The Art of Teaching

This will be my third reflective blog that I have made for the school year thus far. As I have mentioned in my previous blog entries, it has been a rollercoaster. I have been preparing for an observation with School A and I have felt a great deal of stress given that I had to write my first observation for a student being unsafe in the science classroom. I was in a state of confusion and panic because I have never had to write one before within this scenario and was unsure of what to do. I came to my principal to figure out how to document this and then I found myself arguing back and forth about the phone policies in the school. While my principal was upset that a student in my class filmed what happened (misuse of flammable chemicals) I was thankful to the student who filmed because it validated everything I said within the behavioral referral. At the end of the conference, my principal was thankful that I came to clarify what to do so that I knew the correct procedures were being...

Over the past few weeks, I have gotten great feedback from my first observation with my principal and administration. Overall, they were proud of how the lesson went but had a few suggestions for improvement. One of these things was to be mindful for how I question probe my students to allow for them to be prepared to defend the answer that they gave for a response to the bell ringer (drill) exercise. In addition, I have gotten feedback to find ways to quickly get my students into their seats and ready to begin the lesson activities. Since receiving this feedback, there was a professional development day in Harford County on November 4 th . Due to the notes of improvement for question probing, note taking, etc., I attended three workshops where I got to learn about the new STEM cases that allow for students to be able to step into the role of a scientist to determine how the content learned in class relates to phenomena in the real world. The second workshop I attended allowed for ...

With me being a new teacher and especially to younger high school students, I find myself in a position where that emphasis of building relationships with my students is crucial. Due to me teaching two sections of biology, I find myself needing to take longer than expected to truly get to know my students in regard to how they learn, what motivates them to learn, and how do they process information. To gain insight regarding this information, I had my students complete a student survey at the beginning of the school year where they got to rank themselves on their skills in reading, comprehension, math, and writing. While I am aware that my students could merely tell me whatever it is, they want me to read, I encouraged my students to please be honest as I will need this information to determine the nature in which class will be ran.   As the first quarter comes to a close, I have found that the following routine I have established has been helpful in determining the pace of the c...