Prepared or Not Prepared-That is The Question

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 21^st 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.

                        

  

Curriculum Document

         

      The last couple weeks of this course have been challenging for me since I have never seen a curriculum document before.

        Having to create a curriculum document has provided shocking insight to what a career in teaching will be like, and it will not be easy to say the least.  A bunch of terms were thrown at me such as the know, do and be which meant little to me at the time.  Meeting with my group and beginning our curriculum document I began to understand that the know, do, be will be central and important terms in my teaching career as all my lessons will revolve around them.

            When designing lesson plans based on the curriculum teachers look at three major questions of education: what is most important for students to know?  What is most important for students to be able to do?  What kind of person do we want students to be?  The answers to these three questions lead to the know/do/be framework and it is helpful when working with one discipline.  When looking at the curriculum document for the first time it initially all appeared to be jumbled information that made no sense.  Upon deeper analysis the answers to the three big questions for each unit popped out at me and I began to understand what each unit of biology taught and the expectations that followed.
   

The know consists of big ideas and enduring relationships in the KDB umbrella while the be corresponds to attitudes, values and actions.  Finally the do refers to 21st century skills.

The assignment for this class has led to my first blog rant:

    Not being exposed to a curriculum document until fourth year is beyond frustrating.  The concurrent education program is supposed to be preparing me to become a teacher and I feel all I have learned in the education classes is the usual Pavlov's dog and hierarchy of needs.  I feel a curriculum document should have been presented to us way before this class as it would have been beneficial to talk to teachers about curriculum documents during my placements.     Rant over.

Now that I have expressed my frustration we can go back to creating a document.  Looking at the Ontario curriculum documents it is evident that there are a lot of expectations and requirements for teachers to follow.  I feel it is going to be tough to create engaging lesson plans while meeting all the requirements and expectations outlined in the curriculum documents.  Perhaps this is why teachers have resorted to strictly lecturing as opposed to trying to come up with interesting lessons- there is not enough time in a semester to engage students with every lesson while also covering all of the material.  

Perhaps my next blog will incorporate ways to cover everything in the document while making learning engaging and fun!