Choose to be Grateful.

Choose to be Grateful.

After reading this article by Arthur C. Brooks, I took a moment to actually think about the things in my life that I am grateful for. Similar to Brooks, the first thing that came to mind was my family and friends. I agree with Brooks in regards to people learning how to be naturally grateful. I think that the  only time people talk about things they are grateful for is during Thanksgiving, which is disappointing.  I think people should talk about the simple things they are grateful for every day and I also think that people should show their appreciation to everyone around them every day. Instead of talking about the things we are thankful for at the Thanksgiving table, we should talk about the simple things we are thankful for all year round. 

Reflection

Thinking about the past weeks of fieldwork, I can say that I have learned several things about the importance of reflection and constructive criticism. Our unit plan on Henry Hudson was a good topic and the students enjoyed learning about Henry Hudson. Lauren and I hoped that things would have gone a little better. Our Direct Instruction lesson lacked content and could have been more detailed. I learned that the Direct Instruction lesson sets the tone for the unit. The Cooperative and Inquiry lessons build on the content that is taught in the Direct Instruction lesson. During, the moment we were receiving feedback, it appeared as though we did not care or did not want the feedback, but we listened. At the end of the day, I want to be the best teacher that I can be for all of the students that I teach. In terms of planning, I think that we did a good job planning how we wanted to teach Henry Hudson and his journeys. I think if we had more time we could have really expanded and included more of his voyage of the Hudson River. 

Overall, I enjoyed our fieldwork experience. I was grateful to have Lauren as my partner. We spent a lot of time working on our unit and we shared our ideas and discussed various ways to engage the students.  

Working to create something Meaningful...

After my teaching experience last week, I was looking forward to seeing the third group's lessons. Unfortunately, they were unable to present their lesson. Instead, we were given the opportunity to work with the students on creating a brochure of Hudson Valley. Together we helped the students to research what we taught them and new information on the Hudson Valley. I think it was a great learning experience for the students and teachers. The best part was watching the students present their final work. 

Henry Hudson Unit

Today was our big day. We spent numerous hours working on our Henry Hudson unit and we felt we were prepared to teach it. We were anxious and eager to present our lesson with the hopes that it would be as good as we planned. The students were excited and eager to learn. Unfortunately, our lesson did not go as we planned. Our lesson was incomplete and lacked content. The assessment tool we used to formally assess the students had technical difficulties as well. This was one of the toughest experience I have ever faced as a future teacher. Overall, I learned that constructive criticism can be brutal, but it can also be essential.