Journal #4 - Being Involved

What it means to be an effective teacher.

           

            Creating, maintaining, and constantly working on relationships with students is one of the most important aspects of being an effective teacher.  Not only has this been shown to effectively help in classroom management, but it also enables teachers to get to know their students on a more personal level and vice versa.  I’ve already spoken to the point on how showing students that you are there for them and creating an environment which promotes open communication is an essential part of being an effective teacher, but I also think that it takes a teacher to want to be aware and find out how their students are doing outside of their classroom in order to establish strong relationships with their students inside of their classroom. 

            Another aspect of forming student-teacher relationships is about being aware of what is going on in your students’ lives, or being “in-the-know” about what is going on in the school.  This information can be as simple as knowing about which students are playing afterschool in an extra-curricular soccer game and knowing which students are involved in the art at the school this weekend.  Simply by asking those seeming unimportant questions like “how did the game go yesterday, I heard you guys won?”, or “how did the show go this weekend, did you learn a lot?”, you are helping to forge new relationships and expand old ones with your students.

Just recently I had a personal experience with this when I was teaching at St. Michael’s University School in February, 2012.  Of course coming into a boy’s grade ten physical education class for only three days was quite intimidating for my first teaching experience in a high school; it’s difficult to form good relationships with your students in such a short period of time.  Needless to say, the first class could have gone better as far as classroom management is concerned.  However, from my own experiences I knew how important it was for me to try and form some sort of relationship with these boys if I wanted to have a lesson run smoothly, whether it was just letting them know that I’m interested in what they’re doing or simply by acknowledging that, as a teacher, I see them as an individual and not simply as just another student.  Luckily for me, there were about nine boys in the class of fifteen that played on the basketball team that happened to be playing that night.  The next day I came into the class with slightly more confidence and a whole new game-plan.  I let the boys have the first ten minutes of the class as a “free play” time where they could do what they wanted in the gym, then I began going over to each small group and asking them about their game the previous night.  The response I got from the students was incredible!  They could see that I was taking an interest in what they were doing outside of the class simply because I wanted to and that made all of the different to them; the lesson that day ran much more smoothly than it had the previous day.  On the final day of my student teaching I actually had some of the boys come into class early!  I had five boys, all of whom the first day I had labelled as the “trouble makers” of the class, actually willingly come to the gym and play around with me until the rest of the class joined.  We chatted about their upcoming basketball game, the school rugby trip that was over Spring Break, and what they each had planned for the weekend.  My third and final lesson could not have run better.  The change in the classroom management, enjoyment, and overall tone of class changed dramatically over only three simple lessons; I couldn’t believe what a difference it had made in just three days. 

I think that although being aware of the simple things going on in your students’ lives is incredibly important in forming and maintaining relationships with your students it’s also essential to be aware of the more serious issues that some of your students may be facing outside of your classroom, such as bullying, a parents’ divorce, a death in the family, or others.  Sometime this information might be more difficult to come by so that’s why it’s also important to have two of the previous characteristics I spoke to, availability and accommodation, in order to provide students with a safe environment which they feel they can come and speak with you as a teacher. 

I think that it’s important to remember that your students want to be treated as individuals and not just as “another student” in your classroom.  By showing students interest your allowing them to see that you appreciate that they are an individual person who you care about; this also shows students that you are a teacher are also an individual and not simply “just a teacher”.  By taking the initiative to form relationships with your students you are helping to create a more comfortable and enjoyable classroom setting and learning environment for everyone.

Journal #3 - Creativity

What it means to be an effective teacher.

 

            The idea of fostering creativity in the classroom was something that at the beginning of my post-secondary education I would have argued wasn’t an important part of helping students learn; I’m glad to say that my opinion on this topic has changed dramatically since then.

            I was never a very “creative” student throughout my secondary education.  I was a student who liked writing essays, reading textbooks, and watching documentaries made in the 1970’s, but that was how I learnt best.  Although I was never an artist, I played the piano for eight years before entering high school.  I always had a fascination with reading music and the feeling of contentment that I had when I would play.  However, once I got to high school I noticed that being creative wasn’t necessarily something that was a “good thing” as far as assessment and assignment purposes went.  But creativity isn’t just “the arts”; creativity is a state of mind and a process.   I think that author and educator Sir Ken Robinson did a great job in one of his TED lectures in 2006 of highlighting not only the importance of creativity in the learning process, but also of how the current education system doesn’t foster the creativity of students as individuals or as a whole, and how this can be detrimental to some student’s learning processes.

Sir Ken Robinson's lecture: "Do Schools Kill Creativity?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY

            This journal entry is somewhat related to my last entry on accommodation; teachers need to be able to individualize learning in order to fit the needs of each student, including fostering creativity.  A definition offered by Berk (2005) of creativity is that it is the ability to produce work that is original, but sill appropriate and useful.  Although when many people think of creativity they think specifically of music and art, it’s important to understand that any subject can be approached in a creative manner.  Being creative simply means coming up with new, relevant ideas or ways to solve problems! 

            Being able to foster creativity in a classroom setting may mean a variety of things for teachers; for me, it simply means creating an environment where students feel free and safe in order to produce something that might be “wrong” or “different”.  There is a part in Sir Ken Robinson’s lecture where he states that: “if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original” (2006).  To me, this is exactly why creating a safe environment for students to share their ideas is critical in helping to foster creativity in the learning process.  By enabling to students to be creative in their thinking processes, you can encourage ideas that may not be conventional or typical, but may enable the students to learn and think in a way that works best for them as individuals.

