Johnathan Harvell

Dr. Karen Rowe

26 November 2017
Student Teaching Reflection: Content
Throughout out my student teaching experience, I have come to realize that having a
good knowledge base is not the only way to distinguish content successfully in a public school
classroom. During my time as a student teacher, I have been exposed to some students that have
different learning styles compared to my own; as a result, I have found that, although I know the
science content in my own learning style, I had to devise ways to relate the same content
information in different manners to make sure that my students were successful in my classes.
To begin this process, I started evaluating my own learning style. Even with being in the
teaching program at CSU for a few years, this was the first time that I really sat down and
thought about how I learned content throughout my academic career. As a part of self-evaluation,
I came to the conclusion that I am more kinesthetic, arithmetic thinker, thus I knew exactly how
to teach these types of thinkers based on my own personal educational experiences; however, I
was now tasked to create ways to relate content to students who are more visual, auditory,
passive, and creative learners.
As I began to think of how to devise some teaching techniques to communicate content to
different students, I thought it would be best to speak to the students and see their own
perspectives of their learning. In turn, I would be able to create a sense of empathy with my
students, so that I could use that empathy to create some effective content strategies. As I came
to find out, this was very helpful to both myself and my students. By using the feedback from the
students, I was able to create some effective teaching methods to demonstrate certain pieces of
content, especially in regards to the chemical bonding and chemistry mole units I taught
throughout the semester. I found that I was able to re-learn content in new ways, to which my
knowledge base increased past measures that I had not realized before, as well as my students
were able to be successful based on the data from their formative assessments.
Content is not as we expected in school: book knowledge. Content is much more than
that. Content is the ability to convey information in multiple ways to adapt the personal,
educational needs of person in which the knowledge to being conveyed to. My student teaching
experience has taught this too me, and I realize that I have much more work ahead to become a
master of my content area.