Beliefs Statement and Reflections on Student Teaching

BELIEFS STATEMENT

As I continue to learn and grow in this program, through my student teaching experiences, I have begun to develop some beliefs that stem from the idea of teachers as researchers.

As teachers we must constantly be researching our students, our methods and finding ways to grow and improve. (Berthoff, 1986) First and foremost I believe that for students to really grow as learners they must feel like they are in control of the process. Students will be more actively engaged in the material when they feel they have ownership over it. I would like to see my students questioning each other, looking to each other for help, and generally engaging in helpful and active discourse throughout lessons. For this reason questions that I try to develop for my lessons are not there simply to reiterate something I already know, but to get more from the students. (Bransford, 2000)

Additionally, when constructing the lessons I always had in the back of my mind particular student's in my classroom and their individual interests and strengths. I am interested in finding ways to give students more opportunities to show their classmates their strengths and interests through sharing work. I want to make this as authentic as possible and therefore I believe that flexibility on what direction a lesson may go is key. 

Finally, I care deeply about each and every one of my students and wish to see them succeed. In order to make sure that each student is getting what they need out of the lesson I hope to provide opportunities for every voice to be heard and give them an active role to promote agency. (Johnston, 2004)

FINAL REFLECTION

As I come to the close of my year of student teaching I can look back and find moments that defined who I am as a teacher today. This portfolio is only a small portion of those moments captured in one place. However, a general theme across the entire year is that I learned the most and grew the most as a teacher when I stopped to listen. When you do this in the classroom it can not only help you teach better to the kids, but it can help reduce classroom management issues because you know what makes the students tick. Dewey proposes that we reconcile the often conflicting ideas of subject matter and the child. We must work as teachers to develop curriculum that shows the students how the material being studied is not really some distant, abstract concept, but a part of their understanding of the world. Part of this is getting to know our students and finding ways to relate the material to their own personal experiences.

The teaching profession requires you, as a teacher, to act as a perpetual student. I fully plan to continue question and reflect on my teaching practices. Some questions still remain as I leave this year. First, how can I create more opportunity for the students to engage in discourse with each other? Much of my time this year was spent finding ways to have students find a voice in the classroom and engage in discussion-based lessons. However, I think it is equally important for students to learn how to turn to their peers. Particularly, during the discussions I’ve had over the past year I would have liked to see students responding to what their peers were saying (agreeing, disagreeing or simply adding on). This kind of discourse requires modeling and set up that begins on the very first day of school and I look forward to working on this over the coming years. Lastly, how can I motivate my students or give them a sense of independence to want to push themselves and challenge themselves academically that comes from an intrinsic (rather than superficial) place. Thinking about myself as a learner I always enjoyed the challenge and it pushed me to do better in school. This is something I hope to pass on to my students as their teacher.

REFERENCES

Johnston, P.H. (2004). Choice Words: How Our Language Affects Children’s Learning. Portland, Maine: Stenhouse Publishers.

Bransford, et al. (2000). How people learn: Brain, Mind, Experience and School. Washington, D.C: National Academies Press. 

Berthoff, Ann E. (1986). The Teacher as Researcher. In D. Goswami and P.R. Stillman (Eds.), Reclaiming the Classroom: Teacher research as an agency for change. Upper Montclair, NJ: Boynton/Cook Publishers. 

Tomlinson, C.A. (1999). Teachers at work building differentiated classrooms. In The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of All Learners. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Responsible Science Lesson

Students instantly started working together to sort trash items.
They worked collaboratively and talked each other through
their reasoning. After they were done I asked them to explain
to me why they had classified the items into the different categories.

What

The curricular content of the lesson ties into the general overarching unit the students are working at the moment, I am Responsible. The lesson is focused on how students can be responsible in their lives to help the planet be a better and greener place. Goals for the students include learning about different ways that we can “be green” that are simple and easy first steps to a better world. The students will also focus on trash and recycling, because discarding is an action that even a first grade student can control.  Students will learn about the different types of garbage being thrown away, ending up in the landfill and how that impacts our world. Students will have a better understanding of what can be recycled and how it should be classified and sorted. Most of the state standards are not necessarily focused on environmental issues and sustainability so we chose to focus on classification and sorting since it is a big part of the activity. We will also address the standards on biotechnologies and the idea of waste management through a discussion on the difference between trashing and recycling items. 

                                                                                    

During our "trash talk" I showed the students the Reduce,
Reuse, Recycle symbol and asked them to explain what they
thought each term meant. We talked about what could happen
to the environment if we didn't recycle. Students proposed
different ways to reuse household items and conserve the amount
of paper they use in their school journals.

How

I will start by asking students to sort the trash items into different categories that they see fit. This will allow the students to explore with the different materials and give us a chance to gauge their understanding. I will have the students explain their methods for sorting and then have a “trash talk” about what ends up in landfills and what could be done in terms of recycling. We will have discussions about the repercussions of having all of these things end up in a landfill instead of being recycled and reused. The culminating activity will be reading aloud 10 Things I Can Do to Help My World. During and after reading the story students will be prompted with questions about their own actions. After each action explained in the book students will be prompted to see if they already do this and why they do/how this helps our world. This will lead to thinking about ways to be green beyond sorting trash properly and how this is “being responsible.”

Why

Students were actively engaged. Here I show them the recycling
symbol on a can they had just sorted. They continued to try and
find it on the other objects. At the end of the lesson each student
is named "Recycling Star" in charge of keeping the classroom clean.

