To try to summarize all the things that I learned in this class would be impossible, so I would like to highlight a couple things I thought were memorable to my learning experience. Triangulation was something that had been brought up in previous coursework that I was glad that our professor took the time to review. We also reviewed the value of grading with regards to using triangulation or failing to use triangulation. I have made use of oral communication in my classroom to give a student their grade when they struggled to write fast enough to speak to all the questions I had listed. I merely wrote “spoken” on the questionnaire that was connecting to an article we had read and marked it complete. This student I had connected with through previous classes with regards to their exceptionality and difficulty with writing, and so I was prepared to make this adaptation.

I also appreciated that the instructor covered the field trip manual and raised issues that discourage teachers from doing field trips. This review of the manual also raised issues with the manual itself. For example, we have someone who is certified for outdoor excursions in our classroom, and they pointed out many of the legal things that were either not addressed or the fact that teachers were not required to have taken a course before doing field trips. It was a very interesting discussion.

Something else that we discussed in this course that I found very useful to address was workflow and strategies for keeping yourself sane and mentally healthy in a new job that comes with many challenges. We discussed having lesson plan back ups. Adaptations. Using variety in the classroom to augment student learning, such as students respond, talk, move, read, write, and create. Deciding which methods of learning in the previous sentence are musts or maybes for our lessons. Using more formative feedback rather than summatively marking everything. We also discussed building assessments based on things that we value and also that we have taught. We also discussed tips for discerning how our classroom management is going — for example, students with sensory difficulties can be indicators for when the teacher needs to step in and make a change in the classroom.