Hello, my name is Jessica and for as long as I can remember I have always wanted to be a teacher. It began as early as grade 1 when I had the most amazing, supportive and kind teacher, Mrs. Webster. She always had her students best interests at heart and was so genuine and caring and was motivated by wanting her students to succeed. I don’t necessarily remember every single thing that she taught me but I have never forgotten how she made me feel. Her charisma, enthusiasm and big heart has motivated me after all of these years to be a teacher just like her. My learning journey really did begin here, at Coyote Creek Elementary school.

 My learning journey has been filled with amazing teachers who I don’t only see as my teachers but rather mentors. I went on to attend Fleetwood Park Secondary where I had teachers who motivated me to try my best and that I can accomplish anything that I set my mind to. These teachers were my coaches on numerous sports teams, my encouragement when I felt like giving up and my continuous source of knowledge when I didn’t have the answers. They drove me to better myself and with their support, I felt like I could accomplish anything and everything. I began to see teaching in a different light. Teaching didn’t just consist of simply teaching your students new information but it was more about creating those positive teacher-student relationships that are built around trust and respect. It consists of collaboration and guidance  and  being a positive role-model for your students. I realized that my teachers at Fleetwood Park were my role-models who I looked up to and this further motivated me to want to have that same impact on my students one day.

After high school ended, I began volunteering with amazing non-profit organizations such as the Canucks Autism Network and the Special Olympics of B.C. By working with these organizations my love for helping others grew tremendously. I developed a strong passion for trying to make a difference in peoples lives. Looking back on volunteering with the Canucks Autism Network I have so many amazing memories and to this day I remember all of the children that I worked with fondly; they all had a huge impact on my life. Some days these children with Autism were having a lot of difficulty and the activities that I was assisting them with were outside of their comfort zones. In this case I had to be their support, their motivation that they could accomplish the task, and their leader. When I got through to these kids and they did something they had never done before, I would see their faces light up and it was the greatest, most rewarding feeling in the world! They felt accomplished and proud and huge smiles would come across their faces. I remember one child was terrified of doing the back stroke during the swim program because he was terrified of getting his ears in the water. I assisted him in everyway possible and he finally did it! I could tell after that he was so proud that he had accomplished this and that he felt like he was on top of the world! My passion for helping others grew through these experiences.

 I began attending UBC and was enrolled into the education program.  I remember thinking how terrified I was to begin my 10-week practicum and that maybe I couldn’t do it. My fear was taking over but after I watched this video everything clicked for me. I’m not going to know all of the answers right away and I will have those feelings that ‘I can’t do it’ or ‘I’m not supposed to be here’ but that’s okay. It’s going to be uncomfortable and confusing but it’s through those uncertain times that we truly grow. The line that stuck with me from this video was, “fake it until you BECOME IT!” I remember repeating that to myself countless times throughout my practicum especially during those times where I didn’t feel like I could do it. After repeating it to myself, it became easier and slowly I found myself actually becoming a teacher. This video helped get me through a time of uncertainty and steered me in the right direction towards becoming a teacher and letting go of all my insecurities.

“FAKE IT UNTIL YOU BECOME IT!”

 I have experienced many enriching, heart-felt experiences over the years that have further pointed me in the direction of the teaching profession. My friends and family have further molded me into the person I am today and through their love and support I felt like I could reach for my dreams. These critical moments in my life have made me further realize that teaching is what I am meant to do. I cannot wait to start this exciting journey of teaching!

“Teachers are gardeners- Their goal is to cultivate the mind by nourishing, enhancing the climate, removing the weeds and other impediments, and then standing back and allowing growth to occur.” -adapted from Apps, J. 1991

“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all”. –Aristotle

As an educator, I believe that it is my responsibility to not only educate student’s minds but to also educate their hearts. My purpose is to spark passion, interest and curiosity in the hearts of my students while allowing them to realize their own potentials. I believe that incorporating Social and Emotional Learning allows students to feel nurtured and safe in the classroom where their passions and interests can guide their learning. By incorporating the five Social and Emotional Learning competencies, I will create a classroom environment where students feel like it’s okay to make mistakes without fear or failure, feel they can succeed at learning if they try their best and are confident to take risks. I aim to reduce stress and anxiety in my students by providing my students with the skills and tools needed to self-regulate. I believe that by having students knowledgeable on how to regulate their emotions, more learning and student engagement will take place. I bring social and emotional themes into the classroom through incorporating children’s literature, brain breaks, goal setting and class discussion about SEL topics.

