Throughout my teaching experience over the past two months, I have learned so much about what is successful within my teaching style, as well as what needs to be worked on to ensure lessons run smoothly and students are completely engaged. I have been working with 60 fourth grade students from three classes, two of which I assisted during the lesson and one class I led the lesson. One takeaway I have had from the five in-classroom visits and two field trips is that having excitement, enthusiasm, and positive energy as an educator can be reflected back with the students I am teaching. For example, I noticed an increase of engagement and interest from the fourth graders when I gave them opportunities to move around, such as using animal forms when they are waiting for the next activity and participating along myself. This allows them to put their energy into something related to the lesson, and makes them more comfortable with me since I am allowing them to get excited in a classroom. Another part of my teaching style that I really worked hard on improving each week was setting boundaries and expectations for the students, which helps with getting activities finished on time, avoiding any conflict with the students, and reducing the amount of technical questions. For example, I would specifically tell the students that I was only going to call on two hands after asking a question, and that I only wanted them to share one idea. These boundaries help lessons run more efficiently and keep students on task. From my field reflections, I believe the one aspect of teaching I could have improved on is my integration of Spanish in the lessons. I do not speak Spanish, and despite practicing vocabulary and educating myself on basic phrases before each lesson, I was still not completely comfortable using it in the classroom. Knowing I was not confident in Spanish, I attempted to have the students speak in Spanish when I could, such as reading the Spanish off the slides or answering questions in Spanish in order to mitigate the lack of bilingualism in my lessons.
Overall, I feel as if I improved each week when I was teaching in the classroom. I prioritize excitement and positivity within each lesson, since the overarching goal of Aves Compartidas is to create empathy for the migratory birds we are discussing and inspire students to take environmental action within their own lives. When I observed students having fun and asking engaging questions, I felt as if the lesson was successful. I am grateful for the Environmental Leadership Program and the Willamette-Laja Twinning Partnership for offering this opportunity and allowing me to be apart of a project that is so impactful to the community. As an educator, I want to make students passionate about the environment and the natural world around them, and encourage them to keep learning more and to keep being excited about nature.
From my teammates assisting me in classes, as well as the elementary school teachers whose students I was working with, provided me with feedback that highlighted what I was doing well, and what needed improvement. One piece of feedback I received after the first week of teaching was that my PowerPoint slides that I created to go along with the lesson were very organized and aided the lesson well. After piloting lessons, I realized that other groups having a presentation was helpful towards keeping the class engaged, ensuring everyone understands what directions are, and helping students with spelling, as they can see the phrase written on the board. My peers also expressed that I was able to set boundaries efficiently and provide clear instructions to avoid confusion. I found that this was one of the most difficult parts of teaching, at first, because students get easily distracted when they are unsure of directions. I tried to work on this skill every week, and by the fifth lesson, I was able to decrease the amount of instructional questions students asked and keep the timing of the lesson smoothly. From their feedback, I found my biggest area for improvement is my usage of Spanish in the lessons. As I expressed previously, I am not comfortable using Spanish, and sometimes my pronunciation and sentence structure would be wrong. I felt that it was better for the students to have them speak in Spanish, as I did not want to give them wrong vocabulary. Reflecting back, I wish I would have asked for more help in this area, as a Spanish supporter would have helped me with my confidence.
As a team, we unfortunately did not check in with our community partners very often as we were teaching the students and formulating the lessons. However, we utilized the Willamette-Laja Twinning Partnership resources very often in order to make sure our lessons align with their goals and morals. For example, we intensively reviewed their lessons that we adapted our own lessons from to ensure we were not changing important aspects. We value their learning outcomes and the awareness to action framework our community partners support, as our goal to represent their mission accurately. Our community partner coordinator Carina came with us on our fourth grade field trip, and provided some feedback. For example, our field guide that we created was framed in multiple ways, so it was somewhat confusing to the students what the activity was. Since becoming a teacher, I have realized that framing is extremely important to the efficiency of a lesson and the amount of engagement students have.
I have especially valued and appreciated the feedback I received from our Environmental Leadership Program co-director Katie Lynch, and our project manager Helena, who were both with us in the field nearly every day. They both informed me that I have a skill in classroom management and capturing students’ attention during lessons. Helena has expressed that I am able to read the room well, and understand which students may need more one-on-one attention than others. This has definitely been one aspect of my teaching style that I am proud of, as I believe it is important for an educator to be constantly scanning the room and ensuring no students are being left behind. I believe that it is important for every student to have equal attention and support from a teacher, so I worked hard to observe any person that was possibly struggling with a task and help them individually to express my care for their education and knowledge. Also, in order to keep a classroom from becoming chaotic, I tried to notice any students who were distracting themselves or others, and center their attention back to the lesson. A general critique from these two mentors is that I sometimes would explain too many rules at once or give out too much information within one sentence. I would often get worried about time, so I would say a lot at once, but this can be confusing to students, especially when they are being introduced to new material. After receiving this feedback, I tried to rely on the slides to show instructions as a way to keep me on track with the lesson and not jump ahead. Overall, Kate and Helena’s feedback helped me tremendously, and I look forward to implementing their knowledge in my future endeavors as an environmental educator.
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