Reflection- Student Behavior, Characteristics of Exemplary Teachers, and Goals
The experience I’ve had recently that I’ll grow from was one of my first exposures to very poor student behavior. I had a student last week who was off task while my mentor teacher was leading the lesson. We were drawing cells during the various stages of mitosis and this particular student just wouldn’t do it. I first tried just standing next to him to see if my presence would encourage him to work, but he just continued to ignore the rest of the class. I then quietly told him to get out his notes and start working, and although that worked for a while, I noticed a few minutes later that he put his notes away again. I then asked if everything was okay, if he felt sick, needed to go to the bathroom, etc. All I could get out of him was “I don’t know,” but I was able to eventually get him to take his notes out and start working again. This aspect of my teaching is what I would consider my greatest weakness primarily due to my lack of experience. Most students will correct their behavior if you remind them what they should be doing, but every once in a while a student will just not listen. I think I did a fair job of handling the situation, but I’m sometimes not sure what to do when dealing with poor student behavior. Am I being too lenient or too harsh? When should I send a student to the office or support room? I know this will get easier with experience, and I hope having a mentor teacher during my full-time internship next semester will help me grow as a classroom manager.
I believe there are many characteristics to being an exemplary teacher. First, I think an exemplary teacher must have good people skills. After all, being a teacher involves constantly working with people of all ages, including students, colleagues, parents, and administrators. Having people skills means being a good communicator, understanding development, and working well with a diverse population. A second important characteristic of an exemplary teacher is enthusiasm. If a teacher is enthusiastic about his or her content their students will likely show a concomitant level of engagement and motivation. Flexibility and organization are two more characteristics of an exemplary teacher that are sometimes at odds. A good teacher must carefully plan units, lessons, assessments, and individual instructional activities to ensure that the content standards are met and students possess the skills they will need when they leave the class. However, a teacher must acknowledge that plans cannot be so rigid. Teachers must differentiate to accommodate the needs of various learners and realize that sometimes things don’t go according to plans, and one must be ready to adapt to the situation. I tend to be very organized and hope, with experience, that I can become a more flexible instructor as well. Lastly, kindness is crucially important for a teacher. There are times that I have to remind myself that I’m not just teaching science, I’m teaching kids. I remember how tough it can be to be a kid. Students get stressed out, have bad days, and consequently aren’t always on their best behavior. Regardless, we as teachers need to recognize these difficulties and do our best to be understanding.
Next semester will be a busy one for me. I’m both excited and nervous about starting my full-time internship, so I do have a couple of personal goals in mind. First, I want to establish classroom rules and procedures that I can take with me when I become a teacher of my own. It’s one thing to read tips and hear suggestions from other teachers, but being in my own classroom will be a completely different experience, and only with practice will I be comfortable as the head of a classroom. I’m fairly confident with my content knowledge and teaching ability, but improving my classroom management skills is the most important goal I have. Secondly, I want to familiarize myself with the curriculum and start to develop my own lessons and units. One of my minor concerns about teaching is knowing exactly what content to cover. The NGSS and MSDE standards are a bit vague, and most of my classroom experience is at the middle school level. I know that Carroll County provides their teachers with unit plans, lesson plans, PowerPoints, and assessments from which they can develop their own materials, so I hope to tweak these to fit my style and generally familiarize myself with the curriculum. I don’t have any other specific goals for next semester, but I hope to continue improving my teaching in general by gaining more experience.
