Matthew 3:13-17; The Baptism of Jesus Christ

In this small section we are taught many things about Christ and his example to us and we are also taught about the nature of the Godhead and how they are three separate beings.
John was quite hesitant to baptize Jesus, in Matthew 3:14 it says "But John forbade him, saying, I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?" John was hesitant because he felt that Christ was greater than him and he felt that Christ should have baptized him. I feel that this is an amazing example of John's humility as well as Christ's humility to give us an example to follow even though he was perfect.
We are taught a lot about the Holy Ghost in this passage, we learn that the Holy Ghost is a separate being and that he is a personage the Prophet Joseph Smith said, "It does not confine itself to the form of a dove, but in sign of a dove" I think that this is very interesting, earlier in the quote it said that the devil cannot take the for or make a sign of the dove. This to me shows that by doing this Christ was doing exactly what he should have because the sign of the dove appeared. This leads into how Christ was fulfilling all righteousness by being baptized. 
Christ did not technically need to be baptized because he had lived a perfect life, but he did for a few reasons, to me the first and most important is to give us an example of what we are to do and how we can best follow him. Another reason that Christ did it was to fulfill all righteousness, and obey the commandments that His Father has given. To me another reason that Christ was baptized was simply because He loved us and wanted us to be able to come to understand how much that He loved us by doing this seemingly small act.
With a careful reading of Matthew 3:13-17 it becomes clear that the Godhead is three separate beings. This is because, Jesus Christ was in the water being actually baptized, the Holy Ghost "desecen[ed] like a dove, and lighting upon him" and a Heavenly Father spoke saying, "This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased." To me this shows that that the Godhead is three separate beings because they all had a part on Christ's baptism doing different things.
 

Luke 1:5-80; The Birth of John the Baptist

This week I decided that I wanted to spend some time focusing on John the Baptist, with the discussion board I got to look a little bit more into his life, because of this I picked this topic so that I could learn even more about him and his life.
The passage that I read focuses on the birth of John the Baptist, I love what it says in the Bible dictionary about his purpose and birth it says "[he was] designated to prepare the way for the Messiah and make ready a people to receive him." Before I read this I had never understood the importance of John the Baptist and how much he helped to prepare the way for Christ.
The story of the birth of John is amazing, his mother Elisabeth was barren and she was also old. Elisabeth and Zacharias (John's father) really wanted a child, they were praying and fasting for a child. Zacharias had a incredible experience where an angel of the Lord appeared and told him that Elisabeth would bear a son and call him John. After this experience one of my favorite scriptures is written, Luke 1:37 which says "for with God nothing shall be impossible" I love this scripture and I especially love it in context. I love how God is able to do something that wasn't physically possible.
I love how the amazing circumstances surrounding his birth correspond to his amazing mission. I had never understood the amazingly important role that John had and now I more fully understand why the circumstances around his birth were so incredible.
Many people would rejoice over the birth of John the Baptist for these two reasons in addition to many incredible attributes such as he was unwavering and true, he bore a magnificent testimony of Jesus Christ, and he was a vigorous preacher. His influence even continued on as he ordained Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery to the Aaronic Priesthood. John had an amazing influence during his mortal life and beyond.

Week of 7/13

This week we spent a lot of time focusing on discipline and positive behavior strategies (PBS). We also spent some time reviewing important things to help us with the final and help us in the future.
In class we spent some time talking about PBS's and how functional behavior assessments (FBAs) and behavior improvement plans (BIPs) can help to improve behavior. We also discussed the pattern to follow to make sure that things are done right for the student. We also talked about behaviorism and the role that behaviorism plays and how we can use it as teachers. Finally in my small group we also discussed how to implement peer tutoring and how that can help our students to be more successful.
Finally we reviewed some things that can be helpful to us as future teachers, such as the thirteen categories of disabilities and what disorders can be included under them. We also briefly covered the etiology to go along with the disabilities and how they can be diagnosed. I believe that the 13 categories  one of the very important things that we as future teachers know and understand. I also think that it is especially important for me to understand being a future special education teacher.
I believe that understanding PBSs and the basics of special education are things that will make us successful teachers and especially make us successful as we work with students with disabilites.

