Reflection
There are many different reasons as to
why I decided to pursue a Masters of Arts in Teaching. The first reason is that I absolutely
love school and everything that it has to offer. I love the idea of making myself a more knowledgeable human
being because after all “knowledge is power”. It might sound silly but school is fun for me. I enjoy the work, the structure of it and
all of the interactions with classmates and professors. Education to me is the single most
valuable thing in the world. The
doors and opportunities that have opened up for me because of education keep me
addicted and always wanting more.
The second reason as to why I wanted to
pursue a MAIT is because I wanted to learn how make myself a better social
studies teacher. My favorite subject
growing up has always been social studies and history and yet I felt like I
never had a great social studies/history teacher. I feel that with this program I can make myself a great
social studies teacher.
In the district and school that I teach at,
social studies is almost non-existent and I wanted to develop a unit of study
(social studies) around Alcatraz.
I thought that this would be a fun and exciting unit that my district
might end up adopting. I wanted to
learn how to create an entire unit based on topic that I am extremely
interested about. I am extremely
excited for this program to get started.
I feel that my strengths as a teacher are
that I am extremely energetic and that I have a great sense of humor. I feel that these are two important
qualities that all teachers should.
I feel that with these two “tools” in my “tool box” I am able to keep
students engaged. Other qualities
that I posses that make me a quality teacher are my organizational skills and
my flexibility. I feel that if you
don’t have either of these then you cannot survive as a teacher because when
you are dealing with kids/students you never know what might happen over the
course of a day and you must be ready for anything.
Something that I would like to improve on
is how to teach social studies to elementary grade students. The reason is because I never got to
see a great social studies teacher while I was growing up. I always loved history and social
studies but that passion came from outside of school and would really like to
learn how to teach social studies in a fun effective way.
In this class I have learned the
difference between qualitative and quantitative research and how to set up an
E-Portfolio/Blog. I have no “burning”
questions as of right now but I am sure that some will arise as I move through
this program.
