Running Head: REFLECTION 1

[Link]. Program Reflection Paper

Abby Houghtelling

Nebraska Wesleyan
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[Link]. Program Reflection Paper

When I entered the master’s teaching program at Wesleyan, I often found myself feeling

like a cat herder while teaching first-grade. From unmotivated students to the students with

difficult behaviors and short attention spans, I felt like I spent all my energy on fixing those

behaviors that I lost a lot of instruction time. During these past two years in the [Link]. program

at Nebraska Wesleyan I had many opportunities to grow more reflective, resilient, intentional,

diagnostic, and collaborative; deciding I wasn’t so much herding cats but more like a tour guide

for my students. I realized by acting as a cat herder, I limited my students. I tried controlling

everything they did, from behavior to how they learned. As a tour guide, I give my students

behavioral direction and navigate them through their educational journey. Student motivation

and behavior does not need herded, it needs someone to set up an environment that can guide

them to their success.

When I started the program during summertime, I felt full of energy and ready for the

journey as we learned about positive psychology and resilience right from the start in EDU 5110

Positive Education. During this course we learned about many skills of resilience, but the

resilience skill ATC (activating events, thoughts, and consequences), has helped me the most

with how I handle difficult classroom situations. In the past, I experienced a situation that I wish

I knew about ATC. I had a student in my classroom that within seconds could become highly

aggressive without warning. With this activating event my automatic thought was always fear

for myself and my other students. One day this student was very upset and becoming aggressive,

and I tried getting to the phone to call for help. He grabbed my arm, keeping me from reaching

the phone. We also have a button on the wall that you can push to call the office, and there was a

student close by that I asked to push the button. At this point the upset student let go of my arm
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and started going after the student getting ready to push the button. I instructed the student to

walk away from the button as I reached for the phone. Once again, my arm was in a hold and I

was trying to hide my state of panic to keep my class calm. At this point I said our class code

word for evacuation “Go Big Red”, and as students lined up, I gave them directions to go to

another classroom. I eventually was able to dial the success room (our behavior room) for help,

but the student had grabbed the phone and pulled it as far away from me as possible. I was able

to still communicate with the other room, and waited in my classroom as the student blocked the

doorway with chairs. Finally, someone had come for the student, and the assistant principal also

came to check in on me. She asked if I was okay, and I immediately started crying. She told me

to take a break for a few minutes before going to gather my students from the classroom I had

sent them to. As I reflect back on this situation, I wonder if there was a single moment that I

could have changed my thinking and reacted any differently to have changed any of those ending

events or the consequences that occurred. Everyone that helped with the situation afterwards

reassured me that it wasn’t my fault, as I know it wasn’t, but could I have done anything

different to helped the situation more? After reflecting on that question, this is what I concluded.

The moment I saw the student wasn’t okay was the activating event for me. Instead of getting a

fearful thought, I could have immediately thought of, “what does this student need?”. The

consequence could have stayed the same if he didn’t allow me to help him, but as least I

wouldn’t have just immediately thought of fear. I think about this student a lot when faced with

behaviors in the classroom. I spent way too much time fearful of anticipating when and how this

child would spiral. Thinking about and applying the resiliency ATC skills has changed how I

view all situations in the classroom.

The topic of resiliency during this class couldn’t be more applicable than during these

past two years of my life. I am so thankful that this topic was introduced during our first course,

because during our second course that summer I was hit with a difficult life situation that I

struggled with deeply. My best friend had been suffering from bad migraines for months, and it

got to the point where she wasn’t wanting to get out of bed. I took her into the hospital and they

did some tests, finding a brain tumor. A day later she was having brain surgery, and I was

terrified because the doctor said results after surgery were not guaranteed to be positive ones.

All of this going on while I was supposed to be focused on a summer master’s course. Luckily,

Dr. Mark Gudgel was exactly the instructor I needed to get me through that difficult time. He

was understanding, patient, and most of all cared. He made sure I was okay and met me where I

was at. I still have an email saved from him that he sent me after class telling me that he admires

my ability to be so present when I have so much going on. He also told me to keep him updated

with my friend’s progress, and never to hesitate if I needed to miss class to be with her. This was

such a good lesson for me. Seeing how someone can understand a difficult situation and meet

their student where they are at instead of expecting them to be exactly where they need to be

disregarding their current circumstances. The kind of appreciation Dr. Gudgel has for his

students fits perfectly with the course he was teaching that summer; Education and the American

Dream. He is full of passion and empathy for what education in American needs. I could have

easily called it quits that summer, but with my recently learned resiliency skills and an

empathetic instructor, I was able to find my way through. This kind of compassion and

understanding of meeting and student where they are at in their current situation is exactly what I

want/need to be for my students that come to me from some pretty rough circumstances.
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With resiliency skills in place, I was ready to teach and be a student for the first time. I

could finally start taking what I had learned and apply new learning to my classroom. One of my

biggest takeaways that I have now applied to my classroom came from Literacy Instruction in a

Digital Age. During an analysis assignment I started looking at a way I could get a group of 20

six and seven-year old students to get with an assigned partner and discuss open ended questions.

