Reflections on Teaching Block A

Its been a few weeks since saying goodbye to my Block A Grade 3 class and amazingly supportive associate teacher and staff. I’ve had a long time to reflect back on my first “real” teaching experience, my evaluation and my gut reactions. I am relieved to realize that, yes, I’m actually a pretty good teacher (this is where I will try to restrict the self-congratulatory remarks to a short paragraph). I also was happy to learn that, yes, I really do want to be in a classroom. (not that I ever really doubted this, but I’ve heard that Block A will set you straight if you were in dream land about the whole teacher lifestyle). Also, impressing, (if I do say so myself) is that I can make connections and build community feeling in 4 short weeks. That, yes, I was able to engage the students and they paid attention to me (most of them, most of the time). That, yes, despite all anxiety and fear of failure, I was able to teach them new concepts so that they learned them and were able to apply them to real world situations (well...simulated real world - which is almost real world!) Bottom line - no falling flat-on-my-face (yet - Block B is around the corner) and no student casualties with me at the helm.

 What I did not do, what I feel I failed to do, and I’ll admit it here to my (granted, fairly limited audience) is that I didn’t incorporate as much educational technology as I would have liked to into my day-to-day lessons. Why? It wasn’t because the school wasn’t equipped. We did have access to a SMART board in the library which, given time and pre-planning, we were able to reserve on a first-come-first-serve basis. Its not because I didn’t have access to tech. Being a pre-service Brocktechie, I did have lots of great ed tech to sign out from Brock and bring with me to my placement.

 No, the access wasn’t the issue. It was because I wasn’t exactly sure a) if I could teach at all, tech or no tech b) how I was going to make sure I covered all my associate teacher and faculty adviser and curriculum expectations c) how I was going to engage and authentically assess the students d) keep a thorough and well-organized daybook and yadda yadda yadda. I could keep going all the way through the alphabet here. I, shamefully, let tech slide because I was trying to learn to be a teacher first. I thought it would come naturally to me, that it would flow from my finger tips, like some magic digital fairy. Not. It has to be planned, it has to make sense and it has to fit. The students and the content and the situation. And you have to want it.

 I’m not trying to make excuses either. Being a brocktechie, I had fully intended to weave the most fascinating, 21st century-fluent, rich, integrated, digital, empowering, engaging, differentiated learning experiences imaginable for a variety of cross-curricular, cross-strand lessons. But then I got in there and was paralyzed by possibility. Every lesson I thought of I spun into 12 more lessons and ways of teaching the concept. My first line of thinking was always tech-based - even if the concept didn’t need it, and GASP! even if the concept being taught didn’t benefit from tech-integration - i wanted so badly to go there.

 I did take a TON of pictures using my iPhone. I did do my microteaching lesson on making connections using an Epson Document Camera to do a Modeled Reading. I did download sound effects from the iTunes store to aid in audio transitions for my Math money unit centers, but that, my friends, is where the tech magic ended in my Placement A. It is my personal goal to incorporate tech into more of my teaching in Block B. Livescribe, SMART boards and even X-Box Kinect are all in the line-up for tech-enhanced lessons. Even Front Row could make an appearance - who knows. With 4 weeks of teaching under my belt, I feel like now I have the confidence to spice it up with some tech. Also, this time around I’m in a Grade 6 class. Any readers out there have experience using tech in a Grade 6 class? I’d love to hear.