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Centralizing approaches to a complex issue in the child care industry.

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STEP 1: Define Problem or State Research Question 

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STEP 1: Define Problem or State Research Question 

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Day cares have become just that, a place where your child will be cared for each day, but the early years of a child's life are considered to be "crucial" and "sensitive" periods in a child's development in which care is not the only thing a child needs. Our problem is that day cares are lacking in knowledge of how to properly promote a child's development through learning. They are lacking in knowledge because they do not have teachers who are properly trained or educated for the job which then hinders the value of any curriculum put in place. This is so important because if a child does not receive the proper education in their early years, they will fall behind in schooling.

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STEP 1: Define Problem or State the Problem 

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STEP 1: Define Problem or State the Problem 

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Our problem revolves around the lack of institutionalized language learning. Many public schools have foreign language departments, but at the same time there is a perceived lack of emphasis to learn a language. Schools only require students to take two years of a language. And that is also is relevant to public universities. The problem rests upon the lack of our school systems’ (and society to a greater extent) lack of promotion of multilingualism.

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STEP 2: Justify an Interdisciplinary Approach 

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STEP 2: Justify an Interdisciplinary Approach 

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There are psychological, sociological, economic, child growth and development all involved in the issue of not having proper knowledge to teach young children in daycares.

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STEP 2: Justify an Interdisciplinary Approach 

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STEP 2: Justify an Interdisciplinary Approach 

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There are historical, sociological, psychological and economic reasons why American society is hesitant to learn another language, but there are just as many historical, sociological, psychological and economic factors that should boost our need to learn another language.

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Step 4:

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The difference between these 2 researches is that one of them did charts with students and they went in schools to test students and according to that they made percentages. ( this one is about anxiety)
(Speaking out) this one explains overall about languages and it doesn’t show any charts. It actually says how students study another language and how to make it easier. I don’t know if this works but professor said the difference i saw the due date is tomorrow!
Let me know when you add everything

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Contribution to Project. Group members go around and one by one address the following questions at the beginning of the recording:

How did you contribute to your Interdisciplinary Project?

On which steps of the Broad Model did you work? Which steps do you think you contributed to the most? Please explain.

How do you think your group project benefitted from having you as a group member on this project?

Reflection on Insights Gained from Interdisciplinary Research Process. Next each group member addresses the following again going around one by one:

How has the project challenged your bias toward the problem?

How has the research process influenced your perception of disciplinary perspective and expertise?

How has an interdisciplinary approach enlarged your understanding of the problem as a whole?

How is an interdisciplinary approach applicable beyond the classroom?

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Taylor Resso

EDUC 3100

Final Paper

17 April 2018

Final Paper

Looking back on spring 2018 semester in EDUC 3100 ‘An Investigation of Careers and Interdisplinarity in BIS HLD through Problem-Based Learning,’ it feels as though the semester started and ended in a blink of an eye, yet an enormous amount of information was shared with me. Going into the Interdisciplinary degree path, I had no clue what “Interdisplinary” even meant. That sounds crazy, right? I chose a major that I wasn’t even sure the meaning of. All I knew was that it was in the human learning and development department and that I would get to pick two disciplines so it caught my eye and I did it. I declared my major as just that! Early in the semester, I was presented with information to help me understand just what interdisciplinary is and how it is used.

I am thankful for Nissani because I learned that instead of having a bunch of whole fruits, a fancy smoothie sounds much better. Nassani created an Interdisciplinarity Richness Scale in 1995 to help explain what Interdisciplinarity is. In terms of interdisciplinarity, a fancy smoothie is the highest form of interdisciplinarity because it is the alliance of different components, or disciplines, in order to create new exciting innovations, where a bunch of whole fruits in terms of interdisciplinarity really has no components being integrated to find new exciting innovations. The integration of different disciplines to create new outcomes, which can be problem solving, is what interdisciplinarity is all about.

