Critical Commentary
The overall journey was writing journals, I passed through many times to learn, unlearn and re-learn. In this journey I realized and experienced that how important to unlearn for teachers because process of unlearn guide to close look of self-analysis. Through this process, I experienced three significance phases. In first phase I reflected on selected journal entries. This reflection helped me discover the strategies I need to adopt to build positive relationships with my students. In second phase, I articulated my own learning that I gained through narrative enquiry of the journal entries. In final phase, I explored the moments when I led my students’ and learning in order to create a sense of belongingness to a learning community.
1) Phase I: Build Positive relationship:
Going through the narratives of my daily reflections, I realized that every moment in the classroom teaching was important for me and I wanted to discuss those events in my journal entries. However, ‘Teachers are not always learning. However all teachers learn some of the time, and some teachers learn much of the time’ (Hiebert 2002). The process of writing narratives assisted me to develop from ‘learning some of the time’ to ‘learning much of the time’. It provided me the courage to critique my own teaching style into the habit of learning while thinking and realizing the potential flaws in my teaching. The process of critiquing and self-analysing my own teaching able to me see a different perceptive in my journal entries. I realized that initially, especially first few classes, I was just responsible to students. I always referred to their actions as a cause of failure of my planned lessons as I reflected in my journal on the 8th a...
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... about being a teacher who teaches but also about a learner who learns. This discovery will help me in my home context too as it will keep me well equipped with strategies to get along with students like Seema and Amin who rarely participate in classroom activities. The objective behind using this approach was to make students think, question, discuss, present and work collaboratively in order to learn from each other. It was implied that they were becoming more aware about their own learning processes and were experiencing the notion of being in charge of their own learning within the learning community. However, there are still some unexplored domains which I intend to investigate in the future. I look forward to future classes with a positive apprehension to evolve this paper further by encouraging students’ voices to create an effective learning community.
The book Lives on the Boundary, written by Mike Rose, provides great insight to what the new teaching professional may anticipate in the classroom. This book may be used to inform a teacher’s philosophy and may render the teacher more effective. Lives on the Boundary is a first person account composed of eight chapters each of which treat a different obstacle faced by Mike Rose in his years as a student and as an educator. More specifically in chapters one through five Mike Rose focuses on his own personal struggles and achievements as a student. Ultimately the aim is to highlight the underpreparedness of some of today’s learners.
Over the course of creating a critical reflective journal there is one experience that stands out. It was a visit to George Washington Community School, an urban school in Indianapolis Indiana, to observe the role of teacher preparation. During this visit my intent was to observe the concept of formal, common, and frozen registry for communication between teachers, students, staff, and community. During this exposure I was able to see discipline in a school setting in new and revealing way.
As professionals, pedagogues are encouraged constantly to reflect on their practice and to apply both theoretical understandings and self-knowledge to the sometimes challenging demands with which they are
We can all agree, educators and future educators alike, that teaching students is so much more than just presenting information to them. There is more to learning than only speaking. We’ve all had those teachers who were brilliant in their subject area, but not brilliant in making the students know the information. These are not true teachers; they are only smart. They teach in one way only, and doesn’t believe in individualized instruction, even though we all know that “low-income students and students of color tend to feel less “connected” to their schools than affluent and Anglo students, and that older students feel less connected than younger ones” (Schaps). As a future educator, sometimes I fear that I will become like one of these teachers, and I want to make sure that each of my students enjoy coming in class to learn, and is able to apply what they’ve learned to their unique lives. So for this inquiry project, I’ve decided to focus on classroom community. I believe that every great teacher establishes this concept in his/her classroom; without this concept, learning cannot happen. In this paper, I will define classroom community, discuss different ways to implement it in every classroom, and show the results of making an effort to keep it in your classroom.
Through the semester of Winter 2016, I was assigned many essays, reflections, projects and journals. These are artifacts that demonstrate my growth in my course learning outcomes. The
I believe that teaching and learning is both a science and an art, which requires the implementation of already determined rules. I see learning as the result of internal forces within the person student. I know that children differ in the way they learn and grow but I also know that all children can learn. Students’ increased understanding of their own experience is a legitimate form of knowledge. I will present my students with opportunities to develop the ability to meet personal knowledge.