I selected the topic because it fit into the overarching theme for the coming weeks in the classroom of I am Responsible! The idea was formed around using the text 10 Things I Can Do to Help My World. The text was creative and fit along perfectly with the other material being used in the classroom for this unit. It was small, easy steps for even the youngest children to understand and adapt into their daily lives. We believe that most of the learning happens when students are prompted to answer and ask questions amongst themselves and decided to use this to model most of the lesson. There is a recycling bin in the classroom, but students don’t know how to use it properly and this lesson will be a great introduction to proper recycling. There is one particular student that will be pulled into this small group lesson because he constantly expresses an interest in garbage trucks and recycling so this lesson will play into this interests well. The lesson was designed to fill a gap in the current state standards to the School District of Philadelphia. No science standards are expected of first graders and we believe that this lesson is a simple and easy way to introduce students to science that fits into the broader district unit and also teaches kids how to be active and responsible community advocates for sustainability that students in these low performing schools do not normally have access to.

To wrap up the lesson on helping the environment we read Melanie Walsh’s book and discussed how each task was “being responsible.”

Higher Level Questioning as a Form of Assessment

    Throughout the year many of my lesson plans include high level questions that I plan to pose to the students to get them to stretch their thinking. The questions go beyond “what?” and ask “why?” and “how?”. Carpenter and Johnston both stress the importance of having students explain their thinking when teaching. The most important question you can ask in a math lesson is “how did you get that?” and having the student explain their mathematical reasoning to their peers. This forces the student to take on an “agentive position” while retelling their process to the class. (Johnston, 2004) Once you begin to find out how students approach a problem you, as a teacher, begin to learn more about how they think which in turn can help greatly in knowing what areas need to be revisited or where any mistakes may be happening in their thought process. The same goes for teaching any other subject. When doing a read aloud with the class I always start with a series of questions referring back to what we previously covered. This gives me a chance to understand what things may need more time to be fully grasped and what the students are picking up on. Flexibility is an important quality for a teacher to have and with this kind of informal assessment a teacher can adjust lessons accordingly to the student’s needs.

    Bloom’s Taxonomy refers to the different types of learning that can occur in the classroom. At Friends Select School and my own teaching philosophy focuses heavily on two of those levels of learning, cognitive and affective. The questioning used reaches all levels of understanding on the Bloom’s Taxonomy from knowledge all the way up to the highest level of understanding of evaluation.

    Below you will see a selection of questions from a variety of lessons I taught at Friends Select School.

Two Week Curriculum on Underground Railroad

    The curriculum I developed for my two week takeover centered around the idea of the Underground Railroad and communication. The curriculum was designed to give students the chance to explore what interested them about the Underground Railroad. Our first lesson was an introduction to the Underground Railroad. Students helped construct a class KWL chart (pictured below). The students spent 15 minutes offering up questions and things that they “wondered” about the Underground Railroad. As it happened a lot of the questions my students had about the Underground Railroad were topics I had already planned to cover. The lesson was a success because it set the tone for the rest of the unit that I was interested in knowing what they wanted to learn and would listen to them. Many of the social studies lessons followed the pattern of informal assessment discussed earlier in this portfolio.

Similarly, the lesson featured below was a culminating activity of the unit. After several classes discussing the many ways in which abolitionists worked to help end slavery the students were then asked, “If you were an abolitionist what would YOU do to help end slavery?” The students brainstormed together as a class some general ideas of actions they would have taken to help bring an end to slavery. The students had amazing and thoughtful ideas that showed their commitment to social justice issues and taking a stand. 

Class developed list of ideas to end slavery.

An example of one student's action plan.

Once the students brainstormed a list of possible options they were then sent to work in groups of four to pick an “action item” from our class list and develop a step-by-step plan. We discussed the concept that these big ideas were great in theory, but it takes a lot of work to actually set a plan in motion. Students then worked out a plan, discussed and debated with their table members on the best steps to take. This activity truly required students to be involved in what Johnston refers to as a “Democratic Learning Environment”. (Johnston, 2004) The students had to learn how to truly work together as a group. There were some issues of arguing that occurred while the students devised their plans, however the students were forced to come to an agreement (or make a compromise) and work towards a common goal. In business school we learn that one of the most important tools to have is knowing how develop as a group and go through the four stages of forming, norming, storming and finally performing. The same goes for students learning to work in groups in a learning environment. Once the groups had all finished devising a plan they presented their work to the class. As a whole class we discussed each plan and the positives and negatives we saw in each plan. Finally, the class voted on what plan they would have invested in as a member of an anti-slavery organization. This project required the students to involve themselves in the time period and take on the role of those they had been studying. It also gave the students opportunities to engage in debate with their classmates. After instruction from me (the teacher) the students then took on the active role of having a voice and using it to make a difference. 

For the last day of the unit the students visited the historic Johnson House in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia. One of the things I learned from my Neighborhood Study was that local resources can often be your greatest tool. The students love when they realize that history happened just around the corner! The house was a stop on the Underground Railroad and housed a meeting space for the Anti-Slavery Association and people such as the “father of the Underground Railroad” William Still. This trip was meant to show students that the Underground Railroad is not just some topic we learn about from a history textbook, but is a living, breathing part of Philadelphia history. Sometimes students learn about historic events that seem so distant and remote from their own lives that it is important to remind students that history surrounds us. The docent pictured here was impressed with how much history of the Underground Railroad we had covered for students so young. Every single hand shot up in the air every time a question was posed and the students were eager to share what they knew.