What I Learned about Myself
Throughout this semester, I have learned so much about myself and how I want to teach my students. Before this semester, I had never taught in a high school. While I had experience working with high school students, it was not in an actual school environment, and thus I was nervous about actually teaching in a high school classroom. Since this was what I was planning on doing for my career, I felt like a lot depended on my liking this practicum experience. Fortunately, I have greatly enjoyed my experience. I learned that I do enjoy the math content in high school a little bit more than in middle school, and I really like this age group. I think I really lucked out with the group of students I was placed with, as they are great at participating and generally enthusiastic about the class. Even more, the opportunities I had to teach and the conversations I got to have with students helped me learn the best ways to talk to the students and help them learn.
Personal and Professional Goals
First, I think I will need to continue to open up more and allow the students to really get to know me so that they feel comfortable asking me questions and getting help. I think this will help me build strong relationships with my students as well as the staff that I will work with. I think this will help me personally enjoy coming to work every day, give me that support system I need, and help me feel confident when I teach my students.
Professionally, I want to make sure that I have mastered the content that I will teach. There are still a few concepts, especially in calculus, that I have difficulty with. If I review these materials and have a deeper understanding of many of the proofs of these concepts, I think I will gain more confidence when teaching my students. Even more, I want to make sure that I continue to learn new strategies and ways to teach throughout my career. I want to add new ideas into my classroom to make sure that I am not falling back on the same activities and instruction each and every class period. I think this will be difficult for me because once I find a strategy I like, I usually stick with it. If I challenge myself to incorporate new instructional strategies and activities, I think this will greatly impact my teaching.
Beliefs about Students
This semester has reinforced the idea that I want to have a student-centered classroom. Mr. Mierzwa said that he wants the students to do the work, not so much him. I believe that students learn best when they are discovering the information and being active learners. While it is important to be the teacher and there are lessons that simply need to be taught solely by the teacher, I think it is great when the teacher does less of the teacher and the students are doing more than taking notes. I thought it was great that three of the teaching strategies we learned, POGIL, Socratic Seminar, and a flipped classroom, really take on the idea that students are in charge of their learning. Of these strategies, I feel like I could really incorporate flipping my classroom into a unit or two. I do not think I would flip it for the whole year, but I love the idea of having class time where students can work on higher level problems where they really apply their learning. While I think it is sometimes unrealistic to expect students to solve higher-order applications, usually word problems, at home by themselves, they have a much better chance of succeeding in class working with peers.
Overall, I understand that while many students do not necessarily enjoy math, they do enjoy learning when it is presented in a manner that allows them to think and discover. If the students can discover mathematical ideas, I think this will boost their confidence in the subject. Even more, if the students learn how math is surrounding them, that will show them how applicable it is to their everyday lives. If they can relate it someway, their interest will grow. I hope to incorporate many applications and problem solving into my class.
Classroom Management
Classroom management is something that I will need to continue to focus on. I am not always the best with confrontation, but I think this semester has helped me get better at making sure students are on task and focusing on what they should be working on. In the future when I have my own classroom, I want the students to know that I am in charge, yet I respect their ideas and judgment. I think, if allowed at the school, I will not be too strict with cell phones, except for during assessments. I do not want to spend class time watching out for students on their phones, unless it starts to become too much of a distraction. If I make my expectations clear at the beginning of the school year, hopefully they will understand that I expect them to pay attention and not be on their phones the entire class period.
I also think that I will arrange the seats, at least for the first few weeks when we are all getting to know each other. I think it is important to establish some structure and also for me to get to know which students work well together and which should be separated during the class period. Depending on the students, I do not have a problem with letting them choose seats after a certain amount of time has passed.
Finally, I still am not fully sure how I want to handle make up work. I understand both sides of the arguments. I think I will end up allowing students to make up work up to a certain point. Perhaps they can submit work until the end of that unit. I want students to do the work and learn the material, so I think this will be the best solution. I think once I have my classroom, I will be able to see whether this will be practical or unrealistic to organize.
Planning and Assessment
I think planning lessons will be something that I will continually get better at. Right now, it takes me quite a bit of time and thought in creating one lesson. I think especially when I am student teaching, I will need to try a few things to see what works best for me. I might try planning a few lessons at a time and then altering them depending on how the previous class period went. I may see that this is not organized enough for me and try to plan an entire week at a time, or I may see that I need to have more flexibility and try to plan only one or two lessons at a time. I think right now it would be best to plan more in advance in order to stay organized and get all my materials ready further in advance, but I will have to see what works best in practice.
Also, I hope to have formative assessments at least a few times every week, if not every day. It will be helpful for me to see if students truly understand the concepts taught in class or if they need additional time learning the material. I have learned so many strategies in this class for how to informally assess students, and I think I will use many of them, especially ticket out the door and many of the activities walking around the classroom. Concerning summative assessments, I see myself using standard paper and pencil, individual tests. This seems to work best for math, and it really helps me see what students do and do not know. I think there may be situations where I will be able to use projects for the summative assessments, but it will depend on the unit. Hopefully there will be many times where I can have both tests and projects to assess students.