Professionalism
Teaching is such a privilege. We are given an opportunity to change the lives of young people on a day to day basis. During the school year, most children spend more time at school than they do at home. In essence, teachers spend more time during the week with these children than their parents or guardians. Whereas this is something we love to do, there is responsibility that comes with that also. It is a teacher's job to work hard to provide children with the best environment to learn. We can do this by making sure our classrooms, lessons, and assessments are not only good enough, but exceed expectations. We can collaborate with fellow teachers along with administrators to ensure we are doing right by our students.
LITERATURE CIRCLE INFOGRAPHIC
During my time in my Introduction to Elementary Education course, I participated in a literature circle that met weekly. Each week we discussed what we read about and what we learned. Our book we read was "The Reason I Jump" by Naoki Higashida. This book, along with the meeting were very useful in understanding misconceptions of students with autism. We worked together from an educator's point of view to use what we learned to improve our future classrooms. It was very helpful hearing from my colleagues, as I will when I am teaching someplace.
Historical Figures Unit Plan
In my Introduction to Elementary Education class, I was able to work with two other future teachers. We worked together over the course of several weeks to create a Unit Plan that integrated two subject areas. We worked diligently to develop an outline for our Unit Plan and then worked individually on certain lesson plans for a total of 6 day. While developing my lesson plans, I learned so much about what it takes to be a teacher and how valuable it is to be able to turn to your colleagues when needed. I also plan to one day be able to use this Unit Plan if it fits the cirriculum I am teaching and the standards that need to be met.