Unit Reflection
As I look back upon my JPE experience I realize that it was by far one of the best learning experiences of my college career thus far. Sitting in class and learning about instructional methodologies and how Piaget and Vygotsky influenced the world of education can only teach us so much. It is the practical experience that I have gained this semester that has taught me the most and that has finally allowed me to understand what it is truly like to be an educator.
The biggest thing I have learned about being an effective teacher is that I need to come to school everyday and somehow make every class seem like it’s something completely new, fresh, and exciting. Personally, after writing lesson plans, reviewing them, rewriting them, researching the content to make sure it is fresh in my mind, and then finally teaching the lesson, the topic can often become boring very quickly. I need to be cognizant of the fact that although it may be a little boring to me after spending so much time on it, to my students it is something completely new that they have yet to learn about. I need to ensure that I maintain an enthusiasm for the topic throughout the pre-teaching process so that I bring that enthusiasm into the classroom and hopefully it will be contagious and spread amongst my students. Throughout teaching my unit I found that the days when I was more excited and enthusiastic, my kids responded better to the lesson than on days when I may have been tired or not showing as much enthusiasm. This is something that I never noticed until I actually began to teach and it surprised me how something as small as a little extra enthusiasm for the lesson can completely change the atmosphere in the classroom and make me a much more effective teacher.
After teaching my unit I feel as though I had a sufficient knowledge base in my content area but there is certainly room for improvement. There was one lesson in particular where I did not do sufficient research on the topic before teaching the lesson and although the lesson still went very well, I knew that if I had a little extra information on the topic it could have been a better lesson. In addition, there were quite a few questions that my students asked me throughout my time teaching that I did not know the answer to. Although I know this is not a bad thing, I felt as though they were questions that I should know the answer to and I simply did not. So although I do have room for improvement, I think that once I began to teach I actually knew much more content than I gave myself credit for.
Teaching my unit has shown me that an effective teacher needs to know much more than I had previously thought, not only in their content area but in simply knowing how to run an efficient classroom. If I had been a little better read in my content area I would have been able to answer all of my student’s questions which could have led to a more in depth discussion on the topic, which certainly would have made me a more effective teacher. So certainly an effective teacher needs to be extremely knowledgeable in their content area in order to answer all of their student’s questions and to enable them to learn as much as possible. In addition, being an effective teacher requires a sort of sixth sense of knowing how to make a class run smoothly. This involves knowing the proper way to start a class and activate prior knowledge, how to effectively complete a classroom activity and how to easily and smoothly transition between activities during a class. This was something I felt I needed to work on while I was teaching. Most of my transitions seemed to be somewhat rigid and things did not always flow easily into each other. I think that this is something that will hopefully come with time. As I become a more experienced teacher I should hopefully become more skilled at transitioning between activities and this will make class run more smoothly. As a student I never paid much attention to how some classes ran better simply because a teacher was able to make better transitions between activities. Now that I have teaching experience I realize how this can make a big difference in determining how well a class will run.
After completing JPE I have realized that teaching is much more difficult than I ever imagined it would be. It ha certainly been a challenge but it has given me a deeper appreciation for everyone who has taught me and it has made me value the profession much more than I previously did. I think if JPE has changed my attitude about teaching then it has certainly made me more dedicated to the profession and has given me a stronger desire to excel and to become the best teacher that I possibly can.
Although I did not get to teach my entire unit plan as I had originally hoped, I was still able to employ a variety of instructional methodologies during the brief period that I was able to teach. I think the most effective instructional strategy I employed involved any sort of class activity which was student centered and merely guided by me. The students at Grover Middle School are extremely intelligent and my cooperating teacher relies heavily upon class activities so that was the type of class that the students were used to. Anytime I did an activity the kids were excited, engaged, and participation greatly increased. This was a clear sign to me that this is how these students enjoy learning and that it was an effective strategy for me to use with them. The most ineffective strategy I employed was the use of a PowerPoint during a lecture while the students took guided notes. This is something that they are very unaccustomed to and it greatly bored them. I could have made this type of instruction much more interesting if I made my lectures shorter and had developed better discussion questions to ask during the lecture. This would give the students a sort of break between listening to me speak and taking notes and it would generate more class discussion which is what they are used to. When I used a PowerPoint I could see by the student’s faces that they were bored, tired, and did not enjoy what I was doing. In addition, class participation was greatly reduced and I even felt that the quality of the participation was reduced, but this also could have been due to the questions I was asking of my students. After seeing how poorly my first lesson went in which I used a PowerPoint, anytime I used it later in my unit I made sure to keep it as brief as possible and to try and keep the students as involved as they could be. The second time I used a PowerPoint I tried this and it seemed to work much better although it was not as effective as a class activity.
Assessment was something that I did not get to use as many varieties that I had hoped. My main form of assessment was through classroom discussion. Almost every student in all my classes actively participated and this allowed me to gauge if my students had an understanding of the material and usually they did. In addition, they always asked questions to clarify some of their own misconceptions which showed me that they were trying to understand the material as best they could.
I also assessed my students through their completion of class activities. One of my coop’s lessons which I taught prior to teaching my own unit was a two day activity in which the students worked in pairs to find information about the Constitution. Upon completion we went over and discussed the material as a class. Going over the activity allowed me to assess my students’ understanding of the Constitution and the general workings of the United States government. I found this to be an effective form of assessment because it showed me that the students were able to complete the activity with little to no aid from me and that they understood the information, which proved to me that many of them were capable of teaching themselves simple information.
Unfortunately, I was unable to give my students any sort of formal assessment in the form of a quiz or homework assignment because my coop was still assigning homework from the lessons that he had taught prior to my unit. I was unaware that this was going to happen when I began to teach and since I had such a limited amount of time to teach, there was no time left for me to assign my own homework or to give a quiz.
I feel as though my greatest area of strength was in running a class discussion. When there was an active discussion between the students and me, the students responded very well and were actively engaged in asking questions of me and of their classmates. On my students evaluations of me one of the most overwhelmingly positive comments I received from many students was my ability to explain things to them. I feel that being able to explain things and make them easy to understand is an integral part of a classroom discussion and I always felt that the students had a good grasp of the information we had discussed upon the conclusion of class.
An area that I need to develop is maintaining enthusiasm throughout the entire class to make the topic interesting for my students and to help motivate them. As I mentioned earlier, I found that my enthusiasm for the class greatly affected the classroom atmosphere. In addition I think I need to develop my ability to think of questions on my feet. I always have discussion questions prepared for class but these never seem to be enough. I think that as I become a more experienced teacher I will improve at thinking on my feet and be able to think of better open ended questions to keep a class discussion moving. Although I was very proud of my class discussions I think they will only continue to improve as I develop my questioning abilities.
There are still many things that puzzle me about becoming a teacher. I think one of the biggest questions I will have throughout my career is knowing whether I am teaching to the best of my ability and how I will be able to assess myself. Fortunately, this is something that my professors take care of now and I am able to constantly receive feedback from them after I have been observed. But as a professional teacher how does one know if they are doing something well or not? I think it would be extremely difficult to have to self-asses myself throughout my entire career and be able to really know if I am doing a good job or not. One way I think I may be able to fix this is to have an open dialogue with my students and allow them to continuously evaluate me. But as I move into student teaching and eventually into a career in teaching, I feel that this is a question that I will constantly be coming back to: How will I know if I am teaching my students to the best of my ability? As I prepare to student teach next year it is my hope that I will be able to learn how to better assess myself as a teacher and to learn to look for signs from my students to know if I am teaching to the best of my ability.