Prompt?: Review your journal entry from week 1 and describe how your content knowledge, confidence, and abilities to teach EE have changed since the beginning of the semester as a result of this course, other courses, and placement in instructional settings.
In my first journal entry when I assessed myself on how I viewed my ability to teach Environmental Education (EE), I had a few main concerns. These concerns were my limited knowledge of EE, differentiating the content with my students (as I will be a special ed teacher), and conveying my passion for the environment when I am teaching.
As of late I feel much more comfortable with these areas that had originally given me concerns. Regarding my concern about my limited content knowledge I feel that I have learned a lot of valuable information about EE that will help me in the future. Through this course I have learned more about sustainability and some easy ways that it can be implemented. Sustainability is something that I think is very important to teach students and a topic that they will probably be interested in. Another topic that I have learned more about are the different forms of harnessing energy. Some of them are more environmentally conscience than others and this could be a discussion that I could engage my students in. Having my students build small models of the different energy harnessing options could get them working with their hands to better understand these methods. Finally I am glad that we have the Project Wild, Aquatic Wild, and Project Learning Tree books, as there are so many fun and useful activities in there that will be very enjoyable to my future students.
My second concern was about differentiating between the large variety of students that I will have. I am now less concerned about this after attending this class. After doing the practicum at CWES I learned that getting students into nature is one of the most effective teaching tools. This applies to all students, even students with some difficult-to-manage students that I may have. I also learned that some concepts such as reusing and recycling do not need to be differentiated, and can be understood by all students. Furthermore putting different concepts into practice is a good way to teach students. For example if I am talking to my students about reusing and recycling then I should recycle in my classroom and encourage my students to find ways to reuse materials.
The final concern that I had was how I would express my passion for the environment to my students. While I still am not sure how I will do this, I am pretty sure that I will be able to express it. If I make the practices that I find important an integral part of my students' day, then that may be a good way to convey to them how I feel about the topic.
Overall I feel that I will be successful when I am teaching Environmental Education to my students, and I hope that I can inspire them to love the environment as much as I do.
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