Teaching Reflections
Links will take you to my lesson plans and other artifacts related to the reflection.
Reflection #4
Standard 1- Content Knowledge: “The competent teacher understands the central concepts, methods of inquiry, and structures of the disciplines and creates learning experiences that make the content meaningful to all students.”
This semester, I worked in a co-taught 7th grade ELA class as a part of my take-over student teaching experience. In this class, we read from a textbook “The Tales of Ulysses,” an adapted version of The Odyssey. For this unit, I had to be prepared for class and knowledgeable about the course content. In addition, I had to be ready to differentiate the material so as to best meet the needs of all learners in the classroom, with or without disabilities.
One way in which I did this was by engaging with the students and enhancing their background knowledge related to the materials. There are many themes that thread their way through The Odyssey; which ones are relevant to and have meaning for a multicultural classroom of 7th graders? For some students, it was the need for Odysseus to return home to his wife and son, and for others, it was his obligation to his crew, like the leader of a sports team. Through discussion and reflective writing, we succeeded in determining several themes or main ideas and trace their development through the text. (RL.7.2)
Another way in which we created a more meaningful learning experience for all students was by differentiating the text itself. I acquired several copies of the graphic novel version of The Odyssey, and used them both as an accommodation – allowing some students to visualize the events that were taking place – and as an enhancement tool, allowing some students to extend their knowledge of the text by critically comparing and contrasting two different adaptations of it. (RL.7.7)
Standard 7 – Communication: “The competent teacher uses knowledge of effective written, verbal, non-verbal, and visual communication techniques to foster active inquiry, collaboration, and supportive interaction in the classroom.”
For my professional development goal this semester, I aimed at increasing the amount of regular contact that I had with the parents of students on my caseload. My goal was to have daily contact with at least one parent and, by the end of April, I was achieving this goal. The majority of my parent contact came through the use of “communication journals” that several of my students used, and I found these logs to be very helpful in maintaining regular contact with parents. Other modes through which I contacted parents was through e-mail, telephone calls, and face-to-face contacts. By the end of the semester, I had had at least one contact with parents or guardians of nine of the ten students on my caseload. One thing that I noticed was that I had fewer contacts with the parents of minority students than I did with the parents of White students. This will be an issue that I will have to continue to be aware of. In the future, I will have to find alternative ways of contacting parents, including meeting with them outside of the school building and outside of school hours.
This semester, I worked in a co-taught 7th grade ELA class as a part of my take-over student teaching experience. In this class, we read from a textbook “The Tales of Ulysses,” an adapted version of The Odyssey. For this unit, I had to be prepared for class and knowledgeable about the course content. In addition, I had to be ready to differentiate the material so as to best meet the needs of all learners in the classroom, with or without disabilities.
One way in which I did this was by engaging with the students and enhancing their background knowledge related to the materials. There are many themes that thread their way through The Odyssey; which ones are relevant to and have meaning for a multicultural classroom of 7th graders? For some students, it was the need for Odysseus to return home to his wife and son, and for others, it was his obligation to his crew, like the leader of a sports team. Through discussion and reflective writing, we succeeded in determining several themes or main ideas and trace their development through the text. (RL.7.2)
Another way in which we created a more meaningful learning experience for all students was by differentiating the text itself. I acquired several copies of the graphic novel version of The Odyssey, and used them both as an accommodation – allowing some students to visualize the events that were taking place – and as an enhancement tool, allowing some students to extend their knowledge of the text by critically comparing and contrasting two different adaptations of it. (RL.7.7)
Standard 7 – Communication: “The competent teacher uses knowledge of effective written, verbal, non-verbal, and visual communication techniques to foster active inquiry, collaboration, and supportive interaction in the classroom.”
