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My great grandmother's name is Christina. My mother also followed the story of Christa Mcauiffe. Christa Mcauiffe was a teacher who trained to travel into space and teach students while in space. Unfortunately, the spaceship exploded moments after take off. My mother told me that was another reason she decided on the name Christa. I was made fun of a little as a child by my step sisters. They would purposefully mispronounce my name and say chur- ista. I have never found a Christmas ornament or souvenir keychain with my name on it. My last name has been changed multiple times. Three times to be exact. The last name I was born with is not significant enough to even mention. It represents a person who is troubled and lacks responsibility. My adopted last name is so special to me. My father adopted me when I was 2 or 3. Charles Decker adopted me after a couple of years of already taking on the father role for me. I am forever thankful for him coming into our lives. My life wouldn't be the same without him. I then changed my last name for a third time when I married my high school sweetheart Grayson Beaghan. Whenever I go to the doctor I get called by my first name. I used to be called Ms. Decker for appointments so this leads me to believe that my married last name is too difficult for people to pronounce. I chose this image because I wanted something simple with the spelling of my name on it. I drew this image of my own name in black and white.

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Growing up my mother took care of my sisters and I while my father was in the military. She also took care of him most of all. My father always told me about how she would wake up when he woke up just to cook him a warm breakfast. Then she would spend the rest of the day taking care of three little girls and then four little girls. I guess after seeing this growing up I have picked up on her wanting to care for others and being a mother. When I met my husband he was young and in high school. He lived a very independent life. Very quickly after high school, he went to live on his own. Only I decided to move in with him so that he didn't have to do everything on his own. I wanted to take care of him. I have been taking care of him ever since. He is such a hard working person and together we have come a long way. I believe my favourite thing is to care for my son. Making sure he has a clean room and clean clothes. I love more than anything being his mother and teaching him to be the best person he can be. Soon I will be able to teach two little babies how to be the best people they can be. Baby Charlotte Rae Beaghan will be here May 2. I will have to learn how to care for a new baby girl, my soon to be 5-year-old baby boy and my husband. Which sounds scary but truthfully I am excited because caring or those I love is something I have always loved. I chose this image because it shows me caring for my sweet son who is the main person I care for these days.

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The object that is most meaningful to me is my home. My husband and I bought it together October 2010. This home represents hard work and perseverance. We both grew up in very different families but together share the same ideas of the type of family we want to create for our children. We want to be parents who can provide for our children both emotionally and financially. We want to work hard for everything we have and not attain things by being handed them from others. When we were both 20 years old we were living in our apartment for the third and last year. We had discussed purchasing a home so that we could one day own that home rather than paying for an apartment that would never be our own. We spent time together looking at many homes and finally found this one. I was able to envision a family being raised there and that's how I knew it was perfect. This object's function is to provide shelter for our family as we grow. This object tells you that I am very family oriented and I value my family. I chose this image because this was taken the day we moved in and began our journey together.

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Your Privilege: Having both parents growing up

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Your Privilege: Having both parents growing up

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My privilege is growing up with both of my parents. I almost didn't get this privilege but thankfully this man stepped in and became my father at an early age. I not only received a father figure but someone who displayed hard work and dedication to get the things we needed. We didn't have much growing up. But we did have each other. My mother was able to stay home and take care of us while my father was in the military. After he was medically discharged we moved to Lawrenceville for a job he had found. I was able to see how two people can work together to better the outcome of a family. They shared a partnership of responsibilities which resulted in our families success. Being able to witness this growing up has allowed me to understand that in my own relationship with my husband. I chose this image because it shows you my parents together with all of their grandchildren that they love so much. They are now ensuring that their grandchildren have everything they need in life.

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Your Cultural Biases: Behavior is connected to Success

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Your Cultural Biases: Behavior is connected to Success

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In the classroom I am student teaching I have three students who struggle with focusing on the teacher while she teaches. These students are constantly distracted. They do not act out in a way to harm others and are not unkind to others but they can at times be distracting. Working with them can be a struggle because they take a long time to get settled and focus on the activity they will be working on. This can become discouraging as an educator and lend you to believe they are not capable of being successful. Although this is a thought that I sometimes struggle with I have to use all the methods and information I have learned from this program to make those connections with my students. I have to learn about my students and the best method for each one of them. These students need to have a different approach to learning than everyone else. Rather than teaching them using the same techniques as the other students find an alternate method of teaching them. Every student has the ability to be successful it is up to us to figure out how to guide them to that success. I chose this image because it is a S-blend Bingo game that I chose to work on with the struggling students in my class. I found this game is engaging and I can see they are actively participating. I have enjoyed the experience of working with these students every day and watching them grow.

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When I met my husband I was introduced to his family. His family is significantly larger than mine. They all hug each other and even give each other a kiss on the cheek. The culture of there family is not similar to the culture of my family. In my family, we do not hug or give each other a kiss. In fact, it never happens and when I do give my mom a hug she gets strange. I know it sounds awful and unloving but this is just how we are. My mother loves me we just display that in other ways. So coming into this new culture of family where everyone hugged made me uncomfortable. I chose this discomfort because it is real to me and I have learned from it. I was able to adjust to the differences and I became comfortable with the norms of my husbands family. Whenever you arrive to Besty's (My husband's grandma) home you give a hug to everyone. When you leave Besty's you hug everyone and there are typically 10 plus people at the home visiting. Over the years I have found myself going to leave my parents house after a celebration and going to give everyone hugs before I leave. I get strange looks from my family which made me realize what I was doing was odd. I chose this image to represent my cultural discomfort because this is my husbands family whom I love and am grateful to have gone through this experience with them.

