I would first like to apologize for not writing in a month. It has been full of portfolios, teaching my unit, and trying to find the time to sleep. Now that finals week has arrived I have finished working in my placement, finished three portfolios (Classroom Management Plan, Professional Portfolio (content), Professional Portfolio (education)), finished many philosophy papers, and finally caught up on sleep. This week I am working and tying up loose ends. Those loose ends would include a research paper for a geology class I have been taking this semester, an exit interview with my content seminar professors, and moving back home for the summer, and of course reflecting upon the semester. The remainder of this entry will be a reflection of this blog and the semester.
As I look back on all my entries this semester I see myself focusing on time management, engaging and challenging activities, and how I conduct myself in the classroom, along with some evaluation back in January. These are all areas that I am continuing to work on but I think have shown improvement.
I think I have grown the most in how I conduct myself within the classroom. As I look back to some of my earlier posts I notice that I was focusing on hiding my fear, now I realize that my professors were right about how perhaps they can “smell fear” but they appreciate and respect courage even more. Another teacher also commented on the same entry about non-verbal messages we send our students. I plan to continue to work on developing good and trusting relationships with my students so those non-verbal messages are more positive than negative.
Another area I feel I have grown well in is time management. It is still a great struggle for me but I have learned to over plan and look for more cues from the students. During instruction I am getting the students more involved (which also helps build engagement) so I can formatively assess how they are doing with the content. This is one strategy I have found to help with time management. As I gather data about their current understanding of the content (the formative assessment in the form of class discussion) I am able to redirect our time toward things they need it for rather than lingering on something that is not needed at the moment. Something I am currently playing with is anchor activities. These are things like a tic-tac-toe, or menu assignments that we learned about during a seminar for all teacher assistants. These are activities that students are able to work on when they have completed the work for that day and focus on that unit’s material. The examples we saw were for English and Social Studies, so I am trying to re-work them to fit within a Mathematics or Earth Science course. This would help me ensure that the students always have something to do that continues to build their understanding of the content and prepare them for the unit assessment.
I think I am the most wishy-washy when it comes to challenging and engaging activities. I feel like I am either asking them to take too much of a leap or allowing them to spend too much time where they’re at. I also feel like I get on an “activity” kick where many of the lessons one week are group work and get the students moving around and engaged more while other weeks they are mostly taking notes or practicing skills for upcoming sections. I would like to learn how to find a balance as well as give the students ownership of the material so no matter what we are doing they are engaged.
I believe evaluation is my weakest area. I did not receive much guidance from my CT this semester while preparing my unit project so I tired to follow the format she typically uses, only with including more multiple intelligence options. As a result I don’t feel I assessed all of the learning objectives for the unit well enough. Although, when I was looking over their common assessment tests they seemed to all understand the material well. I think much of my problem derives from my desire to get away from traditional assessments (multiple choice, true/false tests). I think for next semester I will go back to traditional assessments and learn how to create ones that will effectively assess the student’s abilities rather than just their knowledge of the content. Then I will move on to creating projects. As one of my seminar professors would say, “You need to be making subtle shifts” and I feel in this area I tried to take a leap.
As I reflect upon this semester and all of the time spent working for my students I realize all the work that has been accomplished and can now see a teacher in the making.
