GOODBYE EDU 100!

Education is like baking cookies. There are a lot of factors that affect it, such as the quality of the teacher, the size of classes, and willingness of the student to learn, these things are like the temperature of the oven, what kind of cookie sheet you use, and how long you put them in the oven. There are many areas of study, such as Mathematics, English, Science, History, Art, Music, and much more, including basic skills we learn as children. These things are like the ingredients in the recipe. You have to be careful not to put too much of one ingredient in the recipe, or not to forget one. You also need to understand that each ingredient is equally important to the outcome of the cookies, or students. There are also many different kinds of cookies; different shapes, sizes, colors, flavors, and all with different ingredients. Similarly, every student is different and unique. Baking is an exact science, and something you need to put great effort into, to get the perfect outcome you desire. Many would say teaching is the same thing.
Over the course of the semester, I learned a lot about education, and myself. A few of these things stand out as most important. First, I learned that teachers have a lot more obstacles to surpass than I was aware of. I knew they'd always faced problems that made their job tough, but I never really realized just how many they had. Second, I learned that each state has much different legislation regarding education regarding many important issues such as special education, religion in schools, discipline in schools, extra curricular activites, and race. The third thing I learned through this course is that my decision to teach infant/toddler and preschool is the best decision I could have made, and I'm completely happy with it. I was originally and Elementary Education major, and over the summer I began working at a day care center in Salem. I absolutely love it, and realized that I work better with these younger children. Then, when we had to observe for this class, I realized the great differences between elementary classrooms and day care classrooms, and it became even clearer that I was meant to work with younger kids. My decision to be a teacher has never changed, but my choice of age groups of my students has, and that is in part due to this class.
I think the blog assignments were really beneficial in this course. They have allowed us to take different topics relevant to education and not only research them, but also write our opinions about them. We were able to see a lot of different perspectives about a lot of different topics. Although some of those perspectives and opinions may be different from our own, they are still beneficial to us, and help us learn more about the topics.