This was an area I felt needed improved in my classroom because when asked to have

discussions students were constantly talking off-topic, playing with their partner, or not sharing

at all. I looked into the idea of providing guided sentence stems for students to follow. This

idea from the course became a reality in my classroom, except instead of literacy instruction I

started implementing this type of structure for math instruction. I collaborate with an ELL

teacher to create PowerPoint slides to go with our math lessons. Together we co-teach math as

she brings all the ELL level one students into my room with the rest of my students. Because the

ELL population is higher in my room, the ELL teacher and I find it important to include guided

sentence stems for students to use to help guide conversations. An example of a sentence stem

and how we use it with our students is; One attribute of a _______ is ________. I would ask

students to pick a shape and tell their partner an attribute that shape has. Then the other partner

would pick a shape and do the same. The sentence stem is projected on the screen for students to

see. Since we started provided the PowerPoints students have become more willing to share and

I have noticed a decrease in off-topic conversation.

The PowerPoints we created have also given us an opportunity to add a daily form of

assessment at the beginning of each math lesson. I was able to use these daily assessments as a

part of my unit assessment plan for EDU 5240 Classroom Assessment and Instruction Decisions.

Right away when students start math, they get an index card and watch for their “Favorite No”
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problem of the day. This is a problem that connects to the previous day’s objective. I use it as a

quick formative assessment, and students help provide feedback to one problem. Once students

get done the ELL teacher and I walk around and quickly check them as we pick them up. Once

we collect them all, I write my favorite incorrect problem on the board for students to see and tell

students to take a look at my favorite no. I start by asking students to share things about the

problem that they notice was done correctly. Then I say “now, what mistake was made that we

could help fix?” This process shows students that it is okay to mess up, and that even in our

failure, you often times get a lot of things correct in the process. Students love this activity, and I

love it too because it gives me a chance to assess which students still need extra help on certain

objectives; but also lets my students be a part of the feedback process.

Throughout the program we explored a specific problem of practice to focus on for our

action research. As I reflected on my classroom and my group of students, I thought of a time of

day that is structured differently than the rest of the day, and lacks teacher guidance. When

students lack motivation, they often go off-task and do not succeed. This behavior frequently

occurs during independent work station time. As some students rotate through four twenty-

minute independent stations practicing a variety of literacy skills, other students participate in

small group reading lessons with the teacher. Frequently the students at work stations engage in

off-task behaviors that disrupt the learning environment. How does one motivate students to stay

on-task while rotating through independent work stations? With doing some research I found a

common theme that giving specific feedback could make a positive impact on student motivation

to work. Based on this discovery, I planned out a quick intervention between each work station

to give students some positive feedback and set goals for the next work station. We call this the

feedback huddle. The feedback huddle allows for students to come together with the teacher
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after every work station and hear things they did well and set a goal for what they could do better

next work station. The next feedback huddle (after the next workstation) they get to reflect on

that goal and hear more positive feedback from the teacher before either continuing the same

goal if needed, or setting a new one. I haven’t collected data on this, but I have reflected on how

it makes the students more aware of workstation expectations and what they are doing well/need

to work on.

The past two years in the [Link]. program has made me overall more grow more

reflective, resilient, intentional, diagnostic, and collaborative. I find myself reflecting constantly

about my practice; how it went and what I could do differently next time. As a class this happens

during workstations every day as we reflect together in feedback huddle. As I face difficult

situations, I use resiliency skills, such as ACES to think through the process. When I plan out

lessons, I am intentional about how to best instruct my students, like providing sentence stems

for conversations. As I plan formative assessment problems, I am intentional with the objective I

pick for the day so I can be diagnostic in my teaching of what students already know and who

still needs to work on that objective. A lot of these things I don’t do alone. Collaboration with

other teachers has become something I seek out and enjoy. All of these examples are things I

don’t believe I would have accomplished without my two years at Nebraska Wesleyan. Before

the program, I was lacking motivation and not sure where I stood as a teacher. As the program

comes to an end, I have more compassion, knowledge, and drive to learn and lead. While on my

educational journey, I learned how to better navigate my students through theirs and became a

better tour guide for them.