Week 4

          This week has been a highly stressful week. About the time I think I am getting the hang of it all of it goes out the window. I feel a little bit better now then I did at the beginning of the week, but I’m still having a hard time with it. 

Learning Experiences:

          For class we finished up our goals for our PDPs. Which was really hard for me. I knew in general what I wanted my goals to be, but getting them down in words and making them clear was quite difficult. My main goal is to come out of my shell and improve my communication skills. That is a must have as an educator. It is really a needed skill in any kind of job, but definitely as an educator. You must be able to communicate to your students. As well as fellow educators and faculty members, and parents of your students. If you have difficulty in this you are going to have a difficult time in this field. This is not one of my strengths right now, so it is something at the top of my list to work on. The teaching standards constantly stresses collaboration and communication. 1c2 says the teacher "begins to develop professional relationships and networks." 2e1 requires that the teacher "communicates and collaborates with the home and community for the benefit of students." 4b1 calls for a teacher that "collaborates with colleagues to monitor student performance and make instruction responsive to cultural differences and individual learning needs." And so on and so on. All of these standards require me to be able to communicate and get along with colleagues, parents, and others. So this is definitely a skill I need to work on.

Outside Learning:

          In another one of my classes, Fine Arts Integration, we have been working on finding more learning resources to go with a unit being used by a teacher at Washington Elementary. She has a unit on Kill Devil Hills that she is doing with her students. She sent a copy of it to us and we have been researching some other activities and resources that she can include in her lessons if she chooses. This is a great learning opportunity for us. We are learning how to integrate and connect different things to an established unit. We are learning to research activities and learning resources. It has been extremely enlightening and a lot of fun as well. It is also great help to the teacher. She is a full time teacher, who probably does not have time to go to this extent in researching these things. We are helping by providing a list that we have already researched and connected to the lesson and it is all in one easy place. Now all she needs to do is decide if they will work for her class and if she wants to use them.

Future classroom:

          Making these PDP goals will help me continue to make goals in the future that will help me grow as a teacher. Accomplishing the goals I have already made will help me gain the skills that will help me to be the teacher I need to be. The things I have learned this week in Fine Arts will help me with my future lesson plans. Because of this practice in researching activities and other sources, and connecting them with the standards and working them into an established lesson, I will be much more adept to doing it with my own lessons.