Understanding interdisciplinarity as a whole was important when starting the research and problem solving project that went on throughout the semester. I am not one to talk because I had no idea what interdisciplinarity meant when choosing it as my major, but to my surprise, a lot of people that work in programs and situations that  involve a lot of interdisciplinarity don’t know the meaning either. That’s kind of scary to think about. For our group project we all thought of something that was an issue to us and we addressed it. Our main idea was centralized on daycares. When I took my initial visit to a daycare, the director literally looked at me like I had ten heads when I used the term interdisciplinarity. Luckily, we had just dug deep into an article and Nissanis richness scale in our previous class periods so I had a lot of information to explain interdisciplinarity to her.  My team and I thought thoroughly to figure out what our problem was as a whole and then took the time to think about what different components can be integrated in order to address our problem and how to help solve it. That was a really important step in the research process. Figuring out which components, or disciplines can be tricky, but luckily we were provided in class with a guide to help our thoughts get going and really coming up with good ideas for what can work. Aside from that part of the research process, finding articles that could support or maybe have a different view than us was just as important. Finding the different research studies and scholarly journals helped us as a group to keep formulating different ideas and discovering different outcomes for our problem.

In my opinion the most important aspect of our semester long interdisciplinarity project was that it was not set in stone. It was flexible, as it should be. My group and I found ourselves in different steps of the project realizing that maybe we need to go back and look at our previous steps and tweak them a little bit to better explain what we are trying to achieve and give a good view at the different angles we are taking towards our problem. It was an ever changing problem and that was okay. I find that so important. To know that there isn’t one solution to a problem and to know that when integrating different components, the problem is bound to change a little bit and that is also okay, in fact it is supposed to happen.

The problem my group formulated doesn’t just stop because our project and our semester has come to an end. It is a significant problem to me and one that before I even knew what interdisciplinarity meant, I wanted to work on. So this project really opened my eyes even more and gave me a better understanding of how I need to address the problem in the years to come.

Before this class I had my two disciplines chosen, but thankfully this class gave me the opportunity to realize that I indeed picked the right disciplines for me. I chose child growth and development and behavior and learning disabilities as my disciplines. I think they will aid me in my interdisciplinary practices and goals as I move onto my internship and later onto my career because I do think they can integrate and be used to find new solutions. They also are important to my group and I’s original problem in our research project that we did all semester, which is a problem I want to continue to work on throughout my career.

My goal is to open my own daycare. A lot of people think of daycare as just people sitting in a room watching different ages of toddlers run around from the time they get dropped off to the time they get picked up. If there are babies, then chances are someone is just rocking them in their cribs or rockers, right? Well, some places in fact do take that approach to child care, but that isn’t my goal. My goal is to open a daycare that practices interdisciplinarity in its class rooms. I will strive for the children to be educated because as I explained before, many daycares lack that. Children in daycares are in the most sensitive period of their life and they are ready to learn. It is so important to promote their learning through interdisciplinarity practices such as the child growth and development discipline and behavior and learning disabilities because it will not only take one source to provide knowledge to these children. Many different things go on in the first few years of a child life and it takes different sources to be integrated in order to result in the articulation of something meaningful and new.

Another goal I have is similar to my previous goal, but I also want to open a preschool which would be attached to my daycare. I think learning is so important in the early years of a child’s life because through researching articles I learned that, that experience really does set the standard for children as they become school age. It will be great to use the interdisciplinary practices I have learned for my daycare, but then what happens when the children go off to preschool? They need to continue on that journey and just as important as I think it is for the children to be a part of this, I think it is equally as important for the teachers to be informed. A teacher leads their classroom in the right direction, so teachers need to be aware of how to make these fancy smoothies in their classrooms and not just have a bunch of whole fruits in their teachings.

Choosing the disciplines child growth and development and behavior and learning disabilities will definitely aid me in my internship, EDUC 4670. I have chosen to do it where I also took my visit in the beginning of our semester at the very start of our research project. It is a daycare that ranges from six week olds to three year olds. Their development depends a lot on their education believe it or not. That was a hot topic in the research my group and I did throughout our research process. Also, children are so new to everything at this point in their life and a lot of children in daycares have behavior or learning disabilities which are discovered in daycares through the learning and educating process. The daycare I have chosen is not a bad place, but it is not yet a fancy smoothie. I come with ideas such as integrating a lot of reading, art work, languages, and more to create this learning atmosphere that young children can strive in. I think it is so important to create that atmosphere and it takes many different components to do so.

