Reflection 13

Capture:

This week I would like to reflect on having confidence in yourself and others in life as well as in teaching.


Analysis:

Confidence is a choice. Confidence is chosen when we build and strengthen our talents to help others. Confidence is found by fulfilling your deepest desires and needs. Fulfilling your deepest desires and needs comes from a feeling that you're valued as a human being and that your contribution with your talents and time mean something to the world. It is easy to feel like you're just one of the 7 billion people on this earth. It's easy to feel like you aren't unique. Over time, if you tell yourself often enough you don't matter, you'll really begin to believe it. But you have to keep choosing that belief each and every day in order to get to that point. You can also choose to do what you can where you are with what you have and begin to develop your talents and abilities in the best way you can to help others. If you do this, you'll find that you are unique. You'll find that your contribution matters to those that are closest to you and those are the people who matter. As you do this consistently and CHOOSE confidence, you'll find that your deepest desires and needs are met, that you're even able to help those around you meet those same deep desires and needs for themselves. And THAT is what matters.


Action:

I will do my best to foster confidence in myself and by so doing help my students build confidence in themselves.

Reflection 12

Capture:

This week I would like to reflect on my group's 6th grade teaching experience.


Analysis:

I felt like we worked well as a group. I felt like we were able to communicate the instructions for the activities clearly and easily. That said, we could have had more specific instructions for creating their cereal box/commercial. However, I felt that the students were able to grasp the concepts and accomplish the tasks we gave them. While there were lots of things we did really well I think there were a few things we could have done a lot better. We spent 20 minutes at the beginning of class the first day the telling the students that the only difference between generic brands and name brands was the advertising and branding. But then our activity wasn’t too strong of a follow up to that anticipatory set/activity introduction. Instead of having the students come up with their own type of cereal, what may have been a more powerful teaching activity would have been to tell all of the kids that they all had the same type of cereal and they task was to brand it the best out of everyone in the class. That way we would have driven home the point that it doesn't matter if your cereal tastes the same, it's all in the branding. Also, I felt that our time management was thrown off by technical difficulties. It would have been a good idea to test our powerpoints and videos before class to make sure that they worked. It would have also been a good idea to have back up activities planned in case technical difficulties occurred. Also, a better voting system for the student’s presentations could have been devised before hand.

Action:

Each time I teach I think it would be a good idea to do a mini-reflection on how class could have gone better and then apply those improvements the next time that lesson is taught. If I ever teach a similar lesson to this week's I'll apply the changes/improvements listed above into my teaching.