Daniel Herschler reflects on his teaching style and seeks ways to improve. He discusses modifications to his teaching approach after feedback from his department chair [Laura Parsons] to encourage more active student engagement in his Honors Modern World History class. This includes incorporating more cooperative assignments, projects, and shifting from direct instruction to a more interactive style. He also plans to reorganize lessons into PowerPoint format based on Laura's suggestions. Additionally, Daniel collaborates with his teaching team to create assessments and materials. He learns from the creative teaching styles of colleagues, such as Amy Pollin, and observes other classes like Matt Winter's Honors NSL course to get new ideas and feedback to actively engage his own students. Daniel
Professional teacher development wk3 USC 2016 Larry Lynch
English language teacher training course part 3 at the Santiago de Cali University in Cali, Colombia with strategies for earning better salary, recognition and responsability
Professional teacher development wk3 USC 2016 Larry Lynch
English language teacher training course part 3 at the Santiago de Cali University in Cali, Colombia with strategies for earning better salary, recognition and responsability
Formative assessment: an important teaching tool for any subject billhutchison
Formative assessment, or assessment for learning, is the art and science of using questions, assessments and feedback to empower learners. This deck, from www.obrussa.com, gives a non-technical overview for teachers and parents.
Shifting Paradigms in Teacher Development for the Next Generation - Tesol 2014Isabela Villas Boas
This presentation describes a number of CPD projects carried out in a Binational Center in Brazil, aimed at dfferentiating professional development and moving away from traditional TD, towards innovative TD.
Formative assessment: an important teaching tool for any subject billhutchison
Formative assessment, or assessment for learning, is the art and science of using questions, assessments and feedback to empower learners. This deck, from www.obrussa.com, gives a non-technical overview for teachers and parents.
Shifting Paradigms in Teacher Development for the Next Generation - Tesol 2014Isabela Villas Boas
This presentation describes a number of CPD projects carried out in a Binational Center in Brazil, aimed at dfferentiating professional development and moving away from traditional TD, towards innovative TD.
CHAPTER 7Developing a Philosophy of Teaching and LearningTeacJinElias52
CHAPTER 7
Developing a Philosophy of Teaching and Learning
Teacher Interview: Heather Cyra
Heather Cyra has been a teacher at Guild Gray Elementary School for four years. Approximately 600 students attend kindergarten through fifth grade at Guild Gray. The school is located between an older, well-established neighborhood and low-rent apartment complexes. Student enrollment fluctuates at the school, and teachers may be asked to change grade levels when populations at specific grade levels decrease or increase. Ms. Cyra began teaching first grade but after one year she was moved to fifth grade. For as long as she remembers, she wanted to be a teacher. She knew that there would be challenges and rewards in teaching, but teachers make a difference in the world. She wanted to be creative and use the natural skills she possesses for helping people learn.
What do you see when you see excellence in teaching?
I see someone who is organized and has created an enjoyable, engaging environment—teachers who keep the students engaged in learning and also help everyone learn. I see excellence in teaching when I see teachers who have “fun” with their students; teachers who listen to their students and keep the students from being bored. Excellence in teaching is also surprising the students with unexpected activities, rewards, or information.
How do you know when your students are learning?
There are many ways to know that students are learning. You can often tell just by the looks on their faces that show whether they are confused or enlightened. You can tell by verbal cues from how the students respond to the questions you ask or how they contribute to class discussions. You can tell from a written assessment or merely a show of hands. If they are not responding the way I expect them to then I realize I have to reteach a concept or go back over something that may not have been explained in a way that they can understand. If you are tuned in to your students it is quite easy to tell when students have checked out by the way they look at you or don’t and by the responses they give you.
What brings you joy in teaching?
When I see how far the students I started out with grow in a year. By keeping track of their stages of development, I can see how much they have learned and how their attitudes and behavior have developed. When my students tell me at the end of the year that they don’t want to leave, I know that I have created a warm, nurturing environment. I feel like I am doing something right. It’s not entirely about what the tests say. As long as they’re learning, showing growth, and enjoying themselves in school and have enjoyed their fifth-grade experience I am happy and feel like I have done my job.
How did you develop a personal philosophy of teaching?
