As a first time, full-time teacher, I imagine facing quite a
few professional dilemmas this internship year. Having never been so fully
exposed to a classroom setting, I expect that there will be several spontaneous
occasions where I am placed in a position that requires me to choose “the
lesser of two evils” in regards to my students. Some may not be as serious, for
example, when earlier this week I was left to decide whether or not I should
send a child who has been known to take excessive bathroom visitations to the
restroom after asking me for the first time that hour. While I did not think
much of it at first, I was left to wonder what sort of message was being sent
to this child after she ignored my instruction and asked my MT to use the
restroom, and was then allowed to go (my MT did not know she had asked me
first). It made me wonder just how strict I should be with my students. If I am
not as strict, I imagine that they will not like me very much and will not be
terribly motivated to do the assignments I provide them with (or will be
motivated purely out of fear, which I do not want, as I do not want them to
form negative associations with school). If I am too kind, friendly, and easy
going however, I will have students who end up seeing me more as a friend as
opposed to an authority figure, and I do not imagine that they will have much respect
for me or my teaching. I am still finding it hard to find that happy medium
where the students see me as a likable teacher who they respect, but who they
also see as a safe contact person.
I also wonder a lot about how I am going to ensure that I am
reaching ALL of my students, and not just those who are able to listen and follow
direction at all times. For example, if I have one student who is not
understanding the material and is disruptive and must be worked with at an
individual level in order for them to understand the material, and the rest of
the class is ready and eager to learn, when (or do) I choose to ignore or excuse
the child who is being disruptive (and who will then, consequently, not learn
any more of the material) so that I may focus my energy on the students who are
ready to learn? I also imagine encountering several dilemmas in regards to how
to grade the students in my classroom who are ESL learners or special education
students in relation to the general education students (i.e. do I grade the
students on a similar rubric, or do I completely alter the rubrics for these
children?). Dealing with parents should also bring about quite a few dilemmas, for
example, if a parent complains that their child has too much homework, do I
lower the amount of homework to keep the parent and child happy, and risk that
they do not gain practice in as much as I want them to, or do I keep it as it
is and anger the parent and risk that the grades of the child (who in
actuality, really can’t do that much homework due to their learning capability
or time restrictions) suffer?
In regards to my current teaching methods, I feel very
confident in my ability to plan creative and meaningful lessons for my students
(or instructor, or classmates). I am also quite confident in my ability to
assess my students, as we have covered this quite extensively in my TE courses
as well as my TESOL courses, and I have also acquired several great resources in
regards to student assessment during my undergraduate years.
Areas which I feel I need to learn and practice more in the
classroom include classroom management and general execution of my lessons.
These are both areas in which I have struggled with in the past and which I
feel have not been thoroughly addressed in past courses. Considering all of the
teaching that I will be doing this year and the amount of time spent
instructing my class as a lead instructor, I imagine that I will be getting
plenty of experience in these two areas. My two mentor teachers are also great
resources and I have already been getting tons of advice and ideas from them in
terms of how to properly execute a lesson and also how to best manage classroom
behavior.
Caroline I noticed that you talked a lot about being nervous about classroom management. I think this is typical of new teachers/interns because typically this is something that we have only talked about in theory in our classes but have not had minimal opportunity to implement some of these theoretical strategies into real situations. I will admit this was a concern of mine as well, but I will say I feel so much more confident after this first week. My mentor teacher has given me the opportunity to be seen as an equal from an authority standpoint and I take over for small mini lessons during the day. After these small experiences I feel so much better and I feel more confident in my ability to the lead the room when it comes to dealing with behavior, in acknowledging both the positive and negative. This is key in my opinion to building a positive relationship with all students.
ReplyDeleteThis is not to say that I will not have any challenges this year, there will be many to come I am sure.
There are some dilemmas that I can start to anticipate. Much like Caroline, I am also anxious about planning and differentiating well for ALL of our students. Although it is a fourth grade class we students with reading levels that vary from a mid first grade to a seventh grade reading level! That is a lot to cover! I am worried in, "how can I reach everyone?" Another dilemma I see already starting to happen concerns standardized testing. How much do you teach for the test and review and how much do you just continue with your regular curriculum, it is hard to make time for both with already limited schedules. During planning I have seen my mentor torn between, teaching MEAP packet reviews or teaching the lessons from Everyday Math. As a teacher your time in the classroom with your students is valuable and you want to be productive, but is it worth reviewing for when you are practicing multiple choice? In my opinion there are other more meaningful and engaging assessments than multiple choice, but by NOT providing them with multiple choice practice it is a disservice when the MEAP is how they are judged on paper (and in turn us as teachers too are judged based on their scores, so it is hard to negotiate what to do.
This year I am looking forward to juggling these dilemmas and looking to my mentor and other teachers in the building for advice. As far as other things I want to learn more about, I am looking forward to learning how to plan lessons more efficiently, I can see that with time and practice it becomes more second nature. I am looking for other great classroom organizational and behavior techniques to take with me to my future classroom.
As a fourth grade planning team we have already started to "finesse" the literacy curriculum. We made the decision to teach reading and writing so the there is more of a correlation between the two so they build off one another. (similar to Celina in the reading) We thought this would make more meaningful lessons for our students if they could easily see the important connection between the two subjects, and hopefully in turn help foster stronger reading and writing skills.
As I read over both of your posts, I realized that we all are dealing with similar issues and anxieties about our internship year. I am also struggling with classroom management techniques. My mentor teacher and I have been working hard over the past two weeks to establish classroom rules, procedures and routines. Unfortunately, it seems as though we have a class that is struggling to understand and follow these procedures. Besides a handful of students, the majority of our class has an extremely difficult time focusing during teacher talk and lessons. My MT has never had a serious issue with classroom management and she claims that this may be the most difficult situation she has been in. Most of these two weeks have been spent disciplining children, praising those that are following directions, and dealing with various management issues. We have yet to delve into our subject-area lessons because we are struggling to make it through a lesson with whole-class participation. I am worried that management is going to be a huge struggle for my MT and myself this year. I am trying to look at the positive side of things, and realize that I will probably learn a great deal about classroom management and how to deal with related issues. Another worry of mine is that management issues will affect our instruction. I hope to be able to implement many reading and writing strategies, but wonder if I will be limited due to my student's lack of focus.
ReplyDeleteSimilar to Caroline, I also feel comfortable assessing my students and have gotten some practice during these first weeks of school. I have planned and taught two lessons so far, which has significantly boosted my confidence and eased my nerves in front of my students. I felt as though I was prepared for both lessons, and hope that this feeling of preparedness continues throughout the year, since a strong plan is so crucial to the success of the lesson.
One area that I am hoping to learn more about from observing my MT and through my own practice is literature discussions. Since I worked with kindergartners last year, I have found that I am often surprised at the level of thinking my 4th graders possess and worry that I will have a difficult time stimulating and fostering a rich literature discussion. So far, I have been able to observe my MT during literacy instruction and am beginning to note ways in which she is implementing various strategies and techniques. One strategy I would like to incorporate during my lead teaching is to have my students use Wonder Books or Writer's Notebooks to document their thinking during literacy instruction and their own time spent reading. I have seen many unique and fun ways to use these tools and hope that my students will respond positively to them.
Your group is off to a strong start in terms of talking about your classroom experiences in depth and the issues you are confronting. You also are making sure you are responding to one another and offering your own perspectives. Now I'd like to see you take a step further and make use of the ideas in the readings to extend the conversation and make connections with your classroom experiences. This will help you make your discussions even more concrete and give you opportunities to apply, question or critique the ideas and issues discussed in the readings. Keep up the good work!
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