I believe a strength of mine is using teaching strategies that impact my students' learning and understanding of the content. During the previous course I found it easy to alter my lessons to fit the recommended strategies. Many of my activities were already very similar to the strategies listed in the textbook. The same goes for activities used in this class such as 3-2-1 and CSI. Although my old lessons were not exactly the same as these strategies, they shared many similarities and the big idea was the same. In addition, I often already gave my students choice in their assignments and assessments, not for everything, but for many things. Something with this that I am struggling with is when none of the options appeal to the students or when students want to change to a different choice at the last minute. 
	Another strength of mine is taking into account cultural and language diversity. I know that my students recognize that this occurs in my classroom as well based on a recent classroom environment survey I had my students complete. In math classes, I will make world problems with the students by asking them about their life and then use that to make real world examples. In science class, we often have discussions about the scientists in our standards and why we only learn about European men. For language differences, one thing I do is I do not take off points for spelling. On a recent math assignment, I learned that many of my Spanish speaking students write “keep change flip” (for dividing fractions) as “key change flip”. In addition, I am trying to learn Spanish through Rosetta Stone and sometimes my students teach me words or help me with my pronunciation.  
	Something I really need to work on is addressing the social and emotional needs of not just gifted students, but all students. I know most students enjoy my class and view me as a safe teacher to talk to. I do not know how to teach them SEL skills and how to respond to students when they are in need of emotional assistance. I often end up walking them through strategies that work for me, but I know these do not work for everyone. I also often send students to the counselor. I became good at using effective strategies and being culturally relevant in my classroom by reading books and discussing ideas with other teachers. I can work on getting better at addressing social emotional needs of students by doing the same.

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