The first day of class, I don't think any of us knew how we would all grow and how the semester would change us. An entire new world was opened up to me that I may not have discovered on my own. We developed friendships that we hope will last a lifetime. We learned tools that we never knew about before but will probably never forget. We were introduced to an entire new teaching style and a whole new way of thinking.
I thought I knew about technology, or at least just enough. It turns out I had no clue. I have been out of high school for ten years, and the school I graduated from had only two computer labs and another lab inside the library. If we wanted to do research, our teachers had to schedule library time. I had no clue about the software and web tools that were provided. However, once I learned about them, I love learning of new tools that I can use when I have my own classroom of students. I only hope they are half as excited as I was to learn about them.
I enjoyed the way Mr. Smith teaches. At first it was a little hard getting used to. We are so used to having teachers talk at us or lecture to us. We were used to being told exactly what to do for our projects and exactly what the teacher was looking for. Then we entered Mr. Smith's class. It was hard at first to understand that he didn't want us to give him what he was looking for, he wanted us to give him what we were looking for. We had to be creative, we had to think, we had to grasp the concept of self teaching. Mr. Smith wanted us to work together, to become involved, and figure things out for ourselves. We didn't have to memorize information that we would completely forget the day after the exam. We had to explore and figure out things for ourselves.
I made great friends in the short semester. I can't tell you how many classes I've taken that at the end of the semester, I really didn't know anyone any better than when the semester started. I had no idea who was in my class unless we decided to converse before class started. Mr. Smith encouraged us to make connections with every student in our class and made it easy for us to do so. We had fun projects, we were able to voice our opinions regardless of who disagreed with them. This was the first class I can honestly say I was very sad to walk out of class the last day.
Mr. Smith has been saying all semester that education needs a transformation. I believe that if we have more teachers like Mr. Smith, that transformation he's been talking about is closer than some of us may think. This was my first education class, and Mr. Smith has set a high standard for my other education instructors.
