2012-2013 Areas of Focus

It is my belief that a teacher who does not value the importance of continuing his or her own pedagogy has already corroded the education of his/her students. As I embark on my new journey that is the 2012-2013 school year, I will commit to working on the following design quality and intellectual indicator: Protection from Adverse Consequences and Questioning and Problem Posing respectively.

Possible sources of support will be firstly, my fellow RMWP fellows (no pun intended).  The knowledge and experience of these teachers is imaginable.  Also, constructing rubrics and guidelines that will be easily accessible to my students so that they can become self-reflectors themselves will be useful.  Creating a schedule that will allow me to give scheduled feedback to my students across the content area will help me to identify and correct misconceptions in my students' thinking.  As I will expound on later, I believe that by modeling that I myself am a thinker/questioner myself will be of immeasurable value. 

Possible barriers that would prohibit me from protecting my students from adverse consequences would be lack of time.  Possible inhibitors of constructing questioners and critical thinkers would be first, being an example myself.  During my student teaching, my mentor teacher shared with me an article that discussed effective questioning.  I admit that I did not think much of it at the time, but I now realize that perhaps my own questioning has been superficial in a sense.  Also, I in reflection, I realize that many of the basal programs for science/social studies (which many elementary schools tend to rely heavily on) do not always require students to be questions but rather simply memorize data.

Having completed my initial year of teaching, I can honestly say that I have learned so much.  Admittedly, there were times when I felt "lost."  Nonetheless, to take from the words of Billy Joel, "I'm no longer afraid of becoming lost, because the journey back always reveals something new, and that is ultimately good for the [teacher].” I look forward to journey that the new school year holds.