EDSS 531 Reflection

              My experience in this class, The Reflective Professional, has been one that allowed me to realize the importance of reflection upon events and individual students as a means to meet students’ needs and continually grow at a teacher. What I learned throughout the course this semester, in addition to the significance of reflection, is that it is important to understand my own beliefs and biases and to increase student creativity and right-brained thinking through different teaching models such as synectics.

              We started this course with a journal which allowed me to reflect on my first clinical practice experience, in which I put myself in the shoes of my students. In this journal, I described what it is like for them to be students in my class and to move through classes in a day at my school site. It was a great way to start this course and remind myself that it is my duty as a 21^st century educator to try to eliminate the “shuffling” that goes on in public high schools these days.

              In the 3^rd week of the course, both the night and day cohorts participated in an online dialogue in which we responded to the following prompt: “What are your biases and how do you mitigate your behavior when working with students?” This was one of the highlights of the course for me, because it synthesized an in-class activity with an online-based assignment. Many of the assignments I had this semester were open to interpretation because there wasn’t much class-time for discussion. This particular assignment had an entire class devoted to this topic and it resulted in a very rich experience for all involved.

              I also had a great time with my model presentation assignment. My group had a lot of good preparation on the assignment, and got help from Jannis well before our assignment was due. I thought synectics was the coolest of the different models presented and thought we did a good job of explaining its aspects and benefits. I have yet to try this model out in my clinical practice yet, but I will keep it in my back pocket until I have the right need for it.

              I know I might be going over the one-page requirement , but I wanted to note the appreciation I have for you reminding us that writing down our thoughts and being creative through writing poetry  or participating in games such as Two Truths and a Lie are fun ways to create experiences that will endure in my memory. In addition, I realize that this was semester with an experiment, and the cohorters were “guinea pigs;” but I appreciate all you guys did to understand our situation. Being a teacher means being flexible, and you all emulated that fact. I hope you don’t take it personally when some students attack the way this semester went. To me, to be that upset shows a lack of flexibility.

531 Journal 5 - CPI Reflection

Q: Looking back at your teaching last semester, what did you discover about the needs of your students in your classes? What kinds of "needs" surfaced that surprised you?

A: Last semester I realized that my students needed remediation on fundamental mathematical skills that are crucial to progress in higher-level mathematics and in the material I was required to teach. This need certainly surprised me in that it was so widely prevalent in my class.

Another need I discovered about my students was the fact that many did not have the trust in their abilities to  "get" the right answer. On many occasions, I would help a student with the steps in completing a task, only to have them ask me at the end if their answer is correct. The first few times I was asked this question I was surprised. but I found out that many of my students have the same insecurities. I have no doubt that the fault here lies with the way in which my students have been taught mathematics up until that point in their lives. My students have been taught that there is usually only one "right" way to do math. Over time, after being told that they have been "wrong" over and over, my students feel dumb, end up hating mathematics, and completely distrust their own abilities in the subject. A colleague of mine working at High Tech High North County wrote a great blog on the issue recently (see Bryan Meyer - Putting the Cart before the Horse).

On top of all this, the majority of my students need tremendous help with organizational skills.




Q: To what degree do you think you really understand the needs of your students? How wide is the "gap" between them and you?

A:  See Journal #3




Q: What might have surfaced in the reading or in your teaching (about the realities of students' needs) that triggered a negative response in you? Try to identify why this response was triggered and how it relates to your biases.

A: The fact that my students are unable to organize their work in my class definitely triggers a negative response in me. Having many of my students asking for materials that were passed out and lost by my students is really frustrating. It is a waste of time for me to have to make up guided notes handouts for every lesson. Because of the expectation that the students won't take notes without graphically organized handouts makes the teaching profession a lot more tedious and time consuming. This relates to some biases I have in that I feel that many of my students today are less independent and held less accountable for their learning than when I was in school.