During my first semester at ICC, Fall 2014, I worked as a Kindergarten through twelfth grade tutor in Math, Reading, Writing, and English at the Itawamba County Library. The semester of Fall 2014 was the beginning of the tutoring program, with several students from ICC being chosen as bright applicants for the job, myself included. From 3:00-6:30 everyday, I was scheduled with seeing a variety of children from ages 3-18, helping them all with whatever course matter they were struggling with. Throughout the start of the tutoring program at the library, I was charged with connecting parents and students with the free tutoring opportunity available to them, as well as scheduling appointments, and monitoring student progress. Overall, the program was a huge success, and after my four months tutoring, I decided to go venture towards a new opportunity myself. …show more content…
I maintained a friendly demeanor as well as a knowledgeable attitude, allowing many incoming students and parents to realize they were in good hands at ICC. Of course I had to direct calls quickly, with no margin for error, making sure calls were transferred correctly, the first time. Even when my manager was away for two months on surgical leave, my fellow work studies and I did not slack on our duties, and contributed to keep the call center as efficient as
...l office of public health, where I worked on the administrative patient care management team which was developed through AmeriCorps. I am by nature a compassionate person, and I have found that my nurturing demeanor helps to put patients at ease in what can at times be a stressful or intimidating situation.
I went to the school board meeting on March 21, 2016 in Kanawha. The following people were at the council: Wayne Kronneman, Leah Deutsch, Ryan Hiscocks, Ryan Johnson, Jay Burgardt, Mona Buns, Gary Chizek, Todd Hammer, and Jon Harle. The others were mainly community member which included teachers, principals, parents and supporters. Some of the West Hancock staff included Mr. Peterson, Mrs. DeHart, Mrs. Bruns, Mr. Francis, Mrs. Gast and others. The other people who were there were parents and other community members. The first part of the meeting was the revision of the budget and presentation of the budget. This was given by Wayne Kronneman. He explained the budget of this year and how it compared to last years. Also he also talked about the budget for next year. After that they had a discussion with the
Volunteering at a children’s crisis treatment facility, volunteering with Special Olympics, coaching children’s sports teams for 10 years and working as a substitute education assistant has increased my understanding of childhood development. Grandmound Elementary School provides me with opportunities to strengthen my leadership and collaboration skills, through teaching art (as a volunteer) to the 3rd, 4th and 5th grade and serving as PTA president. I was able to implement many enriching opportunities for students in areas of art, science, and reading. I learned to work as a team, set targets, achieve goals, give and receive guidance. Participating in these activities has confirmed that working with families and particularly children are my purpose.
Teach For America provides me an exciting opportunity to help bridge the inequality gap for kids in low-income communities, while helping me grow towards my career goals. This organization will allow me to strengthen the abilities I have learned as a tutor for children in my community and cultivate the skills necessary to be successful in the legal profession. Both my experience helping low-income kids and ambition to develop the attributes of a legal professor will support my mission to be an accomplished corps member.
At this time, I became a group leader in an after-school program for a 3rd-grade class. This was my first time working with children and as imagined, it was a tough transition. The students were Latino and African American, living in poverty stricken neighborhoods with a dysfunctional home life. The program focused on students who were at risk of retention. A large number of students were below average and had been recommended to receive extra academic support. As a result of my time spent working and learning with the students, I choose an educational path.
Without a doubt the lessons and exercises on time management were the most meaningful to me. They brought insight into why I seemed to be constantly working yet still never really got anything I wanted to accomplish throughout the day finished. I realized the majority of the activities I had been spending the most time on didn’t reflect my values of hard work and self discipline and long term academic goals to be successful in college. This motivated to completely change the way I managed my time by effectively striking a balance between my maintenance, committed, and free time.
For the lead teacher interview assignment, I had the opportunity to sit down with and interview my son’s EC teacher from last year, Mrs. Hamm. Since my son started at the school last year, Mrs. Hamm has helped him in so many different ways. Mrs. Hamm has been teaching for over 20 years from her home state of Pennsylvania and more currently at Mount Energy Elementary School in Creedmoor, NC. Mrs. Hamm has been teaching at Mount Energy Elementary School in Creedmoor, NC for the last 12 years and recently awarded “Teacher of the Year”. Mrs. Hamm, up until this school year, was the main EC teacher for all grades Kindergarten through fifth grade at Mount Energy Elementary School. As of the present school year, the school district made the determination that she was over the acceptable number of students. As a result, they decided to hire an additional EC teacher and assistant to teach grades 3-5th and Mrs. Hamm would teach grades K-2. Mrs. Hamm was the teacher of 18 students until this decision was made, now with grades K-2, she has 9 students in her class.
