Lesson 12

This week, class was cancelled on Monday. Wednesday we mostly just talked about grading and assignments were due and the final. Afterwards we went through the categories of IDEA. It was a great feeling looking back and thinking about what I have learned in the past semester. It's so nice to be learning about what I'm going to be spending the rest of my life doing. I love my major and I'm so grateful to be learning what I am.

5 hours of Service Learning

I LOVED my time during service learning! For my five hours of service learning, I would go to the weekly activities on campus called "Hands" and "Life Skills" on Thursdays and Wednesdays. I was so excited the first time I went to Life Skills, because when I got there a girl named Katie showed up. Katie has down syndrome and is the sweetest girl you'll ever meet. I grew up in a little town called Aberdeen, Idaho and Katie used to live there! When I was in middle school we always did musicals together, she was in my young women's, and I even went to her birthday party that was a High School Musical theme and she danced for us and everything! It had been about 7 years since I had seen her and I was SO excited to see her. She even remembered me and we hung out the rest of the night. We played soccer with Jason and Katie kept getting frustrated because Jason was kind of a ball hog and he made all of the goals. So I really tried to uplift Katie and make her feel better and try to pass her the ball more so she could make some goals. And she did! Another highlight was the talent show prep and everyone showing their talents! It was awesome and they all did so good. Jason was hanging out with me and said, "so should I call you hot chick or girlfriend?" And I said, "call me Whitney!!" And he continued to say, "girlfriend it is!" hahaha. I love being with these kids who have special needs. It reminds me of all my kids in Ecuador that I spent 3 months with. They are such a huge piece of my heart. I love my major, and I am so grateful for their sweet spirits in my life.

Stuttering Experience 7/13 & 7/14

I have a lot of cousins who struggle with stuttering so I have been around it my whole life. It gets to the point where you don't notice it as much, unless it takes longer than usual and you get impatient. But because of this it was easier for me to pretend like I had a stuttering problem. When I did my learning disability experience in Walmart I also did this stuttering experience to a different associate. After the learning disability experience, this seemed so much easier and the associate didn't feel as bad for me as the first one did when I could finally ask where the cotton balls and candles were. In mountain lofts, my apartment complex, I stopped a girl and asked her how I get to World's Gym. I carried it on for a really long time and I could tell she was getting impatient, but eventually felt bad for me. When she was explaining it to me she kind of talked in a baby voice to me and went very slow, which frustrated me! Just because I had a hard time talking right didn't mean I was a baby and couldn't understand her. I was very frustrated afterwards and hoped that I had never treated my cousins or anyone else with a stuttering problem like that.

Learning Disability Experience 7/13

This was extremely difficult, whereas the wheelchair and visual was more of a laughing experience for me, this one was not. I had THE hardest time talking. I swear - every word I wanted to say when asking for what I needed at the store had an n or an l in it. I went to Walmart and needed foundation, eyeliner, cotton balls, and a candle. Well would ya look at that! Every single one of those had an n or l in it. So I ended up asking, "do you have a mop?" He showed me where they were and on the way there he tried keeping conversation with me. You could tell he felt bad for me and noticed some type of disability. When we got to the mops I realized I couldn't even say thank you. I was trying so hard to think of a way to say thank you in a different way and just decided to nod at him trying to say "thank you" through our minds. After that we went to Mcdonalds. There was nothing I wanted more than a mcchicken and a Dr. Pepper and I wasn't going to change my order, I had to find a way to say it. "May I have a mcchick?" "A mcchicken?" "Yes a mcchick." I'm pretty sure he thought I was crazy. "Dr. Pepper." "and a Dr. Pepper?" "Yes, Dr. Pepper." I hated it. I hated it all. I felt super inconsiderate the whole time mostly because I couldn't say thank you and I acted like I couldn't talk, which I pretty much couldn't. I have so much more sympathy for these kind of people now and I know this experience will help me have more patience with everyone I ever cross paths with.

Visual Impairment Simulation 5/18/15

This was WAY harder than I thought it would be and I probably struggled with it the most! Right when I got home I put the first one on and went to make lunch. Trying to be my healthy self I started getting what I needed out of the fridge to make a salad. It was a disaster! I missed the bowl when I tried to put the lettuce in and I spilled ranch all over the floor. My roommate was sleeping on the couch and I was having a hard time not screaming in frustration. Then even eating was hard. There was ranch all over my shirt so I had to go change my clothes which was also hard with the mask. Sometimes I couldn't tell if it was the lack of seeing that made it hard or just having a mask on. Sometimes I felt like the mask was what the huge inconvenience was haha. That was definitely the most frustrating part of the whole experience, the rest of the four hours I just hung around my house and talked with my roommates and did some homework which was also extremely difficult. We live in an apartment with a spiral staircase and my roommate was trying to throw my something from the upper level and I could not catch it to save my life. It ended up being a game that we played for a while and everyone would laugh at me. I wasn't too happy about it haha. Then I went and ran some errands with my roommate and I got many weird looks in walmart. It was honestly hard just navigating through. I always thought I knew what it would be like to visually impaired but I really had no idea. It was a different kind of hard than I thought and it made me gain a new appreciation for people who live with that every day.

