Learning Letter

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Now that I am at the end of this course, there are a lot of things to reflect on. One main thing is what I've completed in this course and how it will help me as a future educator. The text presentations were super beneficial to me. It forced me to do research on different books that would help teach in a secondary ed classroom. It also helped me present in front of my peers, which obviously I'm going to have to do in front of many students once I start teaching. It helped me get more comfortable in front of people looking at me as I present information that is important to me and for all of us. As far as the content portfolio goes, I struggled with it a lot, but I am glad that it was assigned. I got to look back and see what is going to be important to me as a teacher and how and what I plan to teach. For example, I personally want to make sure my secondary students know about figurative language. I was never really taught this, so I want to make sure I teach my students so they don't struggle with it the same way I do.
The theories and concepts that we went over in class was super eye opening for me. One main thing that shocked me every time we went over it in class were the Common Core State Standards. I obviously knew that the standards were a thing, but I did not know how extensive these rules were. I think I will always struggle with these rules honestly because some of them are very specific and something that we as educators have to follow, and some of them are also so vague that I don't know what they are trying to get at. I think it is just going to take a lot of me trying to learn more about it because I am going to have to stay true to these rules.
This course as a whole has been super helpful for me. I went into this course having already taken a lot of English classes and being pretty sure that I wanted to be a teacher. But after taking this course and hearing about your experiences in the classroom as well as learning more about the education system, I feel much more confident that this is something that I want to do. I of course still have a lot of questions revolving around teaching and what kind of a teacher I will be, but I'm hoping that this course will help me be a better educator.

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