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My Teaching Platform
Before entering my internship classroom I’ve only had experiences with children in my family and during my observation hours in my perquisite classes. I have a little cousin that I spend a lot of time with and I have seen her grow up. I saw the different learning stages while my cousin was growing up and each year she would change more and more. For example, when she was really little she had a big imagination but it was hard for her to express herself on paper and she could not sit still for long periods of time. Then when she hit 5th grade she was almost the opposite, my cousin wrote her thoughts on paper all the time and could stay focused on one thing for a lengthy amount of time. Those experiences I had with just my cousin influenced how I thought younger vs. older children should be taught in a classroom. Knowing I was going to intern in a second grade classroom I had a feeling when I entered into my intern experience the children would not be able to express themselves very well on paper and would get side-tracked a lot.
My internship school is located in a rural area. The school has a big Hispanic population of students that attend there. The students that are English Language Learners have Spanish speaking teachers that come into the classrooms and help those students out and the school has a translator that can help with commutation problems. So there is a big support system from those students at the school. The school also tries to get all the parents involved. For example, when announcements go home the school makes sure that there is English on one side and Spanish written on the other side. The school also offers a HOST program before and after to school for students.
In the beginning of my internship there were only 14 students and now there are 18 students in the classroom. The students’ desks are in groups and my CT likes to have a lot of group work throughout the day. The “feel” of the room is very calm and the students most of the time are well behaved. Also, the classroom is very fair if the students follow the rules and has a climate of openness. There is a lot of diversity of learners in my classroom. There are some students that are below reading level in the classroom and some are lower than others. For example, one student is on a kindergarten reading level in second grade. Then there are some students that are on level and some students that should be in a gifted classroom. These students all differ when it comes to how they learn better. Some of the students like to work in groups and others just do all their work by themselves. Then some students like to have one-on-one time with my CT or myself to have that extra feedback/help. Then there are ELL students in the classroom. One new ELL student can’t speak any English at the moment and just moved into the United States. Overall, there is a diversity of learners in my internship classroom.
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Beliefs about Teaching
My first belief of what means to be an effective teacher is to have good instructor interactions with the students. This belief addresses the needs of students’ needs and interests because it gives the students the opportunity to interact with their teacher. If teachers interact with their students they will know if the students really understand the materials that are being taught during class. Also, it is important that teachers talk to their students about other things then school. For example, if a teacher asks students, “What are your hobbies?” or “How was your weekend?” this shows that a teacher cares about the students’ interests and has an open classroom. It gives the students a good time to share and really open up and grows their communication skills with adults.
This belief connects both practical and theoretical understanding. It is practical that it is good to have good instructor interactions with students because it will grow a good student-teacher relationship. “Most educators agree that positive student-teacher relations are important and result in positive academic gains…” (Levin, & Nolan, 2014, p.187). For example, when my CT goes around the classroom after she taught a lesson and interacts with the students the students seem to be more engaged and have a better understanding of the lesson she just went over. With theoretical understanding it connects with good instructor interactions because the students’ microsystem becomes stronger. Microsystems, “…includes the people, relationships, and systems that directly interact with the developing individual, such as family, peers, and school.” (Bohlin, Durwin, & Reese-Weber, 2012, p. 31). The students in my internship classroom sees my CT for five days a week, seven hours a day, and how my CT and I interact with those students is very important to their development and microsystems. For example, a student in my internship class was giving me a hard time with an assignment and I stayed very calm and just asked him nicely why he didn’t want to work on it. He saw that my interaction with him was not threatening but caring so he started to do his work. Showing good instructor interactions like that shows students that you are fair and willing to listen to them. Also, if I got mad and yelled at the student he would less likely want to do his work.
Having good instructor interactions with students supports the idea of facilitating learning rather than simply transmitting knowledge because it gives students a better learning environment and they can feel more openness in class. If an instructor interacts poorly or doesn’t seem interested in students or even a lesson they teach, then the students will feel the same way about those things. If the instructor interacts with their students in a positive and friendly/caring way the class will run more smoothly and it will be easier for teachers to teach new lessons to the students.
The collaborative work between me, my CT, and peers at my school and cohort influence my belief about having good instructor interactions with students because I see this belief of mine being displayed all the time. My CT has very good instructor interactions with her students and the students are very open with her because of it. Seeing my CT have good instructor interactions influences how I interact with students in the classroom because I see it works in a positive way. Also, in my cohort when my classmates and I work together on projects we always seem to say that having good relationship with the students is very important and that influenced me to really think that good instructor interactions with the students would build a good relationship with the students.
