Kersten Prince
WPI Student Teaching Practicum in Technology and Engineering
Doherty Memorial High School
Personal and Professional Growth
Life management skills were one of my key areas of personal and professional growth during this teaching practicum.
A major part of life management skills are skills known as Executive Function and Self-Regulation Skills. According to Harvard University:
"Executive function and self-regulation skills depend on three types of brain function: working memory, mental flexibility, and self-control. These functions are highly interrelated, and the successful application of executive function skills requires them to operate in coordination with each other.
Working memory
governs our ability to retain and manipulate distinct pieces of information over short periods of time.
Mental flexibility
helps us to sustain or shift attention in response to different demands or to apply different rules in different settings.
Self-control
enables us to set priorities and resist impulsive actions or responses."
Development of these skills is important for teaching because of the amount of organization needed throughout the class.
Working memory
is used to juggle information about multiple activities, students, and other variables that can come up in a class period at once.
Mental flexibility
allows for maintaining focus for the entirety of one class, while still ensuring a smooth transition between class periods, alongside being able to adapt to on-the-go adjustments to a class plan.
Self-control
aids in prioritizing core concepts while teaching, dealing with time management, and when monitoring personal responses to student behavior.
Reflections on Professional Culture in Teaching
Something that I had never considered before student teaching is just how school culture comes into effect. You will think you see the school culture in how everyone cheers for the band more than the football team, or how everyone takes part in enjoying a pep rally. But school culture is far deeper and more involved than that, as it plays a large role in setting expectations for the quality and methods of instruction at the school.
My first and most impactful lesson on how school culture interacts with teaching was learned at Clinton Senior High School, my first student teaching placement: Expectations on how a teacher conducts their classroom, in lesson planning and when delivering instruction, are set by school culture to create consistency in student learning.
Going into my practicum, I assumed that all schools would have a full range of variation between the teaching styles of its instructors - From teachers with rigorous, structured classroom environments, to those with less intense, more exploratory classroom environments.
However, my experience reflected how students do not like change, and every change that a student has to adjust to is another obstacle to their learning. School culture steps in to create a sense of consistency to limit how many obstacles exist just from differences in teaching styles. I learned this in Clinton because the lesson plans I created were designed to be structured and guided, but the classroom environment that the students were learning in revolved around self-paced work in a discovery learning setup. This led to a clash between the design and execution of my plans and the expectations of students.
This lesson was further expanded at Doherty, as the difference between my and my mentor's teaching styles were vastly different. This was found to be disruptive to the students. The shift in my approach to planning contributed to my struggles during the practicum. While I looked forward to practicing my teaching style, it was reinforced that instruction does not occur in a void. I learned how a teacher must adapt their teaching style to meet the expectations set by the school culture.