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I fulfilled my goals in taking this class by reading all books and materials, participating in all

class activities wholeheartedly and completing all assignments, usually turning them in early. I gave every
assignment, project and collaborative group effort my absolute all. As with every class at PO, I was one
hundred percent committed and present. Even when I was deeply challenged by the format of this class
(but sadly, not by its content), I refused to relent on the degree of exertion that I utilized in order to push
myself to consistently do the best I could.
I invested many, many hours of time and energy, even when struggling along with harsh and
inconsistent criticism and grading techniques from the instructor, while simultaneously dealing with
serious health issues. This class was unrelated to my major, yet required, so I did keep an open mind and
attempted to find ways in which it would translate well, or at all, to my other studies in addition to my life
and career goals. Unfortunately, it never became useful, translatable or otherwise relevant for me.
Regardless, I consistently maintained my work ethic, which is a high priority to me, so at least, in that
way, I fulfilled my most important, personal goal.
This class added to my knowledge of the value of reflective teaching by going on and on and on
with several, redundant examples of the what, where, when, how and whys of the concepts of reflective
teaching. I now have an in-depth, extremely proficient understanding of exactly what reflective
teaching is, how it works, how to apply its principles and the value of it. Most specifically, I got to see
firsthand what the results are when these techniques or elements of awareness are not present within ECE
classroom or with individual teachers. Sadly, I saw how damaging poor quality or inept teaching is for
young children, which of course, is a universal given.
My contributions were to be an active participant in every class, to listen and contribute and to
know what the material was, particularly to help others who may not have read the materials beforehand.
Although it was unplanned, I was also able to show my classmates that it is OK to ask for help when we
need it, without feeling shame or embarrassment. This I know because it is the feedback that I was given

