December 7th, 2019.
Integrating Technology and Anti-Racist Education
After explicitly teaching Anti-Racism in the grade 5/6 classroom in placement, and encouraging inclusion for all, the students were instructed to complete persuasive writing on Racism seen in sports. Once the persuasive writing was complete, students were then asked to participate in a healthy debate against their classmates. What was rewarding about this lesson was the appreciation that the students, teachers, and administrators had for the awareness this lesson brought to inequalities that many face around the world, especially in the world of national sports, while building student’s literacy and drama skills. Through observation, students were actively engaged in this lesson, as all the students were hockey fanatics, this made the activity authentic to the students and they could not wait to successfully complete their writing in hopes to be the next SportsNet Commentator. This demonstrates my ability to create positive relationships with students, which is important for the student’s academic success, as I created authentic activities based on my student’s interests and culture. As a result, students were engaged and excited to learn, while bringing awareness to social justice issues and building their critical thinking skills.
This debate was displayed using the DoInk Green Screen app. The use of this technological tool in the classroom is categorized as Redefinition on the SAMR model, as I have been able to create new task that were seen as previously inconceivable. Using this tool also demonstrates my ability to create cross-curricular lesson plans, as this also covers the subject Drama, as it allow students to have a lived experience to act as sport commentators. Through the demonstration of my knowledge and implementation of technology in the classroom, using this application, has now made creating cross-curricular lessons more effective and engaging for students. Learning how to utilize this application supports my continued professional growth as an educator, as one of my professional goals is to become more competent and comfortable with technology in the classroom to further engage students in learning. In the future, I hope to attend professional development days and workshops that provide me the opportunity to increase my technological knowledge in hopes to use technology in the classroom to transform learning. In addition to, fostering 21st century skills in students such as critical thinking, collaboration, creativity and communication.
Building Self-Efficacy
December 20th, 2019
My goal as an educator is to build self-efficacy ensuring that I can reach students with varying abilities. In order to meet this goal, I realized I need to begin by becoming a self-reflective educator. An educator that looks at every day as a learning opportunity for the student, and equally importantly, as a learning opportunity for the educator. In order to learn and improve, I have set expectations for myself, after every lesson I reflect on how the lesson and my teaching methods can be altered to better reach all students. In addition, weekly, I keep a journal where I keep track of my strengths and weaknesses. Finally, I make sure to write down the names of every student in the class, in my journal. This allows me to recognize which students I need to connect with more. Whether it was a check in to see how their day was, or providing them with feedback or assistance with the material being taught. In my effort to include all students in my lessons, I put a heavy focus on preparedness and individual attention, and building a classroom where I as the teacher have high self-efficacy requires me to be more present to the needs of all students. In order to improve further in the future, I believe that I need to not let my weaknesses consume me. I tend to want perfection, and if I did not perform with perfection, I tend to focus too much on what I could have done instead. In the future, this can be solved by staying present and focusing more on the positives that I brought to the students each day. As a result of this practice, I feel accomplished at the end of each week knowing that I have taken the time to reflect, and to see the improvements in my teaching skills. I also am proud that every week I can confidently say that I made sure that I stay committed to each student and continue to build positive relationships with students.