Giving Help Students Need Rather Than What I Think They Need

As I went into this course, I wanted to gain new insights into Adolescents, my desired stage of development to teach students in grades 8-12 or ages 13-18, and how we, as teachers, can better ourselves overall. Students at this stage have big emotions and must learn to manage and cope. Adolescent students need to gain experience in facing these big emotions that seem exponentially challenging and nearly impossible to navigate. As teachers, providing a scaffolded environment that allows students to navigate these emotions increases their likelihood of navigating them successfully. As we provide a framework for them, they avoid long-term consequences that could be the result if experienced in the real world. These students need structured guidance that keeps them in the right direction but still allows them to have the liberty of what that path looks like for themselves. We should not be too naive to believe that just because we teach students to avoid these negative consequences means they will never encounter them. We should also provide them with solutions when things do not go as planned and how to redeem themselves from poor decisions. As we aid students in this process, we increase their success in terms of their ambitions and desires to become contributing members of society. 

As I constructed my deliverables for this project, I gained a greater sense of my role as the teacher, including how to build lessons for my students that is both instructional and impactful. Maintaining balance is the key to a good class and ensuring the spirit is nourished naturally. It is also crucial to ensure that the concepts taught directly apply to real-world circumstances to create credibility and purpose because “the world might be different from, and possibly better than, the way it is now.” (McDevitt, Ormrod 201). As I began creating the deliverables, I was overwhelmed and lost, to say the least. Still, as I progressed and received clarification, I realized how simple the concepts are to implement. The GEMS and GRASPS outline the roles of the teacher and the student and how they contribute to one another. It has helped me identify my strengths as a future teacher as well as my weaknesses. I understand what I can do to become the teacher I want to become to be the best teacher for my students.