The Senior II Experience, Part 2

By Daniel Barnes (December '07 Graduate)

Warning – read the following two paragraphs, but do not worry: the rest of the article will not be written in that way.

Become very familiar with the word “reflection.” You will reflect in your methods classes, reflect in your classroom, reflect numerous times in your portfolio, reflect when working toward National Board Certification, and you will hopefully be a “reflective practitioner” in your classroom.

What is a reflective practitioner? A reflective practitioner is a teacher who uses the self-reflection process to explore what he or she has done previously and where he or she wishes to go in the future. When teachers reflect, they analyze what they have done in their classroom – including classroom management, procedures, pedagogy, types of lessons utilized, and daily decisions. Reflective practitioners constantly revise and reassess their teaching methods, and adjust each class in a way that will demonstrate their ability to teach each class according to their needs and personality.

Stop for a second.

Perhaps the previous two paragraphs seemed a bit…daunting? Formidable? Pedantic?

Most readers of this blog will become teachers in the near future. Reading those first two paragraphs could simulate the wall of difficulty that many students face when encountering school. If you knew and understood every word in those paragraphs, great! If not…then I did not do a good job at transferring my (acquired) knowledge to a medium that you could understand very well. That is not your fault.

I’ll get straight to the point. The past few months in the Senior II process have taught me that teaching is much more than writing lesson plans and disseminating the information. A teacher performs more than a mere regurgitation of knowledge. Teachers must take the knowledge, scaffold the skills in a way that prepares students to perform those NCSCOS objectives, and must determine how to be creative enough to tap into all students bank of knowledge.

One of the ideas I used was a variation of Socratic Seminar, in which students engage in an orderly “cross-table” debate of ideas. It worked in one class and not in another. Does that mean it was a bad plan? No. I discussed the process with my teacher, and we determined that one class already had the oral presentation skills necessary for positive results. The other class needed more oral speaking skills (though we had done some in the past week) and frankly required more in-class time to digest the external reading because they tend not to do homework. This self-assessment and collaborative assessment is a process that A) you can really take advantage of during the Senior II process and B) is necessary throughout your teaching career.

Some days, all the classes go well – good teachers (reflective practitioners) do not leave it at that. Reflective practitioners examine why the process went well: think about class members, class size, class demographics, thoroughness of focus, review, and scaffolding, time of day of the activity, maturity of the class, personality of the class, management methods, etc. Think of how you can improve the process for future classes. Think of how you can adapt the process for students with exceptionalities, or students in the future who may not fit under the categories that your current classes represent. Figure out why it worked – or, in some cases, why it did not work. Teaching is like the writing process – there is not a perfect method. Advice: always jot ideas first and edit later. The writer cannot help but coming out.

Now, assuming you have read the last couple paragraphs, reread the first three paragraphs. Couldn’t (or shouldn’t) I have teased the information out piece by piece, thereby providing you with the tools necessary to comprehend my verbose opening? The constant self-analysis is absolutely necessary for success and growth in the teaching profession.

I will leave you with a list of five phrases/words/names that you will come across frequently in the internship process. If you are a soon-to-be intern, then I would suggest looking up these phrases on http://www.ncpublicschools.org or on google because they should be discussed at least briefly in the near future, if not already. Thank you for taking the time to read my ramblings!

-- Daniel Barnes

1. “The kids will not care what you know until they know that you care.”
2. Reflective Practitioner
3. Professional Learning Communities
4. Measurable Objectives
5. Impact on Student Learning