This semester, I was fortunate to take part in EDUC 391 otherwise known as our short practicum. This comprised of teaching 25% of the time over a three week period.

What went well? What were my strengths as a future educator?

I felt like I have really grown as an educator during my EDUC 391 practicum. I found that I gained a lot of confidence in myself as a presenter and as a source of information for the students. With that confidence, I felt that my pacing and transitions in class also improved.

Prior, I was nervous to give the lesson, and as a result, I would go way too fast, and students would not have the necessary time to copy their notes or process the information so that they could ask questions. However, as the practicum went on, and my confidence grew, I able to have better pacing, reiterating the information in a different way, finding applicable examples which in turn made my lessons more meaningful.

I also felt through the practicum that I was able to improve my transitions between work periods, the lesson, and the break. I quickly found that I was not going to be able to speak over the students to get their attention. So, what I did was dim the lights as a signal for the students’ attention, then I could tell the students that we were moving into the lesson etc. Conversely, I would make sure that I gave the instructions to the work we would be doing before I turned the lights back up. I tried to make the association ‘dim lights = lesson / I need attention’ and ‘bright lights = work time’.

What needed improvement? What were your stretches?

After this practicum, I felt that my biggest stretch was teaching from the self.

Throughout the practicum, as I had previously mentioned, I gained a lot more confidence in presenting the lesson. However, what I found challenging was really teaching from the self. I felt it was easy to hide behind a note package and present the information traditionally- especially at the beginning when I was nervous about presenting the information in the first place. Even as I grew more confident, I still did not really feel like I was showing any personality in the lessons. In a way, I question if I may have felt this way because I was using my coaching teacher’s note packages, with little modifications. So, since it was not the wording or order I may have put it together, is why I did not feel myself entirely.

 I hope to work on this as I move forward, becoming more comfortable with the content modifying resources to fit my teaching style, I will be able to teach from the self. I also think that with experience, I will be able to mind more relevant examples and stories that help connect myself to the content, as well as to the place.

What are you curious about? What’s next? What do you want to learn or develop further in EDUC 490?

What I want to learn more about before the next practicum is how to plan for diversity and implement it. I found during my practicum it was hard to plan for diversity when teaching Science 9. I found that I would give the same worksheet or textbook questions, but my plan for diversity was giving that student more support to complete the same task as the rest of the class.  However, I felt like this was not enough; or that I should have done more.

On the other hand, there is very little that I was able to find in terms of resources to teach to a grade 9 classroom at a variety of levels. So maybe, a point of future inquiry or professional develop will go into looking for or making those resources accessible to others in the future.