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.
Becky,
ReplyDeleteI loved getting to know you through this initial post, and I appreciated your deep connections with your feelings and behaviors last semester when considering your goals for this clinical experience. You raised some interesting points. I'd love to know why you think parents view differentiation as a negative thing, and what experience makes you think that this is the case. Has your mom experienced this before? Let's plan to chat about in our differentiation talk on Wednesday. Also, you mention that you think taboo topics may be discussed less in rural settings. I wonder what makes you think this to be true? Have you experienced that before? It will be so great for you to see what takes place in LeRoy this semester to add to your understanding of similarities and differences between rural and urban settings. Nice work on your first post!
:)Kira
Your introduction and goals seemed spot on! I love that you mention your nieces and nephews. I am the oldest in my family with hardly any extended family, so I do not get the experiences you do; however, I do enjoy hearing you talk about it! I have teachers in my family as well (ISU alum), but they are older so I cannot connect with them with teaching in today’s society. But, during family gatherings, I love being asked for updates on my schooling, and I can always ask them questions. They like to share stories with me from when they were teachers. Do you think if your mom was not a teacher you would still want to be one? What if you didn’t have the joy of having nieces and nephews while you were growing up? Would that have affected your choice on what career path you chose?
ReplyDeleteI think we have similar goals, which is neat because we are both placed at LeRoy this semester. One aspect of your post I’m not sure if I agree with would be about the “taboo topics”. I grew up in a town surrounded by farms and corn fields with a couple thousand people and little to no diversity. With that said, I feel that our school district did not think much about whether or not questionable topics should be discussed in the classrooms or not. I think it was this way because everyone was pretty much the same. I know that sounds bad, but we were all middle class, white students who went to church every Sunday. I think the more diverse your classroom setting, the more risky these taboo topics to be discussed are. Not everyone in a classroom, especially in the city or a more diverse area, will have the same beliefs as you as a teacher so it is definitely something to be aware of. I’m glad this is something in the front of your mind that you wish to learn more about, though!
Good luck this semester!
Danielle
Becky,
ReplyDeleteI am so glad that there was someone inspiring in your life, especially your mother, that made you want to be a teacher. You said,"Watching her have an effect on her students empowered me to become a teacher." My mother was also a huge inspiration to me becoming a teacher because she teaches children with disabilities and all my life I saw her always want to support others and encourage them and it empowered me to want to do the same. also, I think it is really important to have such a close family, and just like you I too became an aunt earlier in life, at fifteen as well, and it really helped me learn a lot about children at a young age and how to take care of them.
When you talked about wanted to differentiate lessons for students, you talked about the involvement of parents, you said, "I want to learn how to explain to parents that it is a good thing and should not be looked down as a negative." Do you think practicing it more or maybe learning how to explain it in a different way and model differentiation to parents would be beneficial in changing parents minds? Also, you might want to talk to your CT about your goals in how your want to change or support your lessons to the needs of children and make sure that what you may want to change is not going to upset the guidelines for your CT.
I liked that one of your goals was learning about how to bring up sensitive subjects with children at a young age. I think that is a very important aspect of learning how to be a good teacher and learning how to answer questions that children may ask or what your students may be involved with at home. I think these "taboo topics" are something we don't learn much about in our classes and experience can only rally prepare us. I think it is best to ask your CT about their experiences with these topics, and how they handled it. Lastly, I think it is also important to consider the age of children and what information you may want to withhold depending on their development and knowledge of the topic.
I think it's great to be honest that transitions can be difficult for teachers. Honestly, I too thought that transitions could be so scary if something went wrong, but I think that if establish rules and responsibilities in the beginning, practice these transitions with children, and use signals and prompts to remind children then transitions can run very smoothly. when I was at Jefferson Park last semester I really got to practice transitions with the kids and I felt that as long as there were rules and responsibilities established, the children knew what to do and got through the transitions smoothly.
Lastly, I think that confidence comes with practice and support of others, and just like you stated, your classmates just like me will be here to help you! You have some great goals and I wish you good luck this semester!