The Next Chapter of My Journey

As I reflect on my journey throughout this course, I realize the meaningful and life changing effects that it has on my teaching and myself personally. This has not been an easy course. I had to push myself out of my comfort zone and work extra hard in order to do the best that I can do while improving my skills. Although it was challenging, it helped me to learn even more about social studies, teaching methods, and about myself.

When presenting our unit plan in front of a 5th grade classroom, it was the first time that I ever had to actually teach a lesson in front of a whole classroom. It was nerve wracking and exciting at the same time. I felt like an actual teacher and that the students were my own students. I never felt this connection before in any of my other methods classes. I did gain some great experiences in those classes because I worked one-on-one with students but I never got the chance to teach a whole classroom.

Working with my peers on the unit plan was a great experience. My group worked extremely well together. We all were able to contribute to the unit plan in our own ways. I felt that my group demonstrated the Jigsaw Method well by each of us assigning ourselves our own roles when breaking down the unit plan. We each had a variety of roles that we contributed together and we each voiced our thoughts and ideas to one another. The majority of our ideas were combined and put together in this unit plan. One important thing that I learned about the unit plan process is to give yourself a lot of time before you have to conduct the unit plan. This was a lengthy process that takes many days to complete. It is important that you start early in order to get it done beforehand so that you can make finishing touches and even backup activities.

I feel that I have learned a lot about myself in this course. I always felt that I was shy and not very good at presenting in front of people. At the closing of this course, I feel completely different from the way that I felt from the beginning of the course. I feel a lot more comfortable with presenting and teaching in front of people now. When I was teaching and presenting my unit plan to the 5th grade students, I felt confident and I felt that I belonged there teaching these students. It was a powerful feeling that I enjoy and will hold onto. My goal is to improve my skills even more in teaching by practicing presenting in front of people and developing unit plans.

I feel that I am ready to become a teacher due to my experiences and discoveries. I feel that I have learned a lot about the unit plan process and I feel comfortable with developing them. I love the three major instruction methods that we taught this semester: direct instruction, indirect/inquiry instruction, and cooperative learning instruction. I will definitely be incorporating these types of lessons in my future classroom. These lessons really helped the students to understand the lessons more, develop their thinking and scientific method skills, as well as their social skills by working together with their peers. I also loved the Jigsaw Method because when I was a student I always felt that I was unable to contribute in my groups. This method really gave students the chance to contribute and be responsible for their participation. The activities we conducted (Native American Tribe project, Current Events, Artifact Bag, Economics Presentation) helped me to learn a lot more about social studies and how to teach it effectively to students. I will definitely be incorporating these projects into my future classroom.

I really enjoyed this course because the lessons and teaching methods that I learned were engaging for the students and were meaningful because they were able to apply what they were learning in various ways. This is what helped me to decide my philosophy of teaching statement which is, "Teachers are able to make a difference for all students through learning by engaging them in the lessons using a variety of teaching methods and providing them the opportunity to make connections to their own lives." I feel like this statement really applies to how I feel about teaching and one of the important things that I learned from this course. I also feel that this statement incorporates the 5 powerful Social Studies Elements (Meaningful, Integrative, Value-Based, Challenged, Active). These elements are important when developing unit plans because it is important that these unit plans are effective and mean something to these students in order for them to learn.

As I continue the next chapter towards becoming a teacher, I will definitely be using all of the teaching methods and resources that I learned from this course. With my new goals and skills, I will keep improving my teaching in order to make a difference in the lives of students.