Talk can be personal

I liked the idea of having a chalk talk and I plan to use this in my classroom one day. It gives students the opportunity to express themselves and allows every student in the class to participate. I had the opportunity to hear a group of students and professionals talk about the achievement gap between people of color and whites on Friday. It was a very good discussion and it made me think of the clip we had seen in class. While listening to the presenters speak it reminded me of my high school that I attended. I was always labeled the smart child and everyone expected a lot out of my friends and me. It was frustrating at times because I felt that other students got away with a lot because they were the students’ teachers labeled the trouble maker. I also felt that some people looked down upon our school because we were known for gang violence and teenage pregnancies. We were on the news and on the front of the newspaper almost every day for something. I felt that they always reported the bad but never the good that comes from the school. I felt that people labeled us but didn’t even know who we were because they had never been into my school they just know what they say on the news. I feel that teachers nowadays are losing their will to want to teach those who they think don’t want to learn. I believe that we need more teachers like that of the character Hilary Swank played. Students should be given the right to change and they need someone to believe in them. You don’t want your students to go through life experiencing learned helplessness. Every student is different and you may have to modify things so that they can learn to the best of their ability. As a future educator I want to make sure that all students are receiving the best possible practices there are. And if we don’t stand up for them then who will?

Field experience

I am so sad that my field experience is over because I really enjoyed being in the classroom. The children were great and the teacher was very helpful. I really enjoyed seeing what we were learning about in class being practiced in my field experience classroom. The students were just getting comfortable with me helping them and they were way more talkative. I hate that I have to stop going right after the children start to get use to me. I enjoyed being in this classroom because the students had great imaginations and they loved to learn. My favorite time would have to be when the students were working on tree maps and they had to read a book and write down the main idea and three supporting details. After they did this they had to meet with the teacher and discuss what they had put down with other students who had read the same book. The students were discussing the book and giving each other ideas about what they should write. I thought that this was so amazing that these students could sit down and talk about these books the way that they did. Some of them also gave some connections to their lives that resembled people or things in the book. My teacher also gave fun ideas that I would like to do in my classroom some day. She also gave me advice on how to handle certain things that come up in the classroom. I truly enjoyed my time at Northwood and I have learned a lot from the teacher and her students.