Positive
Attitude/
Motivated
Goal
Oriented
Organized
Ashley the Learner
The Designing Process
Creative
Excited About
Learning
Linguistic,
Spatial,
Interpersonal
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Where it all started…
• On June 4th 1984 a fashionista was
born in Houston, Texas.
• I am an only child blessed with a
mother and father who made
education a priority.
• Growing up, I was involved in tap, jazz,
ballet, played the saxophone, a
member of Jack and Jill of America,
part of a swim team, Girl Scout, and
played basketball.
• I was involved in the 1st little miss AKA
pageant, where I played the
saxophone/danced and was crowned
queen.
• I attended Private School all my life:
Montessori (Pre-school)
St. James Catholic School(1-4)
St. Theresa Catholic School (5-8)
Bishop O’Connell High School
While In Elementary School I learned…
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To read phonetically from a basal
reader.
To write entries in my daily journal.
To study for and take weekly spelling
test.
To keep my things and backpack
organized.
To camp, sell cookies, knit and be a
team player.
To take tap, jazz and ballet lessons
from the age 6-12. I also participated
in several recitals.
To swim, ride a bike, and
play the saxophone.
To dribble the ball, learn
the positions/plays, and
guard my teammates.
To make Friends and be a
team player
To take care of my dog
Excerpt from Daily Journal in
Elementary school (2nd Grade)
While In High School I learned…
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To compete in a high
mom
performing School.
That Algebra/Geometry
were hard
How to have a effective
study schedule (Skills that
I still use today)
That extracurricular activities were an
outlet to a stressful day
How to have proper etiquette
through participating in a debutant
ball.
That government could be fun as
well as informative
That uniforms could be cute
That the real world could be hard
(Bills! What a scary thought!)
To be a Social Butterfly
That I was visual learner by making
flash cards to study
My Debutant Ball
While In College I learned…
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How to make a Educational Portfolio
How having a fresh start could help
build new friendships
To be a Leader
Responsibility
Determination through the
pledging process(Alpha Kappa Alpha)
How to study for and take the Praxis
How to teach and be a Student Teacher
Build meaningful educational
units/lesson plans
Live Independently in
another state
How to Budget
Student Teaching
Outstanding Student
Teacher Finalist Certificate
Student Teaching Evaluation
Excerpt from My Journal- July 18, 2012
As I reflected on my college days, I decided to write about my student teaching experience. My
student teaching experience was a wonderful experience and at the end I felt I was born to be a teacher. The
reason I felt this way was because I really wanted my students to learn and be successful. My student
teaching experience taught me that I not only cared about each one of my students, but I also loved the
students enough to make sure that each one of them learned the information I presented to them in class. I
think in this way, I never gave up on my student even when some had more difficulty grasping the material
than others. My student teaching experience was important to me because it give me the opportunity to put
my ideas into practice. My student teaching experience also helped me strengthen my skills and become a
more effective teacher. My student teaching experience helped me truly understand the amount of work
that a teacher is required to do such as writing lesson plans, organizing material, running-off material,
teaching the information to the students as well as trying to actively engage the students in the lesson. My
student teaching experience taught me that if I engage my students in the lesson and make it a fun
experience for them the least amount of behavior problems I will have. However, in order to do this it
required that my lessons were always prepared in advance and that I had a lot of different activities
incorporated into the lesson so that the lesson was not monotonous and boring. It also taught me that when
students are exposed to cooperative learning experiences, guided and independent practice they are better
able to get along with one another in the classroom and understand the material being taught. This
experience was a tremendous growth experience for me, because by taking the class over in increments it
allowed me to gradually become comfortable with teaching each subject area before I had to take over the
entire class. Therefore, when I did take over the entire teaching load I was prepared and loved every minute
of it. This experience also provided me with lots of fulfillment because it has helped me understand my
students’ needs. I realized that my role as a teacher is one that helps the student and guides him or her along
the way. I learned that in order for a student to be able to successfully function and learn in the classroom he
or she must feel comfortable and have a sense of belonging. I felt that I tried to create such an environment
during my student teaching experience and hopefully, I helped each one of my students increase his or her
self-esteem.
My Multiple Intelligences
Linguistic Learner
• Likes to: read, write and tell stories.
• Is good at: memorizing names, places,
dates and trivia.
• Learns best by: saying, hearing and
seeing words.
Interpersonal Learner
Likes to: have lots of friends, talk to people
and join groups.
Is good at: understanding people, leading
others, organizing, communicating,
manipulating and mediating conflicts.
Learns best by: sharing, comparing, relating,
cooperating and interviewing.
Spatial Learner
• Likes to: draw, build, design and create
things, daydream, look at
pictures/slides, watch movies and play
with machines.
