I taught sixth grade Language Arts and Math at Mesa View Middle School.  I changed the room so that students are in small groups of four.  I allowed the students to sit where they liked, unless I needed them to sit with certain groups to accomplish a learning task.  I took down some of the posters and bulletin board creations so that I could post student work.

I chose to work on communicating and involving parents and community members in the classroom.  I met that goal by inviting community members to talk to my students.  Judge Leise, Attorney Swenk, Officer Chavez, Elizabeth Hathenbruck and Ms. Cosbee are community members who came as guest speakers.  I also teamed up with Tamara Alexander, a first grade teacher at Ezperanza Elementary for a reading project.  I sent progress reports home to parents, I have three parents that I email regularly and I sent notes home to several parents telling them how I enjoy working with their children.

The most helpful thing to me this semester was having the freedom that my cooperating teacher gave me to practice the things I have learned in classes.  I learned that it takes time to build routines so that students can work in groups effectively.  I learned that reading and writing are vital partners in learning.  I learned that choices motivate students.  I learned that students enjoy doing a variety of activities to learn.

I am good at having high expectations for students and for giving students responsibility for learning.  My students have made great strides in reading and writing because I have expected them too, and have given them many opportunities to read and write. 

I have learned that teaching is exhausting.  I have learned that the power of choice is remarkable.  I have learned I don’t believe in leveling students according to ability, except when students need to be grouped to learn specific skills or concepts.  I think that there must be a combination of learning levels in each classroom. 

I would like to do more research on assessment.  I have played with different ways of assessing learning, but am not completely satisfied yet.  I also want to continue to learn how to teach critical thinking.  Time is always a factor in teaching.  I find that I try to teach too much in the limited time frame I am given.  I need to work harder at pairing down concepts and managing classroom time