Characteristics of the Novice Teacher: Part 2.

One characteristic that I chose to focus on for this post is characteristic number 2: "We believe that the novice teacher should be an effective communicator." I believe that all teachers should develop effective communication skills with colleagues in order to properly collaborate, with students in order to successfully teach, and with parents to keep them informed on happenings with their child's education.

An ideal team of teachers should be able to collaborate about the content of their lessons and when they teach it. I have found this to be especially important in older grades when the students switch classrooms for different content areas. Having all of the students switch and take math, science, and social studies all at different times is difficult, but can be done with effective communication! When the teachers collaborate to stay on the same page, transitioning through the classes becomes much more organized.

I personally find communication between teachers and parents to be extremely crucial in order to effectively educate children. Parents need to be involved! Parents should be kept updated in order to know exactly what their child is learning in school at any given time. This can prove to be beneficial for many reasons, the most important being that parents can help their children with content and provide extra practice. Many students simply need an extra push at home, but they first need to know the content their child is learning. Another reason teachers should develop good communication skills with parents is so they can discuss student behavior if it becomes a problem or even recognize good behavior when a students does something notable.

The artifact I chose to display my understanding of characteristic number 2 is my Parent Communication Project from Education 401. This project is a website I constructed that parents of my classroom could access in order to see a calendar of important dates, reminders, notices, spelling lists, learning goals for the classroom, what the students are learning, contact information, and more. This type of website is easy to make and serves as a great communication tool. As a bonus, a teacher can use it to communicate with all parents at once, rather than having all of the parents call or email at different times. I even chose to add a "word of the week" that students will practice in class. Little things like this show parents that a teacher is passionate about his/her job.


The second characteristic I chose to focus on is characteristic number 3: "We believe that the novice teacher should recognize that teaching is a professional, moral, and ethical enterprise, should understand moral issues and ethical practices in educational environments, and should have developed ethical frameworks which facilitate effective teaching." This characteristic is important because every teacher should have a profound understanding for moral and ethical issues in the classroom. A successful teacher should not only have a strong grasp on his/her own morals, but he/she should also try to spread good and appropriate morals and ethics onto the students.

I believe that a good teacher must have a respectable moralistic background. If a teacher does not have good morals, what is that to say about how that teacher communicates and forms relationships with students? Teachers are major role models in children's lives. Students should be able to look up to their teachers and take away new values to hold onto for life. Sadly enough, some students pick up poor morals at home depending on the type of family they have. School should always be a place of positive values!

Not only should teachers have respectable morals, but they should be trying to pass them onto their students. Like I said before, teachers are role models, but there is more to it than that. As a novice teacher in a high poverty school, I find it crucial to teach lessons that send a message to students about good morals and values. Some students come from rough families in which the parents have unethical morals that the children are picking up. As a teacher, it is a major responsibility to teach students the difference between right and wrong: the right way to treat people, the right way to act, to right way to treat property, etc. That is why I chose my character education lesson as an artifact for this characteristic.

The character education lesson teaches the students about the importance and necessity of responsibility. For this lesson, the students are working collaboratively to choose the best class pet for out classroom. Before the lesson there is a class discussion about what pets need in order to survive. Once the lesson begins, the students are told to write about their ideal class pet, including all of its needs! The students are then broken up into small group in which they will each have the opportunity to explain their ideal class pet. The small group will then vote on which pet they think would work best for the classroom. Each group will then choose a representative to share their chosen pet with the whole class. After each group had a chance to present, the class will vote on their new class pet. After the lesson, there will be a class discussion about the benefits of the voting system used to determine a new class pet. The class will also discuss everything they will need for the new class pet and the necessity and importance of all of these things.

Characteristics of the Novice Teacher.

One lesson that I am quite proud of is a diversity lesson I taught to a first grade class. The lesson was focused around the book "The Colors of Us" by Karen Katz. The story is about a little girl that describes her friends and family by the colors of their skin. The little girl used creative, food-related adjectives, like creamy peanut butter and hazelnut, to describe different colors of skin to show how every individual is unique. This story helps students distinguish more skin differences than just white and black. Everybody has a unique skin color. I started the lesson by asking the following questions:

a. Does anyone know what ancestors are?
b. Does anyone know if their ancestors came from a different country?
c. Where did they come from?

