Recommendations 

     After spending many weeks in Trenton Central High School observing and working with my cooperating teacher and my partner, I have learned a lot about how I feel about teaching.  I have seen how my cooperating teacher teaches her classes, and I have spent a lot of time comparing her behaviors, attitudes, and values about teaching to my own, and thought about what this means in terms of my own teaching in the future.  I have learned many things that I want to incorporate into my teaching structure.  I have also considered my own teaching and my own lessons, and considered changes that I want to make to my future teaching experiences.

     From observing my cooperating teacher teach her students, I have realized that there are many beliefs and values about teaching that I had never considered before.  I realize now that there is much more to a teaching beliefs system than belief in a teacher-centered verses a student-centered curriculum or a belief for or against frequent homework.  One needs to consider values such as how much to expect from students, how much time to give students when working on problem solving activities, either alone, with a partner, or in a group, what extent effort and participation will factor into the students’ grades, and how much time should be spent allowing students to express themselves individually outside of classwork.

     I have considered all of these value sets and many others, and I have come to many conclusions about my own teaching.  I believe in a predominantly student-centered curriculum with some teacher-centered elements where appropriate.  I feel that I should have very high expectations for my students, because if I have low expectations then they will only work to achieve as little as possible.  If I have high expectations for my students than many of them will rise to meet those expectations, and therefore will learn more from my classes.

     I believe that students should be given as much time as they need to work out a problem solving activity as long as they are actually working, and that it is the teacher’s job to keep the students on task.  I do not believe that a teacher should give the students the answers to problem solving activities because then many students will stop working to their potential.  I think that effort and participation should play a part in students’ grades, especially effort in homework and classwork assignments and participation in group activities.  This allows students to increase their grades by trying to complete problems and homework assignments, even if they are unsure of procedures and answers.

     I believe that, in a math classroom, a large majority of time should be spent working on mathematics and other scholastic tasks.  Students should not be allowed to spend the first half hour of a class period socializing with peers in the class.  Students should also not be allowed to leave classrooms early in order to socialize with peers from other classes.  Students can socialize before school, during lunch, and after school.  I do believe that if students are having problems, such as general bullying problems, or problems with cooperation with peers inside the classroom, especially if a few students are having the same problem, that class time can be taken out to deal with the problem.

     After teaching my lessons, I realize that, in order to incorporate these values and beliefs into my teaching style in the future, I may need to make some changes to my classroom structure.  In all of my future classes I will continue to have high expectations for all of my students regardless of prior achievement records, and I will continue to expect them to come to class on time, begin working right away, and work until the end of the period.  This way I will continue to attempt to get the most out of my students every day.  The unit that I taught with my partner this semester had a mix of teacher-centered and student-centered material, but I feel that there were some lessons that were too heavily focused on teacher-centered principles, such as direct instruction.  I believe that in the future I would want to spread the teacher-centered material out over a few days instead of having so much of it in one lesson.  In the future I would also leave more time in each lesson for students to work on classwork assignments and problem solving assignments on their own or in groups.  Without the time crunch that happened in the lessons that I taught this semester, students will have the ability to work out problems more fully before they are given the answers.

     With these values, beliefs, and attitudes towards teaching, I hope to be able to work with all of my future students to draw out of them all that they have potential for.  I know that my beliefs and values will change and grow as I progress throughout my teaching career, and that I will have to continuously adjust my lessons and my assignments in order to meet my current values and the needs of my current students.  My current values will continue to guide my teaching styles for my entire teaching career.