Kersten Prince
WPI Student Teaching Practicum in Technology and Engineering
Doherty Memorial High School
A Teacher's Impact on Student Success
My student teaching reinforced that student-teacher relationships can be the difference between success and failure.
For some students, this is because they need someone to relate to. The teacher acts as a role model in these situations so that students do not feel alone, and know that they can persevere through it. Sharing related experiences can benefit fostering this communication, but must be done mindfully, as even the way an experience is shared may cause a student to lose respect for the teacher.
For other students, what may be important is being heard and responded to in the first place. The teacher listening in these instances goes far beyond asking questions. A teacher has to be actively looking for who needs to be heard, and must encourage those afraid to speak up. Even an attempt at spending time giving individual help when a student has hit a roadblock can make the world of difference.
This impacts student performance because of the boost in morale that comes from being heard, paired with the benefits of guidance from the teacher with the student's focused effort.
My Professional Goal Moving Forward
A professional goal that I would set in teaching my own classroom would be to design what a full, ideal, multi-unit plan would be, and set the assignments up to balance encouraging student mastery over the content while aiming to minimize time constraint stress. To support the development of this learning environment, my goal would be to take time to develop full unit plans long before implementation, such that I can structure my teaching around that plan.
The clash between the expectations set by the school culture and my expectations in how I could perform instruction was a struggle I encountered in both of my placement schools. My goal when teaching in the future would be to strike a more maintainable balance between these expectations and my own teaching style. I will always have to meet the expectations of someone (administration, the state, etc.); But with teaching my own classroom, I would have more control over my classroom to cultivate a learning environment based on my teaching style.