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My second belief about what it means to be an effective teacher is having good time management. Having good time management addresses the needs of students’ needs and interests because those student will be getting the right information they need in the time frame a teacher has to teach them. If I notice that students seem to be struggling with a certain topic then I would give more time to that lesson for that day or even go back to it the next day. Also, to have good time management I would do lessons that would pique my students’ interests so that they can be more engaged with the topic.
Having good time management connects to both practical and theoretical understanding. My CT always asks the students if they need more time with a certain assignment so that she could get a better understanding of how much more time students need to work on that certain assignment and so that she is able to give to them that time to work on it. “Allocated time refers to the amount of time that teacher makes available for students to learn a subject.” (Levin, & Nolan, 2014, p.133). So if the students need more time working/learning a subject my CT in a practical way figures out how much allocated time to give the students. For example, it would not be practical to give students only 10 minutes to work on a whole worksheet and answer questions about a new topic they just learned. Good time management in a classroom connects to theoretical understanding because it says, “Research on teaching has established that the key to successful management (and successful instruction as well) is the teacher’s ability to maximize the time students spend actively engaged in worthwhile academic assignments and to minimize the time they spend waiting to get started…” (Levin, & Nolan, 2014, p. 133). My CT or I makes sure the class does transitions well and makes sure there is not a lot of time being wasted by doing an attention getting strategy. Even in my university courses the professors talk about how having a good attention getting strategy can help teachers with good time management and getting the students to listen to the teachers instructions.
This belief about having good time management supports the idea of facilitating learning rather than simply transmitting knowledge because it gives teachers and students the right amount of time to actively be in engaged with what is being taught. Having good time management can make the classroom run more smoothly and have the students stay on task and that could facilitate learning because teachers don’t have to keep on stopping and telling students what to do and how much time they have left do work on something. Also, the teacher can just know by just looking at the students if they need more or less time on something and it will be easier on the students because they won’t feel rushed or worried about getting things done. If a teacher gives the appropriate amount of time on lessons/assignments the learning will be less stressful on the students.
When I collaborate with my CT, and peers at my school and cohort the belief of having good time management gets influenced. It mainly gets influenced when working with my CT because she is always saying to me to make sure you give the students enough thinking time/working time. Also, my peers say that it is important to give students the right amount of time to work on assignments so that they can comprehend what they are learning. So far good time management in the classroom seems to be a positive thing to do to be an effective teacher.
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The third belief that I think an effective teacher should do is integrate science and social studies with reading and writing. The students need to develop effective reading and writing skills so integrating science and social studies with reading and writing will give the students more opportunities to work on those skills. Also, it is important that the teacher does not skip over science and social studies because those subjects are important for students to learn about. If a student has no interest in reading or writing then maybe if the teacher integrates science and social studies with reading and writing those students might have more of an interest in working in with those subjects because they are learning about interesting ideas in science or social studies.
This belief connects to practical understanding because, “Science and social studies are the “knowledge” part of the curriculum.” (Cunningham, & Allington, 2016, p. 10). It just makes sense that students will be more interested in topics in science or social studies and learn more realistic things about our word. Science and social studies connects to real life and students can make a better connection with those subjects/topics. For example, my internship classroom was learning about magnets and I asked them to write down what experiences they have had with magnets and one student said that she has magnets on her refrigerator. Then another student wrote down that there was a big magnet at the junk yard he went to with his dad that picked up cars. The students were more engaged with this science topic because they had real examples that they could relate it to and it was easier for them to write about it. Integrating science and social studies with reading and writing can also connect to theoretical understanding. “As children engage in science and social studies units, they have daily opportunities to increase the size of their meaning and knowledge stores and real reasons for reading and writing.” (Cunningham, & Allington, 2016, p. 10). If children have more opportunities throughout the day to work on their reading and writing skills they will gain more knowledge to read and write better. Teachers will see an improvement if student have many opportunities to practice reading and writing throughout the day. In my Emergent Reading class my professor also talks about what an effective classroom should look like and says that we should see our CT integrating science and social studies with reading and writing and those teachers should be teaching those subjects no matter what. Social studies is the main subject that some teachers overlook. My CT makes the time to teach social studies but there is a lot of reading and writing involved in the text the students have to work out of.
The belief of integrating science and social studies with reading and writing supports the idea of facilitating learning rather than simply transmitting knowledge because students will be learning about those subjects but also be getting more practice with their reading and writing. Students will get use to this type of learning and when it comes to writing or reading for a grade those students would have practiced it so much in those subjects that they should feel comfortable. Also, students will have more knowledge about writing topics because science and social studies was integrated with reading and writing.