I believe that through building a classroom community and positive environment, students will feel safe and eager to learn and positive relationships will be the result. I believe a positive classroom community can be reached through group work where students are given the opportunity to work with one another in a variety of team building and cooperative tasks resulting in trust and respect. A classroom is a place where collaboration between students and their peers is important because it allows for new perspectives and new viewpoints to drive the classroom learning. Students feel like they can share their  thoughts within a safe environment without judgment.  Conversation between one another in the classroom will help create a classroom that is diverse and a place where every student feels like their uniqueness is appreciated.  I welcome open discussion in the classroom and think-pair shares in order to ensure that my students feel valued and appreciated and these relationships are built.

It’s important to me as an educator that every student feels valued and included and that individual learning styles are taken into account. I bring multimodal approaches into the classroom to account for these different learning styles and provide continuous support to all students.  As a teacher, it is my responsibility to know who each of my learners are, what kinds of knowledge and experience they bring into the classroom, where their interests and passions lie, and what they want to accomplish so that I can tailor lessons and classroom activities that fit to their needs. I believe that an inclusive classroom is so important because it’s a place where all students voices are being heard and all needs are being met and supported, and it’s a foundation for all learners regardless of ability to learn together. I provide the scaffolding students need in order to build connections between what they already know and their new understandings in order to ensure learning is a gradual process and that teacher support is provided every step of the way.

 In order to be a successful educator, I believe it’s important to provide students with the motivation to learn and grow. I want students to be engaged and academically fulfilled during the progression of a typical school day. My goal as an educator is for students to feel interested, excited, and enthusiastic when it comes to learning. I increase student engagement through experiential learning where I bring hands-on learning experiences into the classroom where students are involved in their own learning and real-world connections can be made. I believe in taking ordinary subjects  and topics and innovating them to a new level where students are now actively participating in their own learning, are moving around the classroom for an intellectual purpose, and are interacting with their peers towards a common goal; learning now becomes memorable and fun. I embrace active learning activities because they stimulate teamwork and cooperative problem solving and lay the groundwork for life-long collaborative practice. I foster critical thinking skills upon my students by bringing topics and issues into the classroom that allow my students to think about the world around them in a new and critical way. By doing so, I believe that students will learn how to analyze, question, and develop higher order thinking as well as develop the necessary skills needed to become positive citizens and role-models in their community.

♥ Throughout this year, I have learned more about the complexity of teaching. Before, teaching was just something that you did. But now I realize how teaching is something you are. There is so much more to teaching than meets the eye and you really have to look beyond the surface to reach the many deeper complexities of teaching. There are so many layers to teaching and everyday I began to peel back a new layer that I had no clue about. I really cannot emphasize how much I realized that teaching is a LIFELONG learning process. It really is. I learned new things everyday I was in school at UBC and my practicum about assessment, social and emotional learning, differentiated learning, instruction, inclusion, incorporating Aboriginal education, inquiry, and the list goes on. I will never know everything there is to know about teaching and that’s okay. I have definitely begun the learning journey and have begun to witness the many complexities that teaching brings with it.

♥ I have learned a lot about myself this year and have begun my journey of personal growth. When I began this program I was really nervous about what things I would have to endure that would pull me out of my comfort zone. My comfort zone had become my best friend and I had lived in it for a long time. This program forced me to challenge myself and begin to have more confidence in my own capabilities. I can often become consumed with self-doubt and so I tried really hard to just take everyday as a new day and a new opportunity to grow as an educator and person. I grew tremendously during practicum.  I began to focus on having this mindset of “you can’t control everything; things are going to change”. Especially in the teaching world, this is so true! However, being someone who likes to be in control, it was difficult to just go with the flow and adapt to new situations. I realized as I progressed through practicum that I began to think on my feet more, adapt as situations needed, went with the flow of the day and just let go of that control. I still have a far way to go but I am really happy with how much I have progressed. My SA even commented on my growth from the first day to the last day in terms of simple things such as my intonation when I read stories to the class or my writing on chart paper and the white board. I even began to develop my own beliefs towards teaching and saw my teaching practice evolve through the lessons I created and instructed.

