Sydney Sedlar - Educational Beliefs & Personal Growth

Educational Beliefs

Teaching is important to me because I am a firm believer that every student learns differently. I myself have experienced changing where or how you learn to benefit yourself and I can see how adapting it to every person can be extremely beneficial. Giving students an opportunity to find what works best for them so they can be successful later on is what is most important to me. I believe that every student learns differently and it is a teachers job to help students understand the way they learn and do their best to facilitate students learning needs.

I think it extremely important to foster problem solving skills and determination in my students. Productive struggle is a technique I like to use to encourage problem solving and determination. Productive struggling teaches students to try their own solutions before asking for help. One way to promote productive struggle is the "ask 3 before me" method, and another way I like to use is setting a 5 - 10 minute timer where students work by themselves making notes of where they struggle, and then I provide whole group help or small group help depending on where students are struggling or how many are struggling. Both of these skills are something that is required for many students, as they try to pursue careers or navigate life. I feel these 2 skills are high on the list of things teachers need to teach students for them to be successful in life and confident in themselves.

Here are 2 additional ways I love to foster problem solving and determination -

Reflection - Teaching students how to reflect on their own problem solving techniques, helps them grow and adjust,. It can help them create new goals, understand what problem solving techniques work or don't work for certain problems. It can also help foster determination for new goals, and finding new ways to problem solve.
Collaborative learning - Using collaborative learning can foster problem solving and determination through collaboration. By not having full control over something and having to work together, students will have to practice problem solving to get everyone to agree or work together. It also helps foster determination because students don't always like every one in their group. They will have to practice determination to stay in the group as well as use problem solving to get along with this person.

Here are the assessments I like to use to monitor the progress in these skills -

Active Monitoring - Active monitoring is a great way to track student progress when students are working in groups. You can take notes and focus on how they are interacting with peers, and using problem solving skills.
Real world Connections/Problems - By having student actively solve problems you are able to measure what steps they are using, where they are struggling, and if they are reflecting on the skills they used.

I think building relationships with school stakeholders is important. I believe these relationships are important because getting to know these people will allow for more growth and opportunity for yourself but also for your school and students. By having a relationships with school stakeholders you able to keep them UpToDate with the needs and accomplishments of the school. By working together you can give them insight to the day to day of the school and what it might be needing from its stakeholders. By working with school stakeholders and facilitate positive relationships you are able to work together to create a safe a healthy environment for learning.

Personal Growth & Reflection

I feel my growth so far has been tremendous. I still have a lot to learn and a ways to go, however, I have learned so much in my short time as a student teacher. I feel that I have been able to really learn and practice my skills as a teacher.

Working with a MCL for lesson planning in ELA has been helped deepen my understanding of lesson planning but also in what I need to do to deepen my understanding of the subject. I know understand the time that has to go into internalizing your lesson, and how through lesson planning I am able to internalize a lesson so I am confident enough to teach it. It helps me discover misconceptions that the students might have, problems they may struggle with, areas we can do group work, etc...

Having a professional conversation with my MCL mentor and the Principal of the school I am placed was very beneficial to me when it comes to pedagogy in the classroom. During this conversation we discussed the areas I felt I exceled in and the areas I was trying to grow. My Pricipal acted out how she takes the control of the classroom back from the students. My MCL mentor also helped me understand what practices I already that are beneficial to me in the classroom. Both of these people helped me understand the pedagogy I already use that I was unaware of, as well as show me pedagogy that I didn't know about. I left this conversation feeling confident and thinking of way I could implement what I learned into my classroom.

Other activities I have attended that have helped enhance my use of content pedagogy -

Eureka Math PLC - All math teachers for 5th grade and a person from the district who specializes in the math curriculum we use called EUREKA meet once a month to discuss the best teaching practices for our upcoming units in EUREKA.

Black History Month Meeting - This meeting helped understand the best practices for creating a culturally inclusive classroom.

At Risk Students PLC - During our weekly PLC meeting there was a presentation given on how to help At Risk students. This infromation was very beenfical to me since I have multiple at risk kids in my class. In this meeting we discussed and learned about the best teaching practices to reach at risk kids such as communication with parents, showing them their growth, and connecting with them on their interests.

PLC & DATA Driven Instruction -

During my student teaching I have been able to observe and collaborate with those in my same grade level and with different subjects to analyze data to prepare students for STAAR. These meetings have been our Weekly PLC meetings. These meetings are for the entire 5th grade team. We are currently discussing the Math, Science, and ELA interim test data and how we can use this to prepare students for STAAR

This collaboration has actually changed my future instruction completely. From the data, we have learned that in ELA the students need more practice with creating ECR's, and that math is the topic they are struggling in the most. This data will have me pulling small groups from math and ELA (70/30 respectively) multiple times through out the day to provide students with extra support on mastering the TEEKS they are struggling with.

This collaboration helped me grow as a educator by showing me how to use the data found to help students master the skills they need. This was my first experience getting to review data and use it to alter my teaching and lesson planning. This was a great opportunity for learning how to use data to guide instruction and activities.

My biggest goal at the moment as a educator is working on mastering how to create relationships with students. I have created some great relationships with some of my students, however there are still students whose relationship I am still working on. These students are on the higher end of at risk. I would like to continue to learn how to bond and interact with these students to create a healthy and respectful relationship between each other. My mentor has given me some great advice for these relationships that I plan to implement and continue practicing during the rest of my student teaching and into my career as a educator.

To accomplish my goal of mastering building relationships with students I would like to attend more training or meetings about at risk students and how to help them. Doing my own research into how to build better relationships wit hard to reach students is a great first step when waiting to attend a meeting or training. By taking these action steps I can start working towards meeting my goal and start practicing some of the strategies i find to see what works and what doesn't.

The NEA also provides a lot of material on how to reach all students. In the link listed below the NEA provides downloadable resources and more for a "Whole Child Approach" to teaching. These resources have helped me learn more about how to connect with all of my students, and will help me to continue working towards my goal of mastering student relationships.

https://www.nea.org/professional-excellence/student-engagement/whole-student-education

Whole student education. NEA. (n.d.). https://www.nea.org/professional-excellence/student-engagement/whole-student-education

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