• Is good at: imagining things, sensing
changes, mazes/puzzles and reading
maps/charts.
• Learns best by: visualizing, dreaming,
using the mind's eye and working with
colors/pictures.
How I use these
Intelligences:
Linguistic:
Make flash cards on specific vocabulary
Clever Storyteller
Allow my students to listen to books on
tape
I have students write in a journal daily
Read many bestsellers
Spatial:
Likes decorating/designing new things
Creates many projects from ideas from
my brain
Uses a vision board to design goals
Likes to make unique bulletin boards
and centers
Interpersonal:
Uses bubbly personality to collaborate
with others
I have taken on many leadership roles
Give my student several opportunities to
work with each other in groups
Establish long term friendship
Learning Styles
Silver, Strong, & Perini (2000) identifies components that support each learning style. Listed below are two
descriptors that really reflect who I am as a learner through my two strongest profiles.
Sensing-Feeling (SF)
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Sociable, friendly, and
interpersonally oriented.
Prefer to learn things that
directly affect people’s lives.
Work best when emotionally
involved.
Motivated by feelings
Likes being part of a teamcollaborating with other
students
Likes opportunities to be helpful
in class
Intuitive-Feeling (NF)
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Curious, insightful, and
imaginative
Searching for new ways to
express themselves
Eager to explore ideas, generate
new solutions to problems, and
discuss moral dilemmas
Highly motivated by their own
interests
Operate on an “internal clock”
Independent and nonconforming; do not fear being
different
Often engaged in many activities
at the same time
My Learning Style Influenced me
as a learner by….
My learning style has influenced me to use my strength of multi-tasking to
build a creative classroom. I learned at a early age, I was not a student that could
sit and write at my desk, I needed visuals and to be creative. I also needed
opportunities to work in groups to have discussions so that I could share my
ideas and feelings with others. Every time I was given an assignment to create
something, I was always the student who would go above and beyond the task
to make my project very detailed and elaborate. My Interpersonal and Self
Expressive learning styles are very evident in my classroom because I use
activities such as group assignments, drama/role-play, develop differentiated
centers, and develop instructional learning plans which provide multiple
pathways for students to learn in my classroom. One example I use to asses
students is by providing them with opportunities to self-assess themselves.
Some of the questions I use are “What did I learn today?”, “What did I do best?”,
“What do I need help with?” and “What would I like to learn more about?”. In
this way, students are allowed to share their personal feelings and experiences
with others. Thus my creative styles, drives me as person from designing my
own outfits, to planning a creative classroom environment which facilitates
student success, to finally creating a Multi Genre project which is all about my
learning experiences.
Excerpt from My Journal- July 8,2012
I discovered some interesting things about myself while completing the multi-genre project. I learned that my
learning style was Interpersonal and self expressive after taking the Learning Style Inventory for Adults.
Surprisingly, I have always known that I learned information better when teachers presented it visually and
followed up with oral discussions. I have also known that I was a person who was extremely organized and
needed others around me to be organized. It drive me crazy to work in a chaotic environment. In order for me to
fully understand an assignment I have to have a plan of attack before I attempt to complete the assignment.
This brings me to the time when I had to complete a project with a group of students in undergraduate school
whom I was not very familiar with. The entire experience of working with a group of people to complete a
presentation was more stressful than I anticipated. The reason for this was because of my fellow group members
lack of commitment and responsibility for the overall group’s success. From the beginning of the assignment, my
group members lack of commitment was apparent because of the difficulty we had in just trying to get everyone
together at the same time to select a topic and subdivide duties. Everyone seemed to be very busy with other
things and no one in the group wanted to take the time to make arrangements for us to meet. Because of this
dilemma, I e-mailed everyone in the group and asked them if we could meet before class in order to set up a time
and a place where we could meet again to discuss what we wanted to do for our group presentation.
Subsequently, all of the group members met before class one evening and decided that we would meet again in
the library on Saturday morning. The real challenge for me began the day our group met in the library, because
only two of the group members and myself showed up. We wasted most of the morning waiting on the other
members to show up, but they never did. Finally, at the last minute we decided to do our group presentation on
“Racial Profiling”, because of a headline on the front page of a newspaper in the library about a recent racial
profiling case. Unfortunately, some of things we did not do at the time were select a leader, decide who was
doing what and when those jobs needed to be done, schedule another time and place for us to meet and set up
some strategies of how we were simply going to communicate to share information with one another. All in all,
we left our meeting with just a topic and no plans of how we were going to begin our research. As a Interpersonal
and self expressive learner, I know now why I was so frustrated with the group because for me I needed to have a
plan in order for the entire assignment to come together for me.