Reflection on me as a reader

Ever since I was very young I always enjoyed to read. I can really say that I love to read anything. I love to read non-fiction, fiction, magazines really anything. Over this past summer I had some free time and was able to read a few novels. I read Chasing Harry Winston, Marley and Me, a Jackie Collins novel and a novel about WWII. I really enjoyed each one because they had different themes. I am not the type of reader who sticks with one theme or one type of novel I like to read anything that is interesting. In one of my other classes were read books that are for adolescents and I must say that we have read a lot of different novels and even though they were geared toward a younger audience they were very good. I actually recommended them to some of my friends to read.
When I was in elementary school in about the third grade I was told that I had a problem with reading comprehension. At first I was upset because I did not want to have a problem I wanted to be just like all of my friends. However thinking back I think that the way that the school handled it was very good and positive manner. I was taken out of my class once a week to meet with a reading coach who would help me and other students with reading comprehension. This class really helped me out a lot and helped me to enjoy reading. I even joined a reading club when I was in the fourth grade.

Community in our classrooms

It is very important to create a community in our classrooms. Student will fell more comfortable in this type of classroom setting making them more incline to participate in class activities. As a teacher is important to decide how you want your classroom set up before the first day of school. Once you start school you should involve the children into the classroom community. You should incorporate the students thoughts into the process of designing your classroom to make them feel that it is there community not just a classroom. I really enjoyed look at the website last week. I thought that the classroom setup was definitely that of a community and that all of the students were involved in the community setup. It is also a very good idea to incorporate real life situations into the classroom. I thought it was a great idea to have spending money and other real life situations inside the classroom.

Lessons I learn from students

In the book "Walking Trees" Ralph talks about learning about students personal lives through his writing workshop. I think that as teacher we could learn a lot from our students and their writings. In one scene in the book Ralph talks about being in the office of the school and a little boy comes in and the secretary asks him what is wrong and he says his mother died over the weekend. There is something about this scene that is so powerful where you find out that this young child just suffered a tragedy and over the weekend and there is no certainty of what is going to happen to him and there is nothing you can do. I think that it is important to understand what is going on with your students so that you can be there for them to help them out in any way you can. It is important to be there for you students or at least let them know that you are there for them. So if they have no one else to turn to they at least have you.
I am not a teacher yet, but I am sure there are so many lessons that I will learn from my students. I know this because I have a five year old nephew that is teaching my things every time I see him. One thing that I learned recently from my nephew is not to underestimate their memories. I promised my nephew back in September that my sister and I were going to throw him a mini Halloween party on Thursday and out of nowhere yesterday he says to us don't forget next Thursday we are having a party. I thought it was so funny because I honestly did not realize that Halloween is next week and forgot that we told we were going to do something. I guess you can get anything by a five year old.

Expanding knowledge on other racial groups

I believe that it is very important to connect yourself, as a teacher, to not only your own culture but the culture and ethnicity of your students. It is very important to do this not only for your students, but also to open up communication between the teacher and the parents of the students. When school starts you should definitely take notice of the different racial and ethnic groups in your class. It is important to special notice to the different group that you may not know a lot about their culture. You should definitely research some of their cultures traditions and history. It is important to also bring what you learned and what you know about the different ethnicity's and race into your classroom. This week in class we learned about the series of Cinderella stories through the eyes of different ethnicity and races. This can be one example of how you can bring different cultures into the classroom through classic stories that are interpreted through different cultures and races.
One experience that I had recently was with the school visits. When talking about a Abbott schools and Non-Abbott schools I had a totally different picture in my head of what Abbott schools are. When you said that Abbott schools are inner-city schools I hate to say this but I pictured a more run down school and thought is was going to be chaotic trying to get into the school. I was pleasantly surprised when I arrived at the Abbott school because the school was very nice and very well organized. The students in the class were very well behaved and for a first grade class very organized. The teacher was very passionate about her job and pushing her students to excel in their education. She would actually make up her own worksheets for the students because the work books that she was given the students found them to be to easy and not challenging enough. I definitely had the wrong picture in my head about what an Abbott school was and I am glad that I got to experience visiting one.