Reich College of Education

As a student of Appalachian State University education has clearly been my number 1 priority as should any college students. But by having the opportunity to be a student in the Reich College of Education I feel that I am even more prepared than most college students to become a phenomenal and effective teacher once I graduate. Reich College of Education has some of the most qualified and most supportive professors there are and provides their students with opportunities to have as much practice and knowledge before entering the field of teaching.

As a student who is majoring in Elementary Education and minoring in Special Education I was worried that I may not learn as much about Special Education by only obtaining a minor but I was completely wrong. This semester alone I have visited countless classrooms, seem every piece of paperwork I will encounter in teaching special education and also learned how to test children with disabilities to help place them in Special Education. The special education department here at Appalachian State has fully prepared me for when I enter the classroom. I have picked up some amazing skills and tricks to use in helping my students learn to the best of their ability. Specifically, I have created devices of my own to enhance and alter learning so that every student can learn to the best of their ability, I have taken and given 10 different tests that I would need to administer as a Special Education teacher and I have been given 100's of resources of different tools and technological devices that will help me teach my student's.

Another amazing opportunity Appalachian's college of education program has provided me with is the reading clinic where future teachers are given the opportunity to work with local students on their reading skills and sparking an interest in reading and books. I have seen that a lot of kids enjoy reading but sometimes they just need to be reading books that they feel comfortable with the content or difficulty. If you give a child a book that they cannot comprehend yet they are going to get frustrated and hate all books. The reading clinic really provides the children with an opportunity to become better readers and for the college students to get practice on how to teach kids to read. This is just another example of the amazing opportunities I have been provided with to help me to become an effective teacher in the future.

Another way I have been prepared for teaching in my future classroom in my current education classes are by having a variety of diverse teachers who use different teaching styles and how they adjust their teaching style to fit the needs of their student's. I have learned in my classes from the past two semesters that a good teacher should have the ability and knowledge to change their teaching methods to best fit and help their students learning ability and style. I have been taught in classes how to teach math, science, reading and social studies in a multitude of different ways. I feel that I can use these methods in my future classrooms interchangeably because I have seen and used lesson plans for each type.

A class that I specifically learned a lot in was my Children's Literature course I took last semester, the whole course revolved around different types of children's literature and how to incorporate them into your daily lesson plan. I really enjoyed reading almost every children's book in the library and rediscovering my childhood again. I remembered just how special it is to just be able to do something as simple as read. By having this class, I found tons of new resources for my future classrooms personal library, ways to incorporate that will be fun for students and all about the different parts of literature. I hope to be able to give my student's choice one day as far as what they read and why they read it. I hope to be able to have every student who leaves my classroom have the confidence and ability to read whatever they like whenever they like. This class definitely pushed me in a way I didn't know I could be pushed because we often had to read children's books from other cultures and try to help relate them back to our own lives. I thought this was important because when teaching children, a large lesson they often need to learn is tolerance and willingness to understand others perspectives. By learning about another culture and how they live we can teach children how to interact with one another especially if they are in a situation where they are of a different nationality or culture than the other person.

I find learning all these new ideas and tips for the classroom to be helpful while also intriguing because if I am intrigued then hopefully my student's will be too. Being able to teach in a positive and exciting manner is ever so pertinent to the aspect of learning. Children can only focus for a short amount of time and so while you have their attention you need to make sure you give them the most accurate and important information as possible.

My education classes have prepared me as much as possible for this upcoming stage in my life and I couldn't be more appreciative for such an amazing program as this one. Appalachian State University's Reich College of Education is by far one of the most amazing and efficient schools. Because of everything I have learned in my classes I feel that I can create a fun, safe and exciting classroom for my student's to learn in.