We are learning different strategies and techniques in school and from books, and going into my field placement I was really nervous. For one, it was for a 7th grade classroom (side note: being a secondary educator typically means 7-12, not grades 9-12 like I thought) so I was just nervous in general, and second was the fact that I had thought back on the story I told above and kept thinking "I have the knowledge, but what if it isn't enough?"
A motto that I personally hold very dear is this: "books and schooling provide knowledge, but experience provides wisdom". you can learn all that you want from books and from going to school, you may have all the pieces of information that should work perfectly but once introduced into the field, your ideas and knowledge can and usually do change to then fit the situation at hand. One example I can think of personally was when I was in my internship at a goat farm during my undergraduate years. I had read every book there was on goats, feeding, housing, birthing, even slaughtering. I felt I had all the knowledge in the world. However, my knowledge was heavily tested one cold morning., One of the does had been in labor overnight and had become too depleted to push anymore. She had had twins and they had gotten tangled in the birth canal. I knew what I had to do but actually getting down to the task proved much harder than I had thought. While I had tried my hardest, none of the small family survived, and I still feel guilty to this day. I had, what I believed to be, all the knowledge I needed, but I still lacked the real world experience. I still hope one day to have a goat farm of my own, and now I have a piece of wisdom to go with my knowledge. The reason I told you all this story was to tie it into what I am learning in my field placement experience for teaching. We are learning different strategies and techniques in school and from books, and going into my field placement I was really nervous. For one, it was for a 7th grade classroom (side note: being a secondary educator typically means 7-12, not grades 9-12 like I thought) so I was just nervous in general, and second was the fact that I had thought back on the story I told above and kept thinking "I have the knowledge, but what if it isn't enough?" However, I couldn't have been granted a more knowledgeable or understanding placement mentor. My mentor has always been patient with me and my personal struggles with teaching. My mentor always answers my multitude of questions, no matter how little they seem. My mentor gave me a piece of advice that I know is going to stay with me everyday that I teach, "It's okay to mess up, some days you may completely fail with a lesson or part of it, and that's okay. Just reflect, change it for next time, and maybe try reiterating what you wanted the students to understand the next time you see them." And I have already seen that in the classroom. I recently got to teach a short lesson on density and I knew I wanted to use dry ice and helium, since the students were on their atmosphere unit. I had employed the 5 E's of learning in my lesson: Engage: I did a density activity of floating diet coke and coke in water to show density of liquids, Explore: I showed a density tower video, Explain: I did a short lesson on what density is and how to find it , Elaborate: helium vs "normal" air and the dry ice experiment, Evaluate: exit questions about density. What I learned from that teaching experience was that sometimes things will and won't work in a lesson. For example, the kids didn't seem to enjoy the density tower video, and if I did it again I would make it an actual activity for them to do. Second, the kids loved the dry ice and helium part but it seemed their excitement overcame them sometimes and they didn't seem to understand the purpose of using it. The technique i tried employing with the dry ice was the technique of See-Think-Wonder. I wanted them to see that the dry ice gas (carbon dioxide) was falling to the ground or staying in the bowl, I wanted them to come to the conclusion that CO2 is heavier than normal air thus it fell or stayed in the bowl. I wanted them to wonder about what that could mean for gasses in the atmosphere. A lot of the students got what I was trying to explain to them, some even asking more probing questions about dry ice and its uses, and some even realizing how gasses work in the atmosphere better. While I may say that my lesson was not completely successful, it was definitely a good starting point.
5 Comments
Devon Smith
10/25/2015 04:52:20 am
This is a very thoughtful and inspiring post, Mary Beth! I love your comment of knowledge versus experience. I think this is a big thing that all prospective teachers have to over come, and it just takes time and practice.
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Nick B
10/25/2015 09:16:08 am
Often when we fail we do feel a sense of guilt. With the thought technique you used, is there anything you regret or feel guilty about? Or is there anything you felt could have been done better?
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Ryan
10/25/2015 05:02:11 pm
I felt very moved by the goat story. And then the goat stuck his tongue out at me and I felt much happier. Did the exit questions reflect your thoughts on the lesson or did they seem to learn more(or less)?
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drann
10/28/2015 09:59:51 am
Bravo! I will never forget how excited you were on the day you used the dry ice and helium.
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Anna
11/3/2015 08:38:44 am
You can never fully predict the outcomes of what you do with your students. Its a beautiful but also scary thing! How did you respond to your students asking the different questions?
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AuthorHey, my name's Mary Beth and I am starting this blog to document my journey in becoming a high school life science/ chemistry teacher. Archives
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