EDU524 Spring 2006

My Reflections on CTEs and Students' Course Reflections

"Basically, I think you should be feeling proud of what you've accomplished, but not satisfied!"

-- My favorite quote from one student's course reflections

Any new preparation for a course is time-consuming, but rewarding in its own way. I have developed EDU 524 Democracy and Social Education, a graduate level course, for the spring semester of 2006. Teaching this new course, I appreciated such a challenge in my second semester at Cortland.

As a new faculty teaching EDU 524 Democracy and Social Education at the graduate level for the first time, I started to gather materials and lesson ideas at the end of the fall semester of 2005. Dr. Cindy Benton shared with me books that might be useful for the course. Mrs. Lori McGiven, the instructor who taught this course before, shared with me her syllabus and some of her lesson ideas. I also sought advice from colleagues and professors I worked with at the University of Georgia and other universities who I knew had taught similar courses. Sharing their experiences of teaching for democracy and social education helped me tremendously. I also asked if I could visit Lori's class. She kindly agreed and I got to observe her class in the fall semester of 2005. Credit should go to Lori for my teaching EDU 524 successfully for the first time.

Here is the course syllabus. I just want to share a few highlights for the course. I took all my students to the Cortland Historical Society and paid out of my own pocket Mrs. Mary Kane, who provided all of us such a wonderful experience to learn about primary and secondary sources available to classroom teachers in local community. In the final lesson plan, I asked students to integrate local historical documents and other sources into their project.

I also introduced concepts such as freedom, justice, fight against prejudice and discrimination, acceptance and tolerance, democractic ideals through multimedia devices. Videos such as "Eye of the Storm","The American Promises" series, and "The Monsters are Due on the Maple Street" are very much appreciated by the students.

As we approached the end of the spring semester, I asked the students to reflect on their learning experiences in this course. I asked three questions:

1. Please write down the things you would recommend the instructor to KEEP if she gets a chance to teach the same coruse again.

2. Please write down the things you would suggest the instructor IMPROVE.

3. Any OTHER COMMENTS AND thoughts to share with this instructor.

I did this before CTE, having the faith that reflections in such details and lengths are going to help me more to improve the learning experiences for my students.

I typed them here into three categories: things to keep, things to improve, and other comments to share with the instructor. Grouping reflection responses together helps me better analyze students' comments on my performance in this course. Please click the following original reflections of each of the 15 students taking this EDU 524 course.

For this course, I didn't ask students to buy a textbook. Instead, I had reading materials duplicated for them from quite a few books. Students shared that they really enjoyed the reading assignments for the course and wished that I probed more with some of the interesting articles we read in the class.

There was one assignment that caused some confusion when I assigned it. I could have made the instruction of the assignment clearer and I could have provided an example of the assignment. Rubrics for that assignment should have been shared with students so that they could have their input and understand what they are expected to do. The assignment is new to me. I would improve the instruction of that assignment and welcome students' input next time.

The adjusted mean of this course is 4.52. "Basically, I think you should be feeling proud of what you've accomplished, but not satisfied!" This is my favorite quote from one student's reflections. Yes, I feel confident after teaching this course for this semester. The students in this class were so supportive and they participated in all activites and discussions with enthusiasm. I wish I continue to have such a wonderful class of learners to grow together! But I'm not satisfied. Students' course reflections help me grow. My reflections on students' course reflectionshelp me grow even more.