# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
What we do best is something to be proud of, and should be tapped into through our education. 

# data[].attributes.body
This is me playing a show with my band, Celestial Ember, at a venue in Pomona, CA. I play guitar in a progressive rock band, and love doing it. Music is where I felt I was able to express myself in ways that I simply could not through my words. Listening to, and eventually writing my own music, is what got me through a lot of tough times as a teenager, and somewhat into my adult life. I feel if this enriched resource of knowledge was tapped into during my educational experience, I would have been a lot more involved and dedicated into furthering myself in the classroom. This was my favorite part of this semester, as it solidified the importance I held going into teaching as a profession, of making teaching more about the student's and their growth with their own skills, and how they apply to the subject I am teaching, not just the subject I am teaching. By appealing to the funds of knowledge of my future students, I can keep students engaged even when things get difficult for them; this allows students to persevere, and find a way to get to the understanding we as teachers are pushing them towards. When students make connections from the material to their funds of knowledge, their creativity and understanding expands infinitely!

# data[].attributes.body
Mistakes happen. This is a mistake a coworker made at the car wash I work at, a few years ago. The mistake was gross, took a long time to resolve, and required more time than getting it right the first time. Through all of the negative, we learned to set the grate on the ledge of the hole and scoop the muck manually in the future, if we ever experience the grate being this full. This is something we never would have come to the conclusion of had this mistake not happened. The importance in relation to the classroom is that mistakes are great. Especially in a classroom setting where the mistakes you make are very low-stake, mistakes should be encouraged and built on. When it comes to literacy,  mistakes are made consistently in the classroom; take learning vocabulary. For ELLs learning vocabulary, their active roles in the word-learning process should be held to the highest of importance: definition of the word and how portions of the definition itself could require further clarity for understanding, its application, and connecting it to the home languages of the ELLs. Mistakes will occur, but through these mistakes, the base understanding of the material can be elaborated upon. A stronger understanding can be learned through these mistakes that we may not have seen without the mistake occurring in the first place.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Never stop climbing to the top, always push towards the next step.

# data[].attributes.body
Students when developing literacy skills in the classroom always have a next hurdle. Even as teachers, we are still developing literacy strategies and literacy understanding through teaching the material to our students. There's always different, more effective ways to communicate depending on the audience,  depending on the scenario, and depending on the time constraint. This picture I took when backpacking in Ojai, along the Sespe River Trail with my 3 good friends. The trip was strenuous and long, but we got different perspectives like seen here, a place with no light pollution and the stars are so clear and beautiful. The goal is to get students to get to that clear and beautiful part of literacy, and working with our students to get them there. Whether it be through the method, or outlining the goals with a student that you can achieve together through the course, a student can always develop a clearer sense of literacy through setting goals, and following those goals regardless of how tough or strenuous they may be.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
When you find meaning in what you do, that is when it becomes worth something.

# data[].attributes.body
Students need to have a purpose when we present a concept to them in order to ensure engagement. When we present topics to our students, we want to emphasize students' interpretation and collection of that information, more so than the information on its own. By doing this, students are enticed and eager to learn. Our goal is to make students feel proud of their ideas; students need to take their understanding of a topic we introduce to them and expand upon it through the scope of how it applies to them. This picture represents achievement through one's self-application of a task, my personal achievement of hiking through knee-deep snow for miles. Although hiking through snow is very demanding physically, pursuing the goal of this view is worth the task at hand. If we can make our lessons designed to promote students forging their uses of the material given their complex and amazing, diverse identities, then keeping students engaged in the lesson is a much easier feat.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Providing an environment of inclusion, respect, and understanding to ELLs and students with special needs. 

# data[].attributes.body
The concept of clarity has heavily influenced my teaching philosophy from the lessons in this course. Literacy for students with special needs and English language learners is difficult to grasp, and it is our job as teachers to provide an environment that is calm, steady, and clear to ensure as much understanding as possible. This picture represents clarity, as well as peace for me. I will occasionally go take photographs by the tide pools, as I find a sense of serenity and clear of mental fog through this experience. I want the mental fog of my future students to be eliminated as much as possible, and in terms of literacy this enunciating my words clearly, repeating concepts in a different manner with less complicated vocabulary, and structuring my lessons in ways that promote inclusion among my future English learner students and students with special needs. I can do this through use of group collaboration, sentence frames, and appealing to visual and kinesthetic learners.