Spring Semester Reflection

This semester has been amazing! During this semester I feel like I have grown and learned so much about my life and where I am going. When I came back from Christmas break in January I knew I wanted something different for my life and there were a lot of things that I wanted to change about my life. I really wanted to become more comfortable with myself and really find out what made me happy. Soon after I came back I applied to be an Impact counselor and I got it. Impact has been one of the best experiences of my life. I have grown so much through it and the other people in my camp and been some of the best people I've ever met. This semester I really reevaluated my life and really got back to who I was instead of trying to be someone I wasn't. This semester hasn't necessarily been to best for me academically but I plan I plan on working on that more in the fall semester. In the fall semester I'm also planning in getting involved in some more organizations that really fit me and will be good for me.

Change of Heart

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about the type of area I would like to teach in when I graduate. I grew up in a very wealthy school district where the parents were very involved in their children's school affairs and organizations like PTA. In my school district the teachers always had close relationships with the parents and the parents always knew exactly what was going on in the classroom. Growing up, I always thought that this was how most school districts operated and I always thought that I would teach in a district like mine. I mentioned in a previous post how I was involved in HOSTS last semester and that experience made me realize very fast that not all districts were like mine from back home. I've really been questioning myself lately and trying to decide what kind of district I would be happiest and where I would be most needed. I really felt during my HOSTS experience that I was really needed and that I was making a difference. There are many pros and cons to both kinds of school districts and it is something that I really have to think about.

Watch How you Phrase Things

I have a friendship with a girl that is a lot of fun but in my mind we never were really able to talk about more serious issues. I casually mentioned how I felt about it to her not to long ago. I told her that I really enjoyed how we were able to joke around together but I kind of wanted to be able to talk about more serious things as well. Well, she took that as me saying that I did not want to joke around anymore and suddenly our friendship become serious all the time. We eventually got things worked out but it was definitely a big misunderstanding. I learned that I need to watch how I phrase certain subject matters like this one because people can easily take it the wrong way or take it to an extreme.

Children's Literature

In the fall semester I will be taking english 360 which is children's literature. I think in this class I will be reading different children's book and discussing their effects and techniques. I think this class will be very beneficial to me in my future career as an elementary school teacher. I hope that this class will be able teach me different ways of looking at and reading children's books and what effects they might have on younger children. I have heard from other education majors that this class is a lot of work and you have to read a lot. I have never really taken a class like this before so it should hopefully be a good learning experience and prepare me more for my future career.

Stepping Outside My Comfort Zone

Throughout my whole life I have always known that I wanted to be a teacher. I am naturally a very indecisive person and don't tend to make decisions well but that is one thing that I have always known is right and have never strayed from it. I grew up in a wealthy school district that really didn't have much diversity. I kind of just got used to certain types of people and almost forgot that there were people and children that we much different than what I was used to.
Coming to Texas A&M this past fall I had to be involved in the HOSTS program in the Bryan school district. This was a very eye opening experience for me because I was dealing with kids that were completely opposite than me and what I was used to. It really tested me at first and really made me think if this is what I wanted to do with my life. After I got used to it I really enjoyed working with these kids and really helping them. It created this passion in me to help kids that are less fortunate and are different than the kids I'm used to working with. Right now I'm even planning to go overseas on a mission trip to help kids in Africa. I'm not sure if this is the direction I want to take my career path, but I think that it is definitely a good experience to step out and help these kids that need it most and are so different from what I'm used to.

The Future of Education

It is already very apparent that technology has and will continue to become a very important aspect of my future career as a teacher. Today, schools do almost everything online and are always adding new electronic devices to make learning better and more up to date. Schools have new projectors to display information and teach and also have many more ways to teach children using technology. Schools also have many different new electronics to teach children with learning disabilities. For the future I can really see the way of teaching changing as technology increases. There will probably be better and more efficient ways to run a school through new technological advances in the coming years.

Virtual World meets the Real World

In today's world everything is on the Internet. With new trends and innovations almost every week people are seeming to revolve their whole life around the Internet. Now, thanks to virtual worlds like Second Life people are even able to create separate lives from their own to form relationships and work with other virtual people. These virtual worlds are becoming such a popular tend that they have the potential to effect my future career. I could see things like Second Life being used to communicate with my fellow co-workers and having sort of a separate life in that virtual community. Even though Second Life is becoming more popular and it has the possibility to work it's way into my future career, I don't see this happening anytime soon or having a big effect. My future career is in education and I can't think of a way that this would be beneficial. As a teacher you need to interact with people on a personal level and don't really see Second Life being useful.

