Intro to teaching reading reflection

August 9, 2012 at 11:39 am | Posted in E1 | 2 Comments
Tags: EDU 6918, self-reflection, what's my job

At the ARC Program student orientation, we were told this summer quarter would be a crash course to prepare us for being in a real classroom. I am a little over two weeks into the MTMS program, and it is no joke. The amount and variety of material we are covering has been a shock to my system, but I am now starting to get my “sea legs” and I can see how all this material connects from class to class.

 

In Dr. Algera’s Introduction to Teaching class, we had two very insightful readings that made us look at teaching from a point of view I never would have considered. I began with “What’s my Job? Defining the Role of the Classroom Teacher” (Wiggins, 2010). I enjoyed his honest point of view and the questions he asked of his readers. Early in the reading he talks about how making students feel confident in themselves and their abilities is crucial for successful learning (Wiggins, 2010, p. 14). He then asks “How many teachers spend the first week of school really getting to know the strengths, weaknesses, talents, interests, and styles of all their learners, and then take a few days to plan accordingly” (Wiggins, 2010, p. 14-15)? I love this idea. Getting to know all our students strengths would allow us as teachers to differentiate our instruction to play to those strengths. When students see that they can make progress, their confidence will soar and successful learning will be the result. But could this ever be reality? Is a week even long enough to get to know 150 kids, figure out where they excel and devise lessons that help students see their own strengths?

 

Later on in this section, Wiggins says “…the job of teaching is meant to cause understanding through meaning and transfer” (2010, p. 18). He explains that too many teachers believe that just knowledge and a toolbox of skills is all students need to get out of school. I believe what he is saying here is that we need to teach for understanding, not just knowledge. If kids are able to understand one concept and then transfer their knowledge along with their toolbox of skills and apply them to a new concept to generate understanding of it, then those students have learned on a deep level. We watched a video in Dr. Soine’s class that talked specifically about trying to get students to understand on this deeper level. But our education system now seems to be focused more on breadth of learning rather than depth. This is why we have fallen in the world rankings. However, after doing a research project in Amy’s class comparing our current state standards with the new common core state standards, it appears these new standards seek to narrow the focus and delve deeper into many content areas. As a preservice teacher now, I will basically have front row seats as we switch from our old standards to the common core standards. I’ll only have a year of teaching under my belt when the new standards come into effect, and then I get to use them and see what kind of an impact they will have.

 

As I moved into the reading by Marzano & Marzano, I was struck by what they called a “basic operating principle” (Marzano, R. J., & Marzano, J. S., 2010, p. 347). This was precisely what our guest speaker Rosemary Leifer spoke about in Dr. Soine’s class. Rosemary called it our core beliefs that guide our actions. She asked us to take a moment and think about these beliefs, to get a good grasp of what they mean to us. I struggled to find the exact words, but I could feel what they meant to me. They felt like a mixture of equality, justice, compassion and ambition. Even now it is still very difficult to actually describe that feeling. These first few weeks in the ARC program have helped me to self-reflect with much more clarity and purpose. If someone were to ask me now why I am switching careers to become a teacher, I would tell them that I was pulled towards teaching because this is the profession where my core beliefs fit and where I can use them hopefully to change lives.

 

 

Marzano, R. J., & Marzano, J. S. (2010). The inner game of teaching. In R Marzano (Ed.) On excellence in teaching. 345-367.

 

Wiggins, G. (2010). What’s my job? Defining the role of the classroom teacher. In R Marzano (Ed.) On excellence in teaching. 7-29.