Standard 4
The teacher 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 content.
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Reflection 2016:
The teacher understands the concepts he or she is teaching. The teacher will acquire and adapt his or her teaching “toolbox” to teach and structure their classroom. The teacher will teach and create a learning experience that allows students to become masters of the content.
A friend and I have been having an ongoing conversation now for about 2 years, and it is based around teaching for a test. We have both agreed that knowledge is not just mindless facts, that are thrown at you and are forgotten. Knowledge and learning is always evolving and changing, new ideas are always coming into play. As a teacher, you are doing a disservice to your students if all you are just spouting off facts, instead you need to make sure that your students are growing every year. One thing that I have really been able to do is learn and implement different learning techniques from other teachers. I believe that knowledge can be acquired from many different experiences; however, they do not have to be your own experiences, we learn and build from others. When you talk to other faculty members, gain a perspective based upon another’s experience, and after that you should analyze this information. After analyzing information, see if it can be applied to your own classroom. One limitation that I have ran into, was in the summer while I was a nanny, every day we would spend an hour working on different pages in her summer math handbook. It became a limitation when I realized that I was unaware of past lessons, I was not sure of how in depth her teacher went into different lesson. Another limitation was since there were only ever twenty questions per page, it was hard to gauge the level of mastery for each skill.
As a teacher my goal is to make sure that my students are not mindless robots, where all they do is memorize facts for a given time. I want my students to become “masters” of each lesson I am teaching. I want to be able to pose a question to my students, and like three weeks after a test, they still able to analyze and explain the answer and the concept of the lesson. As I previously stated I do not want my students to memorize facts and then forget them. I want to build off knowledge they already hold. I want to be able to make connections with every subject I teach. I am able to help students to feel a connection with what they have learned, that is what makes something memorable. Every teacher has a goal of teaching a concept so well that every student understands the concept. This is not the case, and accepting that will be a struggle for me. As a result, I will be putting notes and my lecture online either every day or at the end of the week. This is so my students will be able to have a resource to look back on the lecture, in order to jog one’s memory of something they have forgotten.