Help Mold the Future; One Student at a Time

Education is the most eye-opening experience in a child’s life. It can open his or her world to many ideas and opportunities. I feel that experiences in my education are training me to become a molder of the future. To help create a generation of successful, motivated students, I need to be the best teacher I can be, by continuing in my education throughout my career. I will never cease to continue learning and providing my students with an education that will help them succeed.

What children learn during the early years of education is equally as important as what they will learn later on in life. Motivations, social skills, and self-worth are learned and become habit early on in a child’s life. Since I am aware of this, I will keep in mind how important my attitude, actions, and methods of teaching are to his/her future. I believe in being the leader and the confidential counselor in my classroom. I want my students to feel they can come to me about class-work and personal issues at any time, and feel a resolve after confiding in me. I also wish to create an atmosphere in which the students will feel comfortable and excited to learn. I want them to be excited for their future and feel they can do anything they desire to do. I believe that if I incorporate these aspects into my classroom, I will take a small part of my students’ lives, and mold them into people who will have a promising future.

As I continue to learn and gain experience as a teacher, I have come to the realization that I will have many responsibilities. It is important to me that I always expect the best from my students and never assume they cannot do something, but I also expect to keep this attitude for myself. Throughout my career I want to be a true professional. I believe a professional teacher is a one who knows how to teach and handle children, and knows how to be creative with subject areas. In order to do well in these areas, I will learn how to use effective classroom management, new and improved ways to make subject content make sense to my students, and then I will incorporate them into my class. I also feel that professional teachers are honest, proud of their job, and use good judgment. Therefore I will be honest when I need help, be honest when I’ve made a mistake, and use good judgment for tough situations. I will also attend workshops to keep myself informed and up to date.

Through my experiences in service learning, I have learned that I desire more than ever to be a positive and encouraging teacher. I have witnessed first-hand what this type of attitude can do for a student. I will tell students what they have done well and give them praise, by saying things like “great job” and “perfect!” I plan to create an award system for when students have done well on difficult assignments and inform parents of their child’s achievement. I believe that parents will be delighted to have positive feedback, and the children, who are usually so eager to please, will receive twice the praise and their confidence will soar. When my students haven’t done well on an assignment, I will encourage and assist them to do better in the subjects and content in which they struggle. I plan to use methods in my classroom that will create a positive learning experience for students when they are working individually as well as in a group. The way I will do this is by learning about each student, and making them feel like a partial leader in their personal education so that they will recognize themselves as individuals. I will also work on building a community for the classroom by stepping aside in group projects, and teaching them to learn to work together so that they will develop social skills. I believe this will create a classroom that will work effectively and creatively together. I will make myself available for questions and assistance throughout the day and teach my students to know what will be expected of them. I will make it clear the consequences of mistakes, but I will make sure students know it is alright to make them. I will never embarrass students; when I am frustrated I will always consider, “What would be the best thing to do or say right now in this situation?” The classroom is never all about the teacher, but it is about building a community in which everyone, teacher and students, learn to work well together and strive to develop social skills, and academic skills that will benefit their future.

I believe that knowing and understanding the variety of ways in which different people learn is vital in order to know how to understand and teach others. Children have many different intelligences and different ways of learning. I will learn to how to cater to different learning styles, such as visual, auditory and kinesthetic, throughout my career. In doing this, I will have a better chance at reaching every student in the classroom. In order to differentiate between these learning styles, I will cater to visual learners by drawing/writing on the board. For auditory learners, I will say directions out loud, and for kinesthetic learners, I will provide hands-on projects and activities. Even when a student is struggling, I believe that all students are intelligent in many different ways that they might not even be aware of yet. It will be my job to figure out how individual students learn and what they enjoy learning about. I will then try to incorporate what I have learned into what we are learning in class. Making a connection between content in the book and student interest can make all the difference in their performance. Everyone learns differently, and to be sure that all students are accounted for, I will execute my plan of differentiating the types of learning and teaching used in my classroom.

In order for my students to succeed, they will need the support and encouragement of both me and their parents. I have come to find that parents typically adore being well involved in their child’s education, and that if they are excited about it, so are the students. I will do several things in order to establish opportunities for the parents to be involved and feel comfortable communicating with me. I plan to send home news letters weekly, give parents a call or email when I have positive feedback or an issue they should be aware of. I will contact parents often in order to build a trusting, open-communication relationship. I understand that children are the most precious thing in a parents’ life, and they deserve to have a relationship with me, the person teaching and taking care of their child five days a week. When parents and teachers work together, it creates a support system for the student, increasing their chance of being motivated and confident in their abilities.

What I want most for my students is for them to be excited to learn and feel they can succeed because they all are smart in a variety of ways. I will understand and be aware of the needs of my students, continue in professional development, and keep communication open with parents. I hope that every student at the end of the year will walk away knowing more and feeling more confident about the path that lay before them.

www.umt.edu/images/photolib/409_photo.jpg

Click Art software

www.lsschools.k12.ca.us/.../images/classroom.JPG

Click Art Software- last three