The feedback I received from my supervising teacher throughout placement helped me think about my choices and actions. Although I feel like she has given me predominantly positive feedback, I know there are many things I need to work on. Some things I could do better in my future placements would be to not rush lessons and to breathe. I find that my nervousness always gets the best of me at times, and I tend to rush and forget things.

The next thing I need to work on is providing explanations to students. I realised that I tend to treat them like adults who get concepts straight away after being told once. My supervising teacher emphasised the importance of repeating information to students whenever I can, but subtly or through different ways. I could improve this by using various strategies. E.g. instead of repeating what is on the board, I can ask a student or ask the class to reiterate what has been said, or to use strategies like 'think, pair, share' for them to reiterate information to their partners.

The most important thing for me to improve on is behaviour managment. I need to be more assertive and stern, without being disrespectful to students. At times I realised that the children did not take me seriously because they think I am just their friend. In my future placements, I will make the conscious effort to establish boundaries earlier and to be a more confident communicator.

The evidence I have provided for focus area 6.3 are images of feedback forms completed by my supervising teacher and my own written reflection on these feedbacks. Part of ‘a code of ethics for teaching’ that Ewing et al. has outlined states educators must interact with colleagues, work cooperatively and collaboratively in school environments, share expertise and knowledge with other members of the profession and seek opportunities for professional development and engage in professional dialogue with colleagues (2019, p. 29). Throughout placement, I believe I have ticked the boxes for these things in some way, as I continually engaged with my supervising teacher and other teachers in practice. I observed different teachers and took notes of teaching styles I found effective, and always engaged in consultation and discussion with my supervising teacher.

At the beginning of placement, I was scared to receive feedback about my teaching because I was not that confident in myself and was worried about receiving negative criticism. However, towards the end of my placement, I realised feedbacks actually helped me learn about myself as an educator. I was able to take the feedback to improve my pedagogical choices and to ‘make things better’ for next time – such as my actions, choice of words, choice of resources, body language, dispositions, etc. Reflective practice is an integral part of learning to become an educator, as it also becomes a problem-solving process for teachers (Jay & Johnson 2002, p. 74-75). By evaluating lessons, I was able to look at the learning intentions I provided and was able to reflect whether or not the students have achieved them, or whether I need to make more extensions to help them better understand concepts. Constant engagement with my ST really helped me understand the concept of an ‘emergent curriculum’, as our conversations and interactions lead us to collaboratively develop future lesson plans based on observations, implementations and evaluations.

References:

Ewing, R, Kervin, L, Glass, C, Gobby, B, Le Cornu, R & Groundwater-Smith, S 2019, Teaching: Dilemmas, challenges and opportunities, 6th edn, Cengage Learning Australia, South Melbourne, Australia.

Jay, JK & Johnson, KL 2002, ‘Capturing complexity: a typology of reflective practice for teacher education’, Teaching and Teacher Education, vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 73-85.