Week 5 Reflection

Carly Rickens

This week was one of the most challenging weeks throughout my student teaching so far.

The first reason this week was so challenging for me was that I started to teach my Honors

Algebra III/ Trig students the concepts of Trigonometry. This was difficult for me because as a

high school student my Pre-Calculus teacher was not good at teaching and all I remember about

Trigonometry was her making us memorize the Unit Circle and giving us a quiz on it almost

every day. I didn’t get much out of that class in high school, but I was able to do the Trig

homework I would be giving my students without any problem. The problem I had was thinking

of how I could explain to my students how to use these new properties and identities that they

had never heard of before. Thankfully, Mr. Falger was able to guide me and showed me how to

explain the common questions that the students might have. Overall, I think I taught this lesson

very well and on Wednesday I actually got questions from the students on the homework for the

first time. I was able to go over these problems that the students were confused on and I helped

them to understand these concepts better.

The second reason this week was challenging for me was that I started to teach lessons to

the AP Calculus classes for the very first time. The first day was easy because I was just

reviewing the logarithmic properties with them and going over examples they already knew how

to do because they learned all that the year before, and I knew how to teach it to them because I

already had taught these concepts to my other classes. The day that was the most difficult for me

was Tuesday because I had to teach them how to do the derivatives of logarithmic functions

without the base of e. However, this lesson went a lot better than I had originally planned it to

because Mr. Falger talked with me before my lessons and helped me with explaining these
concepts. I was really nervous that day because I didn’t think I was going to be able to explain

these concepts without confusing the students, but I ended up doing really well. The next day I

was also able to go over a few of the more difficult problems on the homework and worked

through these problems with them step by step. Even though this might have been the most

challenging week I’ve had, I think I handled this week really well and was able to explain things

in the best way that I could. Thankfully, Mr. Falger was there to step in when students had

questions that I didn’t exactly know how to answer. I know that the weeks are going to keep

getting more and more challenging due to concepts being more difficult and having to teach AP

Calculus more often, but after this week I realized that I am ready for that challenge because my

teaching has been improving every week.