Boy has this class been crazy, but in a good way. I love the energy and excitement. I love working with the kids! I love being kooky and weird, and still being accepted. I have learned so much, not only from our teacher, but also from the kids and even the other UNM students.

Working with kids has been great. Middle school is where I want to be so this experience is awesome. I take it very seriously, but I still have fun.

This was a difficult thing for me this semester, but I have worked hard and am much better. My challenge was keeping up on e-mail, the rising form of communication. Now that the kids have lap tops I have to work doubly hard at it. I think the laptops are a great way to help the kids learn and for the teacher to communicate with them on their level. I am catching up.

All forms of communication is important as a teacher. Communication is not just being able to make yourself clear, communicating is two sided. In order to communicate you must be able to understand the students. Without good communication the students will never learn, but even more importantly, if they do not know that the teacher cares and is listening they will never open up, and they will never let that teacher help them.

At all ages they need to know that someone cares and it is most important to communicate this properly. Then, when they start opening up the teacher needs to listen and care. It is important as a teacher to be good at this second part of communicating, the listening, because without a two way communication then the teacher is just talking. In order for a teacher to do their job properly thy must not only teach, but they must care and do their best to affect the students life in a positive way. Without proper communication this is impossible and then the teacher is only talking at the head of the class, no communicating. Talking and communicating are not the same thing.

with this class i had a challenge reaching them because they tried so hard to be disconnected. eventually i understood that excepting them for who they are is the first step to letting them know you care. after that it is easy to communicate.

I love reading. hurray for researching reading! Reading a book is a fine way to learn some about the author, but to really research one must find other books by and about that author. I feel that finding out what kind or genre of books they write is important. Also learning their style and finding what kind of elements thy like to use is important so I can use that info in a class.

We also researched Ann Frank. This was a very rewarding experience. Making research fun for our kids was hard, but doable. the best aspect we found to focus on i s how they relate to her. similarities, differences, emotions etc. they didn’t really do extra homework for us, but they did do the reading because they cared about the author.

This was a difficult thing for me this semester, but I have worked hard and am much better. My challenge was keeping up on e-mail, the rising form of communication. Now that the kids have lap tops I have to work doubly hard at it. I think the laptops are a great way to help the kids learn and for the teacher to communicate with them on their level. I am catching up.

I think laptops are awesome because not only are they an awesome way to get useful information, help bridge the communication gap, but also learn through all learning styles. A teacher could teach with these and have the students go to sights that will help support the lecture with visuals. The act of going to the sight and finding the info helps the kinesthetic learner, an dif the teacher is talking or lecturing at the same time that fills the auditory requirements. A fabulous tool these laptops. Hurray technology.

we didn’t really use the laptops much in the class because we didn’t have the time to learn them, but on a long term basis the laptops would have been a great tool. for the one hour we had the laptops were just a distraction. we could have still utilized them, but we found other methods. however, with the laptops we could have researched anything easily. even though we did no use them, except to email the students , i still like them. simply being able to email students was very helpful.

More technology that is used in our lit class is the web page. The sight will always be there, accessible through the internet on any computer. Again, hurray technology. I will indeed use the tripod for my classes too because of the reasons above and also because parents can look at work from any where.

I still wish there was more of thin in our class. We do work in teams with the kids, which is great. But I wish each team could have discussions about their lit circles. I learn so much from my team mates I wish I could learn from other teams too. I think all experiences are important and I can only have my own personal experience. I wish I had more time to collaborate and learn from the rest of our class.

