Blog #1 Reflection on July Sessions
Reflection on July Sessions
In reflecting upon the July sessions, I found the content and skills learnt from these days to have been quite beneficial to my preparations in the lead up to my Internship. There were three main sessions that I felt were most informative and that gave me insight as to what to expect for the upcoming term:
Homeroom – The homeroom tutorial was a very interesting session which allowed me to explore, in collaboration with many other peoples’ experiences, what they role of the homeroom teacher was. I found the session opened my eyes to the many different systems of homeroom/roll call in place in different schools. I went to a Catholic high school and experienced a horizontal homeroom system, and then for senior schooling experienced a vertical system of homeroom. After doing a few school visits for my Internship, however, I learned that not all schools implement a homeroom system (my government school has a whole school assembly every morning and the roll call teacher take the roll). In thinking about how this prepared me for my internship, I think more than anything it prepared me to consider the reality of the differences in school contexts from school to school. There were so many different experiences of homeroom and expectations of schools from teachers that I was completely unaware of and perhaps even naïve to.
Classroom management – This session was the most influential upon my preparation for my Internship. The classroom management aspect of teaching has always been my biggest concern when walking into a class. I felt that this session provided many useful techniques for managing those difficult behaviours that can be quite daunting to a new teacher who feels that they may not have the appropriate responses to challenging situations should they arise. Particularly having viewed the classes I will be taking, I felt that I was able to walk away from this session with a few techniques up my sleeve to deal with some of the behaviours I have already witnessed.
Code of conduct – Some of the information presented in this session may have been common knowledge by now, however, I felt the reminder was comforting in reassuring the things we, as teachers, need to be cautious of. I was particularly interested in the excerpts from the DET Code of Conduct heading into a DET school for my internship. It was helpful to have the guidelines for both public and private conduct set out clearly, which clarified the few queries that I was unsure of in regards to this issue. I also was interested to learn about the Duty of Care requirements and what that meant for me as a student teacher in a school. I am now aware of what is and is not my legal duty of care and feel that I can now be assertive in situations that may leave students (and other staff) in a situation that may result in a breach of this duty.
In all, I found these sessions in particular very useful in preparing myself for what I initially thought was a hugely daunting experience, but now seems only somewhat daunting.
Practicum Goals
In the next ten weeks I hope to achieve the following:
· Learn as much as I can about each individual student. In doing so I intend to know my students as young people rather than solely as students in my classroom. I also intend to learn enough about each student so that I may implement the most effective pedagogy to benefit student learning, and so that I may make the lessons as engaging as possible for each of my students. (ELEMENT 2 - TEACHERS KNOW THEIR STUDENTS AND HOW THEY LEARN)
· Learn, so that I may KNOW, the content of each of the units I am teaching for the term. I intend to develop a deep content knowledge about the units I am teaching, beyond what the students need to learn themselves, so that I may be as helpful as I possibly can should the students ask questions beyond the curriculum.(ELEMENT 1 – TEACHERS KNOW THEIR SUBJECT CONTENT AND HOW TO TEACH THAT CONTENT TO THEIR STUDENTS)
· Create a safe and supportive learning environment that challenges students’ to step outside of the idea of ‘traditional’ learning in the classroom and embrace new experiences with a positive attitude. I intend to use learning activities that challenge students to work cooperatively with one another to construct meaning and to develop their social skills in communicating with new people. Such an endeavor requires vigilance and careful planning for management in the classroom, which I will have to prepare for and implement strategies to create an environment that is conducive to effective learning. (ELEMENT 5 - TEACHERS CREATE AND MAINTAIN SAFE AND CHALLENGING LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS THROUGH THE USE OF CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT SKILLS).
