Ms. Blackwell's Math Blog!: Blog Post #10: A Reflective Farewell

Hello everyone!

Welcome back to my blog for my final post! I have learned a lot through using this blog as a reflective outlet within my educational journey in teacher's college. As my first year of teacher's college is coming to an end, I think it is the appropriate time to look back on my own posts as well as my peers blog posts to extend my reflection beyond just my knowledge.

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While reflecting on my peers blog posts, I came across a post that Shauna made that I found to be extremely useful and relevant. Shauna's post explored the variety of virtual manipulatives that are available to both students and teachers to be used in mathematics. I really liked this post because it allowed me to see the value of virtual manipulatives, especially given our current state with the world in a global pandemic. Having to learn in an online setting has posed many challenges to the education system in general. However, an online setting poses various challenges to both teaching and learning mathematics specifically. Without face-to-face learning, students who learn mathematics best in a hands-on way have been negatively impacted. However, with the use of virtual manipulatives, teachers can ensure that these students are still engaging with the mathematical concepts in an interactive way that provides them with positive learning experiences. I love the relevance of this blog post because it allowed me curate more resources and tools considering virtual learning will likely become a normality moving forward.

Another blog post that I came across was written by Sydney H. In this post, Sydney talked about recognizing her progress in both approaching and working through word problems. I think that it is so important to recognize how far you've come in any situation, not just in mathematics. While I was reading Sydney's post, I was able to recognize my own progress in my confidence when teaching mathematics. I did not realize how many times I successfully taught a mathematics lesson or concept throughout my first year of teacher's college. I taught a math lesson in two of my classes and led a problem solving session and activity in my math class! Given that confidence is something that does not come easily to me, I am extremely proud of how far I have come in just seven months! I believe that recognizing and reminding myself of the progress that I have made will allow me to keep progressing in this journey of becoming a great math teacher!

As this year approaches an end, I am happy that I have taken the time to reflect upon my progress and collect useful teaching resources that I can implement within classrooms of my own and during my placements. I am very grateful for the many learning opportunities I have been given over this past year of teacher's college and cannot wait to embark on my very first placement.