Week 6 Blog Post


This class has been a great one, and has truly exceeded my expectations.  The readings were great, and the assignments were full of value.  While taking this course, I have also been working full time (45+ hours a week) and taking two other class here at Trinity as well.  I'm not saying this to brag, just that this summer has been a whirlwind for sure, and that I appreciate having a class that is not full of busy work, but rather well planned, insightful readings and projects that really challenged us to think, reflect, and apply our own life experiences.  

When I saw this class was a requirement for my license, a part of me thought, “why do I need to take this? There are not many middle school business classes. I plan to teach high school."  But this has been one of the best classes I've taken at Trinity thus far.  I may never teach at the middle school level, but having an understanding of what middle schoolers are facing, what challenges they endure, and the transition process from middle school to high school will make a world of difference, especially if I am assigned a freshman class in the future.

These students go through a lot.  Their bodies are changing, they're moving schools quite frequently (elementary school, to middle school, to high school) often with different students, different teachers, and an entirely different kind of schedule than they're used to.  They're enduring a lot of change, and there is a lot of pressure.  I had a middle school teacher who would always mention, "just wait until you get to high school, you think this is difficult?"  It was never a helpful statement, and only made us feel more stressed out.  Just thinking about how we affect our students, even with statements intended to make students work harder, can cause unintended stress, and we need to be cautious with what we say.  I think this is a great reminder in setting expectations for new high school students as well.  How overwhelming must the first few weeks of school be?  We need to remember we need to kindly challenge our students, and support them as they face all these individual new challenges.

I really believe this class has offered so much preparation for a (near!) future job teaching.  I do wish we could have met in person, but I think the blog posts and discussion posts were a great way to remain engaged, and review other's thoughts and feelings on the subject matter.  I also loved the Kahoot! experience, and felt like I was on the show, “are you smarter than a 5th grader?” when taking the other quizzes, when I quickly realized how difficult some of those quizzes were! J

I'm excited for student teaching, and though I'll probably never be entirely prepared for that experience, this class has laid a great foundation that I can build upon. 

Thank you!

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