There are so many things I will take away from this course; a better understanding of lesson planning, PBL, how to assess both students in a formative and summative way along with assessing rubrics and knowing how to create my own rubric, different and fun ways to present history, how to present a virtual field trip, having valuable feedback and intellectual conversations with my peers about the subject matter, and I am sure many more I will remember later.
For me, the most valuable piece is having both the insight and conversations with my peers about the subject at hand. It is very easy (the habitual creatures we are), to sit at the same table every week and talk to those same people every week. When we do that we only get the insight of those peers that sit at our table. You all (the professors) forced us to intermingle amongst each other which brought a greater understanding to the subject as a whole. In many of my classes I sometimes walk away never even knowing some of my classmates’ names. That is partly my fault of course, but I can say I definitely know everyone’s name in our social studies class and value their opinions. The virtual presentations were a great way to end class because it showed the diversity of the students and their outlooks on teaching. I picked up a few things I will definitely use in my classroom in the future.
The last question I will leave with is this…What would our program look like if more, or not all of our classes forced us as students to intermingle more? My prediction would be that we would have an even stronger education program because we would be building on each others’ feedback and input, like the saying goes, 2 heads (or 17 in our case) are better than one.