Service Learning Assignment

Reflections: It is all about the students
Judy Maness Jones
Ivy Tech Community College
December 3, 2014

 INTASC Standard and Rationale:

  I choose Standard #1 because I believe a teacher should understand how a student grows and develops. Students’ development vary between individuals. Students are from many types of ethnicity, races and cultures. It is the teacher responsibility to understand each of their students learning styles and to take these difference into account when developing their lesson plans. Standard #1 - Learner Development The teacher candidate understands how learners grow and develop, recognizing that patterns of learning and development vary individually within and across the cognitive, linguistic, social, emotional, and physical areas, and designs and implements developmentally appropriate and challenging learning experiences.

 Introduction:


 My service learning teacher was Ms. Jennifer Guerreo, a kindergarten teacher at Hickory Elementary. The school is a four star school. Each year, the Indiana Department of Education recognizes schools that perform in the upper 25th percentile of schools in performance on ISTEP+ and ECA state exams, as well their rating determined by the national No Child Left Behind statute's Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) (Four Star Schools, 2014). The students are five and six years old boys and girls in a classroom of 25 children. It is all about the students in Ms. Guerreo class room. The class is laid out in a way that stimulates learning, with charts and calendars that aid the students in their learning. The children go over the month of the year and day of the week each morning. They also observe the weather and one students (the student of the day) does a weather report each morning. That students also takes the menu choices to the office each day. Ms. Guerreo has a classroom climate that keeps students busy all day learning new things and reviewing things they have already learned. Ms. Guerreo teaching style is a combination of nurturing and authoritarian. Her class room has a health climate because the students are aware of the expectation for their behavior toward one another and Ms. Guerreo, even though the class is diverse in term of ethnicity, race, and social class (Koch, 2014).


 Relate Service Learning Experience to the Classroom:

Sometimes kindergarten and other early-childhood educators are dismissed by the public as glorified “babysitters” (Koch, 2014). Young children who have the advantage of a high-quality pre-kindergarten school are more ready to learn than their peers (The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, 2014). The study also shows that young children who attended a pre-K program scored higher on reading and math tests that children who learn from their parents. Children who attend a child care center showed grains, but former pre-K students showed the greatest achievement. Children who have preschool are also better prepared for kindergarten. Children who do not have pre-kindergarten or kindergarten will below other children when they begin the first grade. The children from higher income groups are more likely to have had pre-kindergarten, which divides the children on economy boundaries.

 Preparing a curriculum and lesson plan and other activities requires many hours of research and planning wither on not the child has had pre-school. Ms. Guerreo states that she spends many hours working on her activities and lessons plans. She also gets ideas from the internet and other places, but adjust them to fit her student’s needs. I was impressed about all the things the children were learning. Personal Reflections All children do not learn the same and even they are the same age some had trouble and needed extra help. Hickory has teachers to help the students who are slower learners. I worked with some of the slower students, especially one little boy who had trouble with math. I accept one on one tutoring because it helped him considerably. Another little boy seem to find excuses not to do his work. Sometimes he just struggled because he did not seem to understand. He needed extra help every day. Ms. Guerreo also called his parents in for a meeting. A teacher also need to be organized and on top of all responsibilities. I accept that a teacher also needs to have a backup plan in case the original plan does not work. I accept that a teacher has to be quick on their feet and also know how to instruct students about expected behavior without shouting, this will damage a teacher’s class (Koch, 2014).

 Future Teacher:
 This experience will be beneficial to me as a future teacher because I have become more aware of how I explain thing to students. A teacher must explain things in a way that the students relate to and understand. I also know that I have to have a sense of humor, even as a teacher helper I have had to use my sense of humor. I also began to realize that I have to like people, especially students in the age range in that I want to teach. I have learned that I need to be fair minded common sense. Being will organized is also an important trait for a teacher. The experience has also helped me realize that I need to know the subject I am going to teach. A good teacher will always be prepared for disasters that may happen. Having a plan will keep that will keep the students safe and if they know exactly what to do they are less likely to panic. I have had to lead the students in drills such as how to exit a bus in case of an accident. Being a good teacher also means that you have to manage your time wisely. I also learned in service learning that a teacher needs to be able to lead as well as follow.

 A teacher needs to be able to watch how a student learns and adjust their teaching style to the students. To be a successful teacher, I need to become a student of my students. A teacher needs more than one way to approach a topic. One of my favorite quotes is “If a child can’t learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn.” Ignacio Estrade. Another thing I have learned is that I need to work on being more assertive. I am a soft spoken person I that is I need to develop more as a teacher to fit the needs of the students. I have not worked with any children with disabilities but I have help student that are not on grade level. My service learning teacher knew which student needed extra help and had them located at a special table. They have the same lesson plan but except when they leave for special help

Summary and Recommendations:
  I found a school for my service learning fairly quickly and even landed a job as a substitute teacher. I believe that Mr. Buckle was very helpful by giving the class a list of schools, even though the school I did my service learning was not on the list. I believe that more hours than sixteen should be required because there seem to be not enough time to do a lot of the excised on the list. I learned many thing in my service learning experience and began to realize that teaching is all about the students. If someone does not love children and enjoy watching them learn they will not be a good teacher. I believe in the progressivism style of teaching because it gives more responsibility to students and pragmatic because it is embedded teaching and learning in the context of daily life (Koch, 2014).



 References

 Four Star Schools. (2014, December 1). Retrieved from Indiana Department of Education:http://www.doe.in.gov/ Koch, J. (2014). Teach 2. Belmont: 200X Wadsworh, Cengage Learning. The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study. (2014, April 14). Retrieved from National Center for Education Statistics : http://nces.ed.gov/