As this semester comes to a close and I prepare for student teaching next fall I have been doing a lot of reflection assignments for many classes and they have all shown me how immensely I have grown as a teacher throughout this spring. My teaching beliefs have not only been reinforced, I have developed some new ones to add to that ever-changing list about the practice of teaching.
Starting with some teaching beliefs that I developed through my experiences in my practicum placement and discussions in class surrounding the professional texts I think my new beliefs are even stronger than my initial ones. Failure as a natural part of the learning process is one of my new beliefs that I strongly identify with. I wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed for most of my schooling experience and I feel like I have only had a select few teachers that would accept failure as a part of learning. Most of the time failure would produce negative reinforcement and make me resent the thought or possibility of failing anything. If we teach our students to fear failure and do not demonstrate proper coping skills when failure does rear it's head then our future society will be made up of people who become dysfunctional in the face of failure.
Connecting to the previous teaching belief, teaching the social development, morality, character virtues, and things necessary to be a functional citizen are often overlooked, but definitely should not be. These skills need a place in the curriculum alongside academics for a complete and beneficial schooling experience. We do want our future generations to be well educated, of course, but knowing practical skills involving social, lifestyle, and general health are needed to supplement the curriculum and truly round out the education experience. It's one thing to be able to do several mathematical or computer computations, but if you cannot hold a casual conversation with peers any academic skills are obsolete. The last course text by Johnston dealt with this issue the most explicitly, however every text mentions the teacher's responsibility and role as not only an educator, but also a mentor, friend, support system, and guidance counselor.
Nowadays the students that compose a classroom have so many incredible and differing stories that make them the student and person they are, so reaching all the students academically with a cookie cutter mold lesson will not be effective in this day and age. Differentiation is necessary to access ALL of your students higher order thinking skills. The Andersen text regarding the assessment process with writing handles this issue and offers excellent options for teachers to use when they just can't quite reach a certain student who is struggling. Also many of the scholarly articles from our course website that we have read give examples of differentiation like Goldenberg who describes instructional conversations. The several articles regarding technology offer very good ways to differentiate through the use of technology in the classroom whether it is with the whole group or even one on one work.Reflecting on these new beliefs I can see my own professional development as I am newly entering this field and I anticipate what the future has in store for my own classroom and my developing teaching style!
