My name is Becky Peters. This is my senior year at Illinois
State. I am majoring in Early Childhood Education. I have always loved working
with children from an early age. My mom has been a first grade teacher since I
was in second grade. Watching her have an effect on her students empowered me
to become a teacher. In addition, I have been an aunt since I was fifteen years
old. Presently, I have four nieces and nephews. Watching them grow every day is
truly extraordinary. Having such a positive impact on their lives has
encouraged me to have the same effect on other children.
This semester I would like to learn how to differentiate my
lessons. This is important because not one child is at the same academic level.
If I can tweak my lessons by making them more complex or easier this will allow
me to be a better teacher. In addition, I want to be able to recognize when a
student or group of student needs more me to tweak the lesson and needs more
time. Lastly, I think parents can see differentiation as a bad thing. I want to
learn how to explain to parents that it is a good thing and should not be
looked down as a negative.
Also this semester I want to learn how to talk about taboo
topics in my classroom. I know my mom often struggles with this herself. I think
it is so important to talk about these issues. Children need to know what is
going on in the world. This will not only make them better learners but more
concerned learners. Yet as stated above I don’t know how parents will react to
this. For example, when 9/11 happened my school did not talk about. It was like
it never happened. This confused me as a child. I didn’t understand why
something that was all over the TV was not being talked about in school. If
students are taught world news they will be more aware of the world around them
and a better understanding of places that our different. Lastly, knowing I will
be placed in Leyroy this semester I think this will be a great experience to
see how taboo topics are handled in a small rural school. I think urban schools
are more lenient on taboo topics then schools in rural areas.
In my clinical site I want to learn how to transition. I
watched this happen at Tri Valley but I didn’t really get a handle on it. To be
honest it intimidated me. It scares me because I know soon I will be student
teaching and I don’t want to lose control of the class when I move from one
lesson or activity to the next. My goal is that we will spend a lot of time on
this. I want to take what I learn from our class and apply it to my clinical
site. I am going to ask my cooperating teacher if one day I can transition the
students from one activity to the next. I really hope she says yes.
Lastly, during this clinical my overall goal is to become a
more confident teacher. Last semester I feel like I would second-guess myself a
lot. Furthermore, I would then look to my clinical teacher for her approval or
help if the situation called for it. I know I need to respect my cooperating
teachers wishes. I just want to be hands on and confident with my teaching and
response to students. If I accomplish this semester I believe I will be
prepared to student teach.
I know I can reach these goals from the help of my cooperating
teacher, Kira, my classmates and most importantly, myself.
