Initial Thoughts

At the beginning of my practicum, I wondered about what my students would think of me. How would I organize my knowledge and my ideas into steps to convey them properly? Would my students even understand what I wrote on the board, since it was so poorly arranged the last time that I tried presenting a mock lesson? Is it going to be difficult to adapt to the new technology, using Chromebooks and dry erase boards and Smart Projectors rather than iPads, as I had used in my own high school? Will I look too young or will they think that I am too old to relate to them? Will the students even respect me or trust me or like me?

So many questions floated through my head, and I felt the most anxious about teaching my Inclusion Geometry classes. When I had initially spoken with my mentor teacher, he had mentioned that I would be beginning with the students that he had not only taught and gotten to know last year, but who had had a student teacher from WPI for Algebra I, whom both he and his students held in an obviously high regard. Even when I entered the classroom, the students raved about their previous student teacher! I knew that I had some huge shoes to fill, let alone the fact that these students in particular needed Special Education plans, whereas I was accustomed to an advanced, lecture-based curriculum, autonomous notes with minimal in-class activities, and online submissions in high school. Plus, the students at Worcester Tech are also involved in their shops, and many of them do not necessary have the means for or the intention of attending college, instead opting to follow their vocational training and to earn a paycheck immediately post-secondary. This was a drastic transition from my own college preparatory background, which made it seem like college or the military were the only acceptable options after high school. Once I turned this ridiculous standard on its head, it opened my eyes to the different ways in which students can learn and process information. While I of course wanted all of my students to succeed and wanted to share my excitement about college and degree-requiring careers, I completely gained a new insight and perspective when addressing their options.

The schedule at Worcester Tech made it rather difficult to synchronize what I was teaching one class with that of another, especially for my senior classes that flip-flopped each week. However, I found an appreciation for the shop-academic schedule with both these seniors and with my two period of sophomores, who switched between first and fifth period each day. As first period is the beginning of the day around 7am, and fifth period is mid-afternoon and directly before lunch, it was ever-unpredictable whether one, both, or neither class was going to have a plethora of energy and a great participation day during any given lesson... or none at all and nothing of the sort. In any case, I was able to adapt my lessons based upon what worked and on what did not work, and I could provide each set of students with a personalized learning platform while still staying true to my lesson plans, as each of my six total sets of students had such a different personality.

Final Reflection: Quote

PROOFS PROJECT

Culturally Responsive Teaching Goal

One major piece of the practicum involved creating a set of Culturally Responsive Teaching (CRT) goals and synthesizing them into an assessment that could not only test my ability as a teacher to increase accessibility and inclusivity for all of my students, but to act two-fold and to pair with my CAP Progress Goals to measure the progress of my students from the beginning to the end of my time as their instructor. I began by considering which CRT Goals best matched my aspirations in the classroom, and I decided upon three different ways in which I could best aid my students.

I first chose that I would like to "have students share the assets that they bring to the table at the beginning of group work, including those assets that originally appear to be non-academic / outside of academic assets." This involved bringing strengths and weaknesses (or lesser strengths, as I prefer to call them) into the math classroom, even if they did not particularly involve math, such that students could feel like they are contributing to our lesson and placing their own trademark on their work.
Another goal of mine was to "review who has a fixed mindset vs. a growth mindset, and actively demonstrate how to grow from failures / mistakes." This goal revolves around knowing and identifying my students, specifically so that I can help them to see their capabilities in math and to not feel like they cannot contribute to an assignment or to a project in their lives if they do not have all of the necessary skills to complete it.
Finally, I decided that I would like to "give a problem at the beginning of delivering new content / skills, and have students keep going back to that problem to practice applying content / skills throughout lesson / unit delivery." This was a goal that I applied all the way throughout my teaching practicum, even though I only started thinking about CRT goals specifically around Week 5 or 6. I continuously made sure to bring back concepts from previous lessons into my daily problems, opening with review and leading into the new content with a problem that both synthesized and challenged the content that we had previously discussed. This became a trademark of my teaching style, as I have mentioned.

