The end of another delightful chapter.

Thank you Lake City High School staff and students! You have impacted me in so many wonderful ways. I am forever grateful for your hospitality, support, hearts and minds! I miss you all already! While I will never be able to replace you, you have set the standard for the type of community of learning that I hope to find in my future teaching career. I value you all so much and am so grateful for your touching my life like you have...THANK YOU!

What do I need to know in order to begin lesson planning?

 I pride myself on my flexibility and creativity in the classroom, so while knowing about all aspects of the class is a definite plus, I am still capable of facilitating a meaingful lesson without knowing ALL the details. Essential infomation I DO need to know while planning a lesson is what the students know about the content and where they are coming from. I want to know what knowledge my students possess as a stable foundation. If houses have foundations, then comprehension and mastery have background information. The stability of the foundation is what determines the structural integrity of the whole house, just as the support of background information is what can form a sturdy mental platform for new concepts to be built upon. Background information is the  stable surface upon which we build our understanding. Building upon or from background information is essential to learning new information. How does the lesson relate to the student and the world around them? How are they going to be looking at the new material based upon the skills and knowledge they already have? These are the questions that I ask myself while preparing for a class. Background information is the answer to this question and a great place to bring students into the lesson. 

What things do I most want to know about my students?

I want to know their academic strengths, weaknesses, and how and in what ways they interact with the world around them. 

How much do I want to know about my students?

In order to help a student be successful, I believe that having a respectful, friendly, yet professional relationship with that student must be established first. Being a student’s friend is inappropriate, and something I am not comfortable with. Being a student’s advocate and mentor is appropriate and the role I take in the classroom. If you were to ask any of my colleagues about my classroom environment, the first thing they would mention is the positive rapport between students and myself. I laugh and discuss issues comfortably with students, but I don’t discuss the latest gossip and my personal matters with them. I am proud of the relationships that form between students and myself. I feel I am a respected teacher with definite rules and limits, but at the same time, I am a compassionate individual who loves kids and wants the best for them.

I would like to know about my students’ academic struggles, but those struggles are so often influenced by outside physical and emotional stressors that it is sometimes tough to draw a line in the sand, so to speak. These outliers and how they are dealt with can play a huge role in student success. I want to know about my students’ safety, and well being to a certain professional extent, so that I can ensure that they are able to perform at their full potential. common sense as it may seem, I feel like teachers sometimes need to realize that students are people too. Students have bad days too, just like the rest of us.

If I have a student that is struggling, it could be for a plethora of reasons outside of motivation, effort and understanding. For example, it is difficult, to say the least, to concentrate on your studies if you are still worried about the violent argument you had with Mom or Dad earlier, or that you won’t get to eat lunch today, or that you might be pregnant… Students are people too. I want to know about their academic well-being, but sometimes there are unpredictable outliers and if they are effecting learning in a negative way, I want to know how to best help my students. Being informed about these types of issues can help me help me students navigate school while they navigate the outliers. I don’t want to get intimately involved, but I do want to carry out my role as their teacher and mentor and help them to succeed in their studies to the best of thier ability. 

Why do I want to be a teacher?

Teaching gives me a strong sense of purpose and satisfaction. Being able to look back on my day and know that it had definite, meaningful purpose, and positively influenced the youth is my first reason for wanting to be an educator. I know that teaching is what I was born to do, and treat each day as a tangible representation of “living out my dream.” I see the purpose and mission of education clearly and am committed to providing all children with an equal opportunity of attaining a quality education. Positively influencing the youth gives me instant satisfaction and purpose. I am grateful each day that I get to work with students: “good” days and “bad” days. Teaching appeals to my natural desire for change as well. No day is the same in this career. I welcome change daily and take delight in learning something new each day.

I value the youth and enjoy working with them to reach their highest potential. I think that working with teens is the most exhilarating environment. I enjoy students’ energy, passion and fresh interpretations on all aspects of life. I feel like there is much that I can learn from them,  and I welcome their insights ardently.  During these formative years of middle school and high school, students are navigating their minds and the world around them. They are our future and should be valued and facilitated to become successful, self-actualized individuals. I work diligently to ensure that our future generation is motivated, successful, thoughtful and satisfied with itself.

I love my content areas. I pursued an education in English and French for a reason. I love learning more about each subject and approach language acquisition as both an art and science. I am passionate about the study of each subject. I am an enthusiastic learner and hope to instill that in my students through example. If I am not enthusiastic about what we are learning, then how can I expect my students to be enthusiastic about learning it? 

Welcome

Welcome to Teaching Reflections! I never thought I would be "here," seemingly floating in internet land, but nevertheless, I am "here" and very excited!

This blog is "here" for several reasons:

1. To experiment and familiarize myself with technology eventually to be used in the secondary classroom setting. I want to innovate language education, in both French and English. This whole blog thing seems to be a popular medium in which the youth of today identify with...kind of like the newspapers and underground journals of past eras. The internet is the nouveau underground. Très chic. 

2. To share my ideas about education and have input from a new community of people, near and far. 

3. To share travel experiences with parents, family and friends while we ( 32 CHS and LCHS students and 3 faculty) travel around France this June. 

4. To share, write, learn and grow!