Wesley Nelson

TEL 311

DUE: 3/9/19

SA Applicant and School Environment

My name is Wesley Nelson; I am a junior here at Arizona State, studying secondary

education history. I am 20 years old, and have grown up in Arizona my entire life. I attended

Explorer Middles School and Pinnacle High School in the PVUSD district, the same district as

my internship school.

I am in my first semester of interning for Arizona State, and I am doing so at Desert

Shadows Middle School. While I have no prior teaching experience, my mom has been and is

currently a preschool teacher, so I have been around a teaching environment before. I am

currently interning for an 8th grade history class. I hope to familiarize myself with both middle

and high school environments. My internship school has a mostly Caucasian student population,

in a fairly wealthy area. However, the area is becoming more and more diverse as time goes on,

and the area continues to grow. Desert Shadows Middle School’s mission statement is as

follows: “Desert Shadows Middle School inspires students to become exceptional learners and

human beings.” This falls in line with a large part of my philosophy of education as well. The

purpose of education to me is to not only give students the academic skills they need to succeed

in their future endeavors, but also shape students through real life experiences. School is where

one learns a lot about themselves, meets friends, goes through hardships, and learns valuable life

lessons; academics is only a part of it. As a future educator, I hope to inspire the next generation

of leaders to be proactive in treating all they meet with fairness and kindness. I hope my students
will leave my class with a hopeful view on the world, feeling that they can impact positive

change around them.

I believe project based learning is very important for any school setting. Project based

learning allows for the students to showcase their creative abilities, and work with others in the

process. In the real world, you will more often then not are working as a team in the profession

that you choose to go into; building skills to work with others is important to develop. There will

be people you like to work with, and people you do not, so project based learning requires

students to work with both groups of people. Project based learning allows for students to learn

material in a way that is more interactive and fun than just looking at a power point. They will

still be assessed the same as if they were going to take a quiz or test, but this will be more

engaging and fun for the class. I think you must find the right balance between project-based

learning, and teacher led content days. The students must be given the information they need to

complete the project, in depth and correctly. Sometimes if the students are to learn the material

on their own, facts can get messed up, and the content is not learned to the fullest. This is why

mixing in content days can be useful, and having a very well thought out and informative

presentation is important.

My experience with technology integration involves experience in the classroom and

looking through resources in some of my college courses. I have dealt with different teachers

who have used technology well, but also dealt with teachers who have integrated technology

where it shouldn’t be. I think teachers need to find the right time and place for technology use,

rather than force it into a lesson. I have learned about many different technological resources that

can be used in the classroom through exportation in my college course. I think some can be very

helpful, however I feel that many could be forced into a lesson where it does not need to be.
Finding a few technological resources that have the ability to help your students, and resources

that will enhance learning is more important to me than using an abundance of resources just for

the sake of it.