Some things that I learned:

◊The importance of scaffolding students learning

◊Bringing multimodal approaches into the classroom to provide support to diverse learners

◊Explicitly teaching topics and appropriate instruction for specific grade levels

◊Bringing SEL into the classroom in an effortless way

◊How to use formative assessment as a tool to determine where students are

◊How to bring hands-on learning into the classroom

◊Inquiry and it’s many complexities

◊Classroom management techniques and strategies

◊Framing questions and the language used

and

the

list

goes

on….

To check out more of my learning throughout practicum, check out my original blog!

https://blogs.ubc.ca/jnerada/

What engages and motivates student learning?

My inquiry question came to me by…

 observing my practicum class early on. I noticed that many students often were disengaged and not motivated to learn or finish their work. It became my goal as an educator to create a classroom that had all of my student excited to learn and completely engaged and motivated.  To me, motivated and engaged students are raising their hands to answer questions, their minds are focused and are paying attention to their teacher and classmates, are formulating questions and thinking deeper about topics, are actively involved in discussion and are eager to complete course work to the best of their ability.

What did I learn from educational research?

 I learned that…

• Brain breaks or ‘3 minute motivators’ are a good way to refocus students minds when motivation and engagement is lacking
• Since we are a part of the 21st century, it’s important as educators to incorporate technology whenever applicable because this helps increase student motivation and engagement. For some students, their interest and passion lies within the realms of technology and according to research digital teaching tools are actually better for a student’s memory. Students achievement and self-efficacy increases through the use of technology.
• Classrooms that are motivated are due to motivational instructional practices from their teacher. Some instructional practices include:
  • Extrinsic rewards: These can be used to reward on-task behaviour but should be used in moderation because simply relying on extrinsic rewards actually decreases intrinsic motivation.
  • Autonomy and choice: Offer students several choices on how they wish to present a project, give students the opportunity to decide what the guidelines are for particular activities or create a rubric together, or simply giving students the choice on the topic of their story or animal research project will allow students to focus on things they are passionate about and interested in.
  • Situational interest: The teacher uses ordinary items to teach science concepts in a hands-on manner or use Bingo as a way to teach math. Making learning fun and hands-on increases student motivation.
  • Relevancy, Real World Connections: Activities are related to students home life, hobbies, and interests. Getting to know your students interests is key!
  • Competition: Students love competition so bringing it into the classroom in  an educational way can increase motivation and engagement. Do not have a definite ‘winner’ or ‘loser’ but rather focus on the learning that was made and the fun that took place.
  • Goal Setting: Students create classroom goals together or have individual goal setting take place where students create an individual portfolio of personal goal setting, their dreams, and of their interests. Students become driven to reach their goals because they are so invested in them.
• Social and Emotional Learning should be the foundation of any classroom. Creating positive classroom community that is full of supportive relationships based around trust, respect, and understanding. Through the presence of supportive relationships, students better maintain interest in their academic pursuits and are more motivated which leads to better achievement and more positive peer relationships. Explicit teaching of social and emotional skills is needed and providing students with the tools and skills to self-regulate is very important. When students feel capable of managing their emotions and they feel safe to share their feelings in a safe environment, their motivation to learn increases.
• Fostering a growth mindset in students by praising a students effort and process rather than their intelligence increases students motivation to learn. They wanted a challenge, maintained their confidence and enjoyment despite difficulties, and they ended up performing much better on tasks. Overall, by praising a student’s process which included their effort, strategies, concentration, choices, and persistence, students were more likely to remain motivated, confident, and effective.

