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Establishing effective communication with students has been one of my priority goals at Lawton Junior High School. My enthusiastic attitude and genuine interest towards students’ interest has been met with mostly positive acceptance. However, most students took their time to become familiar with me, before they would feel comfortable to share their joys and sorrows. On the other hand, I was not able to communicate on positive bases with those students who have been caught bullying younger and smaller students. Some students told me that they hated me and wanted me to go away from them. Teaching students with special needs especially those with behavior problems is very challenging for most teachers. My cooperating teacher, Mr. Johnson, often shares with me his ideas about how to communication with these students. I am communicating well with those individuals who have accepted me as a teacher who is willing to help them with their assignment. However, my goal is to reach and communicate positively with those individuals who think that all I am doing is to make their life at school more miserable. In those situations where I am unable to communicate constructively and effectively at the present time, the knowledgeable cooperating teachers share with me their valuable ideas regarding how to effectively communication with students and also the teachers in a professional manner.
The professional qualities, which I am consistently displaying, are treating students with respect and fairness. I am constantly conscientious of my personal conduct and my dress code, knowing that all students are observing me and it is my duty to be a positive role model. I have been able to present myself consistently with high standard professional conduct towards students, teachers and the school personnel. My cooperating teachers complimented me that I am enthusiastic, cooperative and eager to learn and try new ideas with different classes and groups of students. Coming to class early in the morning and being ready to teach has been an exemplary that I highly believe in. Teaching students in Behavior Assistance classroom requires additional attention on each individual pupil and demands well prepared written assignments in order to maintain students’ attention and proper behavior. My cooperating teacher gave me a very favorable feedback concerning my construction of the lesson plans.
My goal is to increase my comfort level with individual students in my class who I was not able to reach, motivate and inspire to do their assignments. I still have to develop skills in dealing with students who refuse to follow my instructions.
The very first requirement in teaching students with special needs is careful observations and special techniques in dealing with chaos situation. As a student teacher, I must learn to how to deal with complex situation to minimize disruptions and maximize effective teaching. My well developed lesson plans for teaching grade nine students have been evaluated by my cooperating teacher and returned back to me with very positive comments. After the practice teaching, my goal was to reflect on what I have done well and what should I change to make my lesson plans and teaching more effective. My goal is to present the lesson providing a clear instructions and capture the students’ attention while I am teaching the lesson. That way I will be able to cover the material, as well as minimizing behavioral challenges. I have to learn yet what strategies will work for me and develop teaching skills, which would stimulate students’ interest in wanting to learn more.
While teaching students with behavioral issue, time management is on eof the most challenging thing for me. I would like to learn more on how I could achieve greater results in covering the required curricular materials and reducing students’ interruption. For example, during reading time when I was reading a novel to the class, some students decided to disturb the class rather than paying attention and participating during the instructional time. Especially in Behavior Assistance classes, the amount of time spent on correcting students, sending them to the time out rooms and giving school suspensions is very frequent. Dealing with students who are defiant is challenging. It requires a lot of expertise and experience, which I will have to acquire and develop in my teaching carrier.
Providing interesting assignments and /or class activities to pupils is often helpful in our class for reduction or even sometimes prevention of disruptive behavior. Students usually very attentive when they are watching an interesting movie or playing on interesting games. During instructional time, those students who are involved in their activities and later receive verbal praise or some special treat such as candies or ten minutes play on Nintendo games might be more motivated to behave properly. I have to improve my skills on application of appropriate consequences. My goal is to learn more about what consequences are most beneficial for students, staff, and administration, and know the balance in dealing with students’ behavioral management.
In my class, students respect their teacher because they know that any negative consequences, which they have to accept for breaking the class rules, are fair and never personal. Respect has been shown towards all students and they know that the same is being expected from them. My challenge is to be able to develop those skills where students would realize that my intentions are to help them to handle the negative consequences and being able to learn something positive. I often observed that students came to my cooperating teacher and apologized for their misbehavior.
In Behavior Assistance classroom, teachers are required to develop strong monitoring and observational skill by knowing what activities students should be involved in and redirect them back towards appropriate behavior. My cooperating teacher informed me that some students require more monitoring than others, Thus, with time and experience, I will be able to develop better skills regarding students supervision. For example, more mature students can stay with minimal supervision in our class because they have less behavioral issues and are mostly focusing on their own assigned tasks. Contrarily, younger students who also are on medications require almost constant supervision and monitoring.
To prevent disruptions, students are seated according to their needs in the classrooms. Those students who are easily distracted are better to sit away from the windows, colorful bulletin boards and other students. Students are warned priories about negative consequences if they choose to break the classroom rules, which are clearly posted on the wall. I have done well in identifying students who require constant monitoring and observation, but my challenges are to know how severe of consequences should be given for her or his misbehavior.
Students’ needs sometimes may be obvious and easy to identify but more often are not. I have observed that students came to school without food and money to buy anything to eat. Once the student knows where she or he can turn to and ask for help, then it is possible to do something about it. I notice that some students in my class have mood swings, especially those that are on medication. For some students the greatest pleasure is to spend time with their father or mother. They come and share with me about fears such as spiders, snakes or being left alone in the dark. One of the greatest fear is being bullied by some other bigger students who often humiliates them in front of their peers and makes their life in school and outside of school miserable.
I incorporate interesting topics for their assignments which students can relate to and apply newly learned skills in their life outside of school. Students like to pick their own topic when they are learning to write a letter and know how to mail it with proper postage and address on the envelope. The choices of stimulating student’s motivation are endless. The experienced teacher should be able to apply various teaching techniques in order to motivate them during teaching time.
zoober