I have a few qualifications that have allowed me overtime to become an independent, confident and positive learner and worker. For 4 years now I have worked as a waitress at a restaurant called Pasta Italia Cucina, this has allowed me to gain social skills and deal with problems that are faced within the workplace. For just over a year now I have been and still am working as a teachers aid (SLSO) at Cecil Hills Primary School a couple days a week. One day I am in a unit with students who have autism, ranging from low to extreme and another day I am in mainstream classrooms dealing with students with all types of diverse learning needs. This has allowed me to see the many different learners in a school and I have gained and still am gaining so much knowledge from being at this school.
Month: September 2018
Teaching Philosophy
What is my role as a teacher?
My role as a teacher is simply to get the absolute best out of every student I teach. In order to achieve this, I believe this begins with the teacher and how much he/she really cares and values their students, not just in their learning but in everyday things and needs as well. I want to be able to support the growth of my students and be able to help achieve their goals, growing them into men and women.
To gain the best out of every student, they need to be motivated. To get motivated, their needs are required to be met. To say the least, I believe a humanist approach is needed to get the best out of a student. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs suggests that “human behaviour is motivated by the individual seeking to fulfil a series of hierarchy needs, ranging from lower level survival and safety needs, to higher level needs for intellectual achievement and finally self-actualisation.” (Margetts, Woolfolk, 2016) This implies that students who are not hungry, feel safe, are loved and have a sense of belonging are able to cope with every day life and can reach their fullest potential. My role as a teacher is to make sure students feel safe at school, know they belong at school and are loved at school. How do I achieve this? I personally believe the small things just like a “how are you?” or asking how they are going with school work, opens up a student and allows a teacher to see just how well a student is going. If a student doesn’t feel safe at school or feel like they don’t belong then how are they supposed to reach their fullest potential in a classroom. The importance of making sure these needs are met at school is critical for a teacher and student. Making sure each and every level of Maslow’s hierarchy is met throughout students allows them to reach their fullest potential, gaining their very best out of the classroom. There are many pressures and issues students deal with now a days, between social media, family and friends, its easy for them to get side tracked and “stuck” so I think it’s extremely essential that teachers are checking in on their students making sure they’re okay.
“In his celebrated book, The Courage to Teach , Palmer claims that knowing your students and your subject are heavily dependent on self‐knowledge and that if you do not know yourself you cannot know your students. He argues that: good teaching cannot be reduced to technique good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher” (Churchill, 2015)
My teaching philosophy is like this because I know what it is like to deal with all the pressure and I appreciated my teachers for always looking out and making sure I or any other student was okay. The reinforcement of belonging in the school community and giving me or us that bit of attention really helped. It allowed me to be positive and get the best out of my learning, I understand that not all students are made for school, some may want to get a trade or something and that is completely okay. However, I still want them to make them reach their fullest potential and get the very best out of every student. I believe a humanist approach is needed to understand students and begins the basis of reaching proper learning.
References:
Churchill, Rick, et al. TEACHING: MAKING A DIFFERENCE 3E, Wiley, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/acu/detail.action?docID=4748104.
Created from acu on 2018-09-17 18:34:26.
Woolfolk, Anita, & Margetts, Kay. “Educational Psychology” 4th Edition, Australia: Melbourne, 2016.
Maslow’s Hierarchy
Experience 1
Experience 1:
A student with a learning disability in Year 10 isn’t quite understanding the work set out by the supervising teacher. It’s an individual task of analysing a poem that students must complete by themselves in silence for 20 minutes. He can read the poem but doesn’t understand how to analyse it by himself. The class has gone through analysing poems before but he still doesn’t understand it, he’s not putting his hand up to ask for help and just sits their in silence.
The reason I bring this experience up is because I don’t feel like this particular activity catered for this student. I feel like this activity could have been done much different and in fact the student could have learned from the activity if it was done differently. According to the Australian Professional Teaching Standards 1.5 states that “Differentiate teaching to meet the specific learning needs of students across the full range of abilities.” (Australian Professional Teaching Standards, 2017) I believe this wasn’t met and this teacher should be catering for the needs of this student as I have seen other teachers do so. I would have approached this lesson much different, by making this a group activity. I would put the students in groups of 4 or 5 and give them a stanza each to analyse. This allows students to discuss and gain ideas from each other, its a form of problem solving and gaining new knowledge. After the groups have analysed their part of the stanza, the teacher would bring them back in and they would all go through the poem together, meaning everyone is participating and learning. The student is not missing out as he is involved in the group and learning new ideas, this can be seen as social constructivism. Piaget and Vygotsky believed in constructivism being a form of learning. “The social constructivist view is that social interaction shapes cognitive development and is an essential component of the learning process” (Duchesne & McMaugh, 2016). Therefore for an activity like this social interaction is needed to shape the learning of the student’s with the guidance from their teacher.
References:
Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership. “Australian Professional Standards for Teachers” 2017. https://www.aitsl.edu.au/
Duchesne, S., & McMaugh, A. (2016). Educational psychology (5th ed.). Victoria: Cengage Learning Australia Pty Ltd.
Experience 2
Experience 2:
A student has been disrupting the learning of others in the classroom. The Year 9 student is somewhat bored of what the teacher has set out for work which was how to structure a paragraph for an essay. The teacher only uses the white board to write out the paragraph and expects the students to write what she is writing on the board. Losing interest in the activity he starts to disrupt the students in the classroom, this creates a stop and go lesson for the teacher and students as she is always having to stop the work and reinforce him to stay on task too.
