Reflect on what you know about the school community.

I know a lot about Fairmont. I dated a girl for awhile who went to Fairmont State and she showed me around, and I had several friends who also went here. I enjoy the historical part of Fairmont (things like Monagah and the oil and gas in the area) and I think that the city has done a decent job keeping some of that alive. I can get around town pretty well, at least to the major parts of town and I know most of the major landmarks. Most of the kids that I know from Fairmont went to westside though.

Reflect on your school’s or mentor teacher’s classroom management system.

My host teacher's classroom management style is really student oriented which is awesome because that's not been one of my strong points. He encourages students who are behind or do not usually do work to complete assignments and is very patient with all of the students regarding missed or late assignments. He said something the other day that I think really accurately describes how he teaches, "I've never seen a kid that doesn't want to pass." Sometimes it takes a little bit of encouragement but it is amazing that the kids who are problems for everyone else work so well for us. One of the students actually got suspended for cursing out one of the other interns but he is a great student in history, and I accredit that to Mr. Morgan's classroom management style. One of the things that he does that is really effective is always has paper and pencils for everyone and it's incredibly intuitive. At first students abuse the privilege. In the first two weeks we must've burned through 50 pencils. We'd always ask for them back but would seldom be returned. After a few weeks though kids actually started returning pencils the next day and would remind their friends they had borrowed them. It was actually kind of rewarding to see the kids start to, for lack of a better term, care about borrowing our supplies and returning them. (I should mention that he hasn't bought any pencils to my knowledge, we acquire them throughout the day and he has kids bring in packs of pencils for extra credit every 9 weeks) And I think all of this is because the students realize he cares and are caring back. Now whether or not this is done consciously or subconsciously I don't know, but regardless it is inspiring to see from my point of view.

Reflect on any after-school activity you attended.

I went to the east/west game a few weeks ago and it was a lot of fun. East lost and that was depressing, but the band was great (as always). It was so much different from participant year when I went to the east/west game. Almost no one recognized me last year but this year all of my students were talking to me, other teachers were talking to me. I didn't have any parents talk to me thankfully, usually parents only talk when they need to complain it seems. One depressing thing about the game was the some parents in the stands who are setting bad examples for their kids. The fact that every parent is a coach comes with the territory but some of the parents were yelling obscenities towards the coaches and the refs. Cursing is whatever, who am I to tell them what words they can or cannot say. The fact that they were choosing to do so where there were children though was a little uncalled for though.

Reflect on your rapport with the students.

To put it mildly, my students love me. I think this comes from a combination of things. First off, I am a naturally sarcastic and witty person which is not something that usually describes teachers so I think they enjoy that. When I was in high school I had a young biology teacher who utilized humor to make bio and anatomy more interesting and when I was trying to figure out what type of teacher I wanted to be I knew that with my personality I could do the same thing, and it's worked beautifully. Because kids never know what I'm going to say they pay attention more, because I can tell stories that may not seem entertaining in everyday context or to anyone who may read this, which I doubt anyone will (a quick, generalized example, Ben Franklin called up his brother on his cell phone and said "Yo I invented electricity) but when that's coming from a teacher kids find it funny and it keeps them interested. Also they know I care about them and want to succeed and understand the material. Whether they sense this consciously or subconsciously I don't know. And probably most influential on my students is that I am a young teacher. They can identify with me more, half the girls in my classes have crushes on me and they are in general more interested to spend time with someone they identify more as a peer and less as one of their parents.

Reflect on any team teaching you have participated in.

I try to keep my host teacher as involved as possible. Often we will co-teach in some manner almost every period. I try to always let him take role so that he can match names with faces. I also will ask him questions while I am lecturing to hopefully reinforce students recognize him as an instructor as well. Sometimes he will instruct for an extended period of time especially if we are discussing something that he was alive for (for example JFK assassination). I think this helps students realize these events from a historical perspective and a personal perspective.

Reflect on a lesson that you wish had gone in a different direction. What would you change and why?

I wish my students' presentations had gone better. I expected the students to look up the material and become experts on their subject ( the goal of any assignment where each student has a single, unique topic) and then educate their classmates. This was not the case for most of the students. For the most part, they just copy and pasted off the first three Google results and handed it in regardless of its content. The material they handed in was sometimes copy and pasted. It was mildly depressing but next time I will be sure to discuss plagiarism and its repercussions more in depth beforehand. Also, it is difficult to revert from case studies and intensely focusing and covering as much material as possible on one subject (i.e. college) to a brief overview of a topic (high school)

Without using last names, which child do you think you influenced most this week? In what way (academic, social, emotional)?

A student in my 7th period influenced me the most this week. At first I thought the student was going to be a problem child and was going to be an interruption all class every class. But he is very intelligent, applies himself to all of his work and really puts forth an effort that I did not expect the first few weeks of school. He has impressed me academically, however I still feel he needs to work on his social and emotional skills. Sometimes he can be...immature in class and if he can master that (which he will) then he will do just fine.

