Reflection #1 - My Schooling

My educational experience began with preschool.  I attended KinderCare beginning at age four and do not remember very much about my days there.  I do know that this happened because I was a child of a teenage mother that was attending college.  We lived with my grandparents and they wanted me to have time with other children.  My mother took me everyday and she tells the story of the whole place erupting with excitement with I arrived; mainly because she made sure that I took breakfast with me everyday.  I do remember though getting picked up everyday by my grandfather who made sure we got snack everyday heading home.  Many of my favorite memories revolve around food.

During my time in elementary school, I remember going everyday with my grandmother.  She was a physical education teacher there.  I remember her always talking about how much she enjoyed working everyday and the massive number of hugs she got daily.  When comes to remembering the teaching strategies and activities from class I do not remember the day to day every well.  I do remember going to what we call today the connections classes, like art, music, and etc.  The moments I remember focus around my 4th grade teacher Mrs. Heaps, she was just so loving, caring, and genuinely interested in my future.  I remember at Christmas us working on making presents for our families and how she helped me to make a key holder for my grandfather.

Today, however, when I walk around our elementary school in my district kids are talking about content and doing activities that I never would have completed in my school.  I did some observations of some students in a third grade social studies class last year that were looking at sets of images from events in history and making determinations about the context of the event and time period.  Those things did not happen for me.  I have also been in classrooms where the technology available to students is extraordinary.

Attending middle school is a time period where memories of the level of instruction as well as the strategies are easy for me to remember.  Taking part in the accelerated reader program during my English class and having time to read novels of my choosing.  The freedom to make choices was exciting for me.  I remember sitting in history class and watching videos of re-enactments and working in stations to make observations about primary and secondary sources.  Those types of events still happen in middle schools today.  The remarkable things is the access students have and want to have to the internet.  They see it in ways that I can and have not imaged to date.  I think today we as educators do not give many of our students credit for being the digital natives that they are because of the fear we see in the technology.

High school was very different for me as a student than I remember.  I was a part of the college prep and technical prep "track" plan for graduation system of the 1990s and early 2000s.  I was pushed in to the college prep track naturally and did not have classes with many of the students that I teach today.  I sit in meetings with people all the time and think about how I do not know how to make a connection with this child or make this part of my content more "engaging."  These are areas that are of a weakness for me.  As an educator I struggle constantly with trying to find ways to make school interesting or thought provoking for my students.  I do not remember this happening when I was in school.  My teachers lectured and gave examples for us to work and then gave quizzes or tests and moved on.  Today as an educator, I am constantly changing, remediating, and accelerating my students that I am sometimes lost in the chaos that can be created in my classroom.

When thinking about extra-curricular activities the system in which I work offers many of the same things that I participated in.  These were the times that I got to see my classmates from different "levels" or "groups."  I played football, golf, basketball, and soccer.  I have spent time coaching all of these sports as well.