Assignment Four: Comprehensive Reflection

Now that I reflect back on my student teaching experience, I really miss teaching the kids. It becomes a daily part and something you look forward to every morning and now that I am done for the semester I miss it. I really enjoyed my student teaching experience and I have learned a lot. One thing that I am going to take from this experience is that there is always something do, so you should not have a lot of down time. However, on the other hand I believe that I have accomplished my goals and will continue to always work on my goals. Just to review my goals: My goal is to work on discipline, Get to know the students more and to learn. I would say that I accomplished my goal of discipline by making sure that the students follow the rule that if the teacher is talking then it is not there turn to talk while the teacher is talking. For example, if the students got too loud when I was giving directions, I would clap my hands in some rhythm until they were quiet. I felt that conferences were a big help to me because I was able to get a better understanding of the students and it helped me to get to know the students more. I was able to talk them about their favorite shows, their younger siblings and some of their extra curricular activities that they did. It was very fun to talk to them. Finally, my last goal I accomplished is to learn. I learn many things through the students and through my cooperating teachers. One thing that I learned from the students is that they like to have fun while they are learning. Finally, a cool project that I learned from my cooperating teacher is when you want to make a representation of the moon with craters. You take gray paper and trace a circle on it. Then you take liquid glue and draw various sizes of circles. Then you set a side to dry. Once they are dry, then you take a black crayon and shade over it and it turns out pretty neat.
In conclusion, the one experience that was meaningful to me was that I should not be afraid to raise to my voice to them. Every time that we get in line to go to either lunch or to specials ( gym, art or music) they are talking and I would tell them we will go when they are quiet. However, if that doesn't work after several times of telling them to get in line and be quiet I raise my voice and they be quiet and do what they are suppose. When doing this I feel better because they listened to me and I feel like this has changed me as an educator because it helped to realize that it is okay to get tough with them when needed.