Standard #4 – Content Knowledge
The teacher candidate understands the central concepts, tools of inquiry, and structures of the discipline(s) he or she teaches and creates learning experiences that make these aspects of the discipline accessible and meaningful for learners to assure mastery of the content.
Summer 2015: The origin of my career in educations lies with my experience in the field of chemistry. My experience and knowledge is the framework of the happenings in my future classroom, but I must find real life applications that relate to my students in order to portray my excitement in the subject area. Using the natural curiosity of students to answer authentic questions is a modern way of instruction to engage today’s learners.
Autumn 2015: Content mastery is integral to effective teaching. After being away from my field more than a decade, I was certain that I would struggle with recalling certain information. While this has only been the case twice this semester, the most encouraging fact for me is that I not only recall the chemistry content, but truly understand it and can explain it better than I ever have. It is exciting to be able to do this! I make every attempt to generate activities and labs that utilize common materials and actions that may be found in my students’ every day lives, and I label these activities “real-life” science throughout this portfolio. My hope is that by making content more relatable, my students will have a better mastery of it and will retain it for future use.
Spring 2016: Teaching is more than content. Period. Without a mastery of this material, there can be no concern for student engagement or classroom management. My students need to both question and understand the world around them and my job is to use my knowledge basis of chemistry and relate it to my students’ real-life experiences in meaningful ways. Content is the easy part. Engagement is where the challenge lies.