when I reached out for help from my fellow classmates early on. We all found solace and solutions in
openly discussing our worries and concerns. We found the benefits of supporting and assisting one
another when we were uncertain-which unfortunately, was essentially the case for the entire semester. I
was told that my openness helped classmates express similar concerns that they otherwise would not have
verbalized.
Thankfully, we were also able to maintain humor, which is something that I have learned to
practice and that I bring to the group process as often as possible. We managed to make some fun
moments possible, which helped to break some of the tension during group discussions and utterly
ridiculous things that we were required to do, such as composing and actually singing childrens songs,
about anything, or other times where people felt a collective sense of frustration at the airy content of
this course and the teaching style that we had to come to terms with.
As for my classmates contributions to me, there were many. We formed an inclusive class
community, where we supported each other through difficulties. The classmates who were successfully
writing observations per the formulaic outline were incredibly kind to help me understand how to better
accomplish this by sharing their suggestions. They also shared their first-person experiences as preschool
teachers. I learned a lot about what it is like to be an Early Childhood Educator from their anecdotes.
I honestly do not think that I learned any new concepts that will continue to stimulate my
thinking. I believe that everyone finds learning moments that either light up their brain and spirit or
otherwise, simply do not. In this case, the content of this class was just not my cup of tea. Regrettably, I
did not find the content stimulating or useful in any context. The only thing that it accomplished was
giving me even more concern for the future of children and education in this country. So, at best, perhaps
I will find opportunities for activism related to this type of cause some day.
In terms of what would have been useful or more helpful, perhaps it would have helped to
explore more theorists in detail during class or other myriad, pertinent information on childhood issues.
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We spent far too much time dissecting the books, in a mind-numbingly repetitive fashion. This was of no
use to the students who already invested the time and effort in reading them, and the fact that this was
done in addition to the required book reflections, on the same content, over and over again. This made it a
joyless, seemingly never ending process. All of the books were also extremely similar in content and were
not at all challenging or interesting; they mostly contained what I would hope to be considered general
and given common sense for any person of mediocre intellect. I would have learned something if I had
more diverse material to read and refer to which contained academically credible and thought provoking
content.
Neither was it helpful to do songs, crafts, watch videos nor do things such as a class assignment
entitled, math snacks. The math snacks exercise was a required project where we as groups had to
incorporate food and counting, for example, spending the majority of an evenings class where groups of
students repetitively demonstrated activities for preschoolers. This essentially boiled down to counting
cheese curls, or sorting things such as crackers, chips or fruit by color. It was agonizing. This is just one
example of how class time was wasted, which was grueling and miserable to endure. It was painful to be
forced to participate in things of this nature, which were not worth the price of tuition and the lost time
that it took away from potentially having other opportunities to actually learn solid, meaningful concepts
on childhood issues/education/development. I did not find any of this helpful or useful, no matter how
much or how hard I tried. They provided no learning for me at all and had zero intellectual challenge or
use. It was impossible to take this class seriously.
Additionally, as a class full of individuals well into adulthood, it did not help to be addressed by
the professor as though she was conducting a class for children of middle school, or even of preschool
age. It is understood that this class is meant to offer ways to more effectively teach young children; not to
treat or refer to the adults who were enrolled as children or otherwise somehow as subordinate subjects.
For those of us not going into ECE, it was absurd and frankly, both insulting and inappropriate, and it
lasted all semester long.
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I do not feel that the reflections, discussions or any other assignments here provided a platform
for any introspection or learning about myself, although I consistently searched for ways to do this, to no
avail. This class was primarily about a multitude of repetitive observations-six, in all plus one
culminating of the six; each in exactly the same format. The instruction was to follow the provided format
without one syllable of deviation and then fill in the blanks.
Thus, this was not a class which provided opportunities for critical thought, self reflection or
working at honing my writing skills, ever. I truly feel that this need and forced requirement to dumb
things down, per our given instructions, served only to make me a worse writer upon the conclusion of
this class, than at its start, which is horrifying and completely counterproductive to me. I feel that I now
need to take more writing classes, to recover from the requirements of HD 450. This kind of instruction
and expectation in any subject matter is plainly not what I would consider college level in content. It also
did not touch on any of Pacific Oaks ideals and standards for social justice or awareness, diversity,
inclusion, anti-bias curriculum or any other important topics which played so large a role in all of my
previous classes. It felt very shallow and meaningless; completely insignificant and worthless.
Nonetheless, this class served to reaffirm my understanding of myself that I will work as hard as
needed, and then work harder-in order to meet the standards and goals that I have set for myself. Feeling
so strongly at odds with a class did require me to find extra discipline, so I suppose that is a plus and a
lesson.
It also reaffirmed that ECE is not a field that I would ever care to work in, which was pretty clear
for me beforehand. After this class, I feel safe in saying that any minute interest or vague possibility
which could have possibly existed is now absolutely nil. I will now never partake of any future
opportunities which are in any way related to ECE or in working with young children.

I did also feel (and am presently still feeling/struggling with) the results and consequences of
letting this class take precedence over my other school and life demands. It has truly been a lot to contend
with, and exceedingly stressful; even more so than usual, in terms of the typical stressors or the common
challenge of a school/work/life balance. I have been physically ill for months, and I truly believe

