Reflection Paper
Kyle Patterson
Mrs. Eastman EDUC 111
Reflection Paper
Before I registered for Introduction to Teaching, I had a misconception of teaching. I just thought that teaching was going to be an easy and fun occupation, but at the same time very rewarding. I also thought that I was completely ready to enter the field. This conception wasn’t completely wrong, but I now know I will have to add in some missing parts. Teaching is fun, but at the same time it is very stressful. You not only have the school evaluating your abilities, but you also have the student’s parents, and the students. Teaching is very rewarding, but it can be hard at sometimes to get through to all the students in order for them to learn. Through this experience I have learned that there were a few parts that I still need to work on while at Manchester College and I can’t wait to develop them.
The first day that I was in Mrs. Griffey’s class I did a lot of observations on how the students and teacher interact, and the classroom environment. Classes are a strange and unique thing, like snowflakes, because each period of the day you have different personalities and students, so no one class is alike. Because no one classroom is going to be alike, you have to change and or add/subtract some methods of teaching and rules for the class. An example for this is that one class might have a progressivism feel or that is the students are encouraged to work in groups and have a free give-and-take of ideas, there is some order but not a lot. But for the next period you might have to have a lot of order, have the students raise their hands, and limit the group activities because if you allow these things the students can’t handle them and the classroom turns into D-day all over again. It is very important to recognize how the students in your classroom learn. Some might be linguistic, this means you will have to incorporate some writing and speaking in your room. While others might be spatial or kinesthetic, so you might have to put some movement and objects into the class lesson plan. You can’t just lecture the students all the time because that might only benefit half of the classroom population, while the other half is bored out of their mind. The classroom environment isn’t just the seating arrangements although that is important; it is also how you interact with the students. The seating arrangement is the placement of the students. Some might work better in groups, so try to incorporate some groups of desk. But there might also be those that would rather be alone or with just one student, so arranging the desks in rows would be a good idea. It’s really important to understand the classroom is a diverse place. Each student comes from a different home life. What you might interpret as inappropriate behavior, in the student’s home life would be consider acceptable behavior. In some ways the teacher defines the environment within the classroom. The way the teacher interacts with the students formulates how the students feel about the class. Some teachers make the classroom a hostile place, where the students can’t learn because they are so focused on defending themselves against the teacher. In most cases the teacher can make the classroom a fun and safe place where the students can learn because they are comfortable. Classroom environment and student teacher interactions are vital in the learning processes of the students. This is because you develop a relationship with the student where you can begin to recognize how they learn. After developing a relationship with the student you can then incorporate ways that will help them learn into your daily plan. Each class will have a different plan because the classes are filled with different students who all have their individual style of learning.
There were only