Professional Documents
Culture Documents
PDP 450 Paper
PDP 450 Paper
The Diversity in the Classroom course informed and taught me more about
diversity and its growing role in the overall change in schools and their demographics.
During this course and its corresponding field experience (the first of my college career)
I learned that it is always important to put ones personal biases aside. If one was to do
that it becomes second nature to fully consider the background and possible hardships
that many students in schools face today. During the Classroom Management course I
learned that it is vital to establish and maintain a safe environment in the classroom.
This course was one that helped me grow in my reflection and application of learning
from both my course and practicum experience. The first artifact included in my portfolio
is a Reflection Report on the environment of the classroom I visited for the duration of
the semester. This Reflection Report is important to include because it was an
opportunity to observe and analyze the environment of ab existing classroom, and
brainstorm ways for me to improve upon the strategies I observed and learned about in
class.
Educators gain the most attention and respect from their students when they
implement classroom management strategies that ensure firm, yet nurturing
relationships between teachers and their students in regards to their behavior. The Early
Literacy course taught me various strategies and resources to use when teaching and
remediating students when reading, and working on word study skills. The two sections
of this course prepared me to adequately remediate students in regards to phonemic
awareness and manipulation, fluency and comprehension, and vocabulary building
when reading various fiction and nonfiction texts. Once in my Curriculum in the
Classroom course I quickly noticed that many of the skills and strategies I had learned
area. This aspect of the course made it even more relevant to the practicum hours that
accompanied the Education Course. Over the duration of the Diversity in the Classroom
course, I learned how to address existing biases, how to deal with them, how to deal
with others biases, the effects of cultural differences in the classroom, and how to
integrate the students home lives and backgrounds into the classroom in an appropriate
way. The activities I participated in definitely prepared me for my placement in a local
elementary school as Harrisonburg City and Rockingham County had over forty-two
languages spoken and over fifteen ethnicities or races identified within the population.
I found it important to include my School and Community essay as my fourth
artifact because it was the most relevant to my experiences, and helped me grow as a
Teacher Education Candidate in my second year at Bridgewater College. This
assignment was one that required me to maintain purposeful observations while in the
classroom and connect that back to content I was learning during instruction. After each
experience I would keep track of my observations and interactions in a journal that I
wrote in for the duration of my field experience. I was able to use these journal entries
when it came time to develop my essay. The assignment required me to not only
maintain and integrate observations from my school experience but to also research the
data collected from the local areas. With this assignment, I was able to continue to
refine my research and integration skills in regards to writing, but to also become more
aware of diversity in schools, and make it more relevant to my future experiences as an
educator.
relevance to behaviors one might observe in the classroom. The notes included were
based off of reading dealing mimicking a desired behavior or action. While this was a
required reading and topic of discussion, in reflection, I can see that this topic is
something I have seen in almost every classroom I have visited during my time at
Bridgewater College. Whether it is to receive praise or a laugh from the class, individual
students are almost always mimicking behaviors modeled by their teachers, along with
outside sources like television shows or even their friends. In analyzing the relevancy of
this assignment, I can see that I have grown as a learner and educator through the
course required of the Teacher Education Program and the courses required of my
degree that deal with ethical, cultural, and societal actions and decisions. As a future
educator, I know that the decisions and actions I make not only reflect me and the
people I know, but they can also sometimes effect the students I teach and the other
educators I work with in the building.
Global Citizenship & Intercultural Competencies
With my last few semesters at Bridgewater College fast approaching, I had one
last General Education course to take. I decided to take the Indochina and Vietnam
course because of my interest level and hearing about stories from my Grandfather
when I was younger. This course was interesting and my second seminar style course
taken at Bridgewater. Like the religion course, this French course was mostly geared
around multiple readings and a discussion leader to provide key ideas to spark
conversation. Within the curriculum, we were required to discuss and consider the
different aspects of life before Vietnam was the center of a war in the twentieth century.
Analyzing the various aspects of life was especially intriguing once I was able to start
Conclusion
In preparing for this reflection piece on the vast amounts of learning and growing I have
encountered at Bridgewater, I realized that I am not the same person as I was before I
attended college. I am more aware of my surroundings in regards to culture and
traditions, I am more informed on beneficial educational strategies that have worked
and will continue to work even as many childrens lives change, and I know more about
my role in the world as a professional and a citizen of a world that is causing all the
various changes to life. I truly feel that the atmosphere of Bridgewater College, the
experiences of the Teacher Education program, and the many other courses I have
taken have significantly prepared me to be a competent, trustworthy, and culturally
competent educator, and citizen, for the future.