Beside that I think collaboration is important within our teams. for us it has been half way easy. Sarah and i collaborate well because we are such good friends and see each other so often to talk about class, but it was hard to collaborate with Elsie and Glenna. one reason is because everyone is busy. another is conflicting schedules. another i s that the phone just isn’t good enough. We do give each other ideas, talk about bad ideas and how to fix it, and much much more. 4 heads are better then 1. but collaboration on and entire basis would have been more helpful.

our r students must have the confidence to know they learn and do well. That way they can learn on their own. they must have the independence to know they can do it by their self. Although help isn’t bad, independence and confidence go hand in hand and are very important to learning. one semester, one hour a week just isn’t enough time to teach this, and yes, some of our students lacked it. if they were more confident we could have done much more. then again it could also have been laziness.

having confidence and independence and that has made me a better student. I know I can learn on my own and I know I can learn to do things the right way. My, how hard it is to teach this dimension in such little time. I learned it because my patient and positive teachers have helped me discover my potential. If I try hard though, when I do get it right, I will truly understand the concept. This is why I feel like I can research on my own and do my work. I hope to be able to teach my students this too. too bad some of our Tibbett’s students lacked it.

A teacher can only build on preexisting knowledge. For some one to learn, especially on their own, they must have a basis of knowledge. Every student has some knowledge content and as teachers we must build on what is already established. We must start at their level, we must start with their knowledge content and build on that. It will do no good teaching something I f they do not understand.

I still need to work on being more organized. I am not an organized person but I am learning. This is a skill I must work on because it may not be conducive to all of my future students learning. So having many different skills is important to teach many different students. My other skills are slowly improving. I am a visual learner, so my listening skills have always been weak. Working in groups is another that is improving. I will need it when i am working with other teachers in a school.

I need a million more strategies. there is never enough to teach affectively. 150 kids who all learn differently need different strategies. If one strategy of teaching does not work go to the next. In our Tibbett’s group we had to change strategies a number of times to be more affective. Talking in the classroom did not work, the large group did not work, depending on them didn’t work and many more. So we took them outside, split up the groups and brought candy for bribery. then when the groups failed we brought them inside and worked in smaller 2 and 3 person groups. finally we found something that worked well.

I have learned that being a sub for a year has its benefits, but is way different then being with the same kids every day and being responsible for rwhat they learn. I am glad for my experience and it has helped me to be versatile, but I have learned so much by being with the same kids every class. It is a different experience and it will be incredibly beneficial when I start teaching on my own.

A teacher must always reflect on the class. Should i try it i different way? What worked and what didn’t, who needs help in what area? a journal is helpfull to keep notes about students. It is critical to be aware of the class room, but it is also important to think critically on how to fix any problems. What can I do to get through to this kid? What can I do to reach everyone? And many more questions we as teachers ask ourselves. Reflecting on a class is important. Taking notes is helpful way a teacher notices something. A teacher can always do better. we just need to pay attention to how. Our students will in one way or another let us know.

I was skeptical durring the midturm, but now i am on track. I think I deserve an A+ because i have really worked hard in this class, not only for the kids, but also for the teacher and for me. I have done all assighnments, most of them are in my journal here at home and i still need to post them. So as soon as I get them all posted then I will have everything compleate!

Hm, well i think we covered that in the mid year evaluation of the teacher didn't we? I think that really the class needs to be longer. Of course that is impossible, but there is never enough time to do everything we need to do. We could loose a project, but picking one is impossible because they are all so important. I know lectures are important too, but they also take so much time that is needed to work on lesson plans, class discussions, poetry stuff, etc. My suggestions would be to have more time to prepair for everything. For example no one was prepaired for the poetry thing because we only rehursed once the week before. to put on a preformance we would need at least 2 or 3 weeks to prepair, practice and memorize. begining this project earlier would have bee n benificial. But i don tonly mean more time for poetry, but also more time to talk about lesson plans before or after Tibbett’s. I know time is spare, but something has to allow for it to be used more efficintly. Maybe we could make a scheadual for the next week the last 5 min of class so we know what to expect and how much time for what.

The older they get the harder it is to reach them on an intimate level. we want to reach these kids, but they have worked so hard to close themselves off. i think they understand and relate, but do not want to express it. the "cool" factor is a big one too. bribary has worked well, but i fi use it every day it is less affective. I think earning their trust is a huge deal and being understood is important for them. I have also learned a lot abou tfinding different ways to teach and get through to them. always try different things. be flexable.