Week 12- Teaching Practice

Week 12- Teaching Practice

In preparation for this week's assignments on creating my teaching philosophy, I spent a lot of time thinking about the way that I want to teach my students and connect with them. During my Post Observation with my Master's Mentor, Mary Carol, she continued to return to three main questions to consider when creating a lesson. First, What do you want your students to learn? Next, How are you going to get the students to learn the material? Finally, How are you going to assess that your students understood the material? While these questions are so short and simple, they can be very effective at identifying how you can plan a lesson. For my students, I continue to ask myself these questions everyday when I am planning. I also find myself double checking my lessons to make sure the lesson makes sense and is logical. I found somewhere online where a teacher would start with her assessment and go through her lesson backwards in order to see if the material flowed well. Going backwards made her slow down and helps her identify issues within her lessons. I am going to be trying this next week to see if it is helpful. 

Last week, my one Algebra 1 class is very large and the students are very loud and all attempts to quiet them down have failed. Calling home, referrals, rewards systems for being on task and quiet have all failed. I find the new grading policy difficult because classwork is no longer a grade as well as attendance and behavior. My troubling students are freshmen in high school, so many of them are immature, but the behaviors they are displaying are more a sign of disrespect to me than a sign of immaturity. As a new teacher, it is very hard to have students cussing on a regular basis and behaving in the manner that they are. It is testing my patience and growing  more and more difficult to handle.