Self Reflection

As I constructed my unit plan, I felt like I faced a fair amount of

barriers. My classroom was so diverse in terms of reading level and
comprehension. For this reason, I found it difficult to construct a unit
plan that was suitable for every student in my classroom. In Teaching
to Change the World, the authors go into detail about how to treat
differences in the classroom. They advocated for the idea that teachers
should set high standards in their classroom and make sure every
student is supported to meet these standards (Lipton, 2013, p. 171). I
did my best to place this idea in my unit plan. I wanted every student
to feel supported even if the activity was harder for him or her than
others. This meant that when students were working I needed to be
actively involved. Walking around the classroom and keeping students
accountable was the most important part. Although I did not get to
teach all of my lesson plans, the ones I did teach showed me how
important this idea is.
Creating this unit plan and teaching a couple of lessons from my
unit plan definitely caused me to grow both as a potential teacher and
as a person in general. I think being a more urban school caused me to
have some difficulties that other education 302/303 may not have
experienced. For me, learning about the hardships my students have
been through when reading their personal narratives and seeing
firsthand the struggle with attendance gave me quite a different

perspective than what I was used to. Before this, I was placed at Grand
Rapids Christian high school and I also worked at Wheaton Academy
during the summers. These are both great schools, but they are so
different than Grand Rapids Montessori. I feel like I finally have a wellrounded understanding of what it means to be a teacher in multiple
different settings. As a potential teacher, I grew in learning how to
properly create a unit plan. Objectives need to be clear and as concise
as possible. I also learned that timing is a hard thing to guess.
Sometimes, I would plan something for my students that I thought
would only take 10 minutes but it would actually take 20 minutes and
other times I would give students 20 minutes to do something, but
then it would only take them 10 minutes. It is hard to guess how much
time an activity is going to take for your students, but I think I have
grown exponential in this skill. Also, I have also learned how to speak
to my classroom. This classroom was different than others I have
worked with. I had to use more of an authoritative tone and I had to
fight harder for these students attention (I noted that even my teacher
had to fight harder for these students to listen versus her other
classes). This was simply just a more talkative and rowdy class. I
quickly had to adjust to this, but still feel like there are some things I
could have done better. I think that early on I should have presented
myself as more in charge.

It is hard to assess my students learning completely because I

only got to teach two lesson plans, but during these two lesson plans I
found that it appeared as if my students were learning. I know this
because for the first lesson plan, I had students fill out a mythology IQ
worksheet and they all were very engaged. They wrote down the
correct answers and took notes. For my second lesson, I believe that
students did learn because they were in engaging with the worksheet
and made meaningful predictions. Therefore, I believe that my unit
plan was successful because students were engaged and they meant
my expectations. The whole point of teaching is to ensure students
success and it appeared like my unit plan did just that.