Planning and Adjustments

Finishing off my Teacher Work Sample this afternoon, I was able to look back at my student teaching experience as a whole, and, luckily, I learned a few things.

The first thing that I learned was that planning day-to-day is HARD! There is so much to do on a daily basis with grading and instruction that having to plan an entire curriculum from day to day becomes WAY too much to deal with.

That's why I plan on planning ahead of time as much as possible. The sooner I can find out what I'm supposed to teach next year, the sooner I will be able to get a head start this summer. I want to talk to my new department at the end of this year to learn when they are teaching what, and to steal their best ideas.

The second thing that I learned, was that grading a final assessment where the majority of the students did very poorly is EXTREMELY discouraging. I don't like going through that. In order to prevent that, I'm going to plan some good formative assessments, and adjust my teaching as the unit is in progress; reteaching, adjusting deadlines, and providing intervention and help in a directive way towards my students needs.

When I know how they're struggling, then I can help them overcome their struggles, when I help them overcome their struggles, then they preform better on their final assessments, and when they perform better on their final assessments, they are happier, and I am happier (how's this for a run-on sentence?).

If you know me, then you know that keeping things short can be hard for me (pun intended), but here goes: I've learned from my mistakes to plan ahead as much as possible and to use formative assessments.