My Reflection on My Student Teaching Experience
Student teaching at John Smith Elementary* has been an honest pleasure and worthwhile experience. In the beginning, from the time I pre-student taught, I thought teaching a third grade class was going to be challenging. I felt I was unprepared to work with the little ones. However, now that I have experienced it, I feel blessed because I have learned so much. From my journey with the third graders, I have grown as a future educator. As any educator would experience, I experienced successful and challenging moments.
For this past semester, I feel I was successful in building caring relationships with my students. Not only did I try to teach, but I also made an effort to get to know them and to bring their personal experiences into the classroom. In other words, I let my students know I am interested in their lives outside of school. Furthermore, when certain students had behavioral issues, I made sure I pulled them to the side to have a conversation on why I was disappointed and how things should be handled for next time. Overall, building caring relationships with my students was important because it allowed my students to trust me as a teacher and as an adult.
In addition to building caring relationships with my students, I believe I was successful in class management. I was successful in the sense that I was getting better at class management as time went on. As challenging as it was to have a classroom of sixty students, I believe I made sure my students know of my expectations. I believe the more I taught them, the more they saw me as a teacher and this allowed the class to run smoother.
Planning and being organized are two other areas I have grown in. From teaching for three weeks straight, I believe I was successful in planning and being organized. During these three weeks, I can recall asking myself essential questions such as “What do my students need to know? How will they learn it? What do I need to do to make sure they meet the objectives?” Asking these questions allowed me to plan appropriately and organize my materials. From these few weeks, I learned how important it is to plan in advance and not last minute. This allows lesson plans to be prepared and ready to go. In addition, planning in advance allows for changes and modifications to be done without frustration or a time restraint. Also, being organized helped me be more prepared which helped the students.
As mentioned earlier, as any educator would experience, I had challenging moments in addition to my successful ones. Providing differentiated instruction is an area I need to improve in. In other words, my students were at all different academic levels and it was an honest challenge to try to meet their needs. Although I tried asking high and low comprehension questions throughout my lessons and provided different instruction material, I wish I knew how to provide more of a differentiated instruction to meet the needs of my students. Although providing differentiated instruction was a challenge, I learned that the process of learning is not a one size fits all.
Overall, I am blessed for my student teaching experience at John Smith. I believe I have encountered numerous teaching and learning experiences that will help me as a future teacher. From my experience as a student teacher, I learned the importance of class management, differentiated instruction, organization, planning, collaboration and building caring relationships with the students. From these areas, I believe I have grown the most in class management and planning. From our brief conversation, my mentor agrees with me. Using the DECA-UT as the basis of our conversation, my mentor says I am moving forward toward the advancing stage as a teacher. According to my mentor and field instructor, I have grown since I came into the classroom in August. Once again, I am thankful for being a part of John Smith for the past year. I have learned I am an educator who is caring, sensitive, and devoted to her students. More importantly, I have learned I should continue to learn and grow as a teacher in order to be prepared to work alongside with the many different students we come across.