Look ahead at course schedule:

Summer 2018

·         CPS 3400

·         ECE 3500

·         ECE 3550

·         EDUC 2120

·         EPY 2050

·         EXC 4020

Fall 2018:

·         BRFV 4370

·         EPRS 4900

·         EPY 3010

·         EXC 4350

·         LT 2010

·         PSYC 4040

Spring 2019:

·         EDUC 4670

·         ECE 3010

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Introduction

•importance of speaking another language

•advantages of speaking another language

•overall about languages

•a little intro of my whole paper

Body 1

•reasons why students don’t study

•including research that i found

Body 2

•how people behave and express their feelings when they talk another language

Body 3

•since I am an international I will talk about me and my experience when I started learning,studying,speaking in another language and my experience as a non native speaker

Body 4

•how professors teach kids to handle another language (my experience as well)

•how students feel from their side when they teach them

•every country teaches it differently

Body 5

•how non native speakers handle when they come to another country

Conclusion

•going to give maybe advice or something that’s would give students more motivation to study another language

•tell my opinion about languages overall

•looking back (what I knew it)

•looking forward (what I learned throughout this research)

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Naomie BanatteFinal Paper 1st DraftApril 19, 2018Upon reflection of the past Spring 2018 semester as a Georgia State University Student within my EDUC 3100 course, I have come to the realization that I have had the opportunity to learn a multitude of things regarding Interdisciplinary Studies, Research, and its processes. My chosen disciplines are child development and counseling. I chose these disciplines because I felt that they were the best fit for me academically. I also felt that these disciplines would allow me to utilize my talents and education more effectively in future careers and endeavors. My internship experience has truly exposed me to the aspects of Interdisciplinarity and the variations of approaches depending on the style of choice.My understanding of the Interdisciplinary Process and the approaches increased as I began to research my topic of choice which targeted child development and the disparities that children who fail to receive access to developmentally appropriate teaching and learning practices. The idea that children who are not exposed to quality education, quality teachers, and developmentally appropriate educational practices such as exposure has been something that I have had a tough time accepting. I believe that the challenges that I face regarding this stem from my belief that all children deserve quality education, quality teachers, and access to exposure despite socioeconomic status, race, or gender biases. Our group topic was “centralizing approaches to a complex issue in the childcare industry”. The engagement with my group members with regards to addressing and researching issues within child development practices further supports my stance regarding children who are not receiving adequate exposure to quality education and experiences. In defining the problem, we concluded that day cares are not just a place where your child is cared for, it is a place where your child in the most sensitive and crucial stages of child development is being exposed to teaching and learning. For our research question, my group members and I wanted to discuss how we can best implement practices that will improve aspects of child development, how we can improve professional development standards, and find ways to promote child development through the improvement of curriculum and exposure. Our research also allowed us to understand that although what we would need to locate a resolution for this matter is vast. The articles that we read focusing on research and problem solving and child and development allowed us to understand that there are some things that we can begin to address such as the examination of what teachers are being taught in college, the specialized child development programs that are offered, the examination of curriculum, and the effects of specialized teachers within classrooms.The Nisanni Richness scale allowed me to place the idea of Interdisciplinary approaches more into perspective during research. I was better able to categorize what type