I have always tutored and assisted others in math and science, but about eight years ago while pursuing my master’s degree in Wildlife Biology, I took a couple of classes that changed my life. These classes (natural resource interpretation and environmental education) opened my eyes to the fact that I wanted to become an educator. I loved my education classes and discussed with my major advisor the fact that I wanted to become involved in education. As an extension specialist, my advisor was very involved in education and community outreach and he could help me to further my pursuit of education as a career. He offered me the opportunity to coordinate the Utah WHEP (Wildlife Habitat Evaluation Program), a 4-H wildlife education program. I took the position and conducted the program for three years. During my time as the Utah WHEP coordinator, I worked with youth (aged 11-19), teaching them about wildlife, their habitats, and their management. With this experience, I knew that I had definitely found my calling.
This semester I had to complete two goals if I was to continue on my journey to become a teacher. The first was that I needed to spend a total of fifteen hours observing a teacher during their instruction period, and the second was that I needed to choose the level or grade on which I planned to focus on during my own career. The staff and administration at Riverhills Elementary International Baccalaureate Magnet School, where I completed all my observational hours, were so accommodating and inspiring that I was able to easily attain both of my goals and feel great while doing so.
Looking back over the course of the semester, I feel that I learned many new and interesting uses for technology within the classroom – both for classrooms that have a lot of technology and for classrooms that are limited with technology. For the majority of the class, we utilized William Kists’ book The Socially Networked Classroom: Teaching in the New Media Age (2010), which provided multiple modes of instruction that both utilized and/or created technology. One of the first things that I remember, and consequently that stuck with me through the course’s entirety, is that individuals must treat everything as a text. Even a garden is a text. The statement made me change the way that I traditionally viewed Language Arts both as a student and as a teacher, as I very narrowly saw literature and works of the like as texts only; however, by considering nearly anything as a text, one can analyze, study, and even expand his/her knowledge. Kist (2010) states that society is “experiencing a vast transformation of the way we “read” and “write,” and a broadening of the way we conceptualize “literacy” (p. 2). In order to begin to experience and learn with the modern classroom and technologically advanced students, individuals must begin to see new things as literature and analyze those things in a similar manner.
Becoming a teacher’s assistant makes a difference to the learning of my students. Together, Mr. Connor and I have taught the eighth graders math. We’ve been together as a team for six months, so we are friendly and productive. Still, I’ve been surprised by some ways our students have changed since we agreed to manage the classroom. Just one example: the students were at the third-grade level of math when we first met them. But now they understand the concept of slope of a straight line. As a result, they have learned beginning algebra.
Over the course of my undergraduate career, I had many opportunities to participate in a wide variety of activities. During my freshman year, I volunteered as a tutor at the Door, a drop-in center in SoHo for disadvantaged teens and young adults. As a tutor, I worked with students preparing to enter GED programs or those already enrolled in GED programs, to solidify their academic skills and help them earn their high school equivalency. Growing up in a fairly affluent suburban town, I rarely witnessed the effects of inequity. As a tutor, however, I worked with young adults several years older than myself who had faced substantial challenges that prevented them from receiving a high school diploma. As I worked with my tutees, I learned more about the circumstances they experienced, and was humbled by their honesty and their resilience. I taught students who had extreme difficulty with simple mathematical operations, but unfailingly came to tutoring each week to keep working. I taught students who were determined to push past their earlier failures to go to college, and eventually, go on to graduate school. Perhaps most vividly, I remember a tutee who was a recent African immigrant, who at our first meeting told me that he wanted to write a novel. Having the privilege to witness the extent of human
Thanks to the service learning opportunity, my speculations in becoming a successful math teacher brought out confidence, clarity, and will. Before I explain how my assistance improved the life of a child etc..., let me concisely elucidate all the benefits on why I'm so appreciative to be associated with our service learning: fieldwork. Up to the present time, Dr. Oliver, who is a professor in the history department at Tallahassee Community College, constructed a great class for future educators, called EDF 1007. For this class field work, it provided me the opportunity to sit actively in a classroom setting, discern the teacher, and take effective notes. At the present time, Dr. Oliver also teaches Diversity of a Classroom, and this class fieldwork pertains a lot
There was a significant amount of knowledge given in this course, involving concepts that in our teaching career will be extremely important. From this course I have gained a significant amount of learning experiences. I had the pleasure learning about how the educational system has come to be what it is today and who were the important people in the creation of the public education, like Horace Mann. Watching the videos and reading the chapters required has opened my eyes more of how a teacher should respond to different situations involving a student, For example when we read the chapter on the laws that revolve around the educators and the students. I had absolutely no clue that students had rights while in school property. Another learning
As I reflect on my past assessment process, I realized how much my assessments have changed over the years. In my early years, I used tests for informational recall as my assessments. I felt these were appropriate guidelines in which I needed to follow in order to substantiate a student’s grade. Every assignment or tests was given a point value and then based on the amount of points, a grade was given. Every student’s assessment was exactly the same, and the assessments did not contain any subjectivity. I felt confident in giving the grade based on a valid point system. However reflecting back, I see that I did not include any performance-based assessments or individual learning styles in my early assessment. I also did not take into consideration the individual needs of my students. My assessment approach was awful. I am embarrassed that I use to assess students in this manner.