“A teacher affects eternity: he can never tell where his
influence stops.” –Henry Adams
Hello all! My name is Kristina-Maria Paspalis, and I am currently a Junior at the University of Maryland studying Elementary Education, with an area of emphasis in social studies. I hope to become either a second or third grade teacher, and next semester I begin my year-long internship, where I hope to learn vital skills that will help and guide me throughout my career.
I started this professional portfolio to document my knowledge and my research for several core teaching practices. Assisting students in gaining the tools they need to enter society with an open and current mind frame will ensure that they become functional and capable adults, who will use what they have learned to create a better community of future learners. My main source of information for this portfolio is my personal learning network, mainly my Twitter account and my RSS feed, and together with those two tools I have spent the last semester documenting my progress and my knowledge of how to create a better learning environment for students and lesson plans which touch on 21st century skills. After this semester is over, I hope to still expand on my portfolio and include personal experiences from my internship to supplement the information I have found in my PLN research. By doing so, I hope to gain a deeper understanding of the educational field, and be able to make use of my research by implementing ideas into my own classroom. My journey as a future educator has just begun, and I couldn't be more excited! |