Joyce Jacox

12/04/14
E-portfolio Reflection
My eportfolio contains several items, based on the DSU Department of
Education DESERT model standards, which shows my growth and experiences
during my education program. These experiences have been documented in my
eportfolio by benchmark assessments and appendix items that provide evidence of
meeting the claim of becoming a competent, caring, and qualified educator.
As a student teacher we have had the opportunity to create organized lesson
plans and then actually teach a lesson to the students. My classes at DSU have
helped me become competent in the process of creating effective lesson plans. I
taught a lesson to the choirs at Dixie High School. My objective was to educate the
students about the Hallelujah Chorus, which they would be singing during the
Christmas season. I was able to motivate the students to care about the history of
this classic piece by relating the upraising of George Frederick Handel to the
students personal lives. I used musical examples and videos to help them
understand the style of music that came out of the Baroque time period. The
vocabulary that describes music in this era can be difficult to understand, so I
demonstrated from my own singing voice examples to help the students better
understand the terminology. As a student teacher I have come to see how caring
about my students helps them gain trust in me.

I often greet the students at the door to help them feel like I care about each
one of them individually. In my lesson plans I determined the contextual factors of
the classroom and discovered ways to help with diversity in language, religion, and
learning disabilities. The needs of students are the top priority in getting them to
understand the content. Students have been able to share their ideas and
experiences because of an environment where there is freedom of expression. I have
become a competent and caring teacher through my education classes and teaching
experience.
I consider myself a qualified teacher because I can assist diverse students, I
can use effective assessment to measure learning, and I can be professional in a busy
environment. Students will be different in all aspects like age, maturity, gender, and
interests. I know that by embracing diversity in the classroom students can learn to
be accepting and respectful to one another. I have discovered various means of
assessment that are not as typical as a bubble test like daily inquiries, creative
projects, and technology quizzes. By interviewing teachers and observing the
meetings they hold, I have come to recognize that the best teachers are those who
reflect on what is successful in their classroom and work hard to achieve new goals
of helping kids learn.