Then I would introduce the book to the class and ask the students what they know about skin colors all over the world. Next I would ask the students what they want to learn about skin colors. I would then read the book aloud to the class. After a class discussion about the message of the book, the students create a self-portrait with crayons, colored pencils, or the utensil of their choice. After they draw and color their self-portraits, the students will be instructed to think of a word or two to describe their unique skin color, just as the narrator described the children in the book. Finally, the students will discuss what they have learned from the lesson. I associate this lesson to the ninth characteristic of a novice teacher: beware of and have respect for human diversity.

The second artifact I would like to relate to one of the ten characteristics is a portfolio I made in Music 182. The portfolio contains ten principles of how music can be incorporated into the curriculum. Along with each characteristic is an artifact from the class. I am extremely proud of this portfolio because it is a tool that can be used as a resource later on in my career. I was able to create my own ten principles at the end of the semester, so my portfolio is filled with principles that I find most important in music education. For instance, my favorite principle is "Music is the best icebreaker." The artifact I included was a song called "Hello There," which the students sing to introduce themselves. This is a really great activity for the first day of school or when a new student comes into the classroom. This music portfolio can be associated to the tenth principle of a novice teacher: be liberally educated.

Reflecting on the Blog..

Throughout my first year in the Benedum program I have posted to my blog about five times. While writing each blog post, I put forth my best effort and a great deal of thought about the prompt questions. Today's questions asked me to look back and reflect on my very first blog post. In that post I discussed how I thought this blog would be a great way to share and document experiences with others and read about theirs, as well. Unfortunately, I have not yet found the blog to be a great source of sharing stories with other tutors in the program. The only person that I really share with is my blogging partner, Lindsey. I think it would be beneficial to take time to follow other tutors' blogs and read about their experiences. Hopefully I will change my mind as we spend more and more time in the classroom and gain experience.

One the bright side, I do think that this blog has been beneficial in helping me document my progress in the program. This blog will be a great reflection tool for me later in the program if I am asked to look back on my overall experience.

The blog has This has also been a great way for me to communicate with my blogging partner. I have also noticed that Michelle reads my posts so I think it is an awesome way for her to keep up with me, along with the rest of her students.

Lindsey: Have you had any success in communicating with your PDS coordinator or anyone else from your school?

Semester update!

My biggest goal for this semester is to become more familiar with CSOs. I have been using them often and know how to navigate them, but I feel it would be beneficial for me to have a better understanding of them. I would really like it if I were able to go to the CSO website and automatically find which CSO I need. Becoming familiar with the standards and CSOs that follow them would help me do just that. At first, I was dreading the unpacking CSOs assignment, but in the end it really did benefit me. I have a better comprehension for the point of the standards and the CSOs that back them up.

As for my Practicum Plan, I have not made any updates or changes. My main focus when making the Practicum Plan was setting my completion dates at least a week or two before the due date. Another goal for this semester is getting the assignments done in a timely manner so I do not put them off to the last minute. I think the Practicum Plan has definitely helped me with that. I have been doing my lessons and assignments before the actual completion dates that I set for myself on the plan.

I have really been enjoying my time in the classroom this semester. My host teacher has been awesome with fitting in my lessons and other assignments. She has been offering great advice, tips, and feedback.

Storytelling

Hello! Welcome to semester numer 2 of the Benedum program! One of my main assignments for the semester involves creating my own digital story...

In recent years, stories have become ways of reflecting, documenting, and passing on information. Storytelling has been a source of entertainment for hundreds of years. Some tales from ancient proverbs are still heard today. Such stories have been told over and over again for one simple reason: they're good! To me, a "good" story has to be told with a purpose. I love books that have a moral for people to learn, especially when the meaning of the book is hidden and it is the reader's job to uncover it. In order for a book or story to be qualifiied as "good," there must be a plot (rising action, climax, falling action, etc.).

This semester I will be creating my own digital story. The purpose of this assignment is to document and reflect on my personal experience at my PDS so far. I hope to create my digital story in a way that lets the audience know what to expect if they were to spend a year as a tutor at the same PDS. I think it will be beneficial to include bits and pieces from the lessons I have taught thus far. Interviews of my host teachers and coordinator may add a more personal touch to the story. One idea that I have to keep the audience interested is by including a few comical moments I have encountered with the students.

