'COMMITMENT TO STUDENTS' AND 'PROFESSIONAL KNOWLEDGE'

AMANDA DEN BLEKER
adenbleker@yahoo.ca

Personal Philosophy of Education

Audiotape Analysis

Observation Notes and Reflective Summaries:

The First Week of School - Observation Notes (word document)

Reflective Summary #1 - The First Day of School

Reflective Summary #2 - Short and Long Range Plans

Reflective Summary #3 - Assessment, Evaluating, and Reporting

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Personal Philosophy of Education (top)(main page)

I believe that teachers are guides for learning and to be successful guides they must recognize the diverse group of learners that exist. All students are capable of achieving success in school with direction, encouragement, and drive. Teachers must target the needs of each individual student to help them achieve at their best level.

Student success is based on teacher assessment; therefore students must be involved in the evaluation process with a full understanding of the teacher’s method of evaluation and expectations. Rubrics are an excellent form of assessment and give students the opportunity to review what is expected in detail prior to completing tasks. Given that students learn in many different ways, they will also have a variety of favoured methods for demonstrating their learning. I have to offer students a selection of assessment strategies including oral, visual and written forms.

I believe that education is a three-way process that is highly based on communication. The first is the obvious one, communication between students and teachers. The second is communication between the parent and the teacher. The third mode of communication is between the student and parent. I believe that we must teach to motivate the learner so that they have something new and exciting to bring home and share with their parents on a regular basis.

I believe that the curriculum must be moulded by the teacher so that it is presented in a way that relates to the students’ everyday lives and, therefore, has meaning. Students must be able to learn through hands on experimentation, group discussions, and inquiry so that they can be engaged in their work so that it is meaningful. Education also serves as a means for teaching societal values such as respect, responsibility, empathy, honesty, and the list continues.

I think the number one necessity to a wholesome classroom is respect and I believe that to best meet this criterion, my classroom must function so that all members have a role. It is very important in an inclusive classroom where all members feel belongingness that there are leadership roles that rotate throughout the year from student to student. All students need to feel important and as through their daily contribution. As a role model to my students, I must model respect in the same fashion and strive to develop a school culture in which all teachers can respect, help, and share with one another to make the school a fun place to be, work, and learn.

Learning is a life-long process and it is something that I will present to my students every day. I believe that I must model the behaviours that I expect and thus continuous education and learning can take place. The first step is to reflect on my own practices and regular strategies, the second is to listen to our students and learn from their suggestions, and the third is to continually acquire additional qualifications to make ourselves more well-rounded teachers with an even better understanding of who our student are.

Audiotape Analysis (top)(main page)

Priorities for Improvement/Actions
1. Removing ‘okay’ from my vocabulary. One action would be to include wait time, so that I can gather my thoughts.
2. Slowing down my rate of speech as well as my rate of delivery. An action to resolve this would be better planning which includes wait time.
3. Prepare more thoughtful questions (and hopefully spend less time on homework take up). I plan to refer to Bloom’s Taxonomy to prepare some higher level questioning in my planning. I also want to try a few different methods for homework take up. Here are a few: 1) have a 5-10 minute quiz that is related to the homework from the previous night (or two nights before) to assess students understanding, 2) have a quiz again, but open notebook. If students have done the homework, they will do well, and 3) have students put the answers on the board.

Summaries

The First Day of School - Summary #1 (top)(main page)

The ‘first day of school jitters’ were arising again as I walked into my (practice teaching) classroom. The teacher introduced me as a student teacher and told the class that they will be my first class; my first teaching experience. That was so exciting, overwhelming and scary. Me…a teacher…when did this happen? All of a sudden there were 30 students all looking in my direction, and all I could do was smile!?

The importance of developing rapport with students came to me even before I reached the classroom. Students have to trust me to teach them, and trust what I say. Any of my teachers that I really liked made an effort to get to know me. I made a special effort on the first day to remember the names of each student and that helped me to develop a bond with ‘my’ first students. This first week of beginning to build a relationship with these students made me feel more comfortable about second placement. I want to be a fun teacher, with a fun classroom environment, with fun unit plans, and make learning about enjoyment rather than work. I will attempt to achieve this by building rapport with my students and taking all of their ideas, suggestions, and comments into consideration.

Through a multiple intelligence survey that my associate teacher had all students complete, I realized the number of learning styles that exist. As a teacher I will take all of the multiple intelligences and special needs that exist in my classroom into consideration when planning, by preparing my lessons a variety of ways. I will make myself as versatile as possible to meet the needs of all my students and to include every one of them in classroom activities. There are so many jobs that a teacher does, including attendance, and collecting forms. I will be giving leadership responsibilities to my students on a rotating basis so that they all will get a chance to be the head of the class. I want every student to feel important and special.

As I am writing this, I realize more and more how my classroom will be like a family; a big web of people all coming together for a purpose but all connecting in some unique way. This brings me to another question. What is the purpose? I believe that we are gathered to learn, develop and to succeed. All students have the capabilities to succeed.

Through the introduction of ‘The Race West’ by my associate teacher, the students were all motivated to run as many laps as they could. During all of my years teaching, I plan to challenge and motivate my students in all aspects of student life. I want students to be able to have some passion of each subject no matter how small. To learn, interest in what you are learning has to be real. I will try to motivate my students, not just in my teachable subject; math, but in all subjects.

