At Week Four in my teaching, I believe I have a lot of positive qualities as a teacher.  From my student-teaching during the final semester of my bachelor’s degree, I developed sound lesson planning skills and a classroom management style that fits my personality.  I understand the key components of a lesson plan: the idea that the students need to be transitioned into thinking about the content at the beginning of class as well as given a general outline on what class will be like that day, the importance of activity organization and variation to keep students engaged throughout the class and the concept of giving each lesson closure.  Along with those key concepts, I understand that thoughtful reflection is needed after my lesson so I can carry over what went well to my future lessons and try to manipulate or discard what was lacking so my teaching is more effective in the future. 

When designing my classroom management style, one of the key components I take into consideration is the obvious small age difference between my students and me.  As a 22-year old teaching college students whose ages range approximately from 17 to 21, I have thought long and hard about the boundaries I set between my students and me.   I try to imagine how I would view the situation if I were on the other side of the classroom.  The first issue I addressed as a young teacher is my knowledge of the content to the students.   I did this by giving my educational background as well as mentioning previous teaching experience.  When mentioning teaching experience, I never give dates or lengths because I have several short two month teaching experiences that my students will sometimes misinterpret to be longer. Their misinterpretation works to my benefit because it discourages them from challenging my authority as the class instructor.  To strengthen the idea that I am a seasoned teacher I implement a few classroom management strategies I learned during my student teaching experience:  memorizing and addressing students by their names early, keeping class student-centered most of the time, using proximity as a warning and addressing problematic students privately outside of class.

Although I have just stated that I possess good lesson planning and classroom management skills as a teacher, I still believe there is room for improvement and continue to reflect on my everyday practices.  One specific quality I am focusing extra hard on developing as a teacher this semester is the implementation of technology as a resource in my classroom.  As a result, I hope my students will gain not only critical thinking and communication skills but also learn how to use technology as way to showcase and implement those skills.

I have one major concern about teaching first year freshman English this semester.  My primary concern is that I will not be able to provide some of my highly advanced students with the scaffolding they need to improve their writing because perhaps, their writing skills are already more developed than my own.  To address this concern, I will work with colleagues and advisors to develop ways to challenge my advanced writers. 

I have gained many insights during my first few weeks of teaching.  The most significant one is the difference between teaching grammar and teaching composition.  Going into the semester, I thought they were synonymous, but after learning more about composition theory, I have realized that they are two different pedagogical ballgames.  As I progress through the semester, I hope to gain more knowledge on how to teach composition so when I return to teaching English as a second language, I will be able to apply what I have learned about composition pedagogy to what I used to teach as grammar-dominated curriculum.