Teaching a whole unit was an experience I will never forget. The amount of work that went into it left me surprised. I have also ended up with a number of conclusions through the process of this unit. From all the data I gathered there is one thing which kept me frustrated and its that most students seemed to struggle with adverbs. I mentioned before that I believe this to be because I taught a similar topic right before that, which was adjectives. This makes sense to me because of the many similarities that these two share, so when it comes to similar topics, I learned that trying to separate them would be best. Additionally, the differences between the two topics needs to be specifically highlighted, which is something I personally lacked in. It also taught me how far ahead you need to be thinking when you plan a unit instead of focusing on a lesson-by-lesson basis. I also learned the importance of implementation of other skills outside of English in the very class. I saw firsthand how big the impact was when I implemented Spanish into the classes, and this is not to say you should stray away from the subject you teach, but that you should not be scared to implement other subjects if they are to your benefit. If it wasn’t for the implementation of Spanish, I believe my students would have performed much worse.

            One point I would have to reflect on quite heavily was that of parent interaction. Despite not having much parent interaction, the occasions I had left an impact on me. I met with three different parents for three different reasons, but all three shared a sense of distrust to my teaching. I understand this could be because I am young and just a practice teacher, but I always held my ground with them. In all two of the occasions, I was able to confront the situation in conjunction to the parents. In the one case I couldn’t, the parent resorted in changing the students to another classroom which affected his grade for the worse. Understanding how these parents think was hard for me at first, but I need to take into account that they only know me for what their kids say about me and they only want what’s best for the child. Getting to terms with this helped me better address the needs of the students and helped me keep a calmer mind.

            If I had to create a plan to improve as a professional for the future, there are a couple of things I would address. First off is thinking of the cohesion amongst topics in a unit. I don’t think I paid as much attention to think as I should, maybe plan further ahead before starting the lessons. Another thing would be seeking out ways to keep the parents more informed. As I saw firsthand, parents come to you in a defensive position and sort of see you as the enemy. I guess this is somewhat understandable but I cant let this get to my head and should look for ways to be able to communicate with the parents further. I think I can improve in the variety of assessments I provide for my students during the teaching process. This is something I believe I was sort of limitation on due to the nature of my unit, but I would love to experiment with assessments that would require more critical thinking skills from my students as well as ask them to create things based on the learnt material. Overall, I do believe the unit was a great success and these are just some things I would like to improve or apply in my future as an educator.