Orthopedic Experience (Wheelchair) 6/1/15

My wheelchair experience was pretty crazy and WAY harder than I thought! My friend, Aspen, came with me just so I had someone to experience it with, but I think she mostly came for some entertainment for the day. We wheeled out of the Hinckley after using the elevator, which was way harder than I thought as well. The elevator fits a wheelchair but it's hard to navigate through that thing. The hardest for me was to go down the hill from the Hinckley to the MC. I was scared of rolling down the hill too fast and biffing it! We went and spent the day in the MC and I had some studying to do. When I went to the bathroom, my friends were laughing at me trying to get in the stall by myself. I knew how to "transfer" myself from the wheelchair because I am a CNA and worked with special needs kids in wheelchairs. Going through doors was super difficult too. Especially without the door opener. The highlight of the day was a girl who asked me how I got paralyzed. I understood that we weren't supposed to tell people that we were only in a wheelchair for a class, but I could not think of a response. So all I said was I'm not paralyzed and wheeled away. :) Going up the hill was surprisingly easier than going down! Overall it was a good experience and it was really good for me to understand how that life is.

Lesson 1

Doctrine, principle, and application is something I have learned a lot about in my time here at college. My first college class I ever went to, we watched a video of Elder Bednar talking about this concept. Yet, it's still something I struggle with completely understanding. From what I understood from Brother Cloward's explanation, doctrine is becoming as or equal to Christ and understanding the truths shown to us by God. The principle is what guidelines the prophets and apostles have given us to exercise those doctrines. The application is what we do: seek, act, have faith, be patient, etc. The Holy Ghost is our teacher, we must be open to the spirit and leading him guide us if we want to learn to the best of our ability and reach our full potential.

Group Teaching: Poverty 7/8/15

My group taught the class on the subject of Poverty. I chose this subject because it's something I'm very interested in and I get excited to learn more about. I lived in Ecuador for 3 months working in orphanages and was able to see how people live in poverty and how they deal with it and the effects of poverty in every day life.

How do you feel about your lesson delivery and why? Was it effective, why or why not? I feel like our lesson delivery went really well and even better than I thought. Yes, it was effective. I could tell people learned a lot from it and it was interesting to hear insights that other students had that I hadn't thought of before.

What evidence do you have (while delivering your lesson) of effective student engagement? I feel like evidence of student engagement was when the students would stop talking to their peers or doing their own personal work and look at me or my group members and sincerely seem like they were listening and interested in what we had to say. 

If you were to teach this lesson by yourself, not in a group, what would you change and why? I honestly feel like I wouldn't have done anything different. I feel like some of the information we shared was a little irrelevant but for the most part pretty on point. I felt like I kind of took charge in the group so a lot of what we did was my decision in the first place.

What could have been an area of improvement in your teaching? I think I could have prepared better and had some more insights that would have related to the students better. 

Based on the criteria for the “Teaching Experience” on our syllabus, would you give your group a 0, 5 or a 10?  Why?  AND would you give yourself a 0, 5 or a 10?  Why? I would give ourselves a 10. We really researched this topic and put our whole heart into it. It's something we sincerely cared about and did everything we could to help who we were teaching understand what our objective was.

Lesson 10

This week we learned about individual learning and helping our students learn by themselves and not just their peers, even though learning through others is helpful it's important to learn individually. In the book there were multiple different strategies we could use to help the student. We got into different groups that we had never been in before and discussed the strategies the chapter showed us. It was fun to get to know girls that weren't in our table groups or in our homie groups. We also had to pick a strategy and a way to remember it or a way to teach it to students. Our group picked the CAPS strategy that had to with literature and reading. We all decided that reading, or just literature questions, was a subject that we struggled with when we were younger and in school so we thought that strategy was one of the best because we felt like it would help us personally.

The strategy is C: Who are the Characters? A: What is the Aim of the story? P: What Problems happen? S: How is the problem Solved?
We came up with a fun little method that might help the kids remember it. We said the questions in a chant-y sort of way. When we asked the question, "Who are the characters?", we would point to ourselves. When we asked the question, "What is the aim of the story?", we would position our arms like we were holding a bow about to shoot an arrow. When we asked the question, "What problems happen?", we put our hands to the side with our palms facing up like we were asking a question. When we asked the last question, "How is the problem solved?", we would bring our hands together and clap one time. The class loved it and I think it might be something I will use in my class later and will help me develop other chants for things the students need to remember.

