End of Year Reflection
This past year has been one full of growth and learning. Through the countless struggles, I have experienced so many moments of love, joy, and deep learning. Over the course of the past year, I have been able to genuinely reflect and identify areas of my practice that I am confident in and areas of growth that I can focus on as I move forward in my career.
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My teaching "superpowers" are relationship building and flexibility. These two aspects of my practice are what I feel make me a special educator. I truly believe that students are much more than just students; they are human beings with a life that exists outside of the confines of a campus. I make it a priority to ensure that every student I interact with knows and feels like they are seen, heard, respected, and validated. Throughout my years in education, I have been privileged to build truly transformative relationships with students and I have seen how these connections have significant impacts on the holistic growth and development of students. A meaningful relationship with a student can make all the difference in the classroom even when that relationship is not necessarily rooted in anything academic. My other "superpower" is being flexible. As I finish up my first year of student teaching, I have seen how important it is to be flexible. One thing about teaching is that you can never truly expect the same thing when you come into work. Being felxibile is helpful for me as well as the students. There are days where students' energy are not very high and the lesson for that day requires energy and heavy buy-in. These are moments where being flexible and improvising can be a lifesaver. It can also be helpful in the sense that there will be moments when students are very interested in a particular topic or activity and there may be an opportunity for deeper learning to take place. I believe these are the moments that have the most significant impact on students so I like having the ability to be flexible and put other things on hold so that we can dive deeper into something that is both exciting and relevant.
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On another note, being a new teacher has also shown me many aspects of my practice that I can still grow in and refine to become the best teacher I can be. One of my growth areas is to facilitating meaningful discussions in the class. Throughout my student teaching, I have found that authenticly generated discussion is where the deeper learning takes place. What I have found to be a struggle is when discussion is not generated authentically. I want to grow in my facilitation and scaffolding of meaningful class discussions so that students are given the opportunity to verbally share their thinking with the entire class. Another growth area for me would be being more organizied and writing things down. Being self-aware is really important for me and I am fully aware that my brain tends to branch off and fixate on tangential thoughts. A good strategy that has been working for me is being proactive about writing things down and setting reminders on my phone so that I do not forget important information and other tasks that require my attention.
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As I prepare for the second year of the SDTR program, I want to really focus on two major aspects of my practice. The first is looking at how I might provide more scaffolds to my students on caseload and my emerging bilingual students so that they experience growth, success, and belongingness within our Humanities class. It is my goal that every student that comes into my class feels that they grew in some capacity and it is unfortunately usually these students that struggle to feel these things in the classroom. Another area that I want to focus on is how might I help my students grapple with complex ideas such as racism, social justice, and being culturally conscious? For many of the projects and activities that I dream of doing, students will need a large set of tools for breaking down these bigger concepts that are present within the content that they will be exposed to. Overall, I am excited to deep dive into these two aspects of my instruction so that I can become the best teacher I can possibly be.