journal entry 2

This year has gone very fast. Through all the tedious work that we have gone through as a class, I feel that it has payed off. From the beginning of school, starting with the t-shirt project to assisting Dr. Smirnova teach the class in October, every bit has helped me to prepare for my lessons that I will teach to my class. Learning about how direct instruction and indirect instruction can be used in the classroom was very helpful. Especially since I am an Educational Technology major, I will be using plenty of indirect instruction. Hopefully the way I present my lessons to the class, they will achieve automaticity.

It has also helped me that our class is full of aspiring teachers. We all have the same goal and tend to help one another when we are lost. The education program can be very frustrating and confusing when you have to do it alone. Many times I feel like I am alone and want to quit, but it helps knowing that others are going through the same thing. Working together with my peers on projects has given me an idea of what other teachers have in mind when going into the classroom.

Everyone has created different lesson plans and presented them to the class. My favorite lesson this year is the one that I did on gravity. When I presented my anticipatory set to the class, I recieved good feedback from my classmates. This made me feel good about what I have done, so I decided to keep going with this idea. I created a webquest for the gravity lesson plan and began to work on this. Using the webquest, I added pictures and videos to my lesson. Hopefully this is a lesson that students can actually learn something from. My cooperating teacher and I have been very close and she has made it comfortable for me to present my lesson to her class. She gave me ideas that I have never would have came up with unless I was as experienced as she was.

So far this semester has taught me so much. Hopefully the things that I have learned can help me move forward as a teacher in the real world. I believe that I can be a very good teacher. Right now, it is very stressful for me to balance all of my education classes and major courses. It is very overbearing but I have the confidence that I will make it. The only thing that keeps my hopes up is seeing the children at fieldwork and being able to help them.