Sunday, December 13, 2015

Final Lab Reflection


For pre-service agricultural education teachers at The Pennsylvania State University we must take AEE 412 our fall semester before student teaching.  This course is jammed pack with content and assignments.  It is nothing to take lightly!  All that said it’s a class where we get to grow professionally, learn together, collaborate together, and get to teach our peers along with high school students for a three day mini unit.   

With a semester of AEE 412 lab just under wraps it was a positive experience overall.  Each week I was challenged to teach a certain approach to presenting material to my peers.  While at times I did become quite stressed out.  The knowledge and skill I learned from creating these lessons like a solid interest approach, problem solving, and inquiry have strengthened me as a to be educator.  I now realize the importance of not just standing in front of the class lecturing from a PowerPoint and students never having the opportunity to get up out of their seats.  When teaching on Wednesdays I struggled with clarity specifically clarity in my directions.  Throughout the semester lab I became better at conveying my thoughts and directions across to my students.  I really witnessed this during my three day microteaching experience.  Wednesdays also taught me how much you have to be prepared to teach just a lesson let alone an entire school day!  I found myself preparing days in advance for my teaching.  I also witnessed first-hand how well my lessons would go if I had all my materials prepared and lesson solidly written before going into teach.  This in turn was a confidence booster and helped me succeed during lab. 

Individually, I have grown in the sense of becoming more familiar with teaching techniques and how you might incorporate them into certain types of material I may be teaching.  Throughout the semester and specifically during my microteaching experience I saw the powerfulness of having bell work, greeting students, and starting class with some type of interest approach.  I always thought bell work was dumb, but when looking at classroom management techniques having a consistent schedule set of procedures makes starting class that much easier.  The whole greeting the students’ thing just puts that personal touch on the class. 

Getting up in front of my classmates and being front and center built on my public speaking skills I already had.  Being able to own the classroom and speak in a teacher voice is essential when actually going out and teaching.  I also, learned how to manage students who might be disruptive, rude, or disengaged.  When we began role playing in class I have to say we gave each other a run for our money!  It was all in good fun and meant to only give us an outlook on what might occur while student teaching.  Professionally I have grown realizing that students will only take me as serious as I take myself.  Every day I must go in dressed for success and expect the same from my students while in my classroom. 

Coming into this semester I thought blogging was silly and it’s just another means of social media.  However, my viewpoints have somewhat changed.  Reflecting after pivotal moments in my short teaching career thus far is very important.  It is also just as important to reflect as soon as I can.  I have realized after completing any task worth blogging.  I have found that reflecting and putting my thoughts down into my blog makes me think about the successes, struggles, failures, and meaningful moments I had during my teaching lessons.  Blogging about it allows for me to share my thoughts with anyone.  Reading my cohort member’s blogs it made me feel good they encountered many of the same difficulties that I did.  And that in just a few short seconds I could reply to their blog and discussing anything.  At the same time I can’t imagine blogging on a regular basis when/if I had my own program.

As for improvements for AEE 412 lab

1.      Mix up lab sessions halfway through or quarterly.  This would allow for us all to observe and be a part of other cohort member’s lab.  There was a lot of comments left on the ThereNow website stating I would have loved to of been in your lab!

2.      Reflect on student performance immediately after presenting their lab.  I experienced this right after my IBI lesson.  It was very beneficial.  Discussion doesn’t have to be long, but reflect with the group and instructor after every time a student presents.

3.      The small lab groups made it very impractical to incorporate the things we had to into our lab and we were always improvising with the number of students we had.  Teaching to three students just didn’t give it that teacher student feel.  However, it is understandable nothing compares to the real thing and this is the closest we can get.

4.      Structure.  There just seemed to be a lot of confusion and hear say.

 

Early on in the semester we learned about the 5 characteristics of effective teaching by Roshenshine and Furst.  Early on these 5 characteristics were instilled into our thoughts when creating a meaningful lesson.  As a final assignment we had to create a video highlighting one of the 5 characteristics we thought we demonstrated strongly.  I chose to express variability.  I thought throughout all my lab sessions and microteaching experiences that I did a very good job mixing activities up and keeping student engagement in my lessons.  Below you can watch my short video.

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