that this has been the result of the physical manifestations of my stress levels surrounding the
frustrations of this class. I would love to say that I have better coping skills in this arena, but
previous experience shows me that when I am dealing with stress of this magnitude in a situation
where I cannot singlehandedly correct or moderate, regardless of my efforts, I always get sick.
This experience has been completely ineffective for me, and did not work at all, only
partly because it is completely unrelated to my major, but more specifically because of its
content and because of the professors teaching methods. Changes in the HD department last
semester made the previously required Fieldwork either unavailable or perhaps no longer
offered-that remains unclear. Regardless of departmental issues and transitions, HD 450 was the
only substitution, with no other option. Unfortunately, it was not a suitable substitute, and really
did not have a congruent, relevant position amongst the rest of the curriculum for HD majors
who will not be working with young children.
The rest of the problems are the issues touched upon earlier, but there seemed to be
another kind of disconnect happening too, based on my thoughts in addition to the many
discussions that I have had with my classmates over the duration. When the entire class is
forever struggling and never totally seems to be able to grasp the crux of or successfully and
confidently fulfill the requirements for course work, over an entire semester, it usually indicates
problems with the teaching; however, this was never addressed by the instructor. Frankly, if I
want to grasp at straws at finding a societal issue in this class, it could be to acknowledge the
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power differential between the professor and her students. No one spoke up, because all were
afraid of retaliation-these were not uncommon discussions amongst my classmates and myself.
I am still wildly puzzled about how so much was misconstrued between instructions
given, versus feedback on our assignments. Until the end, I never knew if I was meeting
expectations or assignment criteria or not, because information given fluctuated so much. I have
never taken a class so rigid where it was necessary to compose all work with a rubric literally at
hand. I have also never experienced a class where all students were on the brink, or consumed
with anxiety, frustration or confusion, for an entire semester-it was very chaotic.
My experience was that even when instructions were clear, things would change after
assignments were submitted, or sometimes despite the original direction or even the sample
guidelines. Frequently, new information was included in the critique given on the second time
around, after resubmitting a revised assignment. Apparently, we had been given incomplete
direction or rather, she then found new sections of work which had previously gone unaddressed
as problematic. This meant that when papers were returned, they had new notations that stated
more content was wrong and thus that content needed revision too. It resulted in a lot of
confusion, rewrites, lost points and not knowing what was acceptable or unacceptable, and so
much time spent repeating things, for all involved. It felt nightmarish.
Truly, this was exceedingly difficult for me. I simply did not have enough time in the day,
with the demands of other school work and a full time job, plus family/personal events and
issues, as well as a couple of visits to the emergency room due to health issues to deal with
slipshod and haphazard teaching methods such as these. It made life very unpleasant and had

more impact on my personal life than any schoolwork should, in my opinion. It was different
from all of my other PO experiences, and was consistently upsetting.
The other major issue that I had great difficulty understanding or dealing with was the
quality of papers given as examples for observations and writing reflections. Samples handed out
as guidelines to emulate, were riddled with errors in spelling, sentence structure and grammar.
They were plainly and simply, not quality work, by any gauge. So in all honesty, it was
disturbing to see that this was given as something to strive for. Additionally, my work (and all
of the class work) was very harshly critiqued-even though it contained a fraction (or less) of the
errors or structural issues of the samples given to go by. It was difficult to comprehend or
reconcile the thinking behind thatif the grading process was to be so perfectionistic and
inflexible, then the samples given to emulate should have been absolutely flawless too, but they
were not. They also contained immense volumes of opinions in areas other than the reflection
portion of the observation-which was a clear cut, and constantly emphasized violation, so it cut
very deeply when points were deducted from my papers time after time for having what were
viewed as opinions, when depending on perception they may or may not have been-but even
more so, because the samples were also that way, many times over. So we were essentially given
samples to follow, and then retaliated against for following or in some cases, even improving
upon the samples, which was incomprehensible to me.
The frustration and bewilderment of the whole process did not seem worth the energy or
additional time to even deal with, once it was clear what the requirements and methodology
were. So truly, this was something very off kilter and that I have never seen happen before.
Maybe everything is all too new here, due to so many changes in the teaching staff, the HD

program and PO curriculum, I am plainly at a loss on that one. This class served as an exercise in
futility and repetitive tearing down, not in learning or in building up in any way, in my opinion.
It topped the list, for the absolute worst class I have taken, which is deeply disappointing.
Clearly, this class was a struggle, but not due to anything personal or any of the
intellectual demands of the course content. It is not my intention to be brash or exhibit any bit of
tactlessness; these are just my completely honest thoughts and assessments, for myself, and of
my experiences only. It was regrettable and disturbing that the class content that was not
applicable in any sense for me. I am sure there is great value in it for those who are or plan on
becoming preschool teachers, or work in daycare or other capacities with young children.
Unfortunately, it just did not translate at all, into working with adults, which is what I do. So,
ultimately as a HD major who will not be working with young children, this was a very
expensive way to spend precious time and resources, which, as an adult learner, is crucial: to be
mindful of my priorities, especially in light of the cost of tuition and the great value of
everybodys time.
I am incredibly relieved to have made it through this class. It was a good opportunity to
practice tenacity and look for the positive, no matter what. I realize that this is a big part of
school and of life in general, of course. That being said, I am grateful that I was able to merely
keep showing up and doing the work. I did my best to follow exactly what was asked of me, and
to never give up.

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