It is hard to know when you have made a difference in a child’s life. Sometimes you can’t always see it right away. It took a parent coming to me and expressing how thankful she was that her son was in my class this year. This was a child that at the beginning of the year hardly talked to anyone, had meltdowns multiple times a day and would only play with one thing all day: cars. I used him as a case study in one of my courses at MSU and learned new strategies to use to help him. His mom came up to me a few weeks ago and told me that she has seen significant growth in him this year. He is expressing himself more with his peers and we are seeing maybe one meltdown a week. It felt good to get validation from her that what I am doing in the classroom is helping him to become a more capable and happy individual. 

Throughout this process I have achieved parts of my goals. I found inspiration in my coursework. I added story problems to my mathematics curriculum. I  have taken assisted technology and embed it into the classroom to help students with learning disabilities. I have slowly changed my way of teaching because of what I have learned these last three years. I continue to have these goals in mind each and every day. I am still working on creating a standard kindergarten curriculum for my program so that is a goal I am working on! As for the second goal, there is always more to learn. All kids are different and what may have worked for the kids so far might not work on another! Therefore these are still large goals for me. I plan on using everything I have learned over the last few years to improve the environment and curriculum in my classroom.