In order to assess my students' performance and growth thanks to my instruction, I decided to focus on a topic that I had taught the students from the very beginning and thus which I could use as a true gauge as to how much they had learned: proofs. This was a topic that my sophomore Inclusion Geometry students, whom I had taught for the longest amount of time by the end of my practicum, had unanimously never seen before I had introduced it to them early in my take-over process. It was also a topic with which I knew that my students struggled when it came to figuring out their own steps and processes, as well as with grasping the actual concept and the use of a proof itself... so I felt as if it was a perfect topic to assess their progress on in these areas! However, in order to make this my CRT Project, I needed to consider my three goals as well.

In my Proofs Project outline, I specifically made sure to give a fair grading process, thus I included a rubric in my packet for all students that not only laid out exactly how I would be grading the project (along with a list of the exact materials that I would require for a "complete" project), but I included a column that was worth about one-fifth of the grade and that solely focused on individual participation. Nowhere in my rubric did I scrutinize quality of the project or skills utilized or entertainment of the presentation, I simply wanted to see effort from each group member on all parts. I gave plenty of opportunities for students to utilize their strengths for the project, even spending a class day on having the groups work together to determine their combined strengths and what they could assist each other with / which project type would best fit their individual and team dynamic, etc.. I encouraged the students to work together each day, and even though my project schedule / availability for group help in class had to be altered and shifted for MCAS mock testing and for delays before Thanksgiving Break, I still managed to fit in a solid work day to check in with the teams and to make sure that all of them could present soon. I wanted to make sure that students who could not access materials outside of school or could only find work / meeting time with their groups during class hours would have equitable (even if not necessarily equal) accessibility to the project and could still contribute to receive full credit for their efforts. For the sake of transparency and growth, these ideas are outlined in my original CRT goal / project description from Week 5, where I roughly brainstormed a possible project idea and deadlines, yet I later edited the dates and widened the variety of project types that I would like to see.

Final Reflection: Text

Final Reflection: Pro Gallery

Growth

My teaching style definitely evolved from the beginning to the end of my practicum. When I first began, especially as I was working mostly with my Inclusion Geometry and with my ELL Algebra I students, I tended to speak at a much slower pace and to cover much less material and review in a single class period. I gave my students Problems of the Day at the beginning of each class period, even if it was a quiz day. I managed to keep a good balance of review and of new material, but I definitely focused just as much time on Problem of the Day #1, Review, as I did on Problem of the Day #2, New Content... and that is all that I would cover in a class period. After my first or second observation, the students did not seem to be able to mirror what I was teaching them as much as verbally reiterate it, indicating that they likely needed more practice on their worksheets and help with completing the problems all the way through. I thus established a goal that I would bridge this balance so that I cover a bit higher of an amount of new content with each lesson, as well as would model my mentor teacher's methods from prior to my takeover and include more practice time at the end of class. This way, the students could begin on their worksheets and on their online work and I could provide them with more individualized instruction and guide / strengthen their problem-solving processes.

Over time, I noticed that my students no longer responded to my Problems of the Day, having no accountability for their actions when I did not collect their work or grade it before discussing the answers in class. I experimented with timing my daily problems, such that the students felt more pressure. Sometimes I collected them on separate sheets of paper for participation grades. This strategy seemed to cause students to take their work a little bit more seriously and to even start completing their homework more often with the suspicion that I may collect that too. I even eventually nixed my Problems of the Day on most days and only brought them out occasionally, almost completely diverging from my original "trademark" teaching style that involved a review-to-challenge process each day. Whenever I put up Problems of the Day on these days, students actually attended to the problem immediately, as it was perhaps something new again at that point.