I bring this experience up because this situation could have been dealt with better by making the activity a bit more engaging. Although structuring a paragraph on the whiteboard is good for students, I do believe it could be more engaging with the use of ICT. In the Australian Professional Teaching Standards it states in 3.4 “Demonstrate knowledge of a range of resources, including ICT, that engage students in their learning.” (Australian Professional Teaching Standards, 2017) In this day and age, ICT is everywhere so it would be weird not to use it especially because most students have their own devices and are fantastic with them. So how I would structure this lesson is to make a small presentation, each slide would have the instruction of what it is and what to do plus an example of the topic for the paragraph (something funny like Brooklyn 99 a TV show which most people love) then in their table groups they would write something together so for example: (first slide is on the first step which is Point) POINT – Brooklyn 99 is one of the funniest shows in the world and has many great characters that are hilarious and relatable. Then work through the rest of the steps with them. Already by using something students love and relate too they’ll be interested as soon as you mention the name. Also by getting the students to do this work on their devices it allows them to look up things about the show and characters, allowing them to write more stuff about them for their paragraph. A learning theory that can be applied to here is the information processing theory. “The processing which occurs at each stage is assumed to be learned and the degree of this learning is evaluated with respect to two criteria: accuracy and automaticity.” (LaBerge, 1974) This focuses on encoding and retrieval of what a student has learned. If a student can remember how to structure a paragraph by using Brooklyn 99 then already we have a sense of information processing theory. They use the show as a stimuli to encode the structure of a paragraph in their brain, then in further paragraph writing they retrieve the structure of it to write their own piece of writing.
References:
Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership. “Australian Professional Standards for Teachers” 2017. https://www.aitsl.edu.au/
Laberge, David. “Cognitive Psychology” Vol: 6, Issue: 2, America: University of Minnesota. April, 1974. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(74)90015-2
Experience 2: Brooklyn 99
Experience 3
Experience 3
A student in Year 9 English had been finding it hard to focus in class. Over a few class observations he was always flying under the radar, not participating or doing his work. Later on the supervising teacher approached him after class asking if everything was okay. Unfortunately he had been having some trouble at home and was not feeling the want or need to come to school. Therefore making him off task and not wanting to learn.
I talk about this experience because I think it is highly important and critical that we as teachers cater for the needs of all students. Although this blog entry is not really based on classroom work, I think it is just as important due to the fact a student does not want to be there. If a student doesn’t want to be at school then he/she does not want to learn or will fight the learning off. In the Australian Professional Teaching Standards, 4.3 outlines “Demonstrate knowledge of practical approaches to manage challenging behaviour.” (Australian Professional Teaching Standards, 2017) I believe that a humanist approach into getting this student motivated is needed. This student is missing the basic needs in Maslow’s Hierarchy, in order for this student to get motivated and want to be at school, these needs need to be met. “Maslow referred to the four lower needs as “deficiency needs” because their lack creates a tension within us. He saw nothing wrong with the human desire to scratch where we itch. As long as we can work to satisfy the cravings, we’re moving toward growth.” (Griffin, 2012) I think it is important that a teacher makes sure this student is feeling loved and like he belongs at the school, to do this a particular set of goals could be set for the student to motivate. Find things that the student is interested in whether it be movies, shows, books, food whatever it is that makes the student happy, apply it to his goals. Make the student want to come to school because if he does want to come to school or looks forward to being in that one class because of a teacher then he is definitely going to learn.
References:
Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership. “Australian Professional Standards for Teachers” 2017. https://www.aitsl.edu.au/
Griffin, Em. “A FIRST LOOK AT COMMUNICATION THEORY” Chapter 12. Wheaton College, 2012.
Experience 4
Experience 4:
A year 8 student has been asking for extra help with her English work. She is motivated and wants to learn but just is not understanding the work set out. It has been modified and explained to her as well but she still is not understanding. The teacher tries explaining another way to do the work, she nods as if she is understanding but the teacher can tell she needs help.
I bring this experience up because students have a tendency to always ask for help but when it is explained to them again they just nod and pretend they know what they are doing when really they don’t. I think it is extremely important to let students know that being in your classroom they can come to you for anything and ask for all sorts of help. This is where the trust and good communication between a teacher and student is needed to be well and proper so that they are comfortable enough to come up to you and tell you that they don’t get it even if it has been explained differently. It’s the job of a teacher to cater for a student and understand their needs. In 1.1 of the Australian Professional Standards for Teaching, it outlines “Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of physical, social and intellectual development and characteristics of students and how these may affect learning.” (Australian Professional Teaching Standards, 2017) In this case, I would try to understand where the student is coming from, put yourself in the student’s shoes and see where it is that she is not understanding or grappling, once this is done, effective changes can be made. Social learning theory comes into play here, the work of Albert Bandura is important to this matter as he believes “…that the traditional behavioural views were accurate – but incomplete – because they gave only a partial explanation of learning and overlooked important elements.” (Margetts, Woolfolk, 2016) For this student I would be focusing on the most important bits of the activity and just focusing on that, trying to get her to understand the one thing the teacher wants her to take out from the activity. Then progressively branch out to the other parts of the activity, in other words break it down bit by bit.
References:
Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership. “Australian Professional Standards for Teachers” 2017. https://www.aitsl.edu.au/
Woolfolk, Anita, & Margetts, Kay. “Educational Psychology” 4th Edition, Australia: Melbourne, 2016.
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