It's important that we are aware of all these strategies and learn them so that we can know what learning strategy a certain child needs. There were a lot of other strategies I liked, for example TAG. Modifying is a huge part of being a teacher and one of the biggest things we need to learn while we are preparing for this career.

Lesson 9

This week I was SUPER sick on Monday and wasn't able to make it to class. I asked a classmate what was covered in class and she said they talked about emotional and behavioral disorders and differentiation. It made me start thinking a lot about emotional and behavioral disorders and experiences I had with these disorders. I feel like this is something I have dealt with a lot personally and with other people who I am very close with. These disorders are disorders that either you can't do anything to prevent it or it happens because of something tramatic has happened in your life. It's something that is hard to fight and it controls and affects everything in your daily life. Because I have dealt with it in many different situations in my life, I know it will help me deal with students who have these disorders. I know that real-life experiences will help me with differentiation and the ability to teach students on the level they need to be taught.

Co-teaching

On Wednesday, we got in groups to learn how to co-teach and I just joined my table group since I was absent on Monday. The other taught my group how to lead. They separated us into people that didn't know how and people who already knew how. I was in the group that already knew how. I thought I knew everything about leading music, but I was wrong! I learned so many new things from different people in the group. Each member of the group brought their own knowledge and because of collaboration we were able to lead pretty perfectly! Our group was teaching the other group how to whistle using your hands. Even though I could not do it, I knew how to physically do it so I was able to still help teach. Towards the end, everyone was getting frustrated. There were people who caught on really fast and were able to do it right away or within just a few minutes. I was teaching and I STILL couldn't do it. With a lot of help, even from the people who were being taught, I was FINALLY able to do it and I feel like I have never felt more accomplished in my life! I was so excited and I could tell the people who were teaching me really cared about me because they never gave up and they were just as excited as I was when I got it. It helped me feel like a student who was disabled, who had a teacher who believed in them and because of that they were able to accomplish the task. This experience will always stick with me and help me when I am a teacher myself.

Lesson 8

This week started out with a group presenting on the topic speech impairment and they did super good! I was at the table that had to put marshmallows in their mouth and explain what they did that weekend. I couldn't help but laugh - and it made me feel SO bad that I was laughing at her. I know that I wouldn't usually if someone really had a speech impairment. The first girl started choking so Michael tried doing it and got nine, I think, marshmallows in his mouth! We had a really hard time understanding what he was telling us though. We got the jist of it but not as much as we needed to fully understand! The other groups tried speaking Spanish to each other, not talking at all and only using hand movements, etc. It really gave everyone a perspective on what it would be like to have a speech impairment. The main thing I learned through the activity is that patience is key, it is SO important. It made me a little worried for the speech impairment simulation that I would do later.

Lesson 4 & 5

This week was spent mostly reviewing the concepts and things that were important for our midterm. I was able to get together with some other girls from the 11:30 class that I knew from previous classes to study for the midterm. It's interesting how meeting with other people and hearing their insights can open up your own insights. The collaboration with the other students really helped me when I was actually taking my midterm. You gain so much more knowledge when you are working with others and it opens your eyes to so many different things that you couldn't have gained otherwise.

In class this week, with our table groups we each made a concept map for chapter 4 and 5 as a table. After we were done, we each had to present our map. It was crazy how we were all doing a concept map on the exact same material yet we each had such different doctrines, principles, and applications shown on our paper. We also had a case study about a little boy named Mark and what we could do as teachers to help him. Case studies always help me a ton because it puts the material we are learning into a better perspective and drills it into my mind better so I will remember it. It made me realize how much of your heart should be put into your career. I want to be the kind of teacher that genuinely cares about her students and put my whole heart into helping them reach their full potential.

Lesson 11

This week I did my presentation on poverty and it ended up going pretty smooth and I learned a lot about it and I think everyone else did too. Our activity of having tables build "houses" with different resources helped students understand the concept of students can't really do much if they have little resources or unreliable resources. It also made us realize how important it is to recognize poverty in the U.S. and the poverty around us and not just in the world where extreme poverty is. I'm so grateful for what I have and what type of environment I grew up in. It makes me especially grateful for the gospel and strengthens my testimony of what blessings the gospel brings into our lives.

Lesson 2

This week was heartbreaking, after watching those videos about those special needs kids in Serbia. It hit a little close to home because it reminded me so much of the last three months that I spent working in a special needs orphanage in Ecuador. I spent every day with kids just like the ones in the videos. There were so many similarities except for just one thing - their happiness. I realized how much a difference makes when a child has someone who loves them and is constantly being cared for. I learned so much about the divine worth of souls and how just because they have either small disabilities or severe disabilities, they still have feelings and still are in so much need of love and nurturing. These children are still Heavenly Father's children and won't progress if we are not helping them. My heart hurts for those sweet spirits who were sent here by choice of Heavenly Father. There is a reason for them to be on this earth.