Well another school year has ended and so many lessons have been learned. I have taught a rigorous curriculum and motivated my scholars by engaging them in fun, high-quality learning experiences this year. I effectively planned and successfully executed a well-deserved educational field trip to the Smithsonian Museums in Washington, D.C.; the students and families stated that it was the best field trip ever! I survived a third school administrative team successfully. The three main lessons I have learned were staying true to my pedagogy, my scholars, and to always be kind.
Staying True to My Pedagogy
Pedagogy is defined as the method and practice of teaching (New Oxford American Dictionary). A teacher’s pedagogy determines their actions, decisions, and instructional strategies. Teachers should be life-long learners. They should always be learning about new instructional strategies. These strategies can lead to increased student achievement. Implementing technology into classroom instruction is vital to increasing student engagement. Gone are the days of utilizing paper packets as a learning strategy. Scholars are more engaged when they are doing rather than just sitting and listening. This year I created fun and engaging projects that encompassed a building component. For example, my scholars completed an ecosystem project. Each team of students selected an ecosystem to research. They then shared their researched information about their ecosystem and built a diorama based on their research (See Picture Below). My scholars enjoyed this project so much! Staying true to scholars requires teachers to put scholars first and keeping classroom instruction a sacred time without interruptions.
Mangrove Diorama – 8th Grade Scholars
Staying True to My Scholars
Being PRESENT is essential to building trust with scholars and establishing a “caring” classroom environment. Scholars must feel they can rely on the teacher to be consistently present at school. It’s important for teachers to be not just physically present, but truly engaged while they are at school. This means correcting the wrongs by addressing inappropriate behaviors through courageous conversations. Teachers should not always refer misbehaved scholars to the office. Instead, they should take time to have a conversation with scholars about the inappropriate decisions they are making. Teachers should also inform the families of those scholars. I established a caring and nurturing learning environment by having courageous conversations with scholars and keeping families engaged in their scholars’ learning. As a result, my classes were deemed the most well-behaved, even on the few days I missed. Substitute teachers were always willing to cover my classes this past school year. Staying true to my scholars means I will always PRESENT for them.
Always Be Kind
I have learned that being kind to others is a therapeutic gesture for myself and the other person. Being kind should be a universal necessity for all humans. This past school year required me to work with adults who were negative and uncompromising, extremely rigid. These adults were also the same way when working with middle level scholars. This behavior made the young teens even more cranky than usual. Most times when teachers showed negative characteristics, it’s often because they had faced negative events in life. It is not because they were miserable individuals. Teaching is challenging, and external pressures often affect behaviors, even in adults. Nonetheless, teachers must set aside these external factors while they are at work. Being kind helped me to keep my authenticity and also helped to put smiles on other teachers’ and scholars’ faces, while also keeping my stress levels down. Kindness, also helped me put aside the negative life experiences I may have been facing during the school year as well. I chose to keep my kindness and hopefully spread it to every person with whom I interacted, especially my scholars. Be Kind, Always.
In conclusion, I will take these lessons learned from this past year into the upcoming school year. Hopefully I will learn new lessons from next school year that will improve my pedagogy and help me become a better teacher and person.