Looking Into the Future: How to Not Grow Stale
As an educator I obviously value education. It is my firm belief that humans continue to learn valuable lessons, information, and skills as they age. I believe this is a natural process that happens just from life experiences. However, I believe that people can and should take on an active role in their learning and seek out educational experiences to grow as a person. The field of education is always changing and evolving to better serve students. This means that I need to continue to grow as a teacher and to do that I must seek out educational opportunities. I plan on being a lifelong learner as a person and as a teacher. My three main areas of focus I want to grow in in the future are implementing technology in my math class, increasing student engagement, and developing more and better ways to formatively assess my students.
For the last few years I have team taught fifth grade. That means I teach only math, science and social studies to two different classes of students. While all three subjects are very important, I have found math to be the subject that demands the majority of my attention and the most challenging for my students. For this reason, I want to find and implement more technology into my math instruction as I continue through my journey as a teacher. Technology has a lot of benefits such as helping with assessment, instruction, and for students to use to present their thoughts. I have learned a lot about technologies that can be used in the classroom from the MAET program such as content management systems like Schoology, and I would like to continue to learn about new technologies as they come out. One way for me to do this is to attend the MACUL Conference each year. I attended it last year and was blown away by the technologies shown and the informational presentations that left me filled with new ideas.
While technology can be great for assessing students, instruction and as a presentation tool, it is also great at engaging students. A battle almost all teachers has is keeping students engaged throughout the entire school day. It’s hard to blame students when they are used to sitting in a classroom all day doing similar things day to day. I want to change that in my classroom. As I continue to grow as a teacher I want to learn new ways to keep student engagement up in all content areas. It is not enough to play a review game one day or have a group project every couple of weeks. I want to be able to do things to keep students engaged on a daily basis. I have come to learn that a big part of keeping students engaged is to build strong relationships with them and keep them challenged with meaningful content that demands them to think, reason, and present their thoughts. To help implement this in my classroom I plan on continuing to read from professional sources with research to back up their strategies. I plan on doing a book club with my fellow teachers at my building with “Creating Cultures of Thinking: The 8 Forces We Must Master to Truly Transform Our Schools” by Ron Ritchhart. We have read “Making Thinking Visible” by him and it has made a huge difference for our school.
Lastly, I want to learn about better ways to formatively assess my students in the future. I have strategies such as pre-assessments, conferencing, and exit tickets, but I would like to find more ways to get a deep understanding of all of my students’ knowledge. This is important because understanding what my students know drives my instruction and can alter what and how I teach. I plan on finding and attending conferences by professionals in the field to help gain new strategies. I also plan on reading about this topic in books that have come recommended to me such as “Advancing Formative Assessment in Every Classroom: A Guide for Instructional Leaders” by Connie M. Moss and Susan M. Brookhart. Gaining knowledge from books is something that never gets old!
As you can see, I love my job as a teacher and want to only get better as time goes on. I’ve heard too many stories of teachers getting too comfortable and eventually growing stale as they continue in their careers. I want to combat this with continuous education throughout my entire career.