This page and piece of the puzzle are the areas of inquiry that I intend to pursue as a beginning teacher.
What are my strengths and how will I continue to nurture them?
Arts in education is a passion of mine and definitely a strength that I bring to the profession. It started with my involvement with it as a child and continued it throughout my schooling years. I intend to keep myself involved in the arts as an adult. Currently, I take dance classes and go to live theatre as much as I can. I hope to show my fellow educators, students and their parents the value of the arts and fight to keep it present in schools.
In the realm of the arts, I want to find the most effective ways to incorporate it in my lessons. In the past, I have been hit with the roadblock of many students not being comfortable with presentations or being in front of crowds in general. I want to work towards finding ways to keep these students comfortable but also helping them to grow and gain a sense of stability with public speaking.
How am I working to improve my practice?
I enjoy reading books written by educators for educators. In addition, casual conversations with teachers past and present can expose many tips and tricks about instruction. I want to continue to ask questions and adding new dynamics to my lessons and trying techniques that other teachers have found helpful.
The first thing I did to expose myself to new ways of instruction was choosing to travel internationally to Switzerland and be placed in a traditional Swiss school. There, I spent a lot of time observing a variety of elementary grades and speaking with teachers of both primary and secondary school. Click here to read more about this amazing experience I had.
What issues will I investigate?
I want to look further into ways of encouraging children’s engagement in classroom material. For my inquiry project I completed at UBC, I looked into increasing students’ responsibility for their education and was blown away by the amount of information there is on that topic. I strive to have students want to learn and been eager to expand their understandings.
In addition, I want to discover strategies to balance student differentiated learning. I believe that each student is an individual and therefore gains knowledge in a variety of ways. However, as an instructor, it can be complicated to find ways to get it all done and in an effective manner. Therefore, I want to look into what current teachers are doing that is working for them and find other ideas that I could incorporate in my practice.