Initial Reflection
I have been a student for 26 years! That's quite a journey, I must say. As a student, I am good at decoding information into a simpler language and creating memorization techniques to improve my overall learning and retention of information. On the other hand, often I get stuck when I fail to understand the content based on what I assume to be the best way to learn it. Some excessive polishing can also be a weakness when it comes to meeting deadlines.
As a teacher, I feel honored to be helpful and add to other people's lives. During my teaching experience, I noticed I became avid to investigate my students' needs and come up with tailored practices and activities to help them learn in a more effective way. Such a tendency can be overwhelming when I can find some balance between personal and professional lives, since they overlap each other when one love what you do. My challenge, though, it is to find balance as I strive to be a good teacher and also find time to be with my loved ones.
Teaching Earth and Sciences was easier when I did it in Portuguese, but now that I am taking this course in English, I feel a little intimidated by the challenge of teaching any subject. However, I feel less comfortable teaching about minerals and rocks because of the extensive new vocabulary required to convey the information on those topics. On the other hand, I believe I can teach about water and groundwater-related topics with some previous preparation. Those are my favorite topics when I was an undergraduate student in Brazil.
My SMART Goal for this class is to get my all assignments and at least 1 lesson plan completed every week. I will know that I have reached my goal if I spend at least 4 hours on my schoolwork. In order to reach it, I will take the following actions,
a) Communicate with my group work before deadlines.
b) Ask questions in class to make sure I can get most of the work done at home.
c) Create exciting activities using Quizlet, Kahoot, and Nearpod.
I plan to accomplish my goal by Sunday each week. I will do my best to get this goal accomplished with peace and balance!
Although this class is not graded, I feel as though it will be for me, in the sense that I want to feel like I have done enough to earn an A at the end of the semester. My goal was actually based on a graded class because I needed specific guidelines on my end to structure my time and push myself when I don't feel excited to study due to stress or work. I am really excited to experience my first official ungraded class because it is a model I believe works when both the student and the teacher focus on learning and progressive improvement. I understand I can feel less motivated when other classes start to get busy, but the openness to discuss my needs gives me hope I can do it.
When it comes to the students' outcomes for this class, I want to make sure I can not only be engaged in learning the required content, but also participate in activities outside the classroom that will improve my experience with this class.