The one thing I especially found interesting from this week's reading was the importance of understanding yourself in the context of how you teach, etc. "Self-reflection" is all we hear about, but it really is an important part of bettering yourself as a teacher. In my student-teaching and my internship, self reflection has been very important. It helps me to understand how who I am as a person affects how I teach. Sometimes it could be my personality, or culture, or temperament. Understanding how these factors impact you while you teach is important. They can affect how you relate to kids, understand them, or interpret them. It's important to understand your own identity, and the influence it can have in the classroom.

This made me think of a professor I had at UConn. His opinions, ideas, and even his personality were very evident in how he taught the class. It was a geography class, but at least once every class, he would share his political thoughts, and opinions on many issues. Furthermore, he was very oppositional to other viewpoints, so several times throughout the class, there were debates between him and the students brave enough to oppose him.

His personality and opinions really impacted how he taught, and how I percieved him as a teacher. I personally didn't care for his teaching style. This is why I think it is so important to consider how we let our own identites imapct our teaching.

Dwight Elementary School Experience

I REALLY enjoyed the experience I had at Dwight Elementary School. I did my student teaching in Windham, and being at Dwight Elementary reminded me how much I love urban schools. The kids I worked with were really great--both students were very cooperative and enthusiastic. Even though my experiement was very simple, the students like it.

Both students made different predictions about the experiment, so one student was able to validate his prediction and the other had to explain why his prediction was incorrect. I think both students enjoyed doing the experiment, so I was very happy with how everything went. One problem I didn't forsee, however, was that the floor in the hallway was really uneven, so it was hard to roll the ball accurately.

Another thing I found interesting was that both students loved my computer! Both of them wanted to touch it and type something on it. I let them type something on it, and they both enjoyed that as well.

Dwight seems like a really great school with wonderful students. I'm glad we had the opportunity to visit and work with some students there!