Blog Post 7

Now that I am nearing the end of my student teaching experience, I want to make sure there is a smooth transition back to my cooperating teacher so that the students don't miss a beat. Some tasks I want to complete are:
     -finish any outstanding grading from work I have assigned
     -wrap up my Great Depression learning segment while preparing students for the DBQ segment we will be starting.

During my student teaching experience, I think my greatest growth experience has been with gaining rapport with students. I don't want to say that I didn't experience this when working with high school students, but I've definitely been able to gain a much stronger rapport with many of the eighth graders I am teaching. I've been blessed with great students who are really good kids, and it has been awesome to get to know them a bit. Even more, it means a lot to know that the students look up to me and that I have the ability to have a positive impact on their daily lives.

This is one of the things that I will miss most about working with the students in my classroom. Additionally, I will miss seeing a positive response from them when working on activities during class. I love being able to see instant feedback from the students judging on how they respond to daily tasks, as this allows me to both tweak future lessons and grow as an educator. Overall, I will miss having fun with the kids. We always were able to get work done and accomplish our goals for the day, but we usually had fun doing it. One of my favorite things about working with junior high students is knowing that each day would be an absolute blast.

In terms of my edTPA, my obviously done with it as of now. I still had a bit left last Monday though (when the blog was due), but I was able to wrap it up well. I am worried, however, that I may not have done a good job on it. Sometimes I felt like I wasn't answering what the prompts wanted, but I did my best to answer each question when evaluating each task.