of smoothie was being utilized during research and because of that I was better able to categorize the different articles and projects that were used to ensure that they accurately met the criteria for that smoothie. As a critical thinker, I enjoy the aspects of interdisciplinarity that utilize the “fancy smoothie” the most. I understand it to be the most interesting of the disciplines. The “fancy smoothie” takes all the aspects of interdisciplinarity and blends them together to create one or multiple perspectives and I am always open to gaining perspective.My site visit and internship experiences also have exposed me to aspects of interdisciplinary that I would not have been exposed to without having taken the courses. I was able to attend different and very diverse organizations for my internship and site visit. My internship consisted of my involvement with Trees Atlanta and our desire to create educational materials that align with the standards but are focused on civic action and engagement. “Create your Dreams” is a non-profit organization that provides support for children living in underseved areas in Atlanta by providing resources, exposure, and opportunities. Although both the internship and the site have the same goals, the targeted audience and participants are different. Therefore, some of the interdisciplinary approaches that are utilized to address the issues are different. We can say that the ingredients of their “fancy smoothies” are different but it is still and yet a fancy smoothie because civic action and engagement is still very much a relevant focus. However, one addresses bringing awareness to environmental health and the other addresses disparities within a community.Looking forward, it is my intention to utilize my education and skills to attain a position where I can be most effective. Initially, I wanted and started to work on a non- profit organization of my very own but I am unable to pursue that endeavor now because of its demands. Although I am unable to pursue that endeavor, my passion for child development and counseling has allowed me to create and am currently in the process of publishing a children’s book that is very near and dear to my heart because it addresses the child abuse epidemic across the globe. According to www.childhelp.org every year more than 3.6 referrals are made to child protection agencies involving more than 6.6 children. A report is made every 10 seconds and we are losing 4 to 7 children every day to child abuse. I wrote this book because I too, am a survivor of child abuse in adolescence. I wanted to create a safe place for children to have dialogue and to assist with preventative methods that would help end the child abuse epidemic. I intend to do more in this area going forward but my priority is to publish this contemporary realistic fiction book that is currently at the end of illustration processes. My goals include my involvement and contributions to helping children with exposure, providing counseling assistance,  enforcing the importance of quality education, and implementing practices towards the improvement of  professional development standards.Due to my anticipated graduation date being May of 2018, I am unable to create a chart that demonstrates the projection of courses. However, I have enclosed a retrospective chart that demonstrates the courses that are offered and that I have taken below. Courses Offered for Child Development for Terms Summer 18 Fall 18 Spring 19  ECE 3010 – Introduction to Early Childhood Education (Spring 2019) BRFV 4370 – Language, Literacy, Cognition-CTW (Fall 2018) BRFV 4400 – Family and Community Relationships (Summer 2018)ECE 3021 – Child Development (Summer 18 Fall 18 Spring 19)ECE 3500 – Social-Emotional Development from Infancy to Middle Childhood-Summer ECE 3550 – Children’s Literature in the 21st Century (Summer 2018)   Counseling discipline Courses offered for Terms: Summer 18 Fall 18 Spring 19 CPS 3500 – Stress and Stress Management (Summer 18 Fall 18) CPS 3200 – Diversity and Human Relations (Summer 18 Fall 18 Spring 19) CPS 3300 – Interpersonal Communication Skills (Summer 18 Fall 18 Spring 19) PSYC 3140 – Psychopathology and Abnormal Psychology (Summer 18 Fall 18 Spring 19)PSYC 3520 – Introduction to African-American Psychology (Summer 18 Fall 18 Spring 19)PSYC 4020 – Social Psychology (Summer 18 Fall 18 Spring 19)PSYC 4030 – Cross-Cultural Psychology (Fall 18 Spring 19) PSYC 4040 – Developmental Psychology (Fall 18 Spring 19)

