"We believe the novice teacher should be a facilitator of learning for all students."
Before that seminar on February 10th, I really had no idea what the characteristics were other than the fact that they are used in our enormous rubric. It is hard to believe that this is Spring semester of participant year and that after this semester is completed I will basically be a full time teacher. It is absolutely exciting but completely terrifying. I am placed in a fourth grade classroom and this placement is completely out of my comfort zone. Pre-School and early elementary is my niche so these older children and the different teaching styles used are so different than my norm of teaching. But this placement has my opened my eyes to the true nature of public school in ways that I could not believe. These sweet nine and ten year old children have unimaginable home lives, health issues, developmental levels, and family disfunction. Learning more and more about my students makes me feel even more passionate about being a teacher because school is a safe haven for many of these children. This is why I chose to focus on characteristic #4- novice teachers should be a facilitator of learning for all students.
Because of the wide range of ability levels in this classroom (from illiterate to reading on an advanced level), my mentor teacher strays away from teaching in the whole group setting. Specific groupings, tiered assignments, extra assistance, and differentiated activities are all present in Ms. Pennington's classroom. Throughout this semester, I am seeing how amazing she is at meeting the needs of her students and how much she truly cares about these diverse students. I think that this characteristic is especially important in my current placement because I am required to modify my lessons to help every child in the classroom. A teacher could simply "teach to the middle" and just hope that her lower level students will stumble through the confusion and her high ability students will quickly finish their work. This mentality is in no way the definition of an effective educator and is the opposite of the ever present 21st century learning skills. Many artifacts come to mind to show that I have worked to acquire this characteristic in my teaching:
- sociograms to learn about the friendships and children who do not get along
- IEP meeting notes
-lesson modifications, including different versions of tests and assignments
-interest inventories to learn about students' learning preferences
- mapping of student groups for various assignments, reasons and data to back it up
I believe that this characteristic should not only be found in a novice teacher, but in all educators. If you do not get to know your students on a deeper level how can you understand their needs? This is the first placement where I have to include a variety of modifications into my lessons and I am worried that I will fail at correctly individualizing my lessons. I am sure that my mentor teacher can provide me with feedback as she is a differentiating specialist :)
Jason, what characteristic is the most important to you this semester??
Allie,
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to see that these older students have got you out of your comfort zone. In a way, i feel that this placement will force you to think of ways to reach students who deal with diverse circumstances such as your current fourth grade class. I also think that this will make you appreciate the younger grades even more than before. The resources you mwntion abovve seem like great artifacts to represent your understanding in your portfolio.
Allie, this is an excellent post, truly showing the nature of what reflection should be. While Sara's class is perhaps a bit unusual because of its collaborative structure, I hope that you'll take what you're learning here and apply it to all classrooms. Even though most won't be as diverse as this one, all classrooms have a wide range of learners, and we should always be thinking about how to make learning mean the most for each child.
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