My Teaching Growth

Over the past year, having completing my three practicums, I feel that I have had a lot of personal growth in my teacher identity.

Trust

Trusting my “instincts” was my one word focus for one of the semesters when we were asked to pick one word to focus on. I think at times, I felt naturally more confident with certain subjects and if I needed more practice in certain areas such as math, I would trust my instincts and be real with the students. I shared with them that teaching certain math concepts was not my natural strength and it was something I was working on. They were very supportive and receptive to me opening up. I think it is important to share how with students how even adults can feel sometimes.

I also felt like I trusted my gut instinct when I was trying to evaluate how to respond to conflicts in the class. there were some issues happening on the playground with some of the students and I addressed it generally to the whole class. We had a class conversation about respecting friend boundaries, not forcing friends to do things that they are not comfortable with and crushes. I allowed the conversation to flow and had students share their thoughts and opinions while normalizing how they are at the age where they will have crushes and respectful ways to support their friends through that.

Confidence

As the weeks continued, I felt my inner confidence naturally starting to build. I had certain routines that were so natural and I could easily go through without giving much thought. I was also confident in my abilities to assess students ability to continue working in certain situations. I felt like I had a good sense of when to push certain students to finish a task even when they were having a challenging time. I had a good balance of giving break options and then still encouraging them to continue their work and follow expectations.

I noticed a lot of growth in my ability to recognize when to use my teacher voice. I was able to recognize for which students having a more firm tone was more supportive when they were not following the expectations. I also used a variety of methods to get the class’s attention. Using the clapping method, quieter voice, hand gestures and timers.

Communication/collaboration

I think the greatest asset to teaching growth is being open to suggestions from the coaching teacher, education assistants and other staff in the school. There is so many people with a wealth of knowledge and I think it is very amazing when you can combine a variety of ideas into one.

Having a mutual understanding between your coaching teacher and yourself is important. For me, I went into my 3rd practicum with already having had established a positive relationship with my coaching teacher. There was already an established relationship so I was able to maintain that respect for her throughout. It also helped that she and I were very similar in the type of teaching approach we had for our classrooms. We both loved to take the students outside and do as much outdoor learning as we could.