- Write a brief paragraph introducing yourself to the blogging world
- Review the course learning objectives in the syllabus, the COE professional teacher dispositions, and your own reflections from past clinical and course experiences and map out at least four goals that you carry for yourself for this semester. What do you want to focus on? Improve in? Learn about? Think deeply as this will guide your work in this final clinical experience.
Hi my name is Jessica Canace and I am a senior at Illinois State University. I am studying to become an Early Childhood educator with an ESL endorsement and a Special Education letter of approval. I grew up wanting to be a teacher and have been gaining as much experience working with children as possible over the years. I have worked at several daycares and have gained a great amount of experience while completing my clinicals at Illinois State. Ideally one day I would like to teach in Chicago, hopefully in a kindergarten or first grade classroom. My biggest inspiration to become a teacher came from my Aunt. She is a third grade teacher and I grew up helping her set up her classroom and fell in love with idea of teaching when I would accompany her to school on take your child to work day. I have many goals I want to accomplish as I wrap up my career at Illinois State and get prepared to go out into the real working world of teaching. I feel that I have learned a great deal about the techniques and skills I must possess to be a successful teacher throughout my college experience, along with what I expect of myself to become the teacher I want to be.
One
thing I want to focus on this semester is learning to integrate my subjects.
This semester there is a strong focus on teaching science and social studies
which are something that isn’t very familiar to me. In my first clinical
experience in a K-3 classroom, the most emphasis was placed on reading,
writing, language arts, and math. I feel like this has become a very common
thing in today’s schools. This is a big change from when I was in elementary
school. When I was in elementary school there were times set aside for learning
both science and social studies. As
times change and emphasis is placed elsewhere, I know it is my job as a teacher
to make sure my students are receiving the science and social studies
instruction they deserve. In order to accomplish
this some things I can do are…
- Choose books to read that focus on science and social studies topics that the class is discussing
- Choose books that use science and social studies vocabulary
- Create math lesson plans that use scientific instruments and terms
·
Reach out to other teachers in the first grade
to see how they change their instruction from what is done in my first grade
classroom
·
Attend professional development sessions in
order to meet other teachers and see how they are improving
·
Reach out to the principal for any questions and
advice about becoming a teacher
A third
goal I set for myself for this semester is improving on writing my lesson
plans. Although writing lesson plans is something I have been doing since high
school, I still think that there is room to improve. I am constantly learning
new formats and ideas on how to best write a lesson plan and know this is
something that will continue throughout the end of my college career. As I
finish my last semester before student teaching, I want to become confident in
writing my lesson plans before I begin to implement many more in student
teaching. In order to accomplish this some things I can do are…
- Try out different templates of lesson plans to see what works best for me
- Get all my lesson plans reviewed ahead of time by both my ISU teacher and my CT
- Receive feedback and make edits to my lesson plans
- Use my blog in order to gain some great information from teachers around the world
- Research new technologies being used in the classroom
- Research apps and websites that can be helpful aids in teaching a lesson
