Successes

Successes

    I feel at my best in my classroom when students are engaged in some type of group work. I’m not a big fan of standing in front of the class and lecturing. Of course, that’s part of teaching, but a much smaller part now than it used to be, and I certainly don’t enjoy lecturing because I can tell that it bores students. Class is much more enjoyable when students are having fun with active learning. We’ve done a lot of lab activities this semester and it’s obvious that students enjoy these much more than they enjoy PowerPoints and worksheets. Similarly, students seem more motivated to learn when I make connections between course content and their everyday lives. What I love about science, and biology specifically, is that there is always a way to relate what we need to learn in class to students’ lives outside of class. This helps me avoid the dreaded question: “why are we learning this?” It also improves student engagement because meaningful learning taps into the natural curiosity of the students.

    My best success stories have come when students engage in meaningful learning. Most of the time, this occurs when students are able to participate in a hands-on lab activity. For example, when we were covering the properties of water, I had students circle around to different stations throughout the room, each one with a demonstration that corresponds to a different property of water. After students had been to all the stations, I taught them the properties of water and challenged them to match each property to each station. Students found these stations fun, and the challenge of matching a property to each one was highly motivating. We’ve done other labs that were similarly fun, such as the carbohydrate lab in which students were challenged to determine if various sugars were monosaccharides, disaccharides, or polysaccharides.

    Another one of my successes, and one of my biggest challenges, has come with our policy managing cell phones and other personal electronic devices. From the first day of class, my menor teacher and I established that we didn’t want to see or hear phones in class unless specifically specified for instructional purposes. We were firm and consistent with the enforcement of this policy from the start, and that has helped us minimize distractions throughout the school year. Managing student behavior was one of my concerns when I first started my internship, but this policy has taught me that being fair and consistent with a class policy is best for minimizing disciplinary issues.

 I think the MAT program has prepared me really well for my teaching career. I appreciate that the program gradually got me back into the classroom by starting me with an observational experience, followed by a part-time teaching experience, and finally the full-time internship. Additionally, I have learned many practical skills that I’ve been able to use in the classroom to maximize student learning. The 5E model, for example, is something I’ve used every day to develop engaging and meaningful lesson plans. Finally, the feedback I’ve received from my lesson observations have been invaluable for improving my teaching. I can tell what some of my strengths and weaknesses are when I teach, but it’s nice to have mentor teachers that can watch me and provide me with useful feedback that I can use to improve my instruction.

Culturally Relevant Pedagogy

Culturally Relevant Pedagogy

    Culturally relevant pedagogy seems to be synonymous with culturally competent teaching, which we discussed in our first course in this MAT program. Being a culturally competent teacher involves effectively meeting the needs of all your students in a diverse classroom. A culturally competent teacher must therefore be unbiased, fair, caring, and flexible. Such a teacher must diffuse stereotype threat, view all students as capable learners, and have high expectations for all learners, irrespective of their race, religion, or gender. Culturally relevant pedagogy thus must incorporate multicultural curricular content, provide all students with equal opportunity for success, and be sensitive to students with differing perspectives.

   

    It’s hard to say if I’ve experienced culturally relevant pedagogy in my school system. The county in which I teach is one of the least diverse counties in the state, but I think it does a good job of making education accessible for the minority students in the district. Regardless, there are many ways to incorporate culturally relevant pedagogy into my lessons. For one, my teaching should appeal to various learning styles and my lessons should be flexible. If students of different cultures are comfortable with different approaches to learning, then incorporating various approaches and styles will help those students find one that works for them, while simultaneously making all learners more well-rounded. Peer tutoring and cooperative learning are other techniques I can use in my lessons to promote cultural competence. Pairing students with others gives them the opportunity to work with someone who may be from a different cultural background, allowing the students to compare their personal views and hopefully reduce stereotypical feelings. Finally, the promotion of a growth mindset is a component of culturally relevant pedagogy. Minority students may be turned off by STEM courses due to common stereotypes that suggest that these students will struggle in those courses. Deliberately teaching and promoting a growth mindset can show students that traits such that intelligence are not fixed; rather, they are malleable traits that can be modified through effort.

