Reflection and Discussion on Goals
Hello Ladies,
I hope you enjoyed having Chris with you for a few days, she said you are both doing a GREAT job!!!
While she was there, you would have discussed your experience with her thus far; you might have talked about what you need to work on/accomplish before you leave.
Please reflect on those discussions and let us know what goals you have set for yourselves for this next month or so as you finish in your experience, and additionally, how do you plan to measure these goals?
Daffodils are blooming in Pullman!!!! We send you warm sunny thoughts and hope that spring is starting in Heidelberg too!
Heidi & Chris
posted by Heidi @ 1:19 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
I have grown a lot since I’ve been here; as an adult, professional, and as a teacher. Even though I have come a long way, there are, and always will be, things that I can improve. Many of my goals emerge from lack of experience. Two of my goals that I discussed with Chris are to work on behavior management, and relationship with parents. These two goals are very important for learning to occur and chose to talk about these two because I will be focusing on them for the rest of the semester.
When it comes to having a stronger relationship with parents, I have experience with a variety of things. For one, there are the parents that are in the classroom a couple times a week, or that pick up their child daily. These provide the opportunity to build a strong relationship without feeling strain. Then, there are the parents that don’t look in their student’s folder, never return e-mails or show up to conferences. It almost feels impossible to have any sort of relationship with these parents. There are the parents that are extremely busy, but care a great deal about their child’s education so there is a mixture of communication. I have also had experience with a parent who doesn’t trust teachers and is very defensive and can be challenging to talk to.
I know that every teacher experiences a variety of parents. I just want to work on, and establish a strong relationship with all of the parents. Some take more work and some take none at all. Sometimes it is frustrating when parents are involved and there is limited communication. I believe that for students to be able to be successful in school, they need support from home. There needs to be good communication between teacher and parent. Parents can be intimidating and it takes work to establish a trusting relationship.
Behavior management has been on my radar ever since having the discussion with Chris about class sizes. Class sizes are increasing and behavior management has a big role in how effective teachers are. For me, I have only had experience with small class sizes, so I think it is very important to work on behavior management. I want to be able to have a class of 30 and not feel extra stress and strain because lack of classroom management. Part of this is learning and using new strategies to manage behavior and how to get students to transition smoothly and understand consequences.
Both of these goals take work and practice. They are both very important to the success of student learning. I have only chosen two goals to focus on because I feel they are very important and I want to perfect these goals rather than getting overloaded. There are always things to be improving and reflecting on.
That is wonderful to hear that the flowers are coming out in Pullman. The season is changing here as well. I saw the first cherry tree in bloom today!
I think my two biggest goals for the remainder of my time here are to get half of my students that are currently failing to be at a passing grade, and to get better at dealing with frustrations that arise from class room management.
I feel it is very important to help my students that are failing. Many of them are seniors who want need my class to graduate. I know that the grade should not be motivation, but I feel that my grading accurately reflects the learning and work ethic of my students. If I can encourage my students to work diligently and to learn mathematics, it will be reflected in their grades. I have been working on this, and it has been somewhat of an uphill battle. For every step forward, I feel like there are 3 steps back. However, there are several students that did extremely well this last unit that previously were failing. These successes have been encouraging.
The second goal is not to let my frustration get to me when dealing with class room management problems. I feel like I am good at keeping myself from getting upset in most cases. However, sometimes the students push me too far and instead of dealing with the situation and letting go, I deal with the situation and let the frustration build. I can tell when that happens, because those are the days when I don't go home happy. Almost everyday I come home happy because I enjoy working with students so much, but on those days I come home stressed out.
I think the biggest thing I can do to help myself with this is to be more authentic with my students. Sometimes I feel like I am portraying the image of a teacher to them instead of being myself. I think if I suppress who I really am less, then I will suppress my frustration less. That way students can more easily read me so that they know that they are crossing the line before I even have to say much about it to them. Also, I think I will deal with situations with more humor if I am being more of myself. When I am putting on my "teacher image", I think I am more regimented than I really am (and I am naturally a fairly regimented person, so this is super duper regimented). This gets in the way of using some interpersonal skills, like humor, when the going gets tough. I feel like I am doing a pretty good job of letting my natural personality shine through with my algebra and seminar classes, but I need to improve with my discrete classes. As I mentioned previously, I will be able to measure this goal based on whether I have a smile on my face when I go home or not.
I know that one of these goals is extremely easy to measure, and the other is less tangible to outside observers, but I think they are both really important to address. I feel like the work I have already done to help my students that are failing has actually improved the learning outcomes for all of my students. Additionally, I think my sanity is a pretty worth while goal. So, we will see how it goes. I'm really looking forward to continuing with this experiment.
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