Me as a learner

I started this journey with a lot of questions about my place in the classroom. There were times I had been caught off-guard with classroom situations completely clueless as to how to respond. I would fumble, stammer search for the right words and finally ask if I could get back to them after some research. That disturbed me. I felt like I was measuring up to the task. Lots if doubts and questions about my approach to teaching. That was 6 months ago.

While I still have those moments of confusion and get flustered once in a while, over a period of seven months, I have grown to become comfortable with those moments. I have learned to accept that I would not be able to always have answers to all my students' questions. Or my students may not always agree with what I say. Or sometimes, they may end up behaving in a way that is not going to be ideal classroom behavior. I have learnt to understand that my place is not a place of magic, that would make students behave a certain way. My purpose as a teacher is not make students ace every lesson. My place will not always guarantee that my students will be on their best behavior.

From my log entries it is very evident that I had faced a lot of challenges in creating the perfect lesson plans for my classes. I have felt absolutely clueless sitting in front of a blank lesson plan template not knowing what to do. I had included pictures, quizzes, questionnaires in my LP, but still after every lesson, I had ended up feeling that I could have done things completely different that would have made the class more successful. From September, one may notice that I started becoming acquainted to the process of planning a lesson. There had been some ups and downs during the process, but gradually the became easier and seamless to develop a comprehensive approach to planning a lesson.

The major contributor to this change would be my conferences (pre and post) with my Teacher Educator. Those meetings changed my approach to the idea of planning. Every question my TE asked brought me back to my purpose as a teacher. I gave up on focusing the kinds of resources that I would use in class. I gave up on trying to stick to my mentors' ways to teaching. Instead I started with a very basic approach of how the students would see the concept. How would it make sense to the students? I broke the concept bit by bit, and made a plan that made sense to me as a student. I also had a contingency plan- a safety net if things did not turn out the way I had planned. This gave me more comfort and ease when entering the classroom. Sometimes I did not even had to use the contingency approach, but the fact that I had one out me in a place of ease and confidence.

The next contributor was my understanding of my students. As I was preparing for my class, I could anticipate certain kinds of questions that may come up during the discussions. Knowing their interests, dislikes, the topics that excite them and the ones that may bore them put me at a better place in my preparation.

As I go into my new classroom next year, I realize that it will take sometime for me to establish an understanding of my class. I may fumble and I may make mistakes. Even after I think understand my students, I may still have classes that may not reach a certain level of success. But I owe it to myself that I will learn from them, and so I will evolve.