    I don’t think a teacher can be completely effective if he or she is not culturally competent. If a teacher does not use culturally relevant pedagogy, they may accidentally marginalize a particular group of students or fail to understand a student’s struggles. One of the challenges of teaching is finding one or more ways to help each student in a diverse classroom of students succeed. This can be done by appealing to various learning styles, incorporating cooperative learning activities, and promoting a growth mindset, for example. Having students conduct research projects about scientists of diverse backgrounds is another interesting way to reduce stereotypical mindsets and provide minority students with positive role models. Regardless of the specific techniques one chooses, the importance of emphasizing culturally relevant pedagogy in education is undeniable.

Growth Mindset and Affective Assessment

Growth Mindset and Affective Assessment

Supporting the growth mindset has been one of my biggest takeaways from this MAT program. Among other things, we’ve learned that students with a growth mindset persist through struggles, use mistakes as learning opportunities, and are more motivated to learn. I try to support the development of the growth mindset with the feedback I provide to students. When students succeed, saying things such as “you’re so smart” implies that intelligence is an innate or fixed trait that remains largely unchanged. Instead, I try to say things like “you must have worked so hard” to remind students that effort is the most important determinant of success. I have a few students who have really struggled throughout this semester, and I’ve tried to constantly remind them that they can improve their grade, but it won’t happen without effort.

    Another strategy I use to support the growth mindset is second chance learning. If a student performs poorly on a summative assessment such as a test or a quiz, he or she is eligible to retake the assessment if certain conditions are met. First, the student must complete a form in which they describe what they did to prepare for the last assessment, why that didn’t work for them, and what they will do differently to prepare for their retake. Then, the student must complete a study guide I’ve constructed to help them review the material. Finally, the student must make corrections to their first assessment. After all this is complete, the student may take a new assessment. Second chance learning of this nature helps students understand that we can learn from our mistakes. Furthermore, students who take advantage of second chance learning opportunities tend to realize that the reason they didn’t perform well on the first assessment wasn’t because they lacked the intelligence to do well; rather, they didn’t pay attention in class or didn’t study enough leading up to the assessment. These mistakes are fixable.

    I think my support of the growth mindset has created a very positive atmosphere in my classroom. I don’t have many students with poor attitudes, but even when certain students are struggling, they know that they only need a little effort to turn things around. The growth mindset has also allowed me to be a more flexible teacher. For example, I understand that not all students will prefer the same approach to learning as I do, so I need to incorporate variety into my lessons. Similarly, I know that some students need to put a little extra work into their studies to succeed. For this reason, our school has a “flex” mod in which students can sign up to go to a particular classroom for extra practice or more personalized instruction. In my opinion, this flex mod has also improved my relationship with my students. I have a handful of students who regularly come to my flex mod to ask questions, do practice problems, and study the material. Students appreciate that I will take the time to help them when they are struggling, and I’ve noticed that students will work harder for you when they know that you work harder for them.

    I use affective assessment to give my students a say in how the class runs. For example, I used an interest and engagement survey before and after students completed a project to see how student attitudes toward science and projects had changed. I learned that students enjoy completing projects and working in groups, so I’ve incorporated more group projects into my instruction. Most of my affective assessment, however, has been informal. I’ve polled the class a few times at the end of lessons to see how willing they’d be to do similar lessons again. This has taught me, for example, that my students aren’t big fans of WebQuests and most virtual labs. On the opposite end, students love competing against each other in review games, so I use Kahoot and Pictionary to make learning fun. As much as I try to use affective assessment to improve student learning, I admit that I can do more to incorporate this type of assessment in my instruction. I should consider using surveys at the beginning of each unit and as part of the summative assessment at the end of the unit to monitor students’ attitudes and feelings toward science.