Teaching Reflection 1

I am trying to more pastoral this year. I have always had a short fuse for some behavior, or at least, “I do not suffer fools gladly” as a good friend told me once. Maybe not the best character trait in this profession, but I am working on it. One other thing that may make me less empathetic than is required, is that I think people need to learn many things for themselves, often through mistakes. I tend to let students make their own decisions and see if they do learn, but the Consequences Reflection is for another day.

I have a student who raised his hand the first day when I asked – half in jest – who was going to cause me trouble over the course of the year. He proudly announced there would be times when his fidgeting got him in trouble. His charming admission had an effect on me, but now we are getting serious. His grades are poor and I have had to speak to him many times, not about disruption but a lack of focus and resulting poor grades. I returned a test today which was again poor and was quite quickly disappointed by his childish sulky behavior. I took a few, required, breaths before engaging with him. I told him I was here to help, and would do so, but current wallowing behavior like this was not going to do ANYONE any favors. I suppose baby steps are required for me, just as they are with him.

So how am I designing my instruction to meet the needs of my students? Well honestly, not any differently to how I was last year, when it may not have been at the fore front of my mind. Time is at a premium this year like never before, with both of us teaching, both in Masters Programs, and little Tommy approaching 7 months but I hope to be more aware of it and work harder at it in future.

In the current Bio classes I am working on enzymes and have the students playing games and quizzes in a simple app, we extracted the key words from the app ‘blurb’ which students wrote up, and one enterprising student even put them into a quizlet which we played as a class as quizlet live. (If you have not used quizlet live in your class yet, get on it!) I will have an experiment or two with food stuffs and how enzymes work and the factors required for optimal function soon also. All of this will be in conjunction with my usual Powerpoint and some use of the eBook. Now that I write this, it feels to cover the multi modal engagement and presentation quite well. I do think my use of many ways of having student express knowledge needs some work though.

But will it be enough for Student X whom I spoke about up top?
We will wait and see…

Thanks