Collaborating with my CT, peers at my school and in my cohort has influenced my belief that science and social studies should be integrated with reading and writing. One of my professors like I said earlier said that it is very important to have those subjects being taught to the students and that influenced my belief that an effective teacher should do this. It also it stated in one of my textbooks called Classrooms That Work: They Can All Read and Write that it is important to integrate science and social studies with reading and writing to have an effective classroom (Cunningham, & Allington, 2016). When collaborating with my CT she always makes sure that the students read or write something during science and social studies. I have seen the students’ responses and they really seem to write a lot when it comes to science so that influenced me that this belief is really important to be an effective teacher. Also, the students really seem to like those two subjects and they are practicing on their reading and writing skills so that influenced my belief about having science and social studies integrate with reading and writing. Then some of my classmate have told me that they don’t see social studies being taught in their classroom and make me think that those students are really missing out and don’t learn about things that can help them outside of school and it made me think that this belief should be in every classroom.
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Shifts & Expansion of My Beliefs
My current beliefs have expanded from my initial beliefs because of what I have experienced in my internship classroom. I had all these thought and ideas about the classroom but when I got into working with the students I learned what really works for them and things that are important. I knew that teachers had to have good instructor interactions with students but I never knew it could be so important in how a student can learn in class. It is not just how a teacher interacts with students but it is how a teacher interacts with everyone. For example, teachers need good interactions with the students’ parents and try to get them involved as much as possible. Also, as a teacher it is very important to use the right wording when talking to a student or talking with the parents about their child. For example, I stayed for a few parent-teacher conferences and noticed how my CT would talk to the parents about their child and also engaged the student in the conversation. Seeing this made me expand on my belief of good instructor interactions because it doesn’t just deal with the students. Also, I never knew that a teacher could integrate a lot of writing into science but I have seen it in my internship. Teachers just need to be creative when coming up with the lesson. Also, I thought that a time I came up with when writing out lesson plans would be the right amount of time for students to work but I was wrong and it can change depending on certain assignments/lessons. For example, when I was having the students write and share what they wanted to be when they grew up I only thought they needed about 10 minutes to do this. The students kept on saying they needed more time with doing that assignment and I had to ask them if 5 more minutes would be enough of time. So from doing that assignment it expanded my belief about good time management because it all depends on what the students are working on.
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Felt Tensions/Ongoing Wonderings
A tension that I have as I engage in my field experience is trying not to step on my CT toes. I don’t want her to feel like I want to take over her classroom or anything like that. In the classroom, I struggle with explaining things to students in a simpler way. I feel this is a struggle for me because I am not use to using second grade terminology. Also, when a student is really acting up I try not to question my beliefs about good instructor interactions because of this student bad behavior. I try not to show the students with the bad behaviors that it is affecting me.
These tensions lead me to wonder what type of behavioral system I would use in my future classroom to have it run effectively. I would want to learn more about the other systems teachers use to get the classroom to stay on task. As I move into my Level 2 field experience, I continue to wonder about what behavioral system best matches my beliefs.
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Conclusion of Teaching Platform
My beliefs represent the complex nature of teaching and learning because I might have to modify my beliefs each year because each group of students learn differently than the next. My beliefs represent my consideration of the moral and ethical implications of my ideas and actions as they relate to issues of justice and equity because they are there to benefit the students. To ensure equity for my students I would use popsicle sticks and have all the students'names on them and use them when calling on students to answer questions. Using these popsicle sticks with the students' names on them will ensure that all my students have equal access to class discussions and that every student will be able to participate during class. My beliefs will be for every single student in my classroom, and I would never exclude a student from anything. Having good instructor interactions with students, good time management, and integrating science and social studies with reading and writing would benefit all the students in the classroom no matter what culture they're from, what their gender is or ethnicity, etc. I would engage in new activities I am not use to because then I can see my weaknesses from those activities and grow into a better educator for students by working to improve them.
References
Bohlin, L., Durwin, C. C., & Reese-Weber, M. (n.d.). EdPsych Modules (Second ed.). New
York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Cunningham, P., & Allington, R. (2016). Fluency. In Classrooms That Work: They Can All
Read and Write (Sixth ed.). Boston: Pearson.
Levin, J., & Nolan, J. F. (2014). Philosophical Approaches to Influencing Students. In Principles of
Classroom Management (Seventh ed.). Boston: Pearson.
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