Teaching Hope: Rejuvenation Reflection

In entry 114, I am reminded that Jose is the type of student that I hope I am able to have an impact on as a teacher. Unless I am teaching in a very affluent school, I anticipate having many students like Jose who don't put a ton of effort into school and fall behind quickly--and unfortunately all too often stay behind. I have said it before and I will say it as many times as I need to: when I am a teacher I want to be able to sit down with each student and have a serious conversation with them about how they should be doing in my class. If they are slacking, I am going to tell them that and let them know that they are fully capable of great things if and only if they put in the effort. If they are are excelling, I will tell them that, and continue to encourage them to push themselves to the next level.

Entry 120 once again reminds me of what I would like to do as a teacher. I want to be the teacher that has the most fun with students in the school but also expects the most out of them. This entry really brings a warm feeling when reading it and makes me optomistic of what I might experience when I am a teacher. In my first two years of college I though I wanted to teach calculus and the advanced math classes; however, the more I think about it, the more I realize I want to teach algebra I and algebra II and do fun activities with my students every day that I might not as easily be able to do with a calculus class. More importantly, I want to be able to catch students before they advance into higher math classes and hopefully convince them that they are not terrible at math, and they they might even find an interest in it. I want to change their perspective on math and hopefully even interest them in it, similar to how the teacher from this entry didn't take no for an answer and ended up having Tara be so successful. Convincing students that they are capable and have the ability is very difficult but the end result if successful is what teaching is all about.