Mariah Smith
Mid-Term Reflection
I was surprised by how quickly the
time had gone by when I met with my Cooperating Teacher and University
Supervisor. For the last three weeks I have been teaching on my own for all of
the classes, so I am just beginning to get in the swing of things. The
personalities of my students are starting to come out and I am learning more
and more about my students academically and non-academically. With this in
mind, I went in to the meeting knowing that I still have another eight weeks to
learn about my students, my profession, and my colleagues.
As we were going through the entire
criterion for the report, I was complimented on my professional
responsibilities such as being apart of meetings and giving input into these
meetings. Also, they were impressed of my reflection of my teaching and asking
for advice on how to improve myself in the classroom. Both of my mentors were
impressed with the variety of activities I use in the classroom to maximize the
learning especially for students who learn in different ways. Already I got the
chance to teach new material to students that was just added in the curriculum
this year. My cooperating teacher was pleased on the way I taught the new
subject and how I used various resources to help myself in teaching and provide
practice for the students.
So far this semester I am on the
track of reaching my goals of learning about new curriculums and comparing them
to the MCCS, finding a balance of being involved in extracurricular activities,
and having better sense of time management inside the classroom and work that
is done outside of the classroom. The curriculum that I am teaching from right
now is the Middle Years Program (MYP) by the International Baccalaureate
Program. There is a lot of difference between MYP and MCCS that is found in
assessing students. MYP has grades assessments by one to four different
criterion: knowing and understanding, investigating patterns, communicating,
and applying mathematics in real-life contexts. The complexity of the MYP
curriculum has amazed me but I have learned which parts of the MYP I feel are
better than MCCS and vice versa. For my other goals, I have gotten the chance
to head up an after-school program called MathSquad. A group of high school
students work with middle school students on math. Also I have gotten the
chance to chaperone a weekend camp and go to a few student activities after
school hours.
The last goal that I talked about
needs a bit more improvement. All three of us agreed that my lessons needed a
bit more time management. This was seen mainly at the end of the class period
of which is either rushed or there is extra time that needs to be filled. Both
of my mentors informed me that managing the class time becomes easier as I
teach more and know when it is appropriate to slow down the class or speed the
class up a bit. Another thing that we noticed I hadn’t got the opportunity to
do was communicating with students’ parents. Next week I will be writing
mid-term reports that will go home to students. My mentors suggest that I take
the opportunity to create reports that are uplifting but still confront
problems that are happening in the classroom.
I am excited for the rest of the
semester and looking forward to the steps of achieving my goals of student
teaching. Another goal that I would like to add in for the end of the semester
is to learn more about the culture of the Southern Indian people. I have so
much knowledge around me that I want to seek out more opportunities to be apart
of the culture here in Tamil Nadu and in Kodaikanal International School.
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