Reflection Paper Chapter 1

While reading chapter 1 of The American School and chapter 3 from the Educational Foundations textbook Why Teach? I was able to reflect and come up with many different questions, comments, and concerns about the reading material. Chapter 1 out of The American School textbook talked about thinking critically about history. The main points of this chapter were how to interpret school history, the purposes of educational history, globalization, racial and ethnic conflict, and themes in American educational history. While reading this I was able to reflect back on the past, and think about how schools were run years ago. Schools have changed very much over time, and this reading really made me think about different issues that schools had. The

The next material I read was from the Educational Foundations textbook, and it was called Why Teach?. This reading was very interesting and talked a lot about finding out why you want to become a teacher. The author of this material states that individuals choose to be a teacher for many different reasons. Some people go into teaching because they enjoy working with young children, some become a teacher because they have had awesome teachers that have helped them and they want to continue that tradition, and some choose teaching as a profession because they have had bad teachers that they want to counter the bad experiences and create great experiences for others. I found it also very helpful to read the authors thoughts on what age level you should teach. Many people go into teaching and they do not like the grade they teach. This can ruin their desire to teach, but if you find the right age level you want to teach at it can be very rewarding. Overall, this reading goes over numerous questions people thinking of becoming a teacher might need to ask themselves in order for them to clarify there