Alicia Soppe EDU 490 Liberal Arts Reflection

1. Loras College emphasizes the value of experiential learning and has worked to incorporate greater opportunities for students to learn and reflect on these types of structured out of class experiences. Reflect on the diversity of your learning experiences at Loras and analyze how they have contributed to your growth and competence in relation specifically to the Loras dispositions (at least two), discipline specific skills and your future goals.

In the article Only Connect: The Goals of a Liberal Education, William Cronon states that liberally educated people have been liberated by their education to explore and fulfill the promise of their own highest talents. If someone would have told me this before attending Loras, I would not have understood. I chose Loras based on its Catholic religious affiliation and because they offered the major I wanted to pursue. I knew nothing about what it meant for a school to be a liberal arts college. However, after studying for four years, I can see how that statement rings true. I have grown as a learner and have learned how to continue to grow, explore, and better myself. The Loras liberal arts education experience is founded on four dispositions: active learning, reflective thinking, ethical decision making, and responsible contributing. These dispositions are meant to help us grow and to continue learning and exploring throughout our lives. Through my experience at Loras, all four of these dispositions have been intertwined into the curriculum. The two dispositions in which I believe I have made the most growth are active learning and reflective thinking. The small class sizes, the professors ability to individualize instruction and attention, and the opportunities for reflection have all contributed greatly to the personal growth that I have encountered in both of these

dispositions. I believe I will continue to encounter this growth throughout my life because of what I have learned and what I am taking away from my experience here. Before my time at Loras, I had little experience with the idea of active learning. My preferred way of gaining knowledge was to just sit quietly in class and take notes. I wasnt the student that often answered questions or gave my opinion in class; I just sat back and soaked in what was being taught. When I came to Loras, my way of thinking was turned upside down. I was now required to participate in class discussions and was encouraged to ask questions. I remember during those first semesters how nervous I would be before coming to class just knowing that I would have to be an active participant in the class. At some point during my time here, that all changed. I began to see how I was really able to grasp the concepts that were being talked about. Whether it was through class discussions, group projects, or hands-on experiences through my classes, I was really beginning to find a new avenue for my learning. I was beginning to see how the disposition of active learning was really playing a part in my education. One of my first group presentations took place during my first semester at Loras. I was taking the class Intro to Theology and Religious Studies. While preparing for this presentation, I was really challenged to investigate more deeply the information that I would present. Through this experience of really being an active participant in my own learning and through the collaborative work I was doing with my classmates, I really saw how much more I was gaining and learning. I had to know my information well enough to teach it and help my classmates to understand. I was able to learn not only through my investigation on the topic, but through my teaching of the topic as well. This active role in my own learning really helped me to own and hold on to the information that was being taught in class.

The disposition of active learning has also played a huge role throughout my education classes. Because of the small class sizes at Loras, and the small city community of Dubuque, Iowa, I have had the opportunity to engage in hands-on experiences both in the classroom and in the elementary school setting. While in class at Loras, professors allow us to practice what we learn with our peers. One of my first experiences of this in my education classes was in Beginning Reading. We were going to be assessing first grade students using the Observation Survey. Before we went into the schools to assess students, we were given part of a day in class to run through each of its parts until we felt comfortable administering it. This has also been the case with numerous other assessments and teaching strategies in most all of the education classes offered at Loras. Even the administering of the Observation Survey to an actual first grade student was a way in which I was able to actively learn through doing. I put into practice what I had learned in the classroom and I gained so much through that experience and through all of the clinical experience I have had while at Loras College. Also, because of the small class sizes that a liberal arts college such as Loras offers, teachers were able to work with me one on one and to give me helpful suggestions about how I could become an even better teacher in the future. Reflective thinking was a concept that I had not had a lot of experience with before I came to Loras. The opportunities that I have had while at Loras to reflect have really helped me to appreciate the importance and the necessity of this skill. The classes that I was able to take for my reading endorsement and my clinical experience for elementary education really gave testimony to this. In one such class, Evaluation and Diagnosis of Reading Problems, we were asked to write a reflection each week. In this class, we tutored struggling readers two evenings

a week. Once a week, we would take a running record to assess how the student was progressing. Our reflection was an evaluation of that running record which helped to determine what the next steps for that child were and really helped to pinpoint where help was needed most. This particular experience helped me to really see how important it is to reflect on the work that I am doing with students so that I can help them to the best of my ability and really hone in on where help is needed the most. Another experience that has helped me to grow as a reflective thinker has been through my experience video-taping myself teaching. Sometimes when we are teaching, there are other distractions in the room that we are not aware of at the time or we are spending more time working with some students over others and we do not realize this. Videotaping myself teach and watching back the videos has been an excellent way for me to reflect on what I am doing. It has helped me to see what the students are doing and understanding and has helped me to reflect on what I need to do as a teacher to improve myself so that I can better help the students that I am working with. Loras worked these opportunities into the curriculum to help the future teachers really better themselves for their future classrooms. This self-reflection can often be time consuming and if not reflecting very soon after the experience has taken place, one can very soon forget some details of the experience. Even with that said, this kind of reflection is so important and so necessary for all students to learn and has been especially important to me as a future educator. This skill that I have learned will be a skill that I will incorporate as I become a teacher in my own classroom someday. I will reflect about what went well and what didnt each day and then use my ability to reflect deeper to think about, so what does this mean? and where do I go next?.

A liberal arts college experience is really more than just getting an education in one s desired field. The experience teaches you ways to learn beyond your years in college. By Loras focus on the four dispositions, active learning, reflective thinking, ethical decision making, and responsible contributing, I think they have done just that. As a future teacher, wife, mother, or anything else that may come my way, I believe all four of these dispositions will follow me. My Loras experience has allowed me to grow especially in my appreciation of active learning and reflective thinking, through the way the classes are structured and through the benefit of a smaller class size. Even though I chose Loras for my own personal reasons, my experience here has shown me how important the education of a liberal arts college can be.

Works Cited
Cronon, W. (1998). "Only Connect..." The Goals of a Liberal Education. The American Scholar.

Artifacts The Observation Survey, which is attached in another document, demonstrates one of the many active learning experiences that I had the opportunity to participate in during my time at Loras. The following link shows a video of me tutoring a struggling reader. This was one of the many videos taken of myself teaching that I reflected on later. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGz_-ckNl2g