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Naomie BanatteFinal Paper 1st DraftApril 19, 2018Upon reflection of the past Spring 2018 semester as a Georgia State University Student within my EDUC 3100 course, I have come to the realization that I have had the opportunity to learn a multitude of things regarding Interdisciplinary Studies, Research, and its processes. My chosen disciplines are child development and counseling. I chose these disciplines because I felt that they were the best fit for me academically. I also felt that these disciplines would allow me to utilize my talents and education more effectively in future careers and endeavors. My internship experience has truly exposed me to the aspects of Interdisciplinarity and the variations of approaches depending on the style of choice.My understanding of the Interdisciplinary Process and the approaches increased as I began to research my topic of choice which targeted child development and the disparities that children who fail to receive access to developmentally appropriate teaching and learning practices. The idea that children who are not exposed to quality education, quality teachers, and developmentally appropriate educational practices such as exposure has been something that I have had a tough time accepting. I believe that the challenges that I face regarding this stem from my belief that all children deserve quality education, quality teachers, and access to exposure despite socioeconomic status, race, or gender biases. Our group topic was “centralizing approaches to a complex issue in the childcare industry”. The engagement with my group members with regards to addressing and researching issues within child development practices further supports my stance regarding children who are not receiving adequate exposure to quality education and experiences. In defining the problem, we concluded that day cares are not just a place where your child is cared for, it is a place where your child in the most sensitive and crucial stages of child development is being exposed to teaching and learning. For our research question, my group members and I wanted to discuss how we can best implement practices that will improve aspects of child development, how we can improve professional development standards, and find ways to promote child development through the improvement of curriculum and exposure. Our research also allowed us to understand that although what we would need to locate a resolution for this matter is vast. The articles that we read focusing on research and problem solving and child and development allowed us to understand that there are some things that we can begin to address such as the examination of what teachers are being taught in college, the specialized child development programs that are offered, the examination of curriculum, and the effects of specialized teachers within classrooms.The Nisanni Richness scale allowed me to place the idea of Interdisciplinary approaches more into perspective during research. I was better able to categorize what type of smoothie was being utilized during research and because of that I was better able to categorize the different articles and projects that were used to ensure that they accurately met the criteria for that smoothie. As a critical thinker, I enjoy the aspects of interdisciplinarity that utilize the “fancy smoothie” the most. I understand it to be the most interesting of the disciplines. The “fancy smoothie” takes all the aspects of interdisciplinarity and blends them together to create one or multiple perspectives and I am always open to gaining perspective.My site visit and internship experiences also have exposed me to aspects of interdisciplinary that I would not have been exposed to without having taken the courses. I was able to attend different and very diverse organizations for my internship and site visit. My internship consisted of my involvement with Trees Atlanta and our desire to create educational materials that align with the standards but are focused on civic action and engagement. “Create your Dreams” is a non-profit organization that provides support for children living in underseved areas in Atlanta by providing resources, exposure, and opportunities. Although both the internship and the site have the same goals, the targeted audience and participants are different. Therefore, some of the interdisciplinary approaches that are utilized to address the issues are different. We can say that the ingredients of their “fancy smoothies” are different but it is still and yet a fancy smoothie because civic action and engagement is still very much a relevant focus. However, one addresses bringing awareness to environmental health and the other addresses disparities within a community.Looking forward, it is my intention to utilize my education and skills to attain a position where I can be most effective. Initially, I wanted and started to work on a non- profit organization of my very own but I am unable to pursue that endeavor now because of its demands. Although I am unable to pursue that endeavor, my passion for child development and counseling has allowed me to create and am currently in the process of publishing a children’s book that is very near and dear to my heart because it addresses the child abuse epidemic across the globe. According to www.childhelp.org every year more than 3.6 referrals are made to child protection agencies involving more than 6.6 children. A report is made every 10 seconds and we are losing 4 to 7 children every day to child abuse. I wrote this book because I too, am a survivor of child abuse in adolescence. I wanted to create a safe place for children to have dialogue and to assist with preventative methods that would help end the child abuse epidemic. I intend to do more in this area going forward but my priority is to publish this contemporary realistic fiction book that is currently at the end of illustration processes. My goals include my involvement and contributions to helping children with exposure, providing counseling assistance,  enforcing the importance of quality education, and implementing practices towards the improvement of  professional development standards.Due to my anticipated graduation date being May of 2018, I am unable to create a chart that demonstrates the projection of courses. However, I have enclosed a retrospective chart that demonstrates the courses that are offered and that I have taken below. Courses Offered for Child Development for Terms Summer 18 Fall 18 Spring 19  ECE 3010 – Introduction to Early Childhood Education (Spring 2019) BRFV 4370 – Language, Literacy, Cognition-CTW (Fall 2018) BRFV 4400 – Family and Community Relationships (Summer 2018)ECE 3021 – Child Development (Summer 18 Fall 18 Spring 19)ECE 3500 – Social-Emotional Development from Infancy to Middle Childhood-Summer ECE 3550 – Children’s Literature in the 21st Century (Summer 2018)   Counseling discipline Courses offered for Terms: Summer 18 Fall 18 Spring 19 CPS 3500 – Stress and Stress Management (Summer 18 Fall 18) CPS 3200 – Diversity and Human Relations (Summer 18 Fall 18 Spring 19) CPS 3300 – Interpersonal Communication Skills (Summer 18 Fall 18 Spring 19) PSYC 3140 – Psychopathology and Abnormal Psychology (Summer 18 Fall 18 Spring 19)PSYC 3520 – Introduction to African-American Psychology (Summer 18 Fall 18 Spring 19)PSYC 4020 – Social Psychology (Summer 18 Fall 18 Spring 19)PSYC 4030 – Cross-Cultural Psychology (Fall 18 Spring 19) PSYC 4040 – Developmental Psychology (Fall 18 Spring 19)

