Jim Rohn, an entrepreneur, author and motivational speaker rightly said “Don’t wish it was easier, wish you were better. Don’t wish for less problems, wish for more skills. Don’t wish for less challenges, wish for more wisdom.”
It is to fulfill the three tall wishes of being better, wiser and more skillful as a teacher that I came to Teach Now. When I look back at the past 5 months that I have spent learning I realise that I have acquired a wealth of knowledge and may have become wiser but in the next few months I will be in a better position to assess whether I have become better and more skillful.
The first of these assessments is for me to reflect on how I manage my classroom now and what can I change to make learning more fun and effective for my students.
Classroom climate:
In terms of the relationship I have with my students, I can say that of the 24 students I teach across 4 grades, I know 17 of them very well because this is the third year that I am teaching them. 7 of the students are new to me but I know them because our school is quite small with 110 students over all. I encourage students to ask a lot of questions and they are aware that when I know they have tried, I will go to any extent to help them. I am aware that some of my students come from non-English speaking families and, therefore, I have a greater tolerance for their inability to complete homework sometimes because there was no one there to help them with the vocabulary. I strongly feel that an area where I can improve a lot is in the way I approach questions asked. When i ask counter questions to get my students to think, I can appear to be terse, thereby intimidating the student. This is something I am working on improving. Other than that, I would check all the boxes from my check list for a positive classroom climate.
High Expectations:
When I reflect on the way I teach, I find that I set high expectations for my students and I push them to achieve their goals. I truly believe that each student has the ability to do well but they need someone to show belief in their abilities. By not giving them answers to all their questions and pushing them to think harder, I facilitate an environment where they find their own solutions and develop greater confidence. However, there is one critical area that I need to make great improvement in and that is staying with the ELLs in my Grade 3 class and not giving up on them. I am very patient when it comes to explaining the concept to them but when it comes to assessing their understanding, their slow response sometimes makes me impatient for which I feel very guilty. I also refrain from asking them questions when I see that I won’t be able to finish what I set out to if I slow down the pace. I am very conscious of this and am working hard to make improvements. I can see myself making progress albeit at a very slow pace.
Rules, norms and procedures:
The school that I work in does not have a home room teacher concept and instead we have subject specialists who change classrooms rather than students moving from one classroom to the other. Therefore the classroom setting takes care of combined classes seating and may not always be set up in a way where the teacher has easy access to students. I understand the importance of the teacher being able to move around and reach every student’s desk to see what’s going on and therefore I usually change the seating for my classes. My classroom has three basic rules - Ask questions, Be respectful and Concentrate. The rules are followed well by the students. The area that requires improvement here are the procedures followed everyday. I don’t always follow the same order of activities and sometimes the whole class of 45 minutes can be spent in clarifying doubts where some students are left without work. I am working on planning the activities better and making sure that I always have a pool of resources to draw out from when a student has finished his/her work.
Managing Behavior:
Students are generally well behaved in my class and I have never had a problem with extreme behavior. Students are recognised for their good behavior through a Star of the Week certificate which is a school wide policy. I do not have a specific point chart for my class so far because behavior is not an issue. However I do see the benefit of recognising students and providing positive reinforcement. I would like to start using a specific behavior chart with points after the Winter Break and reward students based on this chart.
De-escalation:
This is a skill I have had the opportunity to practice several times in my Grade 3 classroom where there is one very intelligent student who is an ELL student. He is extremely fast with calculations and often gets frustrated when he does not understand a word problem or directions that I give the class. I realise that when I don’t do some pre-work with him by preparing him in advance for what is coming next, he gets agitated, starts crying and stops responding. I always follow the steps of de-escalation and allow him to calm down before I offer help. I need to plan better for him and make sure that pre-work is not occasional but before every class where we will be working more with words than numbers.
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