JOURNAL ENTRY #3

Teaching is a journey. Everyday is a new experience with new learning opportunities, and new ways to grow. I think this is one of the major reasons I am drawn to this profession, there are changes to my ideas everyday, and that allows for me to continue to grow. There is nothing that will be stagnant as I continue on as a teacher. There are new ideas that come out, and new ways to advance my teaching. 

It has been a benefit to my learning that I teach the same class four different times over the course of two days. This gives me the chance to make revisions to my plans because of what I learned from the previous classes. I taught the rule of thirds to our photography classes last week. This is a tool that will help them to make their compositions more interesting and create visual balance and movement. At the end of the class we gave students a check for learning to see if they were understanding the content. We had a google form with a variety of different images, and they had to tell us if each image was using the horizontal rule of thirds, the vertical rule of thirds, or both. This gave me an understanding of how well I had taught the content. 

I have learned that doing these formative assessments, allows for me to improve my own teaching. During the first class students struggled with the “quiz.” When information was simplified, they had an understanding of it, however, they couldn’t take it into the context of more complex photographs. This made me realize that the way I had taught them wasn’t clicking in their brains. I realized that they needed more practice, and to slowly get more complex photographs. During the second class, the scores were drastically improving, I drew on the board and had them participate to answer questions, and look at many examples of using the rule of thirds. I walked around the classroom as they were filling out their google slides, and helped students that were struggling. I also took a look at the specific images that students struggled with in the first class, and added images like that into my examples, so we could discuss the different ways the rule of thirds can be used. Students in the second class did better, but that wasn’t where I wanted to stop. In order for me to know that students understand the content, I want all kids to get at least 12/15 (preferably 14-15/15). In each of the next classes, students were doing much better, I was getting better at sharing the information in a way that students would understand. 

For me personally, this emphasizes the importance of consistently changing my teaching based on what I learned from past experiences. When I utilize data from past classes to inform my future practice, it will help me to grow, and it will benefit my students in the long run. This also emphasizes the importance of going back and reteaching something when students are struggling. When a class is having a difficult time, it is important to go back, and teach content in a different way that will help students to better understand. I think the first class could use more practice to understand the content, and then they can have an opportunity to take a new version of the “quiz.” This will again help to inform my understanding of where they are at, and how I can better help them to learn. 

In the future, I think an important part of this is getting feedback from students on what is working, and what I can do to better help them. I want all voices to be valued in my classroom. In order to best support students, I need feedback from assessments, but also from the students themselves. The combination of feedback from administrators, other teachers, students, assessments, etc. is what will allow for me to grow across the board. This idea of consistently utilizing feedback and assessment is what will help me to grow everyday as I begin my journey as a teacher.