As this semester
comes to an end becoming a teacher becomes closer and more of a reality. I reflect on a classmate’s genius hour who
raised the question ‘does Brock prepare you for the real world’ and I begin to
ask myself if this class has prepared me for teaching.
My first instinct is a strong no but as I
think about everything that occurred this semester I realized that it did. Tossing aside the theory of this course, it
was the fails and the stressors that prepared me the best. The somewhat unclear instructions and changes
in due dates was frustrating however I have realized that as a teacher this
will be common. Teaching will be
stressful in an ample amount of ways and I may have to change my due dates as
things will come up such as an assembly within my school or spending more time on a unit because majority of the class needs extra help on that topic. The lecture when the professor could not get
the technology to work could also be a very real occurrence in my classroom
because technology is not always reliable and I may have to change my entire
lesson plan to accommodate this inconvenience just like the professor of this
class did. I feel this course has
helped me to develop the skills needed to calmly adjust to change and learn to
time manage, the unclear expectations in assignments helped to bring out my
creativity which is important for a future teacher to maintain when developing
lesson plans. Having to perform tasks
with a curriculum document was challenging, as I have never seen one before and
with the unclear requirements it was a very time consuming event. This also prepared me for teaching because as
a new teacher I will be exposed to things I am not familiar with and it is
important to have the skills to be able to use different resources, find ways
of getting help, getting feedback from colleagues and possibly use trial and error
until satisfied with the result.
I suppose
tossing all the theory to the side is extreme so some of the theory components
of this course that prepared me for teaching are the know, do be umbrella as it
taught me what to look for in terms of the big ideas to form my lessons
around. Learning about the vertical scan
will be useful as a future teacher because looking at the two grades below I
can get a general idea of where the students should be with certain knowledge
and scanning one grade up will help me to ensure I prepare them with the proper
knowledge to succeed the following year in a different classroom. Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy was also a concept
in this class and I think it was important to note the shift to verbs, which to
me implies more active learning with 21st century skills. This leads me to my next point as this class
has introduced a variety of ways to incorporate videos, Skype, and other types
of media into the classroom to try and keep students engaged. Things like group work or even blogs are
becoming for prevalent in classrooms as the strict lecture format has been
found to be ineffective at keeping students interested in the content.
As my final blog
is coming to an end I conclude that this course has indeed began to prepare me
for a career in teaching. I have learned
valuable skills such as creativity, patience, understanding for change, and
teacher specific skills such as scanning curriculum documents and learning how
to prepare lessons.