PLE: Reflections on the first day

Hello and welcome to my first PLE blog! 

I am excited to start this journey through our Ed. Psych class this semester with you, my peers.  I am excited to read and learn new things that you present me, and hope I can do the same for you!

A little bit about me, I am engaged (getting married in May!) to my high school sweetheart.  We have been together for over 5 years through a long distance relationship, it really has been a blessing!  I am the oldest of three, but my heart is with my 8 year old sister! She truly inspired me to go into teaching.  Along with my 2 biological siblings, I consider my roommate and teammate of 5+ years as my sister as well, I will probably refer to her often.  

I enjoy playing softball (I played for UT for 4 years), painting, reading, bowling, collecting vinyl records, and hanging out with my close friends in my free time (what little free time it feels like I have).  I hope this has given you a glimpse into my personality and my heart as you read the rest of my posts this semester.

Thinking back to the first day of class, there were many topics that were really interesting to me.  They were: motivation, classroom management, behavior management and assessment strategies.  Within these concepts and topics there are many fears that bubble up for me when I have to put these into practice in my own classroom (someday).  Fears of being good enough to successfully "pull off" or demonstrate each of these worry me when I start to do these "on my own".  In knowing this, I am greatly appreciative to learn about strategies and "tricks" to use within these domains to strengthen my experience when I have to give it a go by myself.  I do know however, that I will learn the best as I go through my first couple of years of teaching. 

So, in knowing this my personal objectives are to dig into these topics deeper and really appreciate the many different perspectives and artifacts that will be provided for my future use.  I want to leave this class feeling that I have successfully faced each topic with a great attitude and leave saying I learned something new. Concerns I have are more based on anxieties about teaching collaboratively to the class in a way other than the usual "stand and project what I know".  I am not the most creative person ever, so this brings me worries as to how I am going to be successful at this task - twice!  Other than that, I am very excited about this class and semester.  

Something I found from a past class I took this summer a form of assessment that I may use in my future classroom (in regards to literacy in the classroom): 

While it could run the risk of not being reliable (student doesn't feel comfortable telling how they really feel and chooses what they think they should),  I still like that it gives students an opportunity to reflect and may possibly raise questions of awareness to them personally in the area of literacy.  I realize the teacher is called to continually assess, I think this could also be telling of how the student views themselves (if filled out truthfully) and can shed light on the teacher and student being on the "same page".

I hope you have enjoyed my first post, I look forward to posting many more and reading yours! 

Until next time,

-S