For my student teaching seminar class we had to write a professional study paper. My topic of focus was getting ELL students a better chance to succeed in the classroom and the different avenues and ideas that I could use to help them understand the content better, which in turn, will lead to student success. I read two scholarly journals about this topic and both had a plethora of ideas to help ELL students succeed. Something as simple as graphic organizers or making questions less wordy would help ELLs a great deal. Reason for placing this in "Content Knowledge" is because the research I did here not only shows my excellence in my educational field, but also shows that I strive to learn new things even though i'm already in the field. The experiences I had student teaching made me want to pursue this topic much more in depth and have used the strategies listed in these readings, to great success. I believe teaching is a content area all its own because new things come out to constantly improve yourself and how to deal with particular situations, the more research you do the more effective teacher you will be.

For my junior year History seminar we were required to do extensive research and writing about a topic in history. the essay had to be a minimum of 20 pages, with primary and secondary sources, full bibliography and a presentation to be presented in class. The research lasted the whole semester. My topic was the Native American Mascot Controversy to see why Native American tribes were pushing for removal of such team mascots and their reasoning for it. It was remarkable because they mentioned psychological damage to young children, low self-esteem, low self image, racism were all a side effect of such insignias and caricatures. This shows my content knowledge because every thing I learned in my History classes (how to look for information, how to find truthful information, my Native American History class notes) shows how I perfected my chosen field. This essay was also chosen to represent Rider University at the Regional Historical Conferences in Kutztown University.