So although I do not believe that the ‘first day jitters’ will ever dissipate, I want to be prepared for anything. I want to be open to new things and new tasks, as the teaching profession will bring many challenges to my doorstep. I will always start each year and each day off with a smile and remember that I am a teacher, and I do make a difference.

Short and Long Range Plans - Summary #2 (top)(main page)

What I learned from my principal in regards to long range plans will always be remembered. They are about teacher accountability and are in place for the benefit of the teacher. The thought of going into a year of teaching not knowing where I will end up is actually a really scary idea for me. The way I like to look at long range plans is as one big lesson plan. The units or themes to be covered are the expectations in general, and the whole year is what teachers need to accomplish.

During practicum, I was a little frustrated that all the students did not understand integers, and I really wanted them all to have a real grasp for the concept. I came to realize that not every student will get perfect in every subject or every unit/theme/topic. By creating long range plans and thus assigning a general, flexible timeline you will set guidelines as to how long you CAN spend on one area. I had only one student actually fail the integer test, and I told her that she is welcome to set up a time, any time to come for some help, and she didn’t, so at some point the responsibility of understanding the material is up to the student.

I have heard a lot about never being able to cover every expectation. This may be true, but since the curriculum is a continuous process, I would hope that I could plan successfully to cover everything within the school year. One idea that has been repeatedly mentioned is including cross-curricular activities. I think it would be really difficult to organize a cross curricular activity at the spur of the moment. Long range plans will allow me to plan units that work together at the same time.

Also the long range plans is a map of expectations, you can vary the easier and the harder expectations, so that the students are not bogged down with trying to understand ten difficult concepts right at the end of the year. Teaching on the Tuesday following Thanksgiving, I realized how important it is to plan teaching major concepts on days OTHER THAN the first day after a holiday. Students are too excited. This also happens on Fridays’ they are so wound about the weekend ahead that you lose them. Planning ahead can help you foresee these days and plan around them, or plan less complex expectations on these days.

As a teacher I hope to cover all the expectations with my plans so that my students are not missing an important part of the courses development. By creating long range plans, I am setting a goal for myself. Goals are so important in everyday life and our jobs because then we have to work for something. In terms of long range and short range plans, I believe that these are essential for my weaker subjects. Teaching math I am really good at doing ‘at the seat of my pants’ but knowing how to analyse poetry… I don’t know where I would start. Students are more on the ball than we often give them credit for. As a teacher and role-model, I hope to never let my students see me unprepared as a day wasted is an expectation or two. I expect my students to be organized and I am sure that they expect the same.

Assessment, Evaluating, and Reporting - Summary #3 (top)(main page)

I am happy to have the opportunity to discuss assessment strategies and evaluation in this summary because on my last placement I struggled so much with it at the beginning of my placement and I still have some problems now that I hope to overcome.

I was able to teach math and history these past three weeks. The history unit was already planned by my associate and therefore my assessment strategies were already laid out for me. During my three weeks I had students complete a mind map on the people living or moving into western Canada during settlement, a comparative timeline of the two major rebellions, and a resume on Louis Riel. For each assignment I had planned a rubric as my recording device and I found it so helpful to assess the students. Each student was provided with the rubric before each assignment so that they were aware of what I was expecting. The first rubric that I created was more difficult to mark with because I included several points into each level and I had many students in a variety of levels and had to average them out, which often created a higher success level than they would have received otherwise. My second rubric was much more successful. One thing that I changed was not including the number of items that I expected, because many students had the correct number on the first assignment but they were of low quality and I had the number expected under a level three. I am happy to say that I learned a great lesson about rubrics.

For math, I knew from my last placement that there was a major problem with homework completion. One option was to collect the homework, but to save myself the marking, I decided on a quick 4-5 simple question quiz to assess what they understood on homework. At the end of my placement I gave them a test on the overall measurement unit. As I reflect on my overall placement, I realize that I did my students a disservice. I only assessed them using a testing technique. I had five students fail my unit and now I wonder if I had have included different assessment strategies such as assignments or activities that I would have given them a more rounded opportunity to succeed. My final culminating project included splitting the class into pairs, and having each pair create one ring of the ‘Olympic circles’. I never even though of including that as an assessment strategy and I should have.

My continuous struggle is with allowing students the opportunity to submit assignments late. During this placement my associate and I talked a lot about how teachers are not allowed to assess the students based on having their assignments in on time. I have a difficult time accepting assignments late for a few reasons: 1) it makes collection of assignments and marking more difficult for me, 2) it does not give students any level of responsibility. An example of the latter was when my students knew they could hand it in late and not be penalized, I only received 50% of the class’s assignments and I wanted to mark them before I left. By giving students marks for being on time, it could encourage students to complete assignments. I want all of my students to succeed and I realize that some students may need more time, but there will always be another assignment starting as well and to succeed in life you need to complete work when it is due. I realize that this can be mentioned in the learning skills section of the report card but that does not encourage students to work hard. My associate teacher has a method whereby he will only accept late assignments up until the point where he returns assignments marked. After that late assignments are given a zero.

Overall I learned a lot about marking using rubrics as well as the creation of rubrics. On my next two placements, I hope to incorporate more of the other three recording techniques. I really want to include more variety of assessment strategies for math to ensure that all students can succeed because not all students excel with tests. My next steps in regard to late assignments are to try and determine a fair policy that will be able to have as many students come out of my class as successful.

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