A moment that changed me as a learner was a time when I was playing tennis with some friends. They were beating me again and again and it taught me that I would have to work harder in order to beat them. I began working towards practicing a certain technique that would surely help me in beating them called a Slice (which is an undercut return). Although they kept beating me, I was getting better, and I eventually beat them, but not without the plenty of times that I lost. I learned that as someone that I thought could always pick things up quickly, this took me a while, and through the losses I preserved. This perseverance has transferred to how I approach schoolwork and the other challenges that I face on a day-to-day basis. Just as “learning is public, [students] reflect on what and how they learn with peers, teachers, and community members” they work together and face obstacles together including the teacher(EL 3). As I move forward with the planning and learning process of Fieldwork, I am excited to be working with students from the Rockbridge county area. My biggest focus in teaching is going to be trying to acknowledge “both the cognitive and emotional considerations of who they are and the experiences that the [students] have had” which Parton captures brilliantly in her text Exploring Place-and Social -Class-based Ways of Knowing(32).  This obstacle is something I want to approach cautiously so as to not create any rifts, but want students aware that these divisions exist and that one situation at home for one person could be very different from the other. This address would work to build these young thinkers into more intrapersonal leaders within their community and work to make others feel welcomed and fair in understanding people’s perspectives.

Cadet Justin Addis