Professional Plan

While working as the Youth Minister at a Catholic Church, I have been able to utilize much of what I learned during Student Teaching. I work with middle and high school students teaching a youth group for each group as well as a Confirmation class for high school sophomores., Currently I am in a Youth Ministry Certificate Program in order to broaden m y education pertaining to Youth Ministry and working with youth in the Church.

Also, to further educate myself, I am in my first year of the Special Education Masters Program at Adams State College. Because classrooms, as well as youth groups, are increasingly diverse culture as well as learning styles and needs, I feel that this program is not only educating me about this population of students, but will also help me to more fully understand the learning styles of all of my students.

The Student Teaching process taught me a great deal about what it truly means to become a successful teacher. While it was never made clear to me that teachers need to expose themselves to new and innovative teaching methods and curriculums, teaching at Arvada High School has shown me the constant reflection and professional development that goes into becoming an effective teacher in the classroom.

Every Thursday morning the departments at AHS meet and have professional development meetings for an hour and a half before class starts. The meetings go over intervention plans, creating common assessments, discussing relevance of our curriculums and determining what steps need to be taken to ensure the success of the students in the future. The Jefferson County district, as well as others I assume, have very extensive workshops and classes that are constantly offered for professional development to take place. I plan, once I begin teaching, to continue participating in these workshops and classes to ensure that I am teaching as best I can to all of my students.

Over the course of my student teaching, I have noticed growth due to the fact that I am constantly asking questions to my mentor teachers and looking for different ways that they have handled differentiation, classroom management and even grading. It has been very rewarding for me to gain such insight from the veteran teachers in and outside of the building.

Differentiation was where I had the most difficulty throughout my student teaching experience and because of this, I hope to be able to utilize colleagues as well as the workshops in order to gain insight on differentiation. I know that all of my students will always be able to succeed if I do a good job of changing my instruction each of the to be able to learn.

While I recognize that there is still much for me to learn, I look forward to utilizing the teachers and staff members as wealths of knowledge to continue my learning of how to be a successful teacher.

Lord of the Flies Intro

The Lord of the Flies Unit was extremely interesting to teach because the students had never read something quite so violent dealing with children before.

The first link in the introduction activity that I did with the students. Groups were formed and students had to discuss what they would do in the event of them being stranded without any adult supervision. They were to discuss what rules they would enforce, the pros and cons of living without adults, and what items they would absolutely need to survive. The students came up with some wonderful discussion points and shared and discussed different groups' discussions as well.

The second link is a thematic journal that I put together for the students to accomplish a number of things. First of all, the understanding of the symbols, character, motifs and themes that were present in the novel could be grouped together in a nice and neat format so that the students had examples and explanations all right there to refer to when writing their essays or PEA paragraphs. Also, it acted as a way for the students to not have to search through mounds of notes to find which symbols were discussed on what day, they had all of the information right there for them.

The third link was a paper assigned for the students to complete a character analysis essay on one of the major characters of the novel. Students practiced how to analyze a character with a mock debate that the class had. They were to find evidence, analyze the evidence, and stay on track with their point throughout the whole debate. These skills were to then be transfered into the writing of the essay. Students did fairly well with the assignment, writing to proficiency would have to immediately follow for better results.

Lord of the Flies: Character Analysis

Character Analysis Essay

Your task is to compose a four to five-paragraph essay analyzing one of the main characters of Lord of the Flies. Using evidence from the text to support your conclusions, describe at least three significant personality traits of the character. The traits you choose to discuss should be strong traits which describe the personality of the character. It is these traits that shape the development of the character and the plot of the novel itself. For each trait you discuss, you must include at least two supporting examples/details from the story along with analysis of the evidence given.

Essays need to be typed, 12 pt font, Times New Roman, and double-spaced

Lord of the Flies Thematic Journal

Lord of the Flies Thematic Journal

Themes:

*Civilization vs Savagery

*Loss of innocence

*The loss of innocence

*The invariable corruption of power

*The fear of the unknown

*The influence fear has on people

*Savagery vs. Civilization

*The ideal version of an island vs. The real version of an island

*The reality of death

*The reality of betrayal

*The loss of identity

*The negative consequences of war

*The dehumanization of relationships

*An examination of Man vs. Nature

*An examination of the nature of evil

*The question of the individual vs. community

Motifs:

*Biblical Parallels

Symbols:

*Piggy’s glasses

*The conch shell

*the signal fire

*The beast

*the lord of the flies

*Ralph, Piggy, Jack, Simon and Roger

Lord of the Flies Introduction Activity

Lord of the Flies

Team Activity

Imagine you and your teammates are somehow stranded on a desert island with no native inhabitants. You have no way of knowing where you are or if you’ll ever be rescued.

1. SURVIVAL. What items would you need to survive? (Brainstorm a list; then, choose only FIVE. Circle the five your team decides on and number them, with 1 being the most important and 5, the least.)

2. ADULTS. How would life be different without adults around? (Make a list of positives and negatives. Be specific.)

PRO	CON

3. GOVERNMENT. What kind of rules would you need to ensure your prolonged survival and cooperation? Make a list.

House on Mango Street: Intro

The following links demonstrate how complete understanding was obtained for House on Mango Street. The students had a very difficult time comprehending the vignette collection because they had never read a piece that did not follow the the typical structure of a novel. For this reason, a lot of explaining and analysis of the vignettes was done together.

The first link demonstrates how students were analyze the vignettes read on their own to ensure that comprehension was taking place. the students were very able to have discussions and make connections as a class with simple prompting questions from me; however, it was very difficult for them to grasp meaning on their own. This worksheet allowed the students to break the vignette down and look for connections and meaning on their own.

The second link helped the students identify and analyze the figurative language that was present at any given time while reading the piece. the students liked this because it acted as a nice guide for understanding the concept of figurative language which they were able to go back and look at when they were required to write their own vignettes.

The third and last link here was used to allow the students some time practicing their own use of figurative language. The students were to describe places or situations using only metaphors, similes imagery and personification. At first, students really struggled with it; however, once they figured out that we were trying to describe the event or place without using "the house is red", they came up with some wonderful things.

Tuesdays with Morrie Intro

The following links provide some of the activities that were completed with my senior class while reading Tuesdays with Morrie. The celebration of Morrie Project was used for the students to demonstrate to me their knowledge of the text as well as their ability to write for multiple purposes. This project was not only a conclusion to the book, but it was also an introduction to the different types of writing that exist, such as professional writings. The students were encouraged to write for a specific purpose and to notice how their purpose changes with different types of writing.

The second link demonstrates how the students were encouraged to recognize how this book is truly a record of human experience. The students were to discuss how Morrie was truly a real person and compare their image of Morrie from the book to the Morrie shown on the video clips. This allowed me to have the students analyze multiple medias as well.

The third link is to the Mid- test that was given to the students. The students were taught all about leveled questions and they were expected to understand how their answers were to change depending on the type of question that was asked. Because the novel was read with only a class set, it took 6 weeks to get through it. For this reason, midtests as well as constant discussion and journaling. Because of the constant discussion and journaling the students did very well answering the questions fully.