These are samples of educational artifacts that provide a snapshot in a few areas of my experience where I’m proud of my growth and achievement.
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Classroom Organization and Management:
A classic tool in the toolbox of teachers for classroom management is seating plans. Students can need accommodations, have behavioural issues being near each other, or just need a shakeup to better facilitate class discussion and social support. Due to COVID protocols, students were pre-arranged by the administration into cohorts and I wasn’t allowed to rearrange them for most of my practicum. On one class in particular with a high number of behavioural issues and specialized needs, I had a lot of trouble. My host teacher and I tried several other management techniques on them, but nothing was as effective as we needed it. I was worried my classroom management skills were insufficient. After 5 weeks, protocols were loosened to allow for rearrangement and I immediately tried shuffling them into this seating plan based on the needs and issues I’d observed; it worked amazingly. I was really relieved to see that I could successfully solve this classroom issue under normal circumstances. You can try and adapt all you want, but sometimes there’s only one tool for the job.
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Lesson Planning:
Lesson planning was an ever adapting and evolving beast due to both it being my first practicum and because of COVID. This was tricky, especially in the science class where so much of what is done is hands-on and/or discovery-based approaches which were mostly unavailable under COVID protocols. I worked my hardest to plan as far in advance as I could, while also being aware that things could change on a dime. I developed this lesson planning template to help keep me organized, while also allowing for easy change (and it helped keep my practicum binder neat). Every weekend I’d plan out my lessons and try to focus only on the core theme or ‘need’. The lesson type, supplementary materials, length, and materials were less the focus as they were likely to change. I know most established teachers don’t write out big multi-page highly detailed lessons for every class, and now I see why. Focus on the “where you’re going”, as the “how to get there” is ever changing.
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Instruction:
This is a schedule of all the lessons I taught during my first practicum. After each week was over, I’d add the lessons I did to the list, and begin planning out the next week. By keeping an ongoing list, I could easily see if I was leaning too hard on one lesson type, or if I hadn’t done a specific type for a while. Something I really wanted to focus on and grow in my practicum was moving outside my comfort zone in terms of ppt+lecture-style lessons so I could bring variety and better accommodate different learning styles. This is one example of how I actually worked on that in an easy and effective way.
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Assessment:
Test 1 (human reproduction)
Test 2 (menstrual cycle and embryogenesis)
These are the first and last tests I developed for my first practicum. Assessment is the area of teaching I had probably the least experience with coming into the classroom, but I also wasn’t greatly worried as assessment has fairly clear guidelines and best-practices that are applicable in most situations. The other part of assessment is the unique needed of the students. My first test couldn’t be perfect because I didn’t know my students well enough yet. While I think the first test is wholly acceptable (and so did my CT), comparing it to the second shows growth, adaption, and fine-tuning even just a few weeks. Part of that is learning and reading more about assessment and part was working on strengthening my student’s weaker areas and helping the test flow better to reduce some unnecessary stress and mental jumping around.
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Area of Personal Choice:
An opportunity I was fortunate enough to have during my first practicum was starting a GSA (Gender and Sexuality Alliance) at the high school. LGBTQA+ youth, especially at high-school age, are in a very vulnerable and tricky place socially, culturally, and academically. There are huge barriers and struggles they face that aren’t experienced by their peers, and these are additionally compounded with intersectional identities. We as educators need to be constantly learning and growing to better understand the needs and challenges of our students in all aspects of identity so we can best help them (and not accidently harm them). GSA’s have been statistically shown to drastically increase student mental health, sense of community, and performance at school. Even though I’m not there anymore, other teachers stepped up to make sure the group would continue to run meaning I’ve had lasting and tangible impact at that school on not just the students I got to teach but many more to come. That’s the warm fuzzy feeling teaching’s all about.