End+of+Course+Reflection

End of Course Reflections This paper is being written as a way of reflecting on the experiences that were gained through this course, EDUC 341, as it was held during the fall quarter of the 2008-2009 academic year at Eastern Washington University. The main focus of this course, by title, was to learn methods and strategies for classroom management and assessment in the secondary classroom. Based on this title I am not certain how this course should be evaluated. The bulk of the course seemed to be focused on learning new technologies and learning how to integrate different types of teaching methods into the classroom teaching experience. This is a very important goal and is something that the university should focus on in assuring that the educational professionals that leave this institution are prepared to teach and meet the needs and demands of the students that will be coming in the future generations. The work that we did focused on how to help the students to learn different types of information independently so that when they are faced with the task of acquiring new information when they leave school they will have the tools and resources necessary to do this. They will not come out of secondary school to enter the work force and not know how to learn tasks or concepts at higher levels of thinking. This is a wonderful thing to do. When I entered the class on the first day, however, the idea that I had in mind was to refine my abilities to manage a classroom and to find better ways of discovering what exactly my students knew and were able to express. If there was a hindrance to this end (i.e. the students knew how to do something but they were unable to find expression for their knowledge) I would learn new ways of reaching them and helping them to find exactly what it was that they knew. These items were not addressed to the extent that I had hoped they would have been in the class. If I had to pinpoint exactly what it was that I learned from this class I would have to say that it was how to use technology. This is very important and it does reach out to a certain portion of the students. As I have attempted to implement these technology ideas into the classrooms that I have been placed, the reaction has been mixed at best. The number of students that, at this time, are comfortable at learning in this self-directed manner are so few that to have the entire focus of this class on this one aspect did not seem to be a totally effective use of the time available. It really did seem as if the title of this class should have been “Technology, internet and wikispaces.” There were aspects of this class that I did find very useful. The largest of these was the time that I had in an actual classroom. The master teacher that I have at Medical Lake High School is wonderful. He has given me a great amount of freedom to work with the students and to help them in the best ways that I know and can find. He has given wonderful amounts of feedback to assist me in learning more efficient ways to reach the students and to present the materials to them. The requirements for in-class time were low. I understand that for many of the students this minimum requirement is difficult to achieve since they are at schools very far away. I had the pleasure of being in the classroom for a total of 15 hours per week. This amount worked great in introducing me to a greater variety of students and teaching/presentation methods. It also has allowed me to have extra opportunities to teach. I taught a total of 23 lessons to date with eight more planned before the start of the next quarter. I am not perfect in my methods yet, but this higher exposure to actual teaching situations has helped me to know better what I can really expect. As a whole, what I have gained from this class came from sources beyond the class at Eastern. I know that each time that a class is taught it is a chance to find what works and what doesn’t. I am also aware that each lesson touches each student differently. The items presented in this class were interesting and enjoyable, but they did not meet my expectations of what a class by this title should have taught, and I did not feel, as a whole, that the class contributed to my abilities as a teacher. The items that were discussed, in the area of presenting and discovery learning, should be covered in a methods class for the individual subject material, and the education classes should focus on more general classroom management and skills as well as general topics that span all categories.


 * A digital copy of this is available here: [|End of Course Reflections.doc]