Overall, I think this project will be  good use of various types of multimedia. I plan to add videos and audio commentary because I think it will maintain interest since the audience will personally get to hear or visualize the story. I can scan student artwork to act as illustrations for my digital story. The use of technology for this assignment will definitely be beneficial because my options are limitless!

First semester: student relationships.

Hello! Throughout the past semester I worked in a first grade classroom at Mylan Park Elementary school. I have become familiar with a variety of new teaching strategies. Overall, I taught three lessons and did many small activities with the students.

For the first two lessons I focused on enforcing respect and friendship among the children by forming the lessons around The Rainbow Fish. For the first lesson, I read the story aloud and had a class discussion where I asked the students a number of comprehension questions. I was so happy when the kids were eager to respond and answer the questions about the story. They knew them all! Next, I created a sequencing chart and had the students recall the basic events of the story and reflect on why they were important. By the end of the lesson the children understood the moral of the story. This lesson was great for all of the learning styles in the classroom because they had both the story and the pictures on the sequencing chart to assist them in answering the questions, even though most of them only needed their memory.

For the second lesson, I did the sequencing activity a second time to refresh the story for the students. I directed the children to create their own unique rainbow fish using crayons and sequins. After that, they were to write three sentences about what made them a good friend to others. The students really enjoyed creating the fish, and they even used the surrounding paper to make a background. Some even put sequins on drawn in fish to represent the rainbow fish sharing. It was awesome to see the kids really understand the meaning of friendship and respect! The students did not all write their sentences about what made them a good friend. Some wrote about a best friend or an event they did with a friend. I wish they would have wrote what I asked, but I was still glad to see that they at least wrote about friendship in general. 

My last lesson was on diversity. I read The Colors of Us aloud to the class and then asked them to create a self-portrait and describe their skin color with a creative word. The students had a blast creating their portraits. They were all so unique and colorful! However, there was a bit of a problem with the descriptive word. Overall, there were only three different words that the class used because the children did not try to think of their own and used their neighbor's instead. I was quite disappointed that the students did not even use some of the examples from the book to describe their portraits.

One of the major problems I saw in the class was talking among the students. In my diversity lesson, I feel that the children did not obtain much knowledge about diversity since they all shared their words. The students did not get the concept that each skin color was unique since they all used the word "peach." At other times I would tell one table to quiet down and when I would walk away, they would begin talking again.

I feel that I have learned to adjust my teaching to be beneficial to different learning styles. I have definitely noticed that every students is unique and one style of teaching is rarely suitable for the whole class. I think this is one of the most important things I have learned thus far because it is a necessity for each student to have an equal opportunity to learn. I was able to work with the children for one-on-one activities that not only gave me a good idea of their individual learning levels, but I grew to know them on a more personal level, as well. I got the chance to see the unique personalities and how their attitudes affected their learning. Overall, I would rate this past semester with this first grade class a 10!

Were you able to work one-on-one with the students? If so, did you observe how the individual personalities affected their motivation to learn?

Ciao! :)

Blogging Possibilities

Hello! Since this is my first blog, my only knowledge on blogging is what I have seen or read from friends and family that have had them. I think blogging is an excellent way to keep track of thoughts and new experiences. Blogging will come in handy as I go through the Benedum Collaborative since I can document my personal progress, thoughts on assignments, and more. Later on, I can look back and reflect on the program and my experiences.


As I begin my career as a teacher, blogging will be a great way to document lesson plans and the positive and negative aspects about them. This will be a good tool to reflect on so I can see what did or did not work with the lesson and make the necessary changes. Along with lessons, I can blog about how I handle certain situations, like negative behavior or bullying. I think it would be beneficial to get the other teachers to blog, as well. This way we can read each others posts for tips. Leaving comments of encouragement would be a great way to give fellow teachers reassurance on their lessons and teaching strategies.


I think this blog is the start of something good in my educational career. Like I mentioned before, this blog will come in handy in many situations all through my teaching career. Ciao!