Growth Area
My student teaching experience has taught me so much about what it takes everyday to be an educator. To me, being in the classroom day in and day out was an invaluable experience that revealed to me many things. Two of the most prevalent growth areas that this experience revealed to me were in challenging students to use their higher order thinking abilities and making my lessons have a purpose.
I believe that both these areas go hand in hand with one another. There have been a few times this year when I reflect on a lesson I have planned and taught and I realized I did not engage my students in higher order thinking. As I reflect more on this, I am beginning to come to the realization that I perhaps felt this way because I failed to find a deeper purpose for my lessons, besides learning new content. In this coming year I will be putting a bigger emphasis on the “why” of my lessons. Once I’ve defined the “why” of the lesson, I believe my students’ higher order thinking will follow suit. I want to prevent my class from feeling monotonous to my students, which I believe ensuring all my lessons have a deeper “why” to them will take care of this issue.
Teaching Superpower:
On the opposite side of the spectrum, this year has revealed my teaching superpower to be my ability to connect with my students. I believe this ability to connect with my students allows them to open up to me, which makes it easier for them to ask and accept support. Being able to make a meaningful connection with my students also provides them with a better learning experience, as they would enjoy being in class more when they feel closer to their teacher. Coming in to the year this was one of my biggest fears, not being able to make a meaningful connection with my students, because I had previously been working with the same group of students for the two years prior to my year as a student teacher.
Antiracist Educator:
Being an antiracist educator means a lot to me at this point in my career. What being an antiracist educator means to me is to be an advocate for the groups of people who have been kept down. As a Mexican, with two immigrant parents, it is of utmost importance to me to continue to uplift the voices and stories that have been silenced throughout history. One way I will attempt to implement this into my classroom is by first acknowledging the Kumeyaay, as we are currently on the land that was taken from them. I will also strive to continue to bring up the counternarratives in history, as in the stories that may contradict or shed a new light on the historical events we have been taught.
How might I?:
A “how might I?” question that I may be looking into for the following year is “How might I better support IEP and EML students in their reading development?”