Paul Poole

SCED 401

Gjoni

5/11/19

Professional Year Growth Reflection

It goes without saying that every new teacher grows a lot in their professional year. My

growth however felt more like a roller coaster of sorts than a steady progression upwards. In my

first rotation of my first semester I was incredibly rough on classroom management and

planning, as well as confidence in my content. All of my mentor feedback and feedback from

observations pointed to this. I used this feedback however to home in on what I needed to

improve in.

During rotation one, I felt very confused on how to improve my classroom management

and content knowledge. While my mentor was doing the best job they could, the things they

were teaching me just were not connecting with me. I opted instead to seek outside help from an

old teacher who reached out to me about how student teaching was going. After a bit of back and

forth I was allowed to visit my high school and talk to many teachers both in and out of content

and was able to find many new strategies and places to look for content and activities. It was also

a fantastic opportunity to reflect on what some of my old teachers did and what really worked for

me as a learner.

I started with attempting to improve my confidence in my content knowledge, which was

one of the easier things to improve but was very critical to my success in rotation two. I also

began to collaborate more with colleagues and seek out other resources beyond what I had at my

disposal in order to come up with better lessons. During rotation two I worked very closely with
another intern, as our mentors worked closely with one another. By observing how they went

about sourcing their knowledge, I was able to come up with better ways to plana and to source

my own knowledge of a topic.

While planning and content knowledge improved greatly, I still was very rough around

the edges with classroom management and would continue to be. The students at my second

rotation had less behavior issues than the students from my first. This was very evident when I

returned for my first rotation of full-time student teaching. While I was much better off with my

delivery and planning, I still had trouble commanding the class. My mentor began to show me

small tips for managing the classroom. While their earlier tips did not resonate with me, my

mentor began to explain teaching in sports terminology and all of a sudden classroom

management clicked for me.

I was doing better than before but still needed polish in some areas. The biggest of these

was in lesson structure. My lessons were well thought out but lacked the structure necessary in

order to make the step from good to great teaching. My planning, specifically in objective

writing and assessment of objectives also still needed work. Later in the rotation students began

to take advantage of this, and this was very evident in all three of my lessons. All three lessons

went poorly, and the same suggestions were made after every observation, however I did not

comply until after the third and final observation which was easily the worst of the three lessons.

After the third lesson debrief I finally decided to give the suggestion of using a timer a

shot. This suggestion was something I had always felt very uncomfortable doing, as it was

something I had always hated as a student. At this point however I needed to just take the

suggestion to heart and just try it. It was certainly odd the first time I used one in a lesson, but

over time I began to enjoy using the timer in my lessons. It helped out with pacing and
accountability from most of my students in the high school. I also began to think about the

questions in the post observation debrief more seriously, specifically the question of “how do

you know that they have achieved their objective.”

Upon returning to my second rotation I found that teaching was going very well again,

however my mentor continued to help me improve in areas that I did not even know needed

improvement. I also reflected on where I did poorly on my rotation evaluation and picked areas

that would be an easy fix. I chose to attempt to better planning and objective writing and

assessment, as well as my use of technology in the classroom.

Objective writing and assessment helped me to focus more on the question of “how do I

know they have completed their objective.” In my previous rotation I was unable to answer this

question, usually because my assessment was poorly aligned. My mentor pointed this out and

showed me how to go about thinking about assessment. They also showed where opportune

spots for formative assessments are in lessons, which made it much easier to confidently say

after every lesson that I knew the students had met their objective for the lesson.

My mentor and I also came up with a system of feedback that better helped me reflect on

my practices. We used a praise, questions, polish format where my mentor could praise things I

did well, ask questions they had about my decisions in the classroom, and suggest things I can

improve on. This written feedback helped me to analyze what had went well that day and what

went poorly and needed polishing for the next day. Overall I found this strategy to be very

helpful in improving my teaching.

My observations in the last rotation went much better than the third rotation. I continued

to ask for help when I did not understand something or was confused, or even in many cases had
forgotten something. This helped me to nitpick small things that could turn into larger issues

later down the line before they could become issues.

At the end of this semester I can confidently say that I am up to the challenge of teaching,

and am leagues above where I started, and even leagues above where I hit some low points

throughout the professional year. I am proud to say that I have overcame my inability to ask for

help when I need it, as this was the greatest detriment to my teaching. I have become a much

better learner as a new teacher and have become more open to trying anything once. All of these

are skills that have aided me in finishing my professional year on a high note, and are skills that

will aid me when I begin to teach in the near future.