Reflection #4

 I think that teachers at the secondary level think that if a student wanted to talk to them and be engaged, then they would be. I know that in student teaching, I have a tendency to talk to the students who are more outgoing and willing to talk. I need to learn to reach out to the students who tend to be quieter. I need to interact with the ELL and special ed students more than I do. I tend to just let the ELL coach and my co-teacher help them because that is who they are more comfortable with, and sometimes I do not feel like I am qualified. I want them to know that I care and that they can come to me as well.

I know that some students are treated a certain way by the teachers and by their peers. Rather than take what others say about them to heart, I have taken to giving them a fresh start and finding out for myself how to interact with them. Just because some students don’t talk to one of their peers does not mean that I should treat them the same way. I think that everyone should be given a chance. I want for my students to feel like they can talk to me and trust me, even if they can’t talk to or trust anyone else. We can’t assume that a student is “weird” just because their classmates treat them that way. There is a student in my class that was very quiet. No one ever talked to him, and he really just kept to himself. He walks around campus with his head phones in his ears which make him seem unapproachable. My cooperating teacher and I started to talk to him, and when we did he started opening up more. We would talk to him about music and stuff like that. He now seems to engage more with his peers too, and I hope that maybe he might be more willing to reach out to others in the future.