Admittedly, it took me a rather long period of time to get to this point, with students focusing on my daily problems and not simply goofing off when I gave them something to do that did not have any consequence or reward. Leading up to this point, I definitely felt a little discouraged when I felt that my students did not respect me or see what I had to contribute to their education as significant. However, my advisor mentioned to me during my third observation that while my students did not seem very engaged in my daily problems when they were accustomed to them, they perked up the second I began to speak, suggesting a mutual respect throughout the classroom for my spoken word. I thought about this more deeply and I looked back at my previous lessons: my mentor teacher often seemed to trust me completely with what we were going to do that day, sometimes even asking me directly before a lesson about what I was planning on covering (even though we had a shared Google Sheet that outlined our curriculum and which I updated near-daily) and often printing out my worksheets -- which I had put together the night before -- on the morning of the lessons! I often had to alter my lesson plans during this time to make sure that they aligned with the material that I had altered the day before, as previously discussed. I also noticed that my students had grown to trust me in the classroom, and that they revered what I told them, even copying it down exactly as I had covered it. I noticed that my neatness and my marker color variation on the board had grown over time, as opposed to the literal trainwreck that it started out as. Most importantly, I saw actual growth in my students, despite subconsciously believing that they did not absorb what I was telling them. I looked back at my Inclusion Geometry students, whom I had worked with since the very beginning, and how they had started out with no knowledge of geometric proofs. They had issues with the concepts behind the logic and how to organize their theorems. Yet, taking a look at their projects and at their quizzes, I saw tangible results and growth in my students from ground zero. I realized that I actually had made a difference in my students' academic careers!

Final Reflection: Quote

Final Thoughts

From the very beginning, all of my students seemed open to the idea of accepting a student teacher into their classroom. Although the physical journey from college student to teacher only took a semester, the mental challenge and the amount of work and time that I put into my practicum made it feel like a lifetime. I felt as if I grew not only with my students but through my students, whether in trust, in academics, or in something else. I feel so much more respect for the career of a high school instructor after filling those shoes each day for half of an academic year... both my year and my students', as I was simultaneously attending grad courses, seminars, and undergraduate lectures at WPI throughout my time at Worcester Tech.

I have never been one to shy away from public speaking, and I absolutely love to explain new concepts to people who have not been exposed to them or who simply do not yet understand a small piece of the whole. However, I feel as if I have shed a whole new light on my own perspective while standing in the place of such an active member in so many kids' lives each day. My newfound appreciation reaches beyond the basic planning and grading (which do take a lot of time, yet can be enjoyable depending on the lesson, especially if the work eventually receives praise and fulfills a child's knowledge gap). I never realized exactly how involved a teacher is in a student's and in a school's life and how much they deeply, truly care for each person who walks through the door of their classroom, whether it be a parent, a maintenance person, a fellow colleague, or a student themselves. As the workload grew and my patience ran thin and my stamina in this field became greatly tested throughout this rocky semester, I found myself wishing that someone would intervene in my own life as much as these teachers involve themselves with their students' wellbeing. It was not until my own mentor teacher and advisors stepped in to put me on the right track that I realized not only how much they cared for each member of the school as a living, breathing organism, but how much I had grown and functioned throughout the year and how much stronger I felt following this practicum.

This portfolio took quite an extended time to put together, and it still does not encompass everything that I have accomplished and have given to my students throughout the semester -- all of the countless lesson plans, logged hours, worksheets, grades, sleepless nights, the student work generated and collected, even the nine straight hours of MTEL testing that I endured to prove that I was worthy of contributing to my students' education effectively. It is all sitting in my Google Drive in the case that I need it again someday, but until then, I have the memories of my wonderful, respectful students who continuously surprised me and made me feel as if all of the effort was worth it (which it definitely was). I cannot imagine what a different person that I would be if I had chosen to spend my IQP as a typical WPI student does, in another country or focusing on making a difference in a community other than that of Worcester Tech. If I continue on the path of an educator down the road, even if that is by fulfilling my dream of being a university professor and researcher,

I still hope that I can give my kids some ideas, inspiration, and knowledge that they had not previously thought of, such that they can develop a growth mindset and can thrive in each new thing that they learn with a new perspective on the things that they are capable of. I will miss my time at Worcester Tech, but I will be back, especially now that I am legally allowed to substitute teach in Massachusetts and to actually get paid for it!

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