Blog Entry #9

I have decided to become a teacher! I think that this is the career path for me. I am very excited to become a teacher and start my career. I think that it is an excellent career choice and will be a good fit for my life. The service learning placement really helped and influenced my decision.

The service learning placement was really what helped me make a decision. I have been on the fence with this decision for a while and I have been trying to decide on what to do. The service learning placement helped me make a good decision, to become a teacher. My experience was  really great and enjoyable and I learned a lot of new and useful information from my service-learning teacher. I think that if I would not have taken this class and not of done my service learning I wouldn't have decided this so soon. It is a great way to help students like me to make a decision and really decide  what is best for you and what the best career path is. It was just a great experience and really helps show you what teaching can be like.

My next steps are to get into the elementary education program. I am taking the praxis exams in December. I an finishing up all of my prerequisites next semester and in the summer. I will then apply for the program and take all of the steps necessary to get into the program. Then I will hopefully get into the program by Fall 2017. Then finish the program by spring of 2019. Hopefully all goes as planned and works out very well. I am very excited for this next chapter in my life and my career!

Blog Entry #8

I feel that I am making connections between the topics and my service learning. I think that there are many connections to be made and I am making those connections within each of the modules and the blog posts. I think that the blog posts help me to put everything I learn in the module into context. It helps me to see that the information in the modules is actually being used inside the classroom. It shows that there are many ways that you can connect what we are learning and what we will have to teach in our classrooms.
I think that in the process of blogging is helping me to notice different things in my service learning placement. It helps me get different ideas. It also helps me notice different ways of things. It helps you notice and think of all of the small things. There is so much that goes into teaching I think that the blog post help you to see how everything connects. I see growth in that at first my ideas were not as clear and concise and later on I got more into detail and more in depth.

Blog Entry #7

When I was doing my service learning placement the students were doing their benchmark tests for math and science. The standard was a benchmark test to see how the students are doing. If the students weren't doing to well it would help the teacher know what she needs to reteach and go over again. Once the whole grade had taken the test all of the teachers had a meeting. The meeting was to compare classes and see which classes were missing what and why. If a class had a particular  question the class did very well on that teacher would explain how she taught that idea to the rest of the teachers; if perhaps the other classes didn't do so well on a particular question. I thought that this was a very good idea, it helps the teachers to improve and try a new way of doing a subject if they need to.
I think that there was an emphasis on math, science, social studies, and reading/ language arts. She really teaches those subjects well and spends a tremendous more amount of time on those subjects. Some subjects I didn't see addressed, were art or health. I think that I didn't see those addressed maybe because I wasn't there on the day they did it. Also because they are not as vital subjects. They are subjects that will not be on end of year testing and are not subjects that have benchmark testing. I'm not quite sure how the teacher felt about standards or standardized testing, we didn't talk about.