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I think your goal of opening your own daycare will be really attainable if you take an interdisciplinary approach. I am glad you will not be like the daycare worker who looked at you crazy whenever you used the term interdisciplinary! I really like how you incorporated various things that we have learned in class, especially the smoothie scale. I would recommend adding a paragraph or two where you discuss the benefits of using an interdisciplinary approach to solving a problem, instead of just examining an interdisciplinary approach to looking at the problem. You could talk about how solutions must involve an interdisciplinary approach, as well. Maybe even give some examples of problems you may encounter owning your own daycare that can be solved by an interdisciplinary approach, or even the steps that go into opening your own daycare and how interdisciplinary of a processes that is (financial, legal, construction, real estate, education, human resources (hiring and firing), taxes, etc.). Great start!

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Naomie Banatte peer review for  Taylor Resso

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Naomie Banatte peer review for  Taylor Resso

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I enjoyed reading your first draft. Your introduction and the flow was consistent and met the requirements in the rubric. I would change the information about the articles and place it after your opinion about Nissani and the "fancy smoothie" in order to tie your opinion in with your newly learned understanding. I love that you want to open up a daycare. I think you would be awesome in that area. you have great communication
skills among your other strengths.

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Damira this was such a more organized way of approaching the paper than I did. As this is a first draft for the final paper I can understand the brevity of the outline you posted. It gives an organized outlook of your paper. Listing each paragraph and exploration of what you will be talking about. However, there seems to be a problem when I read your outline. This is our final paper discussing our experience throughout the semester and our outlook on what our future goals are. The looking back should consist of what your major consists of and what work we did in the project. When you talk about looking forward it consists of what 3-4 future goals you have regarding what you plan to do in your academic career. Since I know you’re not a BIS major it is a little difficult to mold your paper completely to the rubric. I have worked with Damira for the entire semester and can see how involved into the Padlet project you are to write your first draft on the project. I’m sure you’ll be able to take this comment and create a great final paper!

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you did a great job on explaining what you learned about Interdisciplinary. In your introduction I noticed how well you did writing your reflection. Your reflection of the semester gave me great insight on how you decided you two disciplines. Throughout your paper You also did a good job of giving detailed evidence to support your argument. You were very thorough and used a great amount of enhanced vocabulary.  Elsewhere I am impressed with how well you did in defining interdisciplinary. Overall if there was anything I would change about this draft would be to add more connection between the disciplines. However, you did do a good job on keeping your paper relevant and on topic.

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Naomie you did a great job on explaining what you learned about Interdisciplinary. In your introduction I noticed how well you did in stating your disciplines. Your reflection of the semester gave me great insight on what you have learned from this class. Throughout your paper You also did a good job of using your sources. You were very thorough and used a great amount of enhanced vocabulary.  Elsewhere I am impressed with how well you did in connecting the disciplines you chose. Overall if there was anything I would change about this draft would be to add more examples with detailed evidence. However, you did do a good job on stating your argument.

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I will never forget the first words Dr. Ari spoke to me on the first day of class: “what are you doing here?”  It is a valid question. I am a second semester senior and a history major; not only does this course have nothing to do with my major, but I am about to graduate from Georgia State University. In all honesty, this course fills out my requirements to graduate for me to walk in May. Even though I might not be a BIS major, or even in the field, I have learned a lot from this course overt the past semester. The most important thing I have learned is the importance of Interdisciplinarity.

