Learning Letter

            It is hard to choose where to begin explaining the growth as a student and a future educator that I went through in this course. Throughout the quarter, the idea of having purpose and reasoning for everything we do as teachers was brought up often and I feel that everything we did in this course had a clear purpose and a good reason for doing it. We were able to experience creating and teaching curriculum first hand and that experience is invaluable. When the quarter started I chose to read I Read It, But I Don’t Get It by Chris Tovani first and looking back, I would not have done it any differently. Reading this book first gave me a certain excitement for reading throughout the quarter and the books that we read in this class were excellent for helping me grow as a future educator. I was extremely excited to use the teaching methods and lesson ideas from the informational texts that we read throughout this quarter and I started right away by using those ideas in most of the lessons that I had in my unit plan. I used the ideas from Readicide by Kelly Gallagher very often in my unit plan. He recommends augmenting class texts with supporting texts and that was an idea that caught my interest. I used that teaching idea throughout the whole second week of my unit plan. Overall, I tried to use ideas from most of the informational texts that we read in this course in my unit plan and it seemed to work out pretty well.

            Something that helped my understanding of the texts covered in this course was the blog posts and class discussions that we participated in throughout the quarter. Most class discussion heavy courses that I have been in are not usually that lively. Every discussion we had was active and contributed to my growth. I learned a lot from both discussions and blog posts. The idea of using blog posts to express your thoughts on a certain text was helpful. It was a way for me to recognize what I had learned from a certain text and also to display that learning in a comfortable and relaxed setting.

Along with the texts chosen for this course I was able to read a couple of books for the various assignments we had to do, starting with the book talk. I never thought that I would get the chance to use The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien in a classroom setting, but that was the book that I chose for the book talk. Through that I was able to discover the value that The Hobbit could have in a classroom setting. In the mini-lesson assignment, I used The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian as my lesson text. This was the perfect book for the mini-lesson because I was able to incorporate a supporting local news article for the lesson since the book’s setting is in our area. The best part of the mini-lesson assignment was the feedback that I was able to receive from my peers. That is something that I have not experienced in most classes, but it has helped me learn more about the things that I can improve on. The greatest learning experience that I encountered throughout this quarter was the unit plan assignment. It was also the most challenging assignment in this course. Before this course, I had only made one lesson plan for a mini-lesson in a previous class. The unit plan really turned that up a notch for me since I had to make 15 lesson plans for the unit. It took some time to complete, but the finished product gave me a sense of pride and confidence in my abilities as a teacher.

My participation in this course has completely changed the way I look at myself as a teacher. Before this course I knew that I wanted to be a teacher but had never truly tested that out. The idea of wanting to become a teacher is tested when you actually have to teach, and that is exactly what we did in this course. I found my confidence and clarity with my decision to become a teacher in this course and that is something that I did not expect to find when I signed up for this class. The course challenged me, helped me grow and gave me confidence with my career path.