Miss Kang's 5th Blog : Bringing It Altogether Post

Washington Elementary School Website:  http://washington.district87.org/pages/Washington_Elemen

At the beginning of the semester, I outlined a lot of personal and teaching goals in my blog post. I wanted to improve my language abilities, create meaningful relationships with my students, have solid lesson plans, increase my team working skills, and of course, make sure that all of my students understood the content. In the past, it was difficult for me to watch students struggle while the rest of their classmates excelled, so I made it a goal of mine to differentiate to meet all students’ needs. Luckily, this course had me create plenty of lesson plans to brainstorm ways to help different learners.
 Through classroom instruction and working with peers, I've added many new techniques to my arsenal. Another goal of mine that I believe has improved is my language, namely, my ability to read, speak, and write English. Coming to college was very difficult, since I surrounded myself with other Koreans in high school. My courses and the Writing Center have both helped me improve on these parts of language. Doing lesson plans, especially where I had to work with native English speakers, really taught me how to convey my ideas better and more professionally in English. I also believe I have gained valuable experience in creating lesson plans that will benefit me during my student teaching. This course has allowed me to see the different kinds of subjects that third graders learn, and how quickly they can really grasp a concept. Before this course, I had only worked with younger students, but now I feel more prepared in working with other elementary school grades. The lesson plans have also helped me organize my thoughts. When I get an idea for a lesson, I instantly think of things like “Okay, what materials am I going to need? How can I assess the students throughout the lesson? What are potential problems I could run into?” While these thoughts may have crossed my mind before, this course has really solidified the importance of knowing every step in a lesson before I begin. 

             Knowing what I know now, I still have goals for the future. (I mean, who doesn't?) I still want to improve my English further. The English language can be difficult to really master, so I am confident that this will be a lifelong goal. However, that doesn't mean I can’t improve further. I’m sure having more exposure to native speakers, especially once I am student teaching, will increase my language abilities even further. A goal that goes along with this idea is be becoming even more professional. I want to be able to connect with my future colleagues, and I want them to respect me as a valuable and serious teacher. Improving my language will help with, along with really taking an initiative when creating my lesson plans. I’m passionate about teaching, and I want my demeanor to reflect that. This summer, I will be working with different elementary schools and summer camps, which will make me more confident for my student teaching as well. This course’s clinical experience has taught me that kids are open and excited to learning, as long as the teacher shows and interest in the content and their well-being. I was impressed with how much the students wanted to volunteer their ideas. I never had a problem with no one wanting to talk, usually; everyone was trying to speak at once! This reminded me that teaching is what I want to do with my career, and that I really enjoy working with children. Even on days when I was stressed and did not feel like teaching, the students’ motivation always rubbed off on me. It was a great experience working with Mrs. Wolfe’s class, and I’m glad this course introduced me to her and her students. : )

http://yesseul91.blogspot.com/2014_01_01_archive.html  (Ms. Yeseul's Goals )