This past week of my CFE the kids wrote letters to people that have taught them empathy to thank them and also to prepare for the book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. My personal definition of Empathy is the ability to see how someone else is feeling and connect with them. Empathy is something that we are taught as we grow up, it seems to be a built in part of all of us. When we see someone else hurt we empathize with them because we know just how they feel. As I have mentioned before my goal for this trimester is to have a relationship with all of my students and I believe empathy is something that I can use to help me achieve this goal.
This week for this blog I had to read an article on 15 Things You Must Give Up To Be Happy and one thing on the list I really connect with is #10. Recently I have been really struggling with a lot of things and a big cause of most of the issues is myself. I constantly have negative thoughts about myself and if I don't stop and realize that I truly am wonderful I'm never going to be the teacher I want to be. So I really connect with the idea of #10, I need to give up negative self talk and maybe just maybe I will be a little happier. Who wants a teacher that feels like they are not good enough to teach? Certainly not me. I know I won't be the best teacher, but I need to stop telling myself I am going to be the worst and start telling myself that I can do anything.
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This week I continued on with my CFE, but not with Mr. Gwozdz, no I started with a brand new teacher and class and I have to say they are all lovely. My new supervisor is Miss. Rabbitt who is teaching a small class of ninth graders. Her email is [email protected] if you would like to contact her. I have only been with her for a week and I have to say as much as I miss my class with Mr. Gwozdz, Miss. Rabbitt and the new class are already proving to be just as wonderful. Everyday I go into class Miss. Rabbit gives me a low down on what we are doing so that I can interject in the lesson. I actually got to draw up an example of something they were going to be doing and present it to them and on Friday Miss. Rabbitt was out so the sub just let me take over and teach the class. Only a week in and I have taken over a day of class and gave them an example of what they were going to do. It has been a great week and I am excited for the rest of the tri. Due to the fact that this is a new passage in my CFE journey though and I did accomplish my previous goal from last tri of figuring out if whether or not I want to be a teacher, I believe it is time for me to come up with a new goal. My new goal for the trimester is to try and have a connection with every single student. Last tri I had some connections with the students, but I feel like I should try and connect with every student that way I can help them to the best of my abilities. This goal is slightly based off of something that the students are learning, but I believe that it is a very important thing to do. The students are learning about empathy and the power of connections and I want to see what I can learn from my students by trying to create these connections with all of them. My new goal is to be able to know more about my students than just their names. "Who dares to teach must never cease to learn" John Cotton Dana, this is the perfect quote related to my career field experience due to the fact that I am daring to go into teaching and I never plan on stopping on learning how to be the best teacher I can be for my future students. In my Career Field Experience class I was given the task of creating my own goal to accomplish by the end of this trimester and my goal was to decide whether or not teaching is for me. In my opinion my Career Field Experience class is a unique class because it brought me too the conclusion that yes, yes I do want to be a teacher. For thirteen weeks I got to go to Mr. Gwozdz's class to observe him teach, help the students and occasionally built up to taking over a day of his classes which I am happy to say went very well. While reflecting on my experience I will be outlining all the wonderful things I have learned throughout the trimester, such as communicating with students, researching things for the class and how to be flexible.
At the start of the trimester I had no previous experience with interacting with high school students. Sure I have had experience interacting with students but not high school aged ones, so I jumped in not knowing how to interact with them, but through watching Mr. Gwozdz I started to learn. The students are humans just like me and my friends so I should interact with them like they are, but I also need to have a professional air to my interactions with them. Eventually I started to interact with the students more and more and I actually believe I connected with a few now that I am at the end seeing it all wrapping up. What most students don't realize, even myself, is that in order to teach a class you have to really know what it is you are teaching and this experience really showed me that. As the class went along reading The Crucible I went through the book and researched for things that I could do to teach the kids. When I did that I felt like I finally got to see a part of the teaching world that goes unseen. I use to think teachers just showed up and taught whatever was prepared for them to teach out of a textbook, but now I know there is so much more behind those lessons. There is hours of research and lots of extra work that the teacher actually has to do. The number one thing that this experience has taught me is that in the teaching world you have to be flexible. Things change all the time, no class is the same and you have to be able to make adjustments for when that happens. I saw this happen when Mr. Gwozdz would try to help students individually, not all the students understand everything so sometimes you have to teach them in a different way. I also saw this happen the day I had my evaluation first hand. That day I went in ready to teach one journal and it ended up that the journal changed so I had to change gears on what I was teaching real fast, but that's part of teaching and luckily I know that now. This experience has been amazing for me and Mr. Gwozdz has been a great mentor. This class has taught me many valuable things and I will never forget them because now I shall carry this experience with me throughout my teaching career. Before this experience I was really unsure if teaching was for me or not but now I know that it is. I was asked what has changed in me since the start of my experience and to be honest it is the fact that now I am no longer uncertain about my future career path. Throughout this entire experience I got to meet some amazing students and I will never forget them, especially one student who I didn't even know paid much attention to me, he told me that he was going to miss me and that I was a great teacher. If anyone I know is considering taking this class I would without a doubt tell them to take it because not only is it great but for the moments you never knew would happen. Also I would like to give an extra shout out to Mr. Gwozdz, he has been an outstanding mentor and I will never forget all that he has taught me. I will also never forget December First of 2015 because thanks to him that day will forever be my first day of teaching, which I also have some great student feedback from. Sure it was only half of his second, third, fourth and fifth hour classes, but to me it was an experience that I got to have which he didn't even have to do for me, so I will forever be grateful for the experiences I had the first trimester of my senior year thanks to Mr. Gwozdz from room 207 |
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