Robinson, E. T. (1997, March 1). Applying the Theory of Reflective Practice to the Learner and the Teacher: Perspective of a Graduate Student. 12.
However, the self-reflection journal took this further. It provided me an opportunity to think about how I wrote before the lesson and how my writing has been enhanced. It gave me an opportunity to see what I had been doing right and what I needed to improve upon. I've often heard of the value that journals can generally bring into ones life. This specific use of a self-reflection journal definitely reinforced what I have heard. As a result, I am hoping to continue to use self-reflection journals in my other courses and in my life experiences, as well. I can tell my retention of the lessons and the material is enhanced and it seems to create a lasting impression on my overall knowledge of the subject
Most people question the purpose of writing a journal. People who write a journal keep it to fulfill a basic human need – “self expression and reflection” (Sagan 1). Writing is known as one of the easiest ways to express your personality and who you truly are. You can write in a journal without having anyone judging you – unless you chose to have someone else read it of course. You may reflect on your writing while you are writing your journal/diary entries. Then, once you have expressed your thoughts, you can even go back to your past entries to reflect on what you have said before. Reflecting on your writing can help you develop as a person. It helps you think through a situation and possibly solve it. Reflections help generate ideas for how to improve as an individual. But really, it’s entertaining to re-read past memories and see how much...
A self-reflective journal is a good way to keep records and reflect upon what happened during a lesson. I plan to, at the end of each day, jolt down a few comments about what worked in my lessons, what didn’t work, and how I would modify the lesson to better support my students’ development. As this information will be recorded, I can always come back to it for reference when preparing future lessons. I also plan to often read the information on this journal so I can constantly remind myself of what strategies worked and what strategies didn’t work.
In the second week of this course we discussed professionalism and our commitment to students. A lot of the sources read during that week addressed why we decided to become teachers, how we would keep our fire for the field of education burning and how our passion and enthusiasm would impact
Along these two weeks we have been prompt to make a recall to our own way of learning and why we became a teacher: Was it because coincidence, due to life circumstances, maybe because family tradition, was it a conscious decision or because someone influenced us? Whatever the answer is, we have to face reality and be conscious that being a teacher does not only means to teach a lesson and asses students learning. It requires playing the different roles a teacher must perform whenever is needed and required by our learners, identify our pupils needs and preferences, respecting their integrity and individuality but influencing and motivating them to improve themselves and become independent.
Instead of seeing students as partially full vessels waiting to be filled, teachers should conceive their work as creating learning situations where students can build their own knowledge through an a...
A society is only as prosperous as the individuals that live within it and contribute to its success. People interact with one another and through this interaction, individuals begin to formulate a sense of self-definition, as well as the foundations required to form relationships, but more importantly, a society develops the proposal of real learning. Real learning is an understanding of materials through one’s own experiences and understandings, but also through the learning and communication between others. Author Jean Twenge often spoke about the idea of the self through a deeper appreciation of others and not just oneself in her essay “An Army of One: Me”. The author of “The Roots of Debate in Education and The Hope of Dialogue”, Deborah Tannen, similarly proposed the idea that an understanding of others ideas and opinions should be developed in order to achieve an even greater understanding. Author Nicholas Carr of “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” believes that individuals can lose a sense of self, if the development of ideas are proposed by others as well as if one focuses only on what is present and does not challenge that ideas existence. Being socially disconnected is a major contribution and benefit to the formation of real learning. It is only when one begins to develop a full understanding of others ideas and opinions that the development of not only the individual themselves, but also their understanding of learning can truly take place.
In this course I experienced an important change in my beliefs about teaching; I came to understand that there are many different theories and methods that can be tailored to suit the teacher and the needs of the student. The readings, especially those from Lyons, G., Ford, M., & Arthur-Kelly, M. (2011), Groundwater-Smith, S., Ewing, R., & Le Cornu, R. (2007), and Whitton, D., Barker, K., Nosworthy, M., Sinclair, C., Nanlohy, P. (2010), have helped me to understand this in particular. In composing my essay about teaching methods and other themes, my learning was solidified, my knowledge deepened by my research and my writing skills honed.