May
12
The journey
Posted by: Natasha Chiang | May 12, 2013 | Leave a Comment
I think we all put our boats out on a current, set our little sails, and when we hit something that impassions us, and our little boat begins to go there, the wind whistles through our hair, and we know we’re onto something… You become alive as you’re doing it, and you begin to develop gifts you just didn’t know you had.
-Sister Helen Prejan
May
5
Steep learning curve
Posted by: Natasha Chiang | May 5, 2013 | Leave a Comment
Ideally, I envision a school that has bulletins that display work that students have selected to display. I hear students asking questions, and I feel that there is transparency in the classroom so students feel that they are in charge of their own learning rather than the teacher dictating the content.
I feel that there are so many things to learn on practicum that it is a little overwhelming. Though I want students to have some control over what they would like to learn, I have been mostly planning the lessons myself. Though I know that it is important for students to participate and collaborate, I find myself calling for order and panicking when the classroom volume escalates. I am learning to discern what appropriate noise level is and when to stop it from escalating into silliness and dis- order. There are a lot of basic teaching skills that I am trying to master while also learning to be a tactful, effective, best practice teacher.
Ideally I would like to be partners in learning with my students. Right now I feel that I have that working relationship with some students who are eager to learn and inquire with me. The other students are either used to being given a worksheet or project to do that they become distracted if we have a ‘looser’ lesson structure that has intentions to be student- driven. There are also a few students who are still testing to see if I will be more lenient with our classroom rules, and I find myself having to constantly remind them that “now is not the time” or “please stay on task, you only have so and so minutes left to do your work” or “what should you be doing right now?” or “what are the classroom rules about that?”. I don’t want students to feel that I am targeting them when I remind them of classroom rules. Nor do I want students to get off- task during work time. It is difficult to find a balance between these things and more often than not I find myself having to play “bad cop” because we have curriculum to teach and there are established rules in the classroom that I do not want to disregard.
(Some days I feel that I am not the best teacher that I can be. It is true, as I am just starting my career. But I really let it get to me, without realizing that I have so much to learn and that it is okay to make mistakes. I am too much a perfectionist, and I care a lot about my students. On some days I feel so apologetic towards my students, because I wish I could be the best for them all the time. Sometimes I feel guilty that I have my learning moments at their expense, because in hindsight I know how I could have done better. )
Past the midpoint of our practicum– teaching full days now.
May
1
authentic learning
Posted by: Natasha Chiang | May 1, 2013 | Leave a Comment
This week I am feeling more confident in my role as the classroom teacher in my practicum classroom. We have covered much of our science curriculum in the month of April, and we are easing into a classroom newsroom experience for our language arts unit. I am now shifting my role from “the sage on the stage” to “the guide on the side”.
Today I planned an inquiry based lesson, where I took the students out to feel and capture the essence of a tree bark onto a piece of brown construction paper. We went outside and did some bark markings off a cluster of trees on our playground.
The students asked interesting questions such as, “Why is there moss growing on the tree?” “Why does moss grow on my ceiling too?” “Why is there sticky brown stuff on the bark?” “Why are there white marks on the tree bark?” “Why are there tree mussels on the trees?” “Why is the root such a big bump?” “Why do plants grow on this tree but not the other?” They also noticed some things such as the smoothness of the inside of a tree compared to the roughness of the outside bark. I reminded them that living things grow together, and depend on each other. We keep coming back to our big word, “interdependency”. One girl remarked, “These things all live together in the tree, and the trees hold hands, and that is interdependency.”
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