Chapter 7 Reflection

I really enjoyed chapter 7 because it focused on high-incidence disabilities because that is mostly what I will be dealing with as a future special education teacher.
I learned a lot from the presentations about how to address and deal with these more common disabilitoes. I also was able to see how it can apply to me as a special education teacher and to others as ECSE, elementary education and child development majors. I think that it is important for me to be able to see how others can use it so that I can recommend skills for other teachers in my school to use to help their students.
I also learned a lot about some of the specifics that go into these particular disabilities that I didn't know much about before. I also really enjoyed seeing some simulations about the different disabilities that helped me to further about these differences. I also really enjoyed hearing the stories that people had told about people that they had know about people with these disabilites.
I think that this chapter is very important because it helps us to learn and understand about disabilities that will be the ones that we encounter the most in our future careers.

Fluency (stuttering) Experience

This experience was a lot like the learning disabilities experience for me, this is mostly because I felt socially awkward in the situation. A lot of the responses I got in the situation were really similar to what I got during the other simulations.
First of all the situation was awkward and uncomfortable for me because I am not very good at stuttering, and it was a little bit of a struggle for me to stutter. My first experience was pretty uncomfortable for me, I asked someone some questions and I of course was stuttering, during this experience he was very quick to answer my questions but I received a lot of pity smiles from him throughout my conversation with him.
The second experience I had was much more uncomfortable, I was talking to someone and stuttering and while I got pity smiles from her too, she also was trying to be helpful and kept suggesting things to me for what she thought I was trying to say. Like in the case of the learning disability it just made it harder for me to get the words out.
Again I learned that to really help students with speech problem that the best thing we can do is to have patience for them and wait for them to be able to get the words out. Through this experience I also learned that many of our students will have awkward encounters with their peers or others. Since I was able to have this experience I have a better idea of the struggles that my students will go through.

Service Learning

I went to a couple different things for my service learning project including, Hands, Life Skills and the talent show.
Hands was something that I really liked! I enjoyed being able to do art projects with the kids and being able to talk to them about whatever, I remember one time we talked about cars for almost an hour, I also enjoyed the art projects that we did, here are pictures of two of the projects that I did:

I also really enjoyed the Life Skills activity, it was a rehearsal for the talent show that is coming up, it was really fun to see them practicing their talent and probably the best part was when they asked if you were going to the talent show and you told them that you were they got so excited! I cannot wait for the talent show, also since we were there for the rehearsal we get to dance with them at the very end of the talent show, which was especially fun!

I also got to go help set up for the talent show and go to the talent show, which was so fun! I also had the opportunity to be a backup dancer, dancing hula for Gina and John which was so fun! I also got to dance to "Shake it Off" at the very end for the grand finale! The talent show was so fun and I am so glad that I was able to go to it! I loved being able to participate with my friends and be able to see their talents and how happy they were to be able to perform. 

These service learning hours are so fun for me! For me things like this make all the hard work that I am putting into my classes totally worth it. I am so excited for when I get to be a special education teacher and be able to spend time and learn with people with special needs. I cannot wait to be a teacher!!

Chapter 6 Reflection

Chapter six is on low-incidence disabilities which we learned about through presentations from our classmates, these persecutions were very well done and I really enjoyed them. I thought I would just share a few insights that I gained from these presentations.
My group did a presentation on intellectual disabilites which helped me to learn a lot more and understand more about how to teach my students that have intellectual disabilities the most effectively.
I also learned a lot from the other groups, one of my favorite parts was that a few of them had simulations to go along with the presentations and I really enjoyed them, it was really interesting for me because I felt that I gained a better perspective about what it is like to have autism, and while I still don't completely understand what it is like I feel that I have a better and more full understanding.
I also really enjoyed seeing videos about people that live in that situation or with the specific disability. One of the videos that really stood out to me was the video that the poverty group showed to me about what it was like to live in poverty and the real struggle that it was for them and how after living in poverty the children lowered their hopes and dreams about how they wanted the rest of their lives to be.
I really enjoyed learning about the specific disabilites and the things that can be done to help these students to be able to be as successful as possible. I also really enjoyed seeing the other groups present and that I was able to present about something that means so much to me.

