As I evaluate my first full semester in the Mississippi Teacher Corps, I instantly recognize the ups and downs. In general, I found the classes helpful with few exceptions. The most helpful class was my science methods course. Dr. Maddox was extremely generous with his time. At the start of every class, he would hand out full labs complete with directions for teachers, students and questions designed to further student thinking. This was beneficial because we didn't have to create our own labs, which as any science teacher can tell you, is a royal pain. However, the one problem that I had with this class was in the content. The textbook that we read stressed inquiry. Of course inquiry is important in science but I am having a tough time coming to terms with it in my school. I've tried some short inquiry labs with my students but almost all of them ended in chaos. The first two inquiry labs, ended with desks and lab tables a complete mess and very little learning. The next two inquiry labs went much smoother after I got strict on discipline but again, they ended with very little learning because they saw the entire period as a socializing event. I am not required to do many labs in my class and as a result of the first four inquiry labs I tried I have been doing fewer and fewer labs. In the back of my mind, I feel as though I may be leading my students astray without pushing for inquiry, but if I stick to more directive methods of teaching, I am assured that most of my students will get something out of the lesson.

While the amount of homework in my scinece class was a little overwhelming at times, I thought the assignments helped us get in touch with our inner scientist, which is a little bit more than I can say for the morning class...EDSE 600 right? Don't get me wrong, I learned some great information in this class, but I thought the 10 day lesson plan fiasco to be a bit stressful and meaningless. I spent hours upon hours typing up that 10 day lesson plan but I really couldn't use it at all. Personally, I find it difficult to teach from an STAI lesson plan, and so short of taking bits and pieces of it and incorporating it into my lessons, it was worthless to me. I think we proved that we know how to do a 10 day lesson plan (at least to some extent) over the summer when we completed our three day. Either way, I know it had a purpose, but that purpose was kind of lost in the stress of the project.

What I did find very useful in EDSE 600 was the lesson on getting to know your students. It involved us finding statistics on our student population. What I found out was a real eye-opener. A very small percentage of our students actually go on to a four year university, let alone graduate from it. Because of these statistics, I have been talking quite a bit about college in my classes. I feel that if I try to tie together high school and college so that it feels as though it's just the next step for my students down the path, more of them will attend. I know for a fact that one of my juniors is looking into four year universities because I have excited him with talk about playing for a major football team.

All in all, the classes were quite helpful, but of course with any class there are going to be things that some people find useful and others do not. By no means do I think this past semester was a wash. It really pushed me to consider the situations in which my students find themselves and it gave me ideas to use in my science classroom. That's all I was really hoping for!