The Fall 2021 semester has been a time of new opportunities and growth for myself, and perhaps the largest catalyst for this growth has been the student teaching placement we experience as MAT candidates. One of the skills that our faculty members have given us space to develop and that has helped my personal journey is self-reflection. Thanks to this improved skill I have had ample time to look back at my Fall 2021 student teaching experiences and reflect on what I am taking away.

My biggest takeaway from the first semester of student teaching pairs nicely with this idea of self-reflection. Thanks to our work up to this point in the MAT program, I have developed a clearer picture of who I am, both as a MAT candidate as well as a person. This has allowed me to learn in what ways I naturally help and support student learning. However, more importantly it has led me to see where I can grow as a student teacher. I am naturally someone who wants to fully support students. This organically leads to being friendly, to the point of bending perhaps too much in order to avoid potential conflict and allowing students to avoid being on task. I believe this is because I have been hesitant to have students dislike me and I always want to avoid pushing back because I may not be fully aware of their experiences outside the classroom.

Fortunately, I have had the opportunity to work under an incredible mentor teacher who has modeled to me that supporting students does not always mean you are simply friendly and understanding. While being empathetic and understanding are pillars of being a teacher who supports students, sometimes the support students need involves being firmer and pushing them to grow as a learner. Hammond (2015) discusses the idea of being a warm demander, which she defines as someone who “communicates personal warmth toward students while at the same time demands they work towards high standards.” This idea relates closely to the type of teacher I strive to grow into as I gain more experience. While doing so demands that I leave my comfort zone, my experiences from the Fall 2021 semester have shown me that students benefit more from firm boundaries and warm demanding. Professor Fred Hamel has made the analogy of being a wall in terms of setting boundaries that students recognize as not moving or changing. I have thought about this analogy a lot as I have thought about how I can improve as a student teacher heading into the Spring 2022 semester. Since supporting students and their growth is my number one goal, learning how to meet each student where they are individually and adjust how I support each of them is where I am looking to start. My mentor teacher models this daily, whether that is calmly speaking with certain students whose heads are down on their desks to check in on how they are doing before asking them to return to being on task or speaking in a more serious, stern voice or even pulling a student aside privately when an individual uses inappropriate or damaging language, which displays just how serious a situation it is. These all represent different ways of being both a wall in terms of setting boundaries as well as a warm demander in a variety of ways that make learning accessible to students. 

While every student deserves love, support, and understanding from us as teachers, some students benefit more from the way I naturally convey those things. Conversely, other students might benefit from a firmer response in some situations.

I am proud of who I am and see the positives of my personality, but at the same time recognize how vital it is that I develop the ability to adjust how I interact with students based on what they need, as I am learning what being a supportive teacher is all about. I am immensely grateful both for the experiences I have had to this point in the MAT program as well as all the amazing faculty, colleagues, and classmates that have pushed me to grow and have supported me the way I need to be supported in order to grow. Having the ability to adjust how I interact with students on an individual basis in order to meet them where they are is a skill I look forward to developing more this semester as I continue to gain more and more experience as a teacher.

Hammond, Z. (2015). Culturally responsive teaching & the brain: Promoting authentic engagement and rigor among culturally and linguistically diverse students. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Upon completion of the test comeback to this page an review your results in tandem with these reflection questions

• How do you feel about your results?

• What thoughts do you have about your results?

• Are you surprised by your results? Why or why not?

• After taking this test how do you think you will address future actions and decisions in your classroom and with colleagues?

• Do you feel that you have areas of learning that can be engaged with?