For my professional development goal this semester, I aimed at increasing the amount of regular contact that I had with the parents of students on my caseload. My goal was to have daily contact with at least one parent and, by the end of April, I was achieving this goal. The majority of my parent contact came through the use of “communication journals” that several of my students used, and I found these logs to be very helpful in maintaining regular contact with parents. Other modes through which I contacted parents was through e-mail, telephone calls, and face-to-face contacts. By the end of the semester, I had had at least one contact with parents or guardians of nine of the ten students on my caseload. One thing that I noticed was that I had fewer contacts with the parents of minority students than I did with the parents of White students. This will be an issue that I will have to continue to be aware of. In the future, I will have to find alternative ways of contacting parents, including meeting with them outside of the school building and outside of school hours.
Reflection #3
Self-advocacy is one of the core concepts or principles that provide the foundation for special education. It is a key component to teaching students with disabilities how to be fully participating members in society; they must be able to identify and recognize situations in which they are being disabled, whether it is a curb on a street corner or a teacher insisting on a written response to a math question, and be able to advocate for themselves and affect change in their own environments. However, this concept of self-advocacy takes on radically different shapes depending on who the student is, what her individual strengths and needs are, and what her goals for herself are. (This, as a side note, is why it is so important to teach to and to talk about a student’s “needs” rather than his “deficits.” A deficit is something either owed or lacking, and implies that there exists some more perfect version of the person out there, that he has failed to live up to.)
One of the most difficult challenges of my Phase III practicum placement, working with students with severe and multiple disabilities, has been attending to each student’s best approach to learning self-advocacy. My student Baldur, for example, needs a combination of understanding how his environment can sometimes limit him and cause him to have a physical disability and identifying when he may be misinterpreting a peer’s motivations that may make him feel angry or frustrated or victimized. For Thor, he needs to connect his desire for social acceptance with the differences in his social behaviors that may lead him to being disabled when he is amongst his peers. For Trig, our student who is Deaf and has mild physical and cognitive disabilities, she needs a recognition of how her deafness can be disabling to her in community settings, like crossing a street, but also how it can give her access to a positive culture and multiple, effective means of communication. In all of these students, however, I believe that their ability to self-advocate is tied up with their self-identities, and that they need an understanding of themselves not as people who are somehow “at a loss,” but as people who must be able to overcome certain barriers unique to themselves in order to reap the full benefits of equal personhood.
Standard 3 - Diversity
"The competent teacher understands how students differ in their approaches to learning and creates instructional opportunities that are adapted to diverse learners."
One of the most difficult challenges of my Phase III practicum placement, working with students with severe and multiple disabilities, has been attending to each student’s best approach to learning self-advocacy. My student Baldur, for example, needs a combination of understanding how his environment can sometimes limit him and cause him to have a physical disability and identifying when he may be misinterpreting a peer’s motivations that may make him feel angry or frustrated or victimized. For Thor, he needs to connect his desire for social acceptance with the differences in his social behaviors that may lead him to being disabled when he is amongst his peers. For Trig, our student who is Deaf and has mild physical and cognitive disabilities, she needs a recognition of how her deafness can be disabling to her in community settings, like crossing a street, but also how it can give her access to a positive culture and multiple, effective means of communication. In all of these students, however, I believe that their ability to self-advocate is tied up with their self-identities, and that they need an understanding of themselves not as people who are somehow “at a loss,” but as people who must be able to overcome certain barriers unique to themselves in order to reap the full benefits of equal personhood.
Standard 3 - Diversity
"The competent teacher understands how students differ in their approaches to learning and creates instructional opportunities that are adapted to diverse learners."
Reflection #2
_ My second practicum
placement has been at an elementary school in Champaign, Illinois,
where I have been working with 4th and 5th
grade students with specific learning disabilities on reading and
math. One of my students, a 5th grade African American
male, had a “history” with his teachers, both general education
and special education. Like many of his peers, this student had
built up a reputation of not following directions, being disruptive
in class, and not participating. In order to address these issues,
my cooperative teacher suggested that I work with him in a variety of
learning environments. These have included working with him
one-on-one in his resource room, working in small groups during
pull-out instruction, and coming into his general education classroom
during reading periods and working with him and with his peers
without disabilities. In addition, I created an instructional program for him in reading that targeted fluency, and emphasized practicing a variety of tasks in a variety of settings. This, I believe, worked to keep his interest high and behavioral problems low. (Here is, for example, a "game" that the student came up with and I implemented for him that gave him "points" for assembling words from phonemes.) Although this remains a work in progress for
me, what I have observed so far is that, by integrating a variety of
working environments into the student's daily school schedule, we
have been able to weaken the relationship between his instances of
negative behavior and specific classroom instruction.
