The Glass Castle Reflection Essay

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I currently have 90 sixth grade students. By communicating with them on a daily basis, I have gotten to know them on a personal level and learned more about their backgrounds. After reading the book, Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, I could see parallels between my own childhood and Jeanette’s. I too grew up in a lower income family, as did my parents before me. Ruby Payne points out throughout her book, A Framework for Understanding Poverty, that the cycle of poverty often repeats itself, however my parents worked hard to break the cycle. For those students who live in poverty I can show compassion and try to make things a little better for them at school. One way I do that is to have extra supplies for those students whose family is unable …show more content…

Numerous students who have told me that they did not spend much time learning social studies in their elementary school, so to close some of the gap, I have added a unit on basic geography skills. Once they have completed the geography unit, I begin to compare and contrast the ancient world advances in education, religion, politics, and economics with our world today. As we go through each subtopic, we discuss how those achievements have evolved over time and continue to influence our world today. For the practicum assignment, I observed students who were 12 to 20 years old, in Mrs. Odom’s secluded classroom for the non-verbal and physically challenged. During my visits, it was inspiring to witness how the students showed they understood the teacher and were learning through the use of accommodation tools. One girl in a wheelchair, who suffered a traumatic brain injury in early childhood and has a tracheotomy tube, was learning math. The teacher asked her questions and provided verbal choices for her to choose from. The girl communicated her choice with eye movements. She blinked once for no and twice for yes. For those questions that required more information, the teacher used a talking stick with pictures velcroed on it. This visit reaffirmed that all students can learn, but it is my job to help them find the right tools that work best for them. I started incorporating choice menus for students to select the activities they wanted to complete to demonstrate their

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