How did my inquiry link to my practice? My inquiry and learning were reflected in my work with students in the following ways:

• I created lessons that were hands on and engaging for my students. Ex: Seed sorting, creating human bar graphs, writing poems on paint chips, flipping a coin 100 times for probability, spinners, drawing from a bag, planting seeds, painting in Burns Bog etc.
• I gave my students a choice with their tasks. Ex: choosing what they wanted their fairytale to be about and a choice of what Burns Bog animal they wanted to research about.
• I used extrinsic rewards minimally as a management technique. Ex: cotton ball strategy
• Through my lessons I connected my students to their real world and made lessons relevant. Ex: raising money for chickens for families in Africa
• I brought social and emotional learning into the class and developed a positive classroom community and encouraged a growth mindset amongst my students. I developed positive, supportive relationships with my students. Ex: brain breaks, SEL books and discussion, focusing on praise, promoting a growth mindset through words such as, “challenge your brain” or “I can’t do it YET”, jokes to start the day, sticky note goal setting, collaboration through group work such as animal collages or carousel activities.
• I used technology for brain breaks, animal research and math games. Ex: IXL, Raz kids, GoNoodle.

What inquiry means to me:

I initially thought inquiry was something that had an end goal; something that could be completed or come to a close. However, I have learned that inquiry is not something that is ever finished but rather a mindset and process. There is no end goal because the process is continuous; one question or wonder begins to develop into even more questions or wonders and so it’s never fully finished. The end product is unknown and has no limits because you never really know where the inquiry process will take you. Throughout inquiry we may  come to know and understand a topic better, however we quickly notice how much more there still is needed to learn. The inquiry process brings with it the active creation and testing of new knowledge; It’s a process that is ongoing and continuous. To me, inquiry requires that ‘action’ piece where our investigations take us further and where we need to actually test the research and put our new understandings into practice. I think the inquiry process relates well to the teaching practice because being a teacher too is something that can never be complete; teachers always are developing and growing and it’s a continuous, never-ending journey just like the process of inquiry is.

How has your question evolved? Where might my inquiry take me next?

I began my inquiry from a simple question that arose during observing my practicum classroom early on in my teaching journey. From there, I researched the topic in further depth in order to develop knowledge and understanding on the topic. I began taking my research on my inquiry and putting it into practice. I thought it was necessary to test out what I had newly discovered in my research in order to understand my inquiry better. That’s what I did. I tested my inquiry out during my practicum and then I would reflect on it afterwards writing down what strategies worked and what didn’t work. As I progressed through my inquiry more questions began to arise.

 I think my inquiry will take me further into this topic of student motivation and engagement.  As of right now my question is very surface level and I would like to dig deeper into it.

Some questions to think about…

• As an educator, what can I do to reach that one student who will never be motivated or engaged?
• How do I handle behavioral problems that prevent students from being motivated?
• How can I reach students of all levels and provide support to everyone?
• What do I do when I have exhausted all other options but my students are still not focused or motivated to learn?
• How do I motivate students who have anxiety?
• How do I motivate students who don’t have the necessary skills to self-regulate?
• How do I motivate students who just don’t “get it”?
• How do I further create a growth mindset in my students?

I have learned that student motivation is not always something you can accomplish overnight; some students will never fully be engaged or motivated in the classroom. I think that as educators no matter how many instructional strategies we bring to our lessons to try to motivate our students, sometimes there is more going on with particular students that prevents them from being fully motivated.

I feel like I have scratched the surface of student motivation and need to learn more!!

Teaching is a lifelong learning process and therefore I aim to continue to grow in this profession forever. I am a lifelong learner and it’s exciting to know that teaching is not something that can be mastered but rather something that can be developed and researched and there are so many avenues for growth. I intend to continue to grow through professional development opportunities. I will attend district workshops and will read the new research articles and books to further my knowledge on education.  I intend to take this research and new found knowledge and apply it within my teaching practice through the lessons I create and instruct in the classroom. I hope to learn more about the inquiry process, assessment, and how to meet the needs of all learners in the classroom. As well, I truly value collaboration therefore I aim to always collaborate with my peers, coworkers, and mentors. Through collaboration I gain so much knowledge and new perspective. I walk away questioning things I had never questioned before and the amazing opportunities collaboration with others provides is endless. I want to continue to grow personally and continue to be pushed outside my comfort zone and although it’s scary, it’s definitely worth it.

I want to continue to be/have:

REFLECTIVE              PASSIONATE           OPEN-MINDED      BIG HEART

COLLABORATE         GROWTH         LEARNER         BALANCE       ADAPTIVE