By Valarie Morales

After reading the text book for this class I
learned a few things that have stuck in my head. I
particularly liked reading about the first day of
school. This is important to a lot of us this semester
because we came into our classrooms at mid-year and
rules and rapports have been established between our
students and clinical faculty. This section gave light
to the first day of school and what to do to make
students feel like they are important individuals in
your classroom. Many students feel school is a torture
place but welcoming them makes them feel like it is
“their” school.

I have a little girl in my class who
hates to be in school. In fact, she dislikes it so much
that she has some different sickness or injury
throughout the course of the day. I feel that the
students in our class don’t feel like part of the school
as much as they feel just a part of our class. If they
feel important to the school I feel they will feel the
importance of being in school.

Another part I liked discussed the importance of saying
please, thank you and smiling. I do this not only with the
students in my class but with the students from other classes. I
smile at all students and say hello or good morning and
I always make sure I smile. This helps with some of the
students in my class and they are starting to warm up to
me a lot more. I feel this is important also when dealing
with parents. Talking on the phone requires smiles as
the person on the other end can hear your smile. A
couple of days after my grandfather passed away, I
noticed I was really quiet as my mind was a million
miles away. I had to really fight that and use my smile
again and it made some students a little more at ease
with me. My solemn personality was very visible to them
and affected them.