I constructed my philosophy one course at a time through integration of the most prominent and influential pieces of knowledge from each professor and textbook. During the course in special education my ...
Professional Growth Standards V and VI Descriptive Examples Herschler
1. Professional Growth Standards V and VI Descriptive Examples
Daniel Herschler
Standard V
reflects on own strengths and weaknesses and modifies instruction accordingly
analyzes the success of efforts undertaken during the professional growth years of the cycle;
initiates reflective conversations with PDP support system team, other peers, staff
development teacher (SDT), or supervisory staff
It is part of my personal style and rather meticulous approach to the
effectiveness of my teaching that I often spend a lot of time scrutinizing and
evaluating my own techniques and strategies as an educator. Going through the
process of an observation year has afforded me several new opportunities to receive
some important feedback from my colleagues and supervisors, and then attempt to
apply it to my work with the students.
For example, after my last observation from my department chair, Laura
Parsons, we discussed some methods to bring my students beyond merely participating
and earning high marks in my Honors Modern World History class. Often, my
students in Honors World are taking notes, completing their assignments, and
performing well on assessments. However, that does not always imply active
engagement from students in the class activity. Laura and I discussed the possibility
of more frequently shifting from my style of direct instruction in Honors World to an
approach where I could apply more cooperative assignments and project in order to
inspire more active engagement from my students.
Ever since taking on Honors Modern World again last year, I was always
interested in finding a way to cover the vast amount of information, while also
encouraging genuine interest from the students in the subject matter. My
tentativeness of pursuing a more interactive style in the room had generally been a
product of a fear that if I cut or minimized my lectures, then my students wouldn’t
get “enough” information, and consequently not perform as well on summative
assessments. Since Laura explained to me her own teaching style in her AP World
class, I feel much more confident that I would not be corrupting the material by
taking a more creative approach to instruction, but actually enhancing it.
2. Laura and I also discussed how to revise some of my organizational practices to
make more use of powerpoint, which actually appeals to me. I have already begun to
reorganize many of my lessons and lectures into powerpoint format, much the way I
already do with my AP Government classes. I am anxious to apply these practices
throughout next year, since I will have the rare opportunity to teach AP Government
and Honors Modern World a second consecutive year.
Standard VI
engages in dialogue, problem solving, planning, or curricular improvement with other
teachers in the same grade level or subject discipline within the school or across the district
participates in required staff, team, committee, department meetings, and parent
conferences
I’ve also enthusiastically contributed to department and team efforts to
collaborate because I believe that it enriches my own instruction and provides
continuity across classes for students (especially important since our students
generally switch from one teacher to another at the end of a semester). My Modern
World History team has worked extremely well in a collaborative manner to create
scores of assessments, review sheets, and re-assessments based on many hours of
reflective discussion about students’ capabilities, test scores, and interests.
Likewise, I have especially enjoyed working with our team leader Amy Pollin because
she incorporates a creative and innovative style in her classroom that I intend to
integrate more into my own instruction model. While every teacher has their own
personal style that works best for their students, I firmly believe that it is essential
to learn as much as I can from your peers in order to grow as a professional and
enhance my methods and strategies. For instance, Amy gave me a unique idea to
begin our Industrialization that I successfully modified and incorporated into my
classroom simply because I wanted to try something new with my students. I find
that when I can step out of my comfort zone into a creative area, my students are
usually more inclined to feel encouraged to do the same.
At a departmental level, we participated in a really useful and interesting
series of activities that encouraged us to observe our peers and evaluate examples of
engagement in the classroom. The general idea was to observe three different
people, fill out an analysis sheet (focusing on examples of engagement), turn the
analysis sheet in, and then discuss the feedback at the next department meeting. I
3. took the opportunity to observe at least one course that I do not teach- Matt
Winter’s Honors NSL class. Matt’s style of actively and continuously probing his
students with thought-provoking questions provided me with feedback that I know will
be useful as I re-evaluate how I want to approach my Modern World History class
next year in order to get my students more personally invested in the subject
matter.
I am fortunate enough to teach in a department and school that encourages
cooperation, collaboration, and individual professional growth and development. During
the next few years, I intend to take advantage of this environment in an attempt to
take more chances and step further outside the box (and my comfort zone) in order
to find new and innovative ways to make my students successful.