This
course has taught me that there is a wealth of knowledge out there to
help me in achieving my goals in this research project and future
projects. There are several lectures, readings, searches,
assignments and activities, discussion boards, and Blogs.
The
discussion board topics in each of my classes has taught me that I
have a cohort of other professionals to bounce ideas off of. I have
also found that I am not in this alone and that many schools have
similar problems. I have taken some of their ideas and am going to
present them to my committee that is helping me and see if we can
implement them into our program.
The
lectures have been somewhat helpful. I found that it was the same
lecture for a couple of weeks in a row. Sometimes they were helpful
and then other times they had no bearing on what I was doing that
week. For example, in week five the lecture talked about setting up
an appointment during week four with our site supervisor. So I had
to learn to pull the relevant information from the lecture that
applied to that week which was a little tricky for me.
The
readings were very helpful when clarifying the assignments and
activities. This whole course was on research, what I learned from
the readings is that as a teacher I already did this in some shape or
form. What I needed to do was take it from my classroom to a larger
scale of the entire school, something that would affect more than my
hundred students.
The
assignment and activities helped me work through my motivation
project and apply it to the whole school. I did motivation for my
class and wanted to take it to the whole school but was not sure how.
The high school that we feed into does a study hall twice a week but
the students who had all assignments completed still had to sit in
study hall. I wanted the students to have the study hall but I also
wanted to allow for those that had completed their work could receive
some sort of reward for their hard work the previous week. This is
where the thirty minute activity came in. One of the assignments
during this class made me sit down with my site supervisor and bounce
ideas off of her. She also brought up some very good points about
logistics and getting certain things done. I was able to tweak some
aspects of the plan and take things to the committee and answer some
questions before they are going to be asked by the teachers in the
school. I also will now be able to do some comparisons at the end of
the year looking at diversity, attendance and also was it beneficial
in the area that we wanted it in, the state mandated test.
The
blog has been the newest thing for me. I have known many teachers
that blog but I have never followed them. But by doing a blog of my
own, it has forced me to be very honest and vulnerable to criticism
from people that I have never met or may never meet. But it also has
opened me up to a world out there where other professionals are doing
great things and following their blogs it gives me the opportunity to
help and learn from people I do not know.
As a
teacher I always use searches to better my teaching and supplement my
lessons in my classroom. Sometimes it is a video about football that
talks about Pythagorean Theorem, other times is is an online game
that may enhance a lesson that I just taught. But with searches, one
needs to make sure you are researching as well. There is some crap
out there.
All
of things have become very beneficial to me in my studies and
bettering myself as a teacher and as a further my career in becoming
a principal. I look forward to the other classes in this program and
using the skills that I learned in this course to help me in the
future ones.