Reflection

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.