Week of 7/6

This week I feel like I learned a lot that can help me as a future teacher, I was able to learn a little about fair versus equal and how to make our assessments fair, I also learned a lot about poverty and abuse and the affects that it can have on the children we teach and what we can do about it.
I really enjoyed learning about fair versus equal, I think that it is really important that we understand that and that everything is not going to be fair or equal. Our conversation in class about it reminded something that my dad taught me and my little sister, when ever we complained about something being unfair he asked us "what do we know about life" and we had been taught that the response to that question is "life's not fair" because of this I believe that I have a further understanding that everything isn't always going to be fair or equal. I also think that this is something important that we teach out children because they also need to understand that life isn't fair.
We also learned about poverty and abuse in class, which was something that was really eye-opening for me because I have never lived in an area where there was much poverty or really even understood it. The video we watched in class helped me to develop a little more of an understanding about poverty, and when we talked about it in class it helped me to even further understand. Because I have gained a little bit further of an understanding I think that I am more prepared to help my students. We also spent some time going over abuse reporting which is something that I had never really thought was going to be part of my job but I am starting to realize that it is a really important part of my job and that that is one way that I can help my students.
I think that both of the things while quite different are things that are really important to help my future students to be successful and be able to find happiness in their schooling.

Learning Disabilites Simulation

This was a simulation that I originally thought would be quite easy but I found that it was actually quite difficult. Before this simulation I did a little bit of preparation, which I probably shouldn't have done to get the full experience, but I came up with words and phrases that I could use that didn't include the letters /n/ or /l/. While I thought I would be able to do this simulation relatively easy it was not as easy as I thought.
The conversations that I had planned out didn't go as I had expected them to, in one case it did for a couple questions and then the person asked questions that I didn't expect and I felt really silly because I really struggled after doing so well for the first part of the conversation. There was one part where he asked me a yes or no question and my answer was no, so I racked my brain looking for a word but it was nowhere to be found so I ended up just shaking my head.
My other experience was even more uncomfortable because the conversation did not go in the way that I had intended at all. I felt very uncomfortable and awkward as I tried so hard to come up with the words that I could use to express my self. The person that I was talking to also tried to help me and give me suggestions which I just found to be even more distracting, I wish that she would have just given me time to come up with what I wanted to say.
This experience was extremely frustrating to me because I was unable to express what I wanted to say and it took me a long time to come up with something close to what I wanted to say. I think that this experience will give me added patience with students who are slow to answer questions and might help me to slow down in my future classroom to make sure that all my students are where they should be.

Visual Impairment Simulation

The visual impairment was definitely the a difficult simulation for me, not only did I get a horrible headache but also I felt like I couldn't see more than half of what was going on around me. There was one point where I was sitting next to someone and if she had gotten up to leave I would not have noticed because I couldn't see her at all. Things like that happened in many situations, for example talking to a group was very difficult because I would have to completely turn my body to talk to them if I even knew they were there. The masks made it much harder to focus in class too, because my thinking was often that I can't see the board or what is going on so why should I bother trying to understand. I felt that the visual simulation hurt me in social aspects as well as in academic aspects which were different than how I felt about the wheelchair experience. During my SPED 380 class we were playing a game show type game and it was surprisingly difficult for me to participate and to fell apart of the class because I had trouble seeing what was going on.
This simulation really helped me to understand how difficult it is to be visually impairing huge effect that it had on my life. While I know that I don't completely understand what it is like to be visually impaired I feel like I have a further understanding about some of the struggles from the four hours that I spent wearing the masks.

Week of 6/29

This week we learned a lot about strategies for learning. This was a very useful unit for me because it helped more to more fully understand how I can help my future students to learn and understand more.
This week we each had the opportunity to teach a strategy to the class in small groups. In my group we talked about how we need to help to redefine the definition of failure for our students and help them to see any little success or progress as success. We also talked about how we need to see small realistic goals that our students can meet regularly and see their success. We also talked about how we need to help students to see any little progress or failure as a pathway to success. For this part we used the quote from Thomas Edison that said when developing the light bulb "I haven't failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that don't work." We need to help our students to see failure like Thomas Edison saw it and be proud of every little success that we do have. I also learned a lot from the other presentations that taught me about a lot of acronym strategies to help students to be more successful in class.
This week I also learned a lot about self-monitoring and how it can positively affect student's performances. In class we had a note card that we marked on when we participated such as making a comment, asking a question or clarifying something and then we also marked when we affirmed what someone said such as a smile, a nod or even a high five or fist bump. This had a very interesting affect on my small group discussion and the whole group discussions. I found that during the small group discussion I initially was very annoyed with having to mark when I did certain things but after I had gotten used to it then I found that I wanted to participate more so that I could get a tally mark. I found that our group discussions became much more involved and that we covered a lot more material then we normally would have but that our discussions were more surface level.
These activities that we had in class along with the discussions that we had helped me to more fully understand self-monitoring along with helping students to become more successful through strategies.