Meredith's 303 Reflection Blog

 Hello all! I have to be honest, I I feels though I didn't grow a whole lot this week. I think part of this is because I am still struggling with burn out and I am constantly trying to find ways to remain motivated and getting things done. I have connected with other peers and have found many are feeling similar and it was nice to know that we weren't alone in this feeling. I did grow a bit while learning about and understanding UDL. I feel we talk a lot about learning styles and learning needs but er haven't really put everything together yet. UDL explains that learning preferences person to person is as unique as a finger print and UDL is a way of teaching with the least amount of barriers. This is where creative and diverse teaching, and meeting standards meet for me. I am excited to dive deeper into this topic with both Torres and Shaffer's class for I hope to keep growing in this area. Hoping you are all doing well, and if you are dealing with burnout, stress, exha...

 This week has been an interesting week. For starters, I think I am starting to feel pretty burnt out. I am having a hard time juggling everything and it is causing me to become more and more unmotivated. Of course I am still dedicated on becoming a teacher but, I need to find ways to deal with the start of my burn out cycle so I can nip it in the bud. Any advice? Other than that, I have learned quite a bit about myself as a student teacher. One, teaching peers and teaching students are two VERY different experiences, I am very nervous and apprehensive when it comes to teaching my peer. With students I am far more bubbly and energetic. Second, I need to learn how to draw people out. I found when I was teaching my lessons this week, many peers remained quite and didn't offer up much information (to no fault of their own, not only is it an odd experience but, I also need to do more/give more). This is something that I think will come with time in a classroom but, it is a frustrating ...

My brain is slightly mush, and I have no concept of time anymore, but aside from that, it’s been a decent week in terms of growth.   I believe this has been a very “growth heavy” week for me. I think I am getting much more comfortable with lesson plans and alignment. Not only can I fill out the template with know confidence but I can do so with more speed and less reliance on outside sources to help me through it. I am memorizing each section and what it should entail and how it should relate to my lesson. Lesson plans no longer feel like this huge intimidating thing but more of a slightly stressful encounter. I am excited to keep up this growth and hope to keep improving my lesson plans.  This week I also got a swift kick to the gut on how uncomfortable I still am with assessment. I did learn I feel more equipped  to create writing and performance assessment but still with not much confidence. But, I am struggling with a selective response assessment even more than the o...

 How Did I Grow?  To be quite honest, I wasn't worried about assessments when I thought about my future teaching. For whatever reason I never thought that this would be an issue and I would magically be good at assessments. I am not sure why I never gave this any thought but I am very glad I am learning about them now because assessments are incredibly important and are going to provide a lot of intelligence for students. I feel this week and this quarter as a whole really, got me thinking more and more about assessments. This week in particular was very helpful because we focused on what makes a good assessment and I think that was information I really needed. Especially because literacy is going to be a very assessment heavy content area.  Challenges I feel there is still SO much I don't know. I grow more and more worried that I simply don't know enough and I worry that I am going to struggle because of it. It may be because I feel I don't have enough time to fully so...

My content area, literacy, is going to require to be very assessment heavy. In this past week I feel I have learned a lot about assessments which is important. I felt I knew a lot about what to do and how to do in terms of creating and issuing assessment but, I haven't learned a whole lot about what NOT to do in terms of assessment and I am glad I finally have with this module. I know about bias in test questions but there were some things that opened my eyes even further to that. For example when professor Torres mentioned that there was a question in her standardized test about a strip mall and she didn't know what that was. There are things that we think everyone knows and some people don't (aka bias), and it is very important to evaluate such things like this while you are a teacher and while you create assessments. It further reinforces the idea that we all have some illicit biases and we all need to keep this in mind as we are educators. 

 1) My passion for teaching has always been there, my ability for working with and connecting with students is there (I hope so anyway) but the technical part I never really had a full understanding of. I have had some experience with these lesson plans in past classes however, I have not had filled out out like this and to this extent. It is just giving me a little more insight on the other half of being a teacher. While I am a little nervous to take everything on I am still excited for the whole thing. So I was hit with a wave of overwhelming but then reminded of how fun it is going to be to actually execute these lessons that we are learning to build.  2) I really want my lessons to be all kinds of fun and varying styles. Overall for the quarter I just want to get more comfortable and confident with lesson planning. It is not something that I am necessarily uncomfortable with, but something that I know I need to work on more in order for me to be successful as a teacher. I ...