Experiences & Evaluations

Reflection on Teaching

The first big lesson I learned from this experience was the importance of extremely thorough preparation. This means that as an instructor, my preparation has to go far beyond knowing the content and structure of my lesson. For the content, a basic understanding of what I’m teaching my students simply isn’t enough. Not only should I be completely confident in the knowledge I share, but I should know even more. Having more extensive knowledge about a bird species and their ecological connections is an incredibly helpful tool to have, as it is probably the easiest way to get a sidetracked class back on class. Young students love to share what they already know, and much of this sharing, often in the form of stories, can take a lesson on a tangent. If I, as the instructor, however, can connect what this student is talking about back to my lesson, I can seamlessly bring the class back to where they need to be, without dismissing the thoughts and feelings of my student. One of my fourth graders, Alexander, already had a pretty extensive knowledge on birds and other animals, particularly migration. In our migration lesson, Alexander wanted to share with the class everything he had learned about whale migration. He shared with us that many whales follow their food source from warmer to cooler waters and back again. I asked if this reminded him of anything we’d been learning about regarding bird migration, and he said yes - birds follow insects. This realization encouraged other students to chime in, sharing that in the spring, all the insects start coming out again. As this coincides perfectly with the return of our migratory spotlight species, the ecological connection between birds, insects, and migration, was made clear to all of my students.

Another lesson I learned is the importance of clear communication with our students. A lot of our learners were very dependent on having a clear, outlined structure for the day’s activities, whether in class or at Mt. Pisgah. Presenting our students with a flight path for our lessons helped to ease their worries and stresses about the future, allowing them to focus and fully engage with the present. 

Lastly, I want to share what I learned about the power of passion and excitement. It wasn’t always easy for me to step into a crazy classroom at 9:30 a.m. and convince my students for 45 minutes that birds are the most exciting thing in the world. I was even met with some pushback from the learners, some saying they didn’t care about birds at all. Regardless, I persisted, doing my best to come to each lesson with a smile on my face and excitement for the ecological relationships that I’d be teaching my students about that day. This continuous excitement and passion all paid off on the very last day of the Aves Compartidas program, the fourth-grade field trip. Seeing my students show legitimate excitement and awe at seeing plants, bugs, and birds at Mt. Pisgah was a tremendous reward.

Evaluations

Student and Teacher Feedback:

Our very first day at River Road was a struggle for me, specifically when it came to managing the classroom. Simply put, I wasn’t prepared for the level of excitement that these young scientists would bring to the first lesson. Early on, when I introduced the species spotlight for the Yellow Warbler, I was flooded with observations, comments, and questions. Since I was equally excited to see that my students were so eager to participate, I didn’t know when to stop taking hands. We lost a lot of time on this first activity, and had to rush through our exploration of geography at the end. Here, the students picked up on my frantic energy, and started to get a bit sidetracked. Distractions with passing out materials and side conversations made it incredibly difficult for me to regain the class’s attention. After just 45 minutes of teaching, I was exhausted.

Thanks to feedback from Maestro Salgado, these initial struggles improved dramatically for me with each week of teaching. He taught me the methods he’d practiced to gather the attention of his classroom, using countdowns and hand signals to ensure that every student was engaged and attentive before I started giving out instructions. I also got better at managing the number of responses I took for each question, rotating through the students that I called on to ensure that every scientist got the opportunity to share their observations.

This balance between classroom management and participation proved to be a crucial part of my teaching. After the last couple of in-class lessons at River Road, my students were coming up to me at recess and telling me just how excited they were for the big field trip to Mt. Pisgah. When my fourth graders finally arrived for their birding excursion, their excitement for birds and ecology was tangible throughout the whole outing.

Community Partner Feedback:

Every time I interacted with Sarah Spoden at Mt. Pisgah, she provided the Aves Compartidas team with an abundance of ecological and historical knowledge about the Arboretum, encouraging us to share this information with our students. I also really enjoyed volunteering at Mt. Pisgah’s Wildflower Festival, Sarah showed my fellow teammates and me a lot of gratitude for coming out and leading bird walks for families.

ELP Evaluations:

Each week, feedback provided by our project manager and professor helped me establish myself as a confident mentor and educator. One thing they encouraged me to improve upon early on was reinforcing the scientific accuracy of the content I taught. An important aspect of this was how I responded to raised hands when the answer was “incorrect.” Oftentimes, a student wouldn’t be too far off from the right response, and guiding them toward a more scientifically accurate statement could be done fairly easily by asking them a few more questions that could point them in the right direction. Sometimes, however, answers were quite a bit further off and required me to step in and clarify directly. Here, I found things like my tone of voice and word choice to be very important. Finding the balance between respecting a student’s statement and the need for accuracy was difficult, but got easier for me as time went on.

Another goal I was encouraged to focus on was creating strong personal connections with my students. This of course involved my time in the classroom, but also outside it, particularly during recess. Playing soccer on the blacktop and climbing through the play structure allowed my students to get to know me and for me to know them - here, I learned what they thought of Aves Compartidas. One week, following the third-grade field trip, one of the students I led on the trip came up to me jumping with excitement. He asked me: “Do you remember that bird I heard that sounded like a frog?” “The raven?” I replied. “Yes, that one! I heard one by my house, and then I got to see it too!” Interactions like these helped me realize the far-reaching impacts of our teaching, not just as educators in the classroom, but as mentors outside of it.