TO be honest I have never heard of interdisciplinarity before I entered this course. I had no Idea what it was, until we learned it’s the melding of two or more subjects into one study. That’s what the BIS major is al about combining two studies in the educational field, into one major to better service students with the skills that outweigh the individual study. As a pre-education History major I was very observant to the new skills at hand. One of my favorite studies was the counseling play posit video. I found it quite fascinating in my own vision for the future as a future educator. Not only did I find the counseling playposit interesting, but I also found the deaf studies playposit equally as fascinating. In my academic career I was able to gain a tiny insight into the Deaf community through a peer’s oral history project focused on the community in Atlanta.

Through this course I found the best way to understand interdisciplinarity is to study it. Through our team projects on interdisciplinarity I was able to dissect interdisciplinarity for what it truly is. In each step of the project we broke down the key elements that make up interdisciplinarity. My partner and I tackled a problem dear to us regarding foreign language in the modern American classroom. From this simple question we were able to understand what sort of disciplines would feed into the question: educational psychology, history, sociology, etc.

From there we could draw a conceptual map discussing how each discipline fit into the question like a puzzle. Not only did they relate to the initial question, but they also melded together in many places discussing the aspects of study the question addresses. Finally, we were able to find a few resources that could help our research in the many fields that our question can fit into. I know that if our research was extended we could find many more resource to help understand our initial question, but the five we did find were a great start to understanding the problem.

Interdisciplinarity is not only a purely theoretical ability, it has real world context as well. Through my own site visit I was able to see how interdisciplinarity helps students grow. At Wesley International Academy, interdisciplinarity plays a large role in the running of everyday life. Wesley International Academy is also an International Baccalaureate school, which focuses on Mandarin in the context of an international mindset. As a school that advocates the learning of Mandarin as the core of its being, its important for the other aspects of its curriculum to reflect this. Mandarin teachers interact with regular education teachers to create lessons that better impact student’s Mandarin practice.

This heightened interaction between teachers, also afforded by the close quarters the school, helps to create the “Wesley Way.” A school mindset that tries to affect the children’s everyday lives.  Therefore, I chose Wesley International Academy as my site to investigate and observe. They are doing something that few schools in the entire country do, which is combine a traditional academic curriculum with a world language. By meshing together, a traditional curriculum, Mandarin, and an International Baccalaureate focus; Wesley International Academy is a veritable smorgasbord of interdisciplinarity.

As much as I learned from this course over the past semester cannot deny the fact that it has little grasp over my future as a history major. As I stated before I’m graduating this may with a degree in history. However, this doesn’t spell the end for my academic career. I am graduating with a degree in history and a concentration in pre-education, also through Fortuna’s divine wheel I have been accepted in to the Social Studies Education M.A.T. Program in the College of Education. This is where my future will be thrown into the crucible to make me a well-prepared educator. It has always been my dream to teach history at a high school setting, one of my passions is to engage students with history apart from the textbook, which more often than not drives students to deplore the study.

My first goal was to be accepted into the program. I already have been accepted, but there was a long process. It took me a semester of carefully crafting and worrying over my application. Gathering the materials necessary to meet the requirements of the application. I needed two letters of recommendation; test scores; ethics certification; and a goal statement. Out of all of the requirements I found that the goal statement was the most difficult. Only needing to be two-three pages in length, I found it daunting to express my feelings about my goals I wanted to accomplish as a history teacher. It was so daunting that it took me a week of drafting, revising, and crying on the inside to accomplish three pages that I felt best explained why I should be admitted into the program.

My second goal is to register for my prerequisite classes. Before the College of Education can send me out into the high schools as a student teacher, I have to first take classes that will prepare me to understand the intricate nature of education. These classes will be critical takes on history, educational psychology, critical pedagogy, the list continues on. Not only will these courses qualify for me to begin my Practicum in the Fall, but they will give me a better insight into the need si will need to fill as a teacher.

My third goal in the future is to complete my practicum and to find a job.