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Your Cultural Values and Beliefs: Family is Important

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Your Cultural Values and Beliefs: Family is Important

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My family is very close. We enjoy spending time with each other. Our family celebrates birthdays, Halloween, sometimes Thanksgiving, and our biggest holiday is Christmas. We always make sure that Christmas is celebrated but some years we may skip other holidays depending on how the family is feeling that year. We do not have to do anything special when we celebrate anything as long as we are together enjoying each other that's all that matters. Family is important. We are there for each other to help when someone is struggling. Whether it be a flat tire, keys locked in the car, or the need to care for a grandchild during difficult times, we are there for each other. The important part about this is that when we are there for each other it isn't only when it is convenient. We do it because it needs to be done. I created this collage using an app. I chose these images because it shows us together laughing and loving each other.

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Literacy Practices of Your Everyday Life: Facebook

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Literacy Practices of Your Everyday Life: Facebook

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I have many other literacy practices but I have to say that Facebook is a big part of it. I participate in readings for school such as articles, reading standards, and lesson plans. I also am in class twice a week and we all participate in the lectures given during those courses. I do believe that out of all the literacy practices I find that Facebook is a very commonly visited site that I read articles, watch videos and read other peoples posts. With that being said I do love reading to my son every night. He cannot fall asleep without a story being read to him. I chose this image because it is the icon that is used to represent Facebook. I drew it while looking at my Facebook on a piece of printer paper.

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Your Favorite Literacy Experience: Reading Children Books

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Your Favorite Literacy Experience: Reading Children Books

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I love reading children books. I enjoy the fun ton and lessons that can be learned from them. I have been reading to my son almost every night since I can remember. Working at a daycare in high school I read stories to the children there. As I grew older my love for children books grew. I have a huge collection in my son's room and he picks on out every night even on late nights when I feel too tired to read. I try to pick stories that he can learn from like "How Full Is Your Bucket?" I used this book to help teach my son about being kind to others and to help him have a better understanding of emotions. I chose this image because it is the two books I read to Landon every night for a couple of weeks and began to see a difference in his understanding of others.

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My grandmother came to my school when I was younger and read this book to my class. I can not remember what grade I was in but I can still hear what it sounded like for her to change her voice for the characters in the story. When I was a teenager I got my first job working at a daycare. There I read stories to the children and I chose to read this story a lot due to my experience as a child. As I read it when I was older I really understood its message and used it as a way to teach children to be kind and to share. I chose this image because for one of my lessons I taught the students about character traits and how they can change. I drew the image of the rainbow fish on my anchor chart as a visual of the character we were studying.

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Your Struggles with Teaching Culturally Diverse Students: 

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Your Struggles with Teaching Culturally Diverse Students: 

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A struggle I have working with students who are culturally diverse is finding the best ways to communicate with parents who have a hard time with English. I worry that I won't be able to find the appropriate resources to translate the information that they need to know. I had a student score really high on the Cogat and I had to send home the letter to inform his parents that he could be in the gifted program. Our classroom teacher has mentioned her struggles in the past with communicating with his parents. I worry if they will fill this form out for him or not. I will work hard to learn the best practices of overcoming this obstacle so that the student is supported all around. I chose this image because it represents the struggle with communicating and how words can sound like jumbled up lines when you do not understand what they mean.

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Your Strength on Teaching Culturally Diverse Students:

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Your Strength on Teaching Culturally Diverse Students:

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I have many experiences with working with students who come from a diverse background. I also have a family member who was married into our family and did not know English at all. I was able to watch her transition from being terrified of our family because we were so different to loving us unconditionally. I grew up living on a military base and I was surrounded by people who came from different backgrounds so I feel I have a good understanding that we are different. I also was able to experience what it is like to work with a student who had just come to America the day before she started school and had never seen a building like the schools we have before. I worked with her every day. I tried to make any kind of connection with her that I could to make her feel comfortable with me. This was such a heartwarming experience that I will never forget. I will be an advocate for these students by ensuring I differentiate my instruction for them as needed. I will also ensure that I have the resources available to help them to become successful. I chose this image because it shows the visual representation that is important for students who speak English as a second language. This is also a lot of what I had to work on with the third-grade student. She was unable to recognize any of these letters but by the end of my semester she was using English and recognizing these letters.

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I believe this image represents how I see myself. I am a mother before all other things. Everything I do it is for this little guy behind me in the image. He is the reason I am in school right now pursuing my dream of becoming an educator. I never thought I was capable of doing much other than working at the daycare. Then I had him and decided I wanted to be the best person I could be for him.

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I am Christa
I wonder how my first year of teaching will be
I want the best for my son
I worry I will go into labour before I finish edTPA
I am patient
I understand that I am not perfect
I say things happen for a reason
I dream of the day I walk across the stage
I am Christa