4A.1: Reflective Practice (explanation and evidence)

Reflective practice would be my strongest quality as a teacher. Reflecting on my work as a teacher is something I do constantly, whether it’s after a lesson, doing Clark work, while I’m eating breakfast, showering, you name it, I reflect during it. Any time I have an opportunity to adjust my lessons based off of something that happened earlier, even if it’s 2 minutes before my next class as my last one is leaving, I’m going to try to make it happen. During the presentations of my 3D Building Project from my second CUP, I hadn’t provided anything for the students not presenting to do to ensure they were getting something out of it. The students were surprisingly still engaged even though I gave them nothing to keep them engaged. For the next class, though, I decided to have each student write down notes of things they learned from each presentation and turn in the notes to fulfill the “evidence of effective note-taking” section of the rubric. I also had students ask thought-provoking questions by reminding them of the “asking thought-provoking questions” section of the rubric and calling out names of students that I had heard bring up a question during the presentations. This got students significantly more involved in the presentations and much more engaged with the actual learning.

I worked to apply every new thing I learned this year when I could. After each conference from Mirko Chardin or after the ATMIM conference, I worked hard with my math cohort team to find ways to implement what we learned into our lessons right away. We would reflect on all we heard at the conference and figure out what was the most important information to include right away and what were the small adjustments that we could make now to improve. To read more, check out my reflection on collegial learning.

During the Clark program, we wrote journals each week detailing how the week went and how we were working on our teaching going forward. Here’s my first journal all the way back in September:

This first week of being in the school has been a very interesting week. I’ve experienced many emotions, many ups and downs, and a lot of growing up. Looking back through the week, while it has been very hard so far, I think it’s been a massive net positive. While it’s been tough to put myself out there in front of the kids and start to lay down the law early, it will pay dividends later on when I start to take over, as the students will understand boundaries more and respect me as a teacher more than a college student they can walk all over. I’m finding that the initial tough love is starting to pay off a little bit. Some of the students in 10th grade seem to be slowly coming around to me after a rougher start. In 8th grade, I had a couple students who had given me a really rough time on day 1, but by Friday they were saying hi to me and didn’t exclusively roll their eyes at me when I walked by. It was a very hard week for me in the sense that I constantly put myself out of my comfort zone to set those boundaries with the kids, but I realized through the week that it’s more important early on that they respect me rather than like me. Obviously it’s important to build relationships with students, but thinking back to many of the panels we listened to of Worcester students, many of them said to make sure we aren’t too light on the students and still can be firm enough to run a class. I’m sure in due time I’ll realize that a little firm love can create a good relationship going forward, but as much as I know it’s the best thing to do, it’s very hard to put myself out there and in the line of fire, so to speak, so this will be something I continue to monitor and work on.

Overall I felt the learning aspect has been a big success in the classroom. I’ve noticed a few students starting to get really curious about math and geometry and really get excited for the schoolyear. I’ve even had a few students start to ask me super theoretical questions about math and why things are the way they are, which was super fun to see students getting really into the details of math on their own accord. It’s still the beginning of the year, but I have a feeling that as things settle in the year will only get better from here in terms of learning.

One positive I did experience was seeing a few relationships build strong early on with a couple “tougher” students. One even told me that he really wants to work hard in my class specifically, even though he has little care for the others. While I hope to kind of gently push him to find motivation in the other courses, he said he didn’t care for any classes at all last year, so this is still an improvement in some way. The tougher students at some point I’m sure will get at my nerves a little bit, but at least with having started solid relationships with a few of them early on I think it may lessen the blow of flare-ups later on.

I am concerned for my planning on Wednesdays going forward. I’m really worried students won’t enjoy my lessons or engage with them. I think this coming week’s plan is good and will have enough fun and instruction tied in together that the students will get down with it a little bit, but I’m still worried I’ll have a few students protest the lesson like last class. This will be something I continue to work on and trial-and-error throughout the year. At some point I’m going to have to get good at making lessons, so while it’s tough early on, I’m glad I’m starting to figure out some things early on so that when I fully take over I will be able to put together some better lessons.

Around early February, I gave my students CAP surveys to gauge how they feel about me as a teacher and my classroom. You can find the data to those surveys here. I will say, the day those surveys were taken, many students were having very hard days personally, and I received a lot of surveys that had overwhelmingly negative answers for every single question. Maybe that’s an accurate reflection on me as a teacher, maybe it played a role, but regardless, the data is the data, and I still took it into account and worked to improve it from there. I found myself finding new ways to get the class’s attention and trying to extend more help when I can, while keeping the class more focused and on task as a whole. Here’s the journal reflecting on that week of teaching and the surveys:

One of my goals in the CAP meeting was to work more on meaningful flow and lesson plans. This past week in geometry, I set up lessons delivered in real-world context that were more discovery-based. Students were seeming to understand the material better than previous lessons and did better in terms of problem solving and perseverance. I gave students a little more time to work productively when they asked for more time before moving on, and it seemed to work really well. Students got really good with the problems and seemed to feel much more confident going into the Friday Flashback. The introduction lesson for 3D shapes worked really well for getting students hooked into the unit and gave students hands-on ways of engaging with the material. The project has so far been pretty successful this week in getting students to explore why volume and surface area work. Students have seemed pretty engaged and felt like there was a total goal to work towards, which has kept generally most students focused. For 8th grade, I had struggled a little to get students engaged when most of my focus shifted to getting geometry back on track, but now I’m hoping to start turning Numeracy around. I had my round on a real-world context about choosing between 2 companies, which got students invested in the thinking and having fun. I saw a lot of great productive struggle and think I have a great springboard to work from with the rest of the unit.

When reviewing my CAP surveys, I was surprised to see the question I scored the lowest on was always keeping my class on task and focused. It averaged closer to disagree more than any other question, which was surprising. Many of the written comments mentioned that it was because I kept stopping class to wait for complete silence or got too frustrated if not everyone was listening. While I get how that can be frustrating for students trying to learn and how it can make it very choppy and challenging to follow along, it’s also a respect thing to not be talked over and can be just as distracting for me to speak if others are talking over me. Those side conversations can also be just as distracting for other students trying to learn. Another common thread from the survey was that I was moving too fast. I have made slight adjustments when needed if students need more time, like last week with the polynomial problems. I want to be able to give students the extra time if they need things, but I also do see some students who complain that we move too fast but don’t take advantage of things like the extra time or geometry club, which is also frustrating for me for when I do make those adjustments and they seem not to be taken seriously. I also noticed a few students would put strongly disagree for everything, which may have been related to some sort of bad day a student may have had, since I knew many students that day had really bad days. There is also the chance they genuinely feel that way, which is also fine, but I’m curious about some of those thoughts if that is so. I have made the adjustment following the surveys to have students review each other’s work more, since I definitely haven’t implemented it enough. It seemed to work really well when I did and students seemed really good about making those corrections and talking with each other about what to fix.

Reflection to practice is a massive part of me as a teacher. I’m constantly looking for ways to improve and take my teaching to the next level. If I make mistakes and don’t reflect on them and problem-solve how to improve them going forward, I’m failing as a teacher. I can’t expect my students to be problem-solvers and then not practice what I preach! Teaching will never be a profession you can perfect, but I’m certainly never going to stop in the pursuit of it! NEVER!