One of the challenges of this placement has been finding effective media through which to deliver instruction. My students have a wide range of strengths and needs, and include students with severe reading disabilities, hearing impairments, and ADHD. I have found some success through rotating the ways in which I teach, including using SmartBoard Activities, rotating student groupings in order to emphasize their learning strengths, and encouraging student driven and owned learning. The benefits of these approaches have been that they have led to more meaningful learning on the part of the students. However, sometimes the techniques do not work for everyone, and then the challenge is finding a novel approach to delivering instruction.
Standard 5 – Learning Environment
“The competent learning behavior specialist uses an understanding of individual and group motivation and behavior to create a learning environment that encourages positive social interaction, active engagement in learning, and self-motivation.”
Standard 6 - Instructional Delivery
"The competent teacher understands and uses a variety of instructional strategies to encourage students' development of critical thinking, problem solving, and performance skills."
One of the challenges of this placement has been finding effective media through which to deliver instruction. My students have a wide range of strengths and needs, and include students with severe reading disabilities, hearing impairments, and ADHD. I have found some success through rotating the ways in which I teach, including using SmartBoard Activities, rotating student groupings in order to emphasize their learning strengths, and encouraging student driven and owned learning. The benefits of these approaches have been that they have led to more meaningful learning on the part of the students. However, sometimes the techniques do not work for everyone, and then the challenge is finding a novel approach to delivering instruction.
Standard 5 – Learning Environment
“The competent learning behavior specialist uses an understanding of individual and group motivation and behavior to create a learning environment that encourages positive social interaction, active engagement in learning, and self-motivation.”
Standard 6 - Instructional Delivery
"The competent teacher understands and uses a variety of instructional strategies to encourage students' development of critical thinking, problem solving, and performance skills."
Reflection #1
During my first phase practicum placement, I worked in a self-contained classroom for high school students with specific learning disabilities. This class was an English class, and the curriculum required the students to read and respond to a multicultural novel. In the class, we were reading the novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon. This novel is about a young man named Christopher, who has an Autism Spectrum Disorder. The purpose of the unit was to have the students engage with the text in a meaningful way that would encourage them to critically reflect on their relationships with their own disabilities, and how they had been challenged by those disabilities and how they had struggled to overcome those challenges.
One of the constant and ongoing struggles with being a special education teachers is finding appropriate instructional materials that allow one's students to be able to participate with their grade-level general education curriculum at a level of difficulty that provides them with meaningful instruction. Reading The Curious Incident with my students accomplished this. My cooperative teacher was also able to accomplish this by seeking out and finding a graphic novel adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. This adaptation allowed our students to be exposed to the same curriculum as their general education peers, while still managing to obtain meaningful instruction from the materials.
One way in which my cooperative teacher and I ensured that our students were able to have ample opportunities to engage in a meaningful way with these texts was by planning for extensive periods of pre-teaching and reflection in our lesson plans. For this unit on Romeo and Juliet, for example, we would begin each lesson with a short group discussion regarding the literary principles of character, setting, and theme. During the actual reading session, we would encourage students to fully participate through role-playing, acting, and emoting through their characters rather than merely rote reading the parts of the play to them. And after the daily lesson, we would use graphic organizers to provide students with an additional medium through which they might be able to comprehend and synthesize the learning material.
Standard 2 – Characteristics of Learners
“The competent learning behavior specialist understands the impact that disabilities have o n the cognitive, physical, emotional, social, and communication development of an individual and provides opportunities that support the intellectual, social, and personal development of all students.”
Standard 4 – Planning for Instruction
“The competent learning behavior specialist understands how students differ in their approaches to learning and creates instructional opportunities that are adapted to diverse learners. The learning behavior specialist understands instructional planning and designs instruction based on knowledge of the discipline, student, community, and curriculum goals.”