            Fostering creativity in the classroom can be done in a variety of ways: allowing students to brainstorm without judgment, working in groups settings, allowing students to have more say in how they complete assignments, encouraging “wild” ideas.  By encouraging creativity in the classroom rather than crushing it, I think that we can help all students have a better understanding of not only the class material, but allowing them to become more involved in their own learning process.

References:

Berk, L.E. (2005). Infants, children, and adolescents (5^th ed.).Boston, MA: ALlyn & Bacon.

Woolfolk, A.N., Winne, P.H., & Perry, N.E. (2011). Educational psychology (5^thed.). Toronto, ON: Pearson Canada.

Journal #2 - Accommodation

What it means to be an effective teacher.

One of the most important things that I've learned over my five years at the University of Victoria is that everyone learns differently; not every student will take in the information and learn from it in the same way.  I’ve discovered, both through personal experiences as a student as well as through my education courses, that being able to adapt and accommodate to individual learning styles is an essential and critical part of being an effective teacher.

Throughout my years at UVic I’ve discovered that as a student there are different ways even within different subject areas and disciplines that I learn best.  Sometimes I find that hands-on experience is the most effective way that I learn, while other times it’s through very traditional styles such as visual and auditory; even within a single student there can be a wide variety of learning styles that all need to be catered too.  Because of my experience within my own learning styles I can understand how there can be such a wide variety of learning styles within a class, as well as within individual students.

Woolfolk, Winnie and Perry (2011) have defined three different traditions of learning styles which incorporate the wide variety of learning styles (i.e., cognitive styles, problem-solving styles, decision-making styles, thinking styles, etc.) that individuals may have: cognitive-centered styles, personality-centered styles, and activity-centered styles.  Throughout my educational courses I’ve be exposed to a number of different teaching styles which help cater to the these different traditions of learning.  Bloom’s Taxonomy of Teaching Styles is one way that I’ve been exposed to different ways to teaching a class; the spectrum of teaching styles incorporates styles such as command and practice which are more teacher lead styles, and divergent discovery and reciprocal styles which give the students’ more decision-making power and control of their learning.

Using these different teaching styles effectively is essential in helping students to learn to the best of their ability.  I believe that many students who may struggle in different classes don’t understand the content simply because it’s not presented to them in a way which they understand.  Although it’s difficult to cater to all individual needs all the time, I believe that as a teacher it is my responsibility to adapt and accommodate my lesson plan to help those students who may be struggling with traditional visual or auditory learning.

I think that because my background is in Physical Education, I really understand the importance of having students becoming actively involved in their learning; the process of learning is continuous and reciprocal, so it’s crucial that students take part in how they learn and how the learning may be structured.  I believe that having students being actively involved in their own learning and giving them a choice in how they learn the material, you can effectively help all students see success. 

I believe that being an effective teacher means being able to accommodate a variety of different learning styles within your classes.  Being able to help every student in your class understand the material by the way that they learn best is going to help increase the success of the students and make for a very positive learning experience for everyone.  Effective teachers can cater to the needs to all of the students by offering a variety of different teaching methods, styles and assessment options to students.



References:
Woolfolk, A.N., Winne, P.H., & Perry, N.E. (2011). Educational psychology (5th ed.). Toronto, ON: Pearson Canada

Journal #1 - Availability

What it means to be an effective teacher.

One of the reasons that I think this is such a difficult statement to define is because it is so fluid; the answer is constantly changing. Not only does the definition of an "effective teacher" vary from person to person, but it may also change for an individual over the course of their teaching career. I'm hoping that this journal will help me to discover what being an effective teacher means to me at this point in my schooling/teaching career, although I'm sure it will continue to change throughout my career as an educator.

I've chosen to write my first journal entry about something that I found, as a student, was one of the most important things I noticed about the effectiveness of my teachers growing up; this was the availability of the teacher.  I've examined a number of different academic articles to try and come up with some sort of definition of what an effective teacher is that includes the notion of the teachers being readily available to the students when they need them, both for academic reasons and other. The closest definition that I found was written by Devlin and Samarawickrema (2010) who defined effective teaching as teaching that is oriented to and focused on students and their learning. It's a fairly broad definition of effective teaching, but because it states that it is focused on students as individuals as well as their learning it was the best one I could find to fit into my idea of availability as being a part of being an effective teacher.

I think back into my own career as a student and one of the ways that I separated the teachers I thought of as "effective" and the ones who weren't, was their willingness to speak to students and be available to their students outside of the classroom. It was the teachers that made the effort to let students know that they were free to chat outside of class time; regardless of what it was about, they were there as a resource to their students.  If a student was struggling with homework or having difficulty understanding a concept, it was the teachers that were willing to stay late after school to help them that really had an impact on that student's learning experience.

 

I remember having talks with some of my teachers about jobs and family, trouble with boyfriends or friends... it was meaningful to me to be able to have that sort of relationship and support system with some of my teachers. Not everyone is fortunate enough to have a strong family support system at home and I think that sometimes it was those teachers, the ones willing to take the time to have a one-on-one talk with those students who were struggling, that really made a difference in their lives.  By being available to students you are helping to create meaningful relationships and becoming a stable system of support for your students both in and out of the classroom.

 

Being an effective teacher is more than simply knowing your subject area and keeping students engaged in the classroom; I believe that it’s also about helping to become a support system for students outside of the classroom as well.  By being available to your students outside of the class time, whether it is for help with homework or just to talk, you are creating meaningful relationships and I think that that is a major part of what I would consider to be an effective teacher.

References:


Devlin, M., & Samarawickrema, G. (2010). The criteria of effective teaching in a changing higher education context. Higher Education Research & Development, 29(2), 111-124.