It is my belief that a teacher’s role is to educate students with clarity in an efficient and respectful manner. The ability to differentiate and tailor instruction techniques to cater to the needs of various students is something that I value in the education system. I think that the most important job of a teacher is to provide the students with the tools necessary to succeed while making learning fun, active, and engaging. When teaching social studies, creating a learning experience that is meaningful, integrative, value-based, challenging, and active can enhance student learning in all areas of social studies.
At the beginning of the semester, I found myself very nervous and overwhelmed about the course expectations. I knew entering this course that there would be a lot of work and that we were going to be required to incorporate technology into our lesson plans. As the semester progressed, I found myself growing professionally. I was learning the language of a professional individual, techniques to implement lessons effectively, and how to incorporate a variety of tools via technology to help enhance the effectiveness of a lesson plan.
I have learned many things about teaching and constructing unit plans this semester. Each lesson that is created must play an important role in developing the students’ overall understanding of the major ideas and concepts that the unit plan intends to address. I have experienced what it is like to teach a whole class of students which helped to increase my confidence and comfort in teaching. I learned several ways on how to incorporate technology into lesson plans to make them more engaging and meaningful for all of the students. Tools such as Voki animations and Wordles can provide for a good, engaging introduction to a lesson or an activity.
Throughout the semester, I have become more familiar with the different teaching methods and strategies and learned the benefits of each. I plan on using all of the new information that I learned throughout my student teaching experiences as well as my future careers. One of my favorite learning experiences was the edTPA assignment. This course requirement provided me with an experience with the edTPA prior to having to complete it for student teaching. This allowed me to become familiar with the format of edTPA and to receive feedback regarding the assignment. This will be helpful for me in my future student teaching because the task will not be completely unfamiliar to me.
In my future classroom, I wish to instill within students the idea that they have a call to involvement in the community. I believe that it is important for the teacher to develop good, participatory citizens. By informing students about the current events in society, I can promote students involvement in their community as active, engaged citizens. Education should be dedicated to building the human intellect. Rather than simply teaching content, I will create learning experiences that provide the students with the necessary skills and strategies that can be used to learn a variety of concepts. By making generalizations, students are able to make connections in their learning which can be applied across all content areas and in real-life situations.
My future classroom will also consist of differentiated instruction. I believe that all students should be taught in a way that is going to be beneficial to their learning. By tailoring instruction to each student’s needs, the teacher can create challenging learning experiences for his or her students that will assist in the overall understanding of the content. Rather than explicitly teaching the content knowledge to the students, students should develop their own content understanding, with the guidance and support of the teacher. I will provide my students with an opportunity to participate in inquiry-based learning methods and cooperative learning methods, which will help them to build other skills, such as communication, problem solving, and social skills, that will assist them in all areas of study.