The Art of Theater

I am currently a freshman and still just taking my basic classes so I haven't really taken any classes pertaining to my major yet. This semester I am in Theater 281, which is classified as Theater History II. I am just taking this class for my performing arts credit so before taking this I really had not had much theater experience. In this class we study the history of theater from about the Shakespeare age to the present. We learn about the different transitions theater went through to get to where it is today. The professor for this class makes theater history so interesting for me. I have really been enjoying learning all the past genres of theater from around the world. We have been learning about things like Japanese and Indian theater, which are both types of theater that I had never heard of. It is really interesting to me to find out why our movies and theater today is the way it is because of certain things that happened in the past. When I go to movies or plays now, I have a new appreciation for everything that makes them complete. Now, I don't plan on every doing anything that involves theater in my career but I think it is going to be good just to have this knowledge on something that is different and be able to appreciate it.

I've Got an Issue: Education Major Haters

Already, in the short time that I have been in college I have found that some people have a negative opinion of education majors. While in high school I would tell adults that I planned to major in education and they would always say how great that was. Now when I mention it to my fellow peers I am sometimes responded by remarks like, “Ohhh…” and “Well, okay..” , while the conversation awkwardly ends and negative thoughts run through their mind. College students seem to think that education majors are simply people that can’t do anything else so they decide to become teachers. I think that this stereotype came about because of the large number of people, mostly girls that decide to become teachers when they don’t know what else to do or don’t really want to do anything.
Personally this makes me kind of upset because I have always had a passion for teaching. I have wanted to be a teacher for most of my life and have always loved working with kids. I feel that to be an effective teacher you have to have at least some passion about it. People are basing what they think about teachers and education majors on a certain group of students, which is not fair. I have found myself almost becoming embarrassed to tell other students what my major is, fearing the way they might judge me. This is not something that I want to do; I want to be proud of my major and my passion. If these people would just think about it, there could not be any other major without education majors to teach students in the first place.

Problems Facing Today's School Systems

In a very opinionated article about today’s public school system, an undisclosed writer talks about how the school systems are merely babysitting the students and teaching them how to memorize material instead of actually learn it. The article was titled, “American Public School Problems” and was placed on http://mb-soft.com/public2/school5.html. In this article, the author uses very strong emotion to grab the reader’s attention from the very beginning of the article. The author uses the technique of repetition to enforce the points being made. The author repeats that “the children today will not know how to think when they are adults” various times throughout the article to make his main point clear. The author also uses many current social examples to display this current problem in the school systems. From this, the reader is able to understand the broader range of this problem and its effects. I think that the author does a good job of making this topic and his effects known to the reader; yet, he does not provide the reader with possible solutions to this growing problem.

Helpul Advice for Teachers and Parents

The website, education.com is a very helpful website for teachers or for anybody who spends a lot of time with children. This website provides valuable information regarding new research on schools and learning abilities of children. This website provides many articles dealing with learning disabilities, what programs are good for students, and signs to look for in a child’s learning and interactions. This site can be very beneficial to teachers who want to improve their abilities as a teacher and want to help their students more. This website provides good information on different ways for a teacher to be more available to students and what mindset to have towards children. This website provides up to date research on various studies done on a child’s attitude towards school which allows the teacher to have a better understanding. This website also has a large amount of articles that are very effective for parents. It allows parents to know more about what is going on in schools today and allows them to know more of what they should be aware of in their child’s learning.

My Future Career

During my time here at Texas A&M University I will be getting my degree in Interdisciplinary Studies in order to eventually teach early childhood education. I have always wanted teach around the age of second grade. Throughout my whole life I have always imagined myself being an elementary school teacher. I always looked up to my teachers during school because most of them made a very big impact on my life. I feel like elementary school teachers, besides parents, are one of the most important people in a young child’s life. The child relies on their teacher for so many things at that younger age. I would love the feeling of being there when a child first learns to read or write and being there for this big accomplishment in their life. I love being there to help a child learn. It is so inspiring to see them progressively get better and better at a certain subject. One day a child can not understand something at all but then with a teachers help they can gradually start understanding it more and then to see in couple weeks, or however long it takes, they are able to read that book or do those math problems. Seeing this makes me so happy and is the main reason why I want to teach.