As I progress in my learning, I am happy to note that my questions and concerns are also evolving. I am no longer so concerned with what can go wrong in the classroom, but rather what I can do to make the classroom a more inviting place for my students.
Lessons: I want so badly for my classroom to be a fun learning environment where the students not only learn, but also actually enjoy the learning. I worry that my lessons will be boring and not entice my students to do their very best. This has perhaps surpassed my worry of group work activities. I am hopeful that when I have my own classroom, and am able to teach what I want, essentially how I want, that I will be able to create more interesting, interactive lessons that foster a need and a want to learn within my students. Although I am gaining valuable insights into how to create lessons due to the very nature of the classroom I am in, I must conform my lessons to fit with the classroom environment that my cooperating teacher has created.
My Teaching: At the beginning of my student teaching I was very preoccupied by the notion that my students would not respect me, that I would not be able to control my students, and that I would not be an effective teacher. For the most part, I have found that my students enjoy talking to me both inside and outside of class. They often call me over during lessons to help them, or to have me correct and look over work they have completed. I very much enjoy the student-teacher bonds that I have begun making with some of them. I have come to see that my students respect me as a teaching figure – something that I didn’t realize I would be so pleased by. This respect has come in very handy for getting my students to focus and be productive members of the classroom. I am able to give directions and corrections to students – and they actually listen. At the beginning of my placement – I would often hear students under their breaths say things like “well you’re not a real teacher” or “I don’t have to listen to you”. But now, I often need only look at a misbehaving student in order to get them to quiet down, focus, and mouth “sorry miss”.
My Classroom: I spend a great deal of time now contemplating my classroom. In the previous weeks I have been documenting notices, posters, and rules that other teachers have up in their classrooms. By compiling these things I have been creating a cache of ideas for creating my own classroom environment. I have begin to understand that it is not only the teacher and the students that contribute to the classroom learning environment, but also the environment (or the room) itself. I want my classroom to be an inviting place where the students have some control over what is displayed. I have noticed, specifically with my students at SDC, that there is little respect for the environment. Students leave trash and notebooks and crumpled papers all over the place with no regard for the classroom. I am hopeful that If I allow my students to help decorate the classroom they will take more pride in the room and respect the learning environment in the same way I expect each student to respect me as a teacher, and each student expects me to respect them as a learner. This idea of respecting the entirety of the classroom experience has become a central point in my ideas on teaching and being an effective teacher.
What goals do you have for your learning for the remainder of the semester?
ReplyDeleteI guess I would say my goal is to learn and implement as much as I can. I feel as though the learning comes less from the reading and more from the actual assignments we do for class and the lessons we plan for teaching.
ReplyDeleteI would like to become more efficient at planning lessons -- and at the same time, less reluctant to try things on the fly.