End of the Semester Reflection

The end of the semester has finally come and I can't believe the journey I have been on. This semester has really helped me grow as a teacher and it has helped me see what kind of teacher I would like to be with my students. Being in QUEST 2 has been a very enlightening experience and I can see how essential it was for me to go through this. I now feel I am better prepared to be a teacher. I have gotten some what better with my communication to the class. I can now speak to the students with more ease than what I was able to in the past. I guess since I'm not really nervous around them anymore I can formulate my thoughts into words and communicate them efficiently to the students. I am still working on my classroom management techniques. I find that I lay down the consequences but I don't ever enforce them so I definitely need to work on that. I have learned to create lesson plans in which the students are throughly engaged with. Everytime I taught a lesson, this semester, the students were always really interested in the activity and content that was within it. The students were usually excited when I got up to teach. This semester I was in a third grade classroom and it is very different than the first grade classroom that I had during the first rotation. Third graders tend to be more dependent and the lessons they are taught are usually geared towards the TAKS test. I noticed that my teacher would give them lots of TAKS practice questions involved with reading and you could tell how bored the students were when they had to do this. I felt really sorry for them and it made me wish that they didn't have to worry about and take the TAKS test. Whenever I could I tried to make their assignments interesting because they were in need of interesting and fun lessons. All this semester I was able to uphold my professional attributes; it wasn't very hard to do because these attributes are second nature to me. I have grown up possessing majority of the professional attributes and that is credited to my parents. They have taught me what it means to be the best person that you can be. Working with students has actually made me want to work harder and do my best because I care for all children and I want them to learn as much as they can from me. In order for that to happen I have to be responsible, flexible, creative, understanding and patient. The students, this semester, helped bring those qualities out of me everyday. So everyday I gave a hundred percent and nothing less. I am really greatful for going through QUEST 2 and I can't wait till QUEST 3 starts.