Tabitha Gibson

Letter of Reflection
I think that as a teacher, I will have strengths in quite of few of the categories that we
discussed ED 300. I believe that a strength I will have playing the role of the teacher will be that
I have a plan for how to manage my classroom. It's the teacher’s duty to ensure that all students
have equal opportunities to learn and grow as students. One weakness that I may have as the role
of the teacher, however, would be incorporating technology. I know how important technology is
in the classroom, but I also feel that it would be difficult to do so in an early childhood setting. I
will strive, however, to make differentiated lesson plans that include many differentiation
strategies, as well as technology.
Another strength that I will have as an educator is regarding the learning environment. I
have a plan for the arrangement of my classroom, and I believe that it will be effective. My goal
is to make the students feel safe, and welcome. I want the learning environment of my classroom
to be a place where students feel they can express themselves and make mistakes. I also feel,
however, that I may struggle with having too many stimulants in the classroom. Too many bright
colored objects and manipulatives does not provide students with an area to be calm and relaxed.
I will try to work on having more cool colors as opposed to bright colors. Closely tied to the
learning environment is managing the learning environment. I have made a list of rules and
procedures that will be used within my classroom. These procedures ensure not only the safety of
my students, but it ensures that the classroom will be able to run like a well-oiled machine. The
rules and procedures eliminate distractions or disruptions from the students. This provides the
teacher with more time to teach the lessons, and the students more time to learn and ask
questions. As a future educator, I know that discipline is important as well. If your students are
following procedures, you should not have many discipline issues. However, I fear that if any of
these issues occurred, I would try to ignore it at first and hope it goes away. I know that this is an
ineffective thing to do, and that it harms the rules and procedures as well. Therefore, I have
created my discipline plan, and I hope that I can stick to it.
I feel that I have learned many effective instruction strategies from ED 300. My favorite
strategies were from the mastery lesson design plan, as well as using Backwards Design to create
assessments. The knowledge gained from this class will benefit me greatly as a future educator. I
now can create effective assessments, as well as effective lessons to go along with them. I will
have the ability to look at the content standards to create useful objectives and assessments. My
biggest concern with effective instruction is having the time to create all assessments and lessons
in depth. It took a very long time to create my mastery lesson design plan, and I feel that if I had
to make this daily for each content area, I would be overwhelmed. Content and pedagogical
knowledge would be a key component of understanding the standards that are given to me.
Through my knowledge of these standards, I will be able to create a masterful lesson. My biggest
worry in this category is that I am unfamiliar with the content. For example, I am horrible at
geometry. I would be scared to teach it because I lack the skills to do geometry myself. However,
I will take my time to re-learn all the material and do all the practices provided prior to teaching
the lessons to my students.
 Tabitha Gibson

Regarding professional dispositions, I intend to attend many future lessons about the best
practices in the school, and when to use them. I feel that this is an area that I will need to work
on, however. I would love to attend professional development as an educator, but I also worry
that I will be overwhelmed as a first-year teacher.
I feel that I have grown as an educator in each of these categories. Each of the lessons
and labs that have been done in my ED 300 class have given me opportunity to grow in each of
the categories. For the role of the teacher component, we discussed many things. When I think of
the role of the teacher, I think of providing all students with an equal opportunity to learn.
Through this class, we practiced creating lessons using differentiation strategies. This will help
me to create lessons that each of my students will be able to learn from. To learn about the
learning environment, we created our own classroom arrangement. This helped me think about
how I would arrange my future classroom to best fit the needs of my students. For the component
about managing the learning environment, I created my own rules and procedures. These rules
and procedures will assist me in managing my classroom, and making sure that there are minimal
disruptions. For both effective instruction and content and pedagogical knowledge, we created a
mastery lesson design plan. In this plan, I had to include standards and objectives that align to
them. I also had to create a lesson that included both formative and summative assessments, as
well as differentiation strategies, technology, and multiple intelligences. This project will help
me create a lesson that will reach all students. To wrap it up, this entire class teaches us about
professional dispositions. This class provided me with the research to back each of these
methods up. It also gave me the terms and tools needed to create masterful lessons that can be
articulated to other professionals.