Student Teaching Reflection: Strengths, Growth & Future Goals

Introduction: Reflections on Student Teaching

During my student teaching experience I kept a journal, which greatly helped me organize my thoughts and clarify the areas in which I most needed to improve. My mentor also pointed out key areas requiring improvement. As I look forward to a professional career as a teacher, I will be able to draw on these early experiences. I will remember what works and what does not, and I already feel far more confident and proficient than I did before I undertook the student teaching challenge.

In general, a few major themes emerged from reviewing my journal entries and my mentor's statements. My strengths are my willingness to use a wide variety of teaching materials and teaching styles. An enthusiastic use of multimedia materials keeps students actively engaged and makes lessons more interesting. Moreover, my lessons are well-planned and incorporate a number of different activities that also sustain student interest. My mentor noted that I plan my lessons well, which eliminated lag time during class and helped create an atmosphere of professionalism in the classroom. My appreciation and understanding of student-specific learning styles also helps my students learn at their maximum potential.

Key Strengths: Multimedia, Planning, and Student Engagement

My use of multiple materials and engaging activities was certainly my greatest strength in the classroom. For example, in the unit on tectonic plates, I brought in a video entitled Earthquake and also did a demonstration of tectonics using plain sheets of paper. These visual aids immensely enhanced student interest and understanding of the material. I was pleasantly surprised to find that after incorporating multimedia materials and presentations, and after using a wider range of teaching styles, most students did very well on their end-of-week test.

As Greenaway (2004) notes in his online guide on active reviewing, innovative tools carry great power in the classroom. Even though a large body of pre-existing materials already exists for teachers, creating new tools fosters a far more creative and engaging classroom environment. Another instance in which I used novel, innovative tools was during a year eight science unit on fluid pressure. The unit demanded an understanding of measurement techniques, which the students were having some difficulty grasping. Rather than simply holding out a diagram from the textbook, I used a milk carton with strategically placed holes to offer a hands-on display of pressure measurement — a simple but memorable demonstration.

I noticed myself that on days when I incorporated multimedia materials and meaningful activities, students absorbed more of the material and remained focused on the lessons. When I am a professional teacher, I will continue incorporating these same techniques into my classroom practice.

My mentor and I have both identified areas of my teaching practice that could use improvement. During my student teaching experience, I gradually improved in these areas, and by the time the placement ended I had made significant progress.

When I first started teaching, I had trouble making smooth transitions from subject to subject, simply because I was not accustomed to or prepared for making such transitions. One of the negative consequences of insufficient transitions was a loss of student attention. I noticed this problem most acutely in subjects in which students were already struggling, such as in the junior science class. Toward the end of my student teaching, however, my transitions flowed far better, and my mentor praised my improvement in this area.

Areas for Improvement: Transitions, Questioning, and Introductions

Second, and perhaps most importantly, I improved greatly in my questioning skills. Effective questioning is one of the most essential aspects of teaching, and at first I asked questions that were too vague. Open-ended questions, which I initially thought seemed more democratic, actually ended up wasting time and diverting students' attention, as well as my own. Honing questions — making them highly relevant to the material at hand and pertinent to the day's lesson — helped keep everyone focused. The more specific the questions I asked, the more likely students were to learn and retain the information.

For example, during a lesson on water balance in plants, I asked open-ended questions that led the class into irrelevant discussions about topics such as the composition of sand and flour and the impact of sunlight on plant life. Not asking the right questions also sabotaged opportunities for review and reinforcement — both of which are important for retention. Similarly, in the unit I taught on tectonic plates, I would ask "How do we measure earthquakes?" when I should have asked "How do we measure earthquakes using the Richter scale?"

I also encountered problems with question formulation when I taught the year eight science unit on gravitational pulls. I asked questions that were beyond the understanding of many of the students, forgetting that they were only in year eight. I also asked questions on material we had not covered thoroughly enough, which caused confusion and loss of focus.

The key to my improvement in questioning arose largely from planning. The night before each lesson I would create a list of questions relevant to the topic, writing each question as specifically as possible and anticipating possible student answers. This helped me stay focused and maximize classroom time. However, my mentor noted that my overall lesson planning should be more logically organized from beginning to end, as I tended to jump around, causing many students to lose focus.

Finally, when I first started teaching I provided no compelling introductions to the day's lessons, and I failed to initially capture students' attention by launching immediately into detailed discussion. For example, when I began a unit on tectonic plates with a year ten science class, I immediately started discussing the technical aspects of the topic and the students became confused. They lost interest quickly. Part of the problem was that I neglected to introduce the material properly — for instance, by showing students the bigger picture, such as how tectonic plates create earthquakes.

I also struggled with introductions on my sixth day of teaching, when I taught a year eight science unit focused on gravity. I had planned an introduction but ended up confusing the students even more by introducing too much extraneous material. I discovered through trial and error that the best introductions are simple, well-planned, and highly structured.

When I taught the year twelve biology lesson, I used my most well-developed and effective introduction. To capture students' attention I told a vivid story about the Ponderosa pine growing in Yosemite at the time the dinosaurs were still alive. The students were keenly interested, and from there I could move into a more specific discussion about plant hormones. Without the story, plant hormones might have seemed meaningless to them. Unfortunately, this solid introduction ended up taking me off-course from my lesson plan — a reminder that even effective elements must be managed carefully.

Conclusion: Growth and Looking Forward

I made important changes to my teaching style during the course of my student teaching. For example, I tried to use the blackboard more, I tried to plan lessons better, and I attempted to improve my questioning, introduction, and transition techniques. The changes I made were far more successful than I had anticipated. By the time I taught some of the final lessons of the placement, I felt confident. For example, I taught a year nine science unit on the toad's digestive system that stood out as my best lesson: the introduction was solid, transitions were smooth, and questions were specific and to the point.