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.