Teaching is a dynamic profession, with constant changes in both content and theory, and the teacher must maintain a current knowledge of content and strategies and continually assess her own effectiveness in order to prepare students for a changing world.
It is important that the teacher recognizes the need to grow and learn as the world changes. As technology develops and the needs of students evolve, teachers must continue their own education to be able to provide students with necessary skills. They must be able to assess their own methods, knowledge, and strategies, both individually and in collaboration with colleagues, and adapt them as necessary to meet the needs of the learning community. The teacher must also be able to evaluate her own knowledge and perceptions of cultural changes in the world and classroom and learn how to respond to the diversity of students to meet their needs. During my training, I have taken advantage of learning opportunities with professional educators and intend to apply their ideas to my classroom. In addition, I will continue to reflect upon my practices and seek input from students, colleagues, and other professionals to ensure that the strategies I employ are the most effective and appropriate for the students in my classroom.
Learning Opportunities
The Margaret Sue Copenhaver Institute (MSCI) offers professional development with a goal of developing lifelong readers and learners. Workshops and lectures with renowned educators focus on engaging students through cutting-edge perspectives and the use of instructional technology strategies to enhance student development and growth. I attended the MSCI at Roanoke College in June 2019. The speakers were Kelly Gallagher and Penny Kittle, authors of 180 Days: Two Teachers and the Quest to Engage and Empower Adolescents. Through their talks about their year-long cross-country collaborative efforts, I gained additional insight into the benefits of collaboration, the importance of understanding the needs of individual learners, and the value of professional learning opportunities for teachers.
Gallagher and Kittle taught in radically different high school environments with different student demographics. As they planned their lessons, each would question why the other used the strategies and methods he or she was describing. The discussions that followed required them to reflect on the reasons behind the decisions and the effectiveness of those decisions, while the input from an outside source provided a new lens through which to view their decisions. The collaboration also included opportunities for the students to collaborate, which helped increase their awareness of differing perspectives and cultures and identify their own personal biases and misconceptions.
Collaborative efforts with other teachers in the same school could provide similar benefits. Each teacher will see the same students differently and will approach the content with a different perspective. When collaborating across disciplines, strengths and weaknesses of students may be apparent to one teacher and not another. Blending those observations and perspectives can lead to an increased understanding of the students and the best ways to work with them.
I also attended the webinars offered by The Write Center in the summer of 2020. In these seminars, highly respected educators, including Kelly Gallagher, Carol Jago, and Jim Burke presented on designing writing assignments, narrative writing, and writing poetry for online spaces. With the presenters’ expert instruction and the multiple detailed strategies they offered for each topic, I increased my knowledge of writing instruction and added to my repertoire of engaging strategies.
Reflection
By taking the time to reflect upon instructional practices and the students’ responses to them, the teacher can determine the most appropriate learning experiences for individual learners. I tutored a high school senior in writing instruction and, each week, we addressed a different style of writing. After every session, I reflected on the results of the lessons, how the student responded to the strategies, and how I could adapt the lessons to better meet the needs of the student. When I combined my own analysis and reflection with the student’s comments, I could better understand why the student engaged with certain strategies and not with others and how my perceptions of a lesson differed from the student’s. That, in turn, enabled me to see how it affected the relevance of the lesson and resulted in differing expectations from each of us.
Collaboration with Colleagues
Colleagues can offer teachers feedback that identifies areas for growth and improvement. From formal observations to quick chats in the hallway, I sought feedback on the lessons I presented during my student teaching. During formal observations, lessons were reviewed according to the Madeline Hunter lesson plan format. Each day, I conferenced informally with my supervising teacher and the SPED co-teacher to review the effectiveness of my lessons from both a whole-class perspective and the perspectives of individual students. We discussed content gaps, strategy alternatives, classroom management, and my communication with the students, among other topics. I was able to use the feedback to plan future lessons, and, often, I was able to make changes within the same lesson for subsequent classes.