Week 12 - Reflection

Areas that I believe are strengths for me professionally are planning instructional methods and materials and stimulating and sustaining learner motivation. My ability to plan instructional methods and materials for courses I teach has changed dramatically this year. Switching from middle school to alternative high school was a huge change for me. My idea of teaching had to be adapted completely. My days of teaching in a traditional form have vanished. I had to change how I present material and my expectations for completion, understanding, and ability of student levels for achievement. I feel I have learned how to plan more appropriate lessons and allow my students the flexibility they need to achieve success in my classroom. I have adapted my instruction methods but also the materials I provide students to learn the objectives set forth. I have found materials that they can relate to and/or understand more readily. I still have work to do in this competency, but I feel the changes I have made are substantial.
Along with changing my ideas for planning instructional methods and materials, I have adapted how I motivate students. My students respond to extrinsic rewards – snag them with the reward and get them hooked on getting a good grade. Well, it works with some of them. I admit it, I am not above bribery. However, the motivation does not always need to be food; sometimes, I use a game for review–they love this–or they may get to help create questions for a test. I am learning that doing work on the two computers in my class is a reward in itself. Helping students to become self-motivated is more difficult and requires more consideration on my part. Usually, this amounts to a great deal of one-to-one conversations with a student; multiply this by 80 students, that’s a lot of time. I usually pick the ones that I think are ready to move on and grasp part of their future. Some students are just looking for someone to lend them a hand in the right direction.
Areas that I would like to continue developing include using media and technology to enhance learning and performance, communicating effectively, and promoting transfer of knowledge and skills. I have come a long way this year in utilizing media and technology; however, I would love to be able to apply a lot of what we have learned during this class in my classroom. For my students, technology can be a great link for them achieving understanding of objectives. I have started using wikis with two of my classes, and quite a few of my students are using them because they cannot make it to class for a variety of reasons. Fantastic! I also have teachers who are asking me for help with their own wikis because somehow I have become the resident wiki professional.
Communicating effectively to my students is key for their ability to achieve success. I am still at the point where I can explain/model something, review it, ask for questions to clarify–then, one or two students will ask me what are we supposed to be doing. Great! Then, repeat the process. As I float around the room, I still need to clarify and reexplain what they need to do.
What a great competency! Promoting transfer of knowledge and skills is what all teachers do. I want all of my students to be able to apply what they learn in my classes to other classes or in their lives. It is important to me that my students realize they don’t attend my class just for the grade and that’s it. They attend my class to learn skills that will help them in other parts of their lives. To put it simply, I love helping students learn and making technology a part of this learning process is a bonus.