Peer Teaching Self-Reflection

Let me emphasize that watching a video of myself teaching is not my cup of tea. It's crazy seeing myself as a teacher. That said, I think it is quite helpful to some degree because it allows me to see some of my nervous habits and just how much I move around the classroom.

I don't really want to break the whole rubric down by each individual criterion so let me just say that I think, to the best of my knowledge, I performed really well in regard to the rubric. I covered each objective, offered both independent and guided practice, walked around all students, used a variety of different teaching methods and questioning methods, and was dressed professionally among others. Despite the fact that I feel as though I mastered the rubric, mostly because I find myself teaching to the rubric, I do not feel as though the lesson was a success. Now I don't want to sell myself short, I think that most students would have been able to accomplish each objective but as for those students who may present a bit more of a challenge for a teacher, I think they may have left my room confused. I would have liked to spend at least 2 days on the lesson (which covered organizing data through various methods including pie charts, bar graphs, line graphs, and tables).

What I learned from this lesson and the past few days of teaching is that even if you master a rubric which is used to evaluate the effectiveness of a teacher, you still may not be the most effective teacher. I really take it to heart when people tell me that in order to be a great teacher, one must be a life long learner. I know I have so much more to learn about teaching before I can truly be an effective instructor. I really wish that the summer session would put more emphasis on content delivery than other issues like classroom management. We need to know about content delivery BEFORE we start teaching in the fall, yet the class is during the fall semester. I feel as though I may need some help conveying the information that I know to 9th graders. According to the Wong and Wong book, one of the biggest oversights of first year teachers is that they tend to lecture too much because a collegiate teaching style is the most familiar teaching style to them. I feel as though I have this problem to a certain extent and I’m excited about finding other ways to convey my knowledge.

That’s all for now!