Over the course of my practicum experience so far I feel like i am not learning anything really beneficial from my host teacher. Let me try that again. I am not learning anything that I would really use in my future classroom. Instead I am learning how NOT to act as a teacher in the classroom.
For example, if my students have a question or are confused about something, I will not just simply brush them off and move onto the next topic or question on a ditto. There is one student in the classroom that gets visibly frustrated whenever he gets stuck on a question for an extra few seconds or an additional minute. The teacher seems to ignore his frustration and moves onto the next question. This causes the students to verbally voice his annoyance, thrown down his pencil, and dismiss the ditto or sweep it to the floor. For the rest of the lesson he will usually just sit there while the other students do their own dittos. I have been trying to work with the student whenever I notice him struggling and try to encourage him and help him to complete the ditto so that he does not fall behind the rest of the class. I let him know the parts that he got correct and try to guide him using his strengths, which tends to work most of the time. Also, I try to surprise him with my support and relate a problem or question to his life or interests.
But it's hard when I don't seem to have the support or guidance of my host teacher on my side.
Recently, I helped the student completed a diamond poem that students were working on in class. He came to me with spelling struggles and even let me help him fix some things that the teacher wanted corrected or changed. I really felt very happy inside when he came to me with a question or a correction.
It is so hard to see a student struggling and seeing that the teacher does not do anything about it. I am glad to see you are taking initiative and helping students when it is clearly needed. :)
ReplyDeleteIt is helpful to see what NOT to do as well. It shows you the effects it has on the students, and makes it more reasonable why not to teach in this manner. I like that you are there to attempt to keep some of the students from falling behind; and you're right- it would definately be more successful if you had the support of the host teacher.
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