Final Reflection - May 2007

Looking back at my entire blog, my entire semester, and how my thoughts of teaching have changed and shifted is slightly overwhelming. The pressure I put on myself at the beginning of the semester to come up with some great metaphor to describe my feelings about teaching are definitely still present - but in a whole new way. I feel this immense need for me not only to have a great view of teaching through my metaphor, but to have achieved and improved in so many new ways as I actually have to entere the classroom world in a few short months. In that very same way, my ambition still tends to get the best of me, but hopefully I can channel this drive into something positive that my students and I can both benefit from. To quote my first teaching metaphor (which I am going to refer to often in this entry) - "I want the perfect place for my kids, and am often overwhelmed with all of the ideas, people, objects, and methods that come into play in any educational setting - especially elementary school."

This time around, instead of talking about my educational philosophy through a teaching metaphor, I hope to become successful as a juggler instead of just looking at my life as a balancing act. The perfect balance is something I feel I will just get better and better at as I spend more and more time in my classroom; with the students, teachers, and all of the essentials that this class gave me a solid background in (management, assessment, and differentiation all of my other bean bags all in sync.

When I read through my entry earlier, I still strongly agree with everything that I had to say earlier and I could not be more excited or feel more prepared (even though I love to doubt myself)for student teaching. I went into my classroom for the fall yesterday to talk to my teacher about Kindergarten at Greer, to observe part of her day, and to get books to check out and get read up on over the summer. I was sheerly astonished at how differently I just OBSERVE the classrooms now versus how I used to participate and try to fit in when I did Madison House Boosters. I was glancing left and right, up and down just taking all kinds of things like my teacher's classroom layout and environment, to differentiation and we even had a conversation about the assessments the Kindergarten teachers at this school use. She had so many good things to say about Ms. D's room (they are teaching friends and have kids the same age) and was really excited that I got to have good experiences at Hollymead this year. I am excited to continue reflecting and to continue working in the field I feel so passionate about. Yes, I am curious what it will be like without my Teaching Teammate, but feel like I am going to grow and learn so much about myself and elementary education in the fall.

:)