My First Year Of Teaching

Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligence’s (MI theory) is a valuable resource for teachers, if they understood how they could apply this in the classroom (Snowman & McCown, 2012). In this class, there are multiple intelligences observed amongst the students; however, there is minimal differentiated instruction to allow the students the best opportunities for success. It is critical that teachers understand that their teaching methods may not be wrong, but they

The twenty-five stories that are contained in the book, My First Year As A Teacher, are about real teachers and their experiences during the first year of teaching. Each story is different. Some are about memorable students while other stories are about some of the hardships that are encountered as a novice teacher. The diverse sampling of stories in this book gives insight of what kind of problems one might encounter as a teacher, yet they also describe how rewarding the profession can be. I found it rather difficult to choose only ten stories as my favorite but after much consideration and rereading I decided on the following stories because in many ways I could relate to the students as well as the teachers that are given life in these stories.

One course I feel made a big impact on me during this program was week 5 of PEDG 5372 Assessment Data to Guide Instructional Decisions. This course was taken at the beginning of this journey to complete my Master’s Degree, in the summer before my second year of teaching. I learned more about data analysis from this course than I did during my student teaching and my first year of teaching combined. I feel that teachers are expected to hit the floor running and there is no true training period or period of transition; you just have to know what you know and learn as you go. This course helped me to be more focused and knowledgeable about data and how to use it effectively. For instance, I learned how to dissect data in a way that I am able to drill down into specific TEKs and see where my students are struggling and focus on that TEK again in later lessons. For instance, I currently teach Juniors and Seniors and we struggle using context clues to determine vocabulary words. For the past three common assessments this year I was able to go to my data meeting with all of the data already broken down showing the three highest performance indicators and the three lowest performance indicators. Because I am only a third year teacher, my administration team was quite impressed with my knowledge. I have actually used the data analysis presentation that I created during week 5, to show my department chair how to break down the data we report more effectively and in a way that

I would have to say that the biggest takeaway from this class, was how I learned how to improve my time management. I have to admit that I'm still not the best at handling time, but I'm better then then when I started this class. This class has also helped me not just in the classroom, but in the workforce also. I

My legs started to tremble as I took my first step into the noisy classroom. The moment I walked in the entire class immediately became extremely quiet. First day of new school is always the hardest, but for me it was a bit different; it wasn’t only a new school but was also a new language a, new country, different races and a total different environment. I couldn’t even say a sentence properly in English, but the worst of it all was the people surrounding me had made me feel like I didn’t exist or as if I didn’t belong among anywhere. I was good in every other subject besides English but that hadn’t mattered because everything revolved around English.

She has envisioned herself as a planter sowing seeds into her students. Some would reject her lessons. Some would embrace them and teach them to their children. Her ideology is that generation after generation people have left their children a world that is a mess and it will take a very special type of people to clean it up and prevent the mistakes of the past. The end game to her has always been to develop her students‘ moral compasses and help them discover what they believe and why they believe. To build conviction of their beliefs so they have a personal code so that they can navigate whatever space in the world that they occupy and choose to change what they didn’t like in the world. No matter what grade or subject she has taught, she has always focused on character development for her students.

This course has taught me many new things about teaching. I have gained knowledge about topics such as moral education, expertise, decision-making, and classroom management, just to name a few. Through the reading and portfolio essays, my desire to teach has strengthened throughout the semester. Because of this course, I now have a better understanding of the educational and psychological needs my future students, as well as myself, will have and how to meet them.

This program has taught me many things about myself. I have been able to analyze my personality, my tenacity, and my ability to be patient and how I am able to handle conflict not only in my classroom but also in my life. The virtues that I possess can influence my teaching style and how my students perceive my class and are able to function and achieve. It is important for my students to be successful and this is something that I must work hard to instill in my students.

Improving student performance has long been an issue contemplated and researched by educational professionals and psychologists. Nowadays, an even greater burden has been placed on the shoulders of teachers, whose livelihoods are being determined by how well their students perform on standardized tests and other academic evaluations. With this increased amount of pressure, teachers are desperate to find ways to improve student success. As Hidi and Harackiewicz point out, the aspect of student learning that teachers have the most influence over is the amount of effort put in by students (Hidi & Harackiewicz, 2000). Research has shown that students’ motivation to meet these academic demands begins steadily declining around the third grade (Anderman & Maehr, 1987; Harter, 1981) which means teachers must take proactive approaches in their classrooms to stimulate and maintain the motivation of their students.

In working with different peoples' styles and kinds of intelligence, I must sometimes stop and see how can I work best with them. By having a balanced curriculum, lesson plan, and activities in the classroom we can meet the needs of the students but also motivate them to learn. Of course it is not realistic to think that educators can have a plan for every single intelligence type in their classroom, but by focusing on the strengths of each student teachers can have an avenue of learning every student.

Students who are more inclined toward intrinsic motivation like a challenging job. They have an incentive to work for the benefit of personal satisfaction from taking care teacher for getting good grades. They prefer to try solve the problem on its own rather than relying on the help or guidance of a teacher. They also adopted a system of mastery goals and standards of evaluation that allows them to make an independent assessment of the success or failure in the classroom without relying on teachers for information or evaluation.

In classrooms all over the world, there are bright, intelligent, capable individuals who should, by all standards, be doing well in their academic careers, but for some reason, they are not living up to their potentials. One common explanation for this phenomenon is a lack of motivation on the part of the students, and while motivation is not synonymous with performance, it can be a relatively accurate predictor of academic achievements (Maclellan, 2008). This lack of motivation that seems to be plaguing classrooms is a serious issue that must be addressed by all educators, because an unmotivated student is being robbed of their chance to better themselves.

Blad (2014) stated, "... we all know that emotions, how we feel about a person, topic or activity … that 's going to shape how much we want to be cognitively engaged in this task". During my first year teaching I created a song to assist in my students’ learning the key words needed to solve word problems. Once they learned this song and the gestures, they were able to apply it in context and use it whenever it was needed. I did not need technology to create the song nor many resources. All I had to do was take a risk and chant it to my students as well as act out the gestures. As a result of following each of these steps, the students were highly engaged in learning. They also made the most learning gains out of the 12-second grade classes for the 2013-2014 school year.

I cannot help but think how useful this course has been. Reflecting on the content covered over the course of this semester I have seen growth, and how changes on my lesson plan that not only benefited every student but also changed my focused in using different methods of instruction to fit the needs of every individual student. I truly enjoyed that the course was divided into main topics to help me grow on a professional level. Each topic attempted to provide specific examples, lessons, broke down information, incorporated research, used external resources, and used real-life examples to help individuals in the education system understand the importance of instructional interventions. The course was divided into

As the first semester of my college career comes to a close, I cannot think of a more beneficial class for me to have taken than this university seminar. I learned a lot about a variety of different relationships and the class definitely put a new perspective on how I saw romantic, familial, and platonic relationships. I am and always will be experiencing these relationships all throughout my life, and learning more about them now will help me understand how to approach them and keep the relationship strong and healthy in the future.