Reflection on Learning

What can you add to your knowledge of you and of your knowledge of teaching in your content area?

Over the course of this class I have learned a tremendous amount about myself. Specifically how I my personality traits and desires effect the way I teach Social Science. I recognized many important factors to the way my personality traits affect my teaching style for the positive and the negative, I’ll share two examples of this. The first one I’ll call time managed and focused, the second example I'll call plan, stick to it and be open to adapting.

Time Managed and Focused

I have found that as I worked through the warm up and lesson plan field experience I held steadfast to the time line I had prepared. This was detrimental to my students because I then rushed through areas they I should not have in order to get back on the time schedule after we had strayed off. I feel as though I need to build a lesson plan that is not so ridged and reliant on time. Removing the number of minutes from each stem in the lesson plan may help with this. Also as I become more comfortable with teaching and the structures of the classroom I think this area will resolve itself.

Plan, stick to and be open to adapting.

The other area I felt was affected by my personality trait to plan and complete everything planed was the lesson plan in general. As I worked through my lesson plan there were many distraction and elements that took time out of the class period, which caused me to not get through my whole lesson plan. This initially frustrated me. And to be honest it still kind of does. But I realized that things happen and I won’t always be able to get through the whole lesson. My personality traits are to plan and stick to and not deviate from the plan. I’m a planner. However there will always be times when the plan has to be changed and reworked. Recognizing this alleviates a lot of unnecessary stress, and improves the learning environment. I’m working on this.