Wesley Bauerschlag

AGSC 325--Instructional Design in AGSC

Reflection Paper

             Learning to be a great teacher is a difficult task.  The need for quality teachers is growing every year.  Experience is usually the best teaching tool that one gains over the long course of a career.  However, at Texas A&M University in The Agricultural Education Department, the professors teach things that can speed the learning experience curve so that the transition into teaching is smooth.

            I have learned many educational lessons in this course AGED 325.  The first lesson that we learned was about the differences in the regular classroom compared to the agriculture classroom.  The differences were not apparent to me like I thought they would have been.  The agricultural classes are going to take more time to prepare, more after school hours, more hands-on teaching activities, and more liability than the regular classroom.  There are many good things that also different but beneficial to the agricultural classes.  Often you get to know your students better, because they take classes from you for multiple years.  The students also get very involved in after school activities such as FFA, Leadership Development Events, and Supervised Agriculture Events. 

Piaget’s four stages of cognitive development helped me to figure out how the development and maturity of our learning behaviors works, in theory.  Lev Vygotsky developed the zone of proximal development, which tells us that there is a level of proficiency where students can not be successful without the help of someone teaching them.  I believe that the teacher should guide his/her students into situations where the students are engaged and teach themselves through research, trial and error, and common sense.  Students are all going to be different and learn differently and as educators we must learn to recognize and adapt our teachings to maximize our students’ education.

There are tests to figure out personality traits and different learning styles to help us learn better and teach better we must be aware of the different learning styles that we tend to have so that we do not teach a one sided perspective.  There are visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners and each has there own ways that they prefer to learn.  The visual learners are very good at remembering what they see, so teaching with power-point slide shows and visual demonstrations would be effective methods to teach a visual learner.  In order to also the auditory learners it would be important to have sounds for the student.  Perhaps having the slides read out loud to the class or having to make a catchy tune to help the students remember difficult concepts and to memorize things in a list.  The last type of learner is the kinesthetic learner, whom finds the agriculture classroom the ideal place to learn, because they learn from a hands-on perspective.  Working in the shop and doing things with their hands is the best way for kinesthetic learners to learn.  No matter which style of learning is best for you, it is important to remember that you are going to have all different types of learning styles in your classroom and you must make your lessons reach as many students as possible. 

This class was important in teaching us what the TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge & Skills) was and how we incorporate it into our classrooms.  The TEKS is basically a set of guidelines that the state puts together to insure that the certain things are being taught in our schools.  Putting together the proper lesson at the proper time is very important, and is known as scope and sequence.  Scope and sequence is deciding the order and time that you will teach the TEKS for the course.  One of the things that I have learned includes learning how many different learning styles there are and how to address each of them.  I have also learned how to be an effective teacher through different styles and activities to engage the students. 

In order for me to become an effective teacher I must acquire traits like having enthusiasm, being clear in all aspects, keeping the students on there toes, running the class in an orderly fashion, and most importantly keeping the learning environment available for the students.  I believe that positive enthusiasm in the classroom will keep the students interested in the lesson and not falling asleep or getting into trouble.  Making sure that your presentations and demonstrations and clear and to the point, to cut down on confusion and possible communication problems.  It is important to change your approach so that your students will be surprised instead of expecting the same boring day.  Having a good time is what keeps teaching fun.  However, you need to run the classroom like a business in order to keep your professional image and earn the respect of your students. 

One of the more tedious activities that a teacher has to go through is writing lesson plans.  Lesson plans are great teaching tools if used properly can lead to unbelievable results in learning and being efficient in the classroom.  There are several parts to developing a proper lesson plan and they include references to the TEKS that are being taught, objectives, materials, and the teaching procedure that will be used.  The teaching procedure includes how you will prepare for the lesson.  There needs to be a link between what the students know already and the new lesson.  The next part of the lesson shall include a motivational way to get the students captivated towards learning the lesson.  Next, you will need to present the lesson in a way that the students will be able to learn the material no matter what type of learning style that they possess. 

The neat thing about Aged 325 was that we got to learn how to set up our own web page.  It was difficult at first and seemed kind of frustrating, because of the difficulty of the format and the lack of previous knowledge.  Knowing how to create a web page is very useful information, and is a very powerful tool that can be used to get a job and to inform the parents and students about what the up coming lesson will be about.  The student would be able to look-up missing or due assignments.  We also had a crash course on how to make a power-point, which is nice to get a refresher course.  I was certified in power-point 2003.  I gained a wealth of knowledge from taking this course and I am very happy to have had to opportunity to learn the basics of teaching, before I go into the real world. 

Wesley Daniel Bauerschlag

P.O. Box 7023

College Station, TX 77844

e-mail: wdb2003@yahoo.com

Phone: 210-355-7005

AGED 325 HOMEPAGE

AGED 601 HOMEPAGE