As each week of our class comes and
goes I find that I am getting to see the real side of teaching outside of a
textbook situation. Last week we were
sent out to observer classes in progress without a teacher escort. At first, I felt nervous about this but as we
visited each class, I began to get more comfortable with the visits. I particularly liked how we all discussed what
we saw afterwards with the whole group.
It really helped to understand what we were seeing.
The part
that stood out the most to me was the discussions we all had about the class
with the behavior issue. As pre-service,
teachers we all discussed what we thought should have been done differently but
then the point was made that we didn’t know all the facts. The teacher handling the situation was
focused on one kid more than the other, to some of us we felt he was focused on
the wrong student was. But once it was
pointed out to us that perhaps there were extenuating circumstances that made
the teacher focus on that student over the other it caused us to think about
the situation and remember that it is easy to judge something even without all
the facts. We were forced to admit that
perhaps something else was going on that we were unaware of. This led to a good discussion on how our
observations were merely snapshots of a classroom and we enter with no prior knowledge
of the students, the teachers, or the classroom dynamic. It is important to keep this in mind as we continue
our observations. To remember not to
judge too harshly what we see because we are not in possession of all the
facts.
Anther conversation
we had about our observations was the psychology classroom. When my group entered it seemed like a great
engaging class, however when anther group entered they saw something completely
different going on. They only entered
minutes after we left but the whole dynamic of the class had changed. Keeping this in mind as I continue to observe
classes will defiantly help me to become a better observer and eventually a
better teacher.
As being a part of the other class that entered the psychology classroom I found it interesting that within a couple of minutes things completely changed in the classroom. If I remember correctly, my group was entering this classroom just a minute or two after your group had left. However, it was good that multiple groups went to the same classroom because if only my group reported to our class what went on we would not be able to understand that we cannot judge based on what happens in the small snapshot we see. I also find it very useful that when we go back to class we discuss as a group why we may have saw what we saw, like the incident your group witnessed in the math class. Some may think the teacher wasn't handling the situation when really, the teacher maybe knew how the student would react to being punished or kicked out of class. This goes along with getting to know your students as the teacher panel said. I think viewing more classes for longer periods of time will be useful in the future.
ReplyDeleteAs you said, seeing teaching outside of the textbook is really becoming invaluable. I feel this experience will definitely better equip us in our future teaching careers. I am still torn about the experience in the Math class. I commend the teacher for remaining calm in the situation but despite what is happening with the student's I felt that the other student was the one who was instigating and there were no repercussions. I think I may be seeing it from the student perspective, and I understand we need to think like teachers. That being said, I also remember being a student and hating feeling like the teacher didn't understand me or even getting in trouble for something that I didn't do. I suppose if I get my mind in teacher mode, I could guess that maybe there was a problem before lunch with that student. We do only get a snapshot of a class, so I would be interested to visit that class again.
ReplyDeleteHI Elizabeth,
ReplyDeleteAfter glancing at the other comments above, I'm going to try to not reiterate what they were saying (even though I agree). The snapshot of a classroom does have positive aspects, but I do want to spend more time in the classrooms that were not running as smoothly as we expected. My short time in the Psychology class was the opposite of the time you had in the classroom and I would like to go back and see how the teacher was able to change things around and get the students on the right path for the lesson he had planned. I do think that follow up observations would be a good idea so that we can see where things have changed and if the teacher had to employ any new strategies to have the students focus better. These observations do provide us with invaluable experience and I am glad that we get this opportunity to experience it all!