Think about one of your recent presentations. Was there a student who was inattentive? How could you involve that student and draw him/her into the le

There are always students who are inattentive and I always wonder how I can keep them paying attention. At the same time it is hard for me to say anything to them because I always used to sleep in class too. Partially because I was tired but mostly because I wasn't interested in the material being taught (and that's kind of common sense, if something is exciting it will keep my interest and I won't be going to sleep) so to me that is saying that I need to make my classes more interesting so that I don't have sleepers. Often I try to use humor and wit to keep kids interested, I feel like this is fairly successful. They say they enjoy my class a lot more then their other classes so hopefully they are more attentive to what I say then in their other classes.

Classroom interruptions unfortunately occur. Do these affect your instruction? How do you get students back on track?

I feel like it does not affect my teaching that badly. I am sure that I have room for growth and will get better as time goes on, but I feel like it is not a tough issue for me...That being said EFHS has an incredible amount of interruptions. There are multiple interruptions a period. But maybe it will get better as the semester continues.

Your lesson took less time than expected. How could you utilize the time left for your subject?

I would utilize the time to talk about something else related to social studies. Probably a current event. In some of my history classes at wvu instructors would do that and it was a good 10 minute time killer but one that was interesting and engaging. It allowed for a teachable moment a lot of times. Plus, one of the benefits of teaching social studies is that any current event is going to be something related to social studies. The recent economic downturn...economics. 2012 election...politcal science. All of these are social studies related and thus teachable at any time. Plus there is a ton of material (news websites, news channels, blogs, pictures, opinion pieces etc) to choose from.

PDS Plan

By utilizing the plan this semester it was much easier complete assignments. In prior semesters, it was difficult to keep track of time and assignments seemed to sneak up on me. Being able to visualize when work was due gave me the idea and incentive to plan ahead. While working through previous years, work seemed to overwhelm me, due to the fact that I procrastinated to a large extent. This semester seemed to move much smoother, allowing me to work on my teaching skills rather than worry about assignments. On the other hand, while completing the plan I received the feeling of a work overload. This was caused by the ability to view all assignments at the beginning of the semester. Although, there was a vast amount of time to complete the work, it was somewhat overwhelming to view all of the work for the entire semester. For the most part I would recommend doing this every year, because it allows teacher prospects to stay on task. It also provides incentives to communicate with your host teacher about assignments and lesson plans

two other characteristics

As I stated before about being a lifelong learner, a teacher in our modern society must be able to adapt and develop as times change. Ethics is extremely important in education today. Educators must understand how to approach delicate situations with the proper technique and ethical value. An educator's decision within the classroom must reflect an atmosphere of equality and high standard. Every student must feel as if they are a high priority to the school and that their presence is required. Many articles I have read and studied have shown that many students feel as though teachers play favorites or ignore certain students. This only adds to the difficulty of incorporating all students into a lesson and increasing the material retention. An educator is meant to provide a positive roll model to students in a classroom. By acting in a respectful and ethical manner we can help influence the youth of today to become leaders of tomorrow. Being liberally educated is another characteristic that I feel plays a major roll in the development of educators today. Having a well rounded knowledge on content can only improve the effectiveness of a teacher. Many times material in a class can relate to material learned in another content. A well rounded mindset can enable a teacher to apply material in various views for different types of learners to understand in their own way. By improving teaching techniques and giving interesting information will only improve the student involvement and overall outcome of the class

Improving Learning Goals

While at PDS I have developed numerous ideas about how to improve my performance or growth as an educator. I have found the area needing the most improvement in my practice was dispensing the material in a fun and easy to understand way. While lecturing students have a hard time to relate the material to their lives. This makes it difficult to dispense such detailed material to the class. Now that I am in my PDS more, I have found it easier to relate the material to a wide array of students. I can now understand them on a personal level which allows me to use things that interest them as examples within the class. I have learned that it is extremely important to know your student's interests and passions, so you can help them understand how the material relates to themselves. I will constantly look to improve all aspects of my teaching so that I can improve the learning capacity of my classroom.

Lifelong Learner

I think that being a lifelong learner is a pretty important characteristic for education majors and educators in general. An educator by definition has to be pretty passionate about learning (because were obviously not doing it for the money)and it is important for a social studies major like myself because my content area is a constantly evolving and changing field. For example, the recent Egyptian revolution and the ensuing unrest in many other Arabic countries have to potential to change the political landscape of an entire region.
Not only is it important in our core areas, but it is also important because pedagogy is also constantly changing. For someone that has been involved in schools for essentially two decades, I have seen emphasis on many different things I call "testing fads". I can remember when I was really encouraged to be able to free write, which then developed to AR and Running Records to measure my reading and comprehension ability. When I was in high school I would help test students using dibels and currently my PDSs preach standardized testing and AYP.
Furthermore, I think it is really important for teachers to hold education important; not only their students education but every one's education including their own. If someone is passionate about learning and their own learning then by default they will place emphasis on others learning that material. Personally, I am really not looking forward to graduating because I will no longer have easy access to the world of academia, especially my history and political science classes. Lifelong learning