Class Take Aways/Blog Ratings

        I do not think I can narrow my "biggest take away" down to just one. There were so many great things we experienced in this class. I use the word experienced because we did not simply hear about techniques and methods to use in our future careers, but we actually practiced them as students ourselves. That was a very valuable way for us to learn. It also gave credit to your teaching, that you actually used the methods you were teaching us with us, so that we could actually live them. That is my first big take away of this class.
        My second biggest take away from this class is how important it is for us to build relationships with our students. I included this as part of my classroom management plan because by the end of this semester I cannot imagine any paper, assignment or standard where this wouldn't be a valuable part of our philosophy as educators. I also experienced this in my observation time. As my hours in the classroom grew, I slowly got to know more and more about each student and by the end of that experience felt as if I had relationships with these kids I'd only spend 45+ hours with. It was very apparent in watching my host teachers actions and listening to her conversations with the students, as well.
        My last take away would be how important it is for us to stay connected with technology. We need to use in our classrooms to expose our students and lead them to be comfortable with technology, as it is the future. (Even though most kids are more comfortable than the teachers!) To tag onto the technology piece, I never knew how many resource websites there are for teachers. I think we got great exposure to this during our semester and I liked that one assignment made us evaluate various websites. I would have never gotten to them on my own time (if I'm being honest). I think it would be a personal goal of my to become more comfortable and use more technology in my lessons, when I become an teacher.
        Overall, this has been my favorite set of classes at. I felt that everything I learned can be used in my career. I was never bored or tired in class, which is hard for a teacher to accomplish in a 4 hour class, because we were always on the move, physically or mentally. Lastly, no assignment we did was "filler" which is must appreciated. I think that each project and assignment had purpose and also helped us prepare to write to a standard.
        In evaluating my previous blogs, I would give my Understanding "Understanding" blog a rating of 3. I felt as if I understood the reading enough to write the post and give my thoughts on how it related to us as future educators, but the reading also seemed repetitive to me for how long it was, so I felt like I missed part of the message in there somewhere. I would rate my Assessment for Learning blog as a 4. I enjoyed the article very much and was able to connect to it, as you can see with my high school examples and perspective using different subjects.