Meredith's 303 Reflection Blog

 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 ...

 As a struggling student who had a hard time keeping up in school because of standards to uphold and standardized tests, I was originally not the biggest fan of standards regarding students and school. I am still a little weary about standards myself but, the more I learn and read about them, the more and more I am beginning to understand them. As a future teacher and going through all the schooling you need to become one, we learn a lot about standards. I tried my best to keep my defiance and say "To heck with standards!" but, the more I learn the more I know that standards, are actually important. I do however, believe we can come up with different approaches to standards or maybe even rewrite a few to make some of the more difficult ones for students more approachable.  As a future teacher, who still doesn't really know hoe they feel about standards, I was starting to get really overwhelmed with how I was going to teach them and help my students reach them. I fell I st...

 I struggled a lot in school. I needed extra help and extra time to complete assignments and to prepare for exams. The thing is, teachers weren't really willing to work with me in the ways I needed in order to be successful. I have even had teachers who voiced their doubts about me and my ability to complete school to my parents and I. It is because all of this, that I had to become a very determined learner.  I was diagnosed with a reading disorder at about the second grade. I could hardly read anything and this also made a pretty negative impact on my writing. I had to go through many years of reading intervention to work my way up to the standards I should have been at. This made school really difficult. Like I said above teachers didn't want to work with me and classmates weren't always the kindest about it either. This is the event that created the biggest impact on who I am as a learner. I still have a difficult time getting through all assigned material and assignmen...