Last week, I ended my reflection with two main ideas that continue to float to the surface of my fieldwork experience: encourage students to try and reinforce the belief that our students can be successful learners. This week, I’d like to elaborate on this idea with a concrete story that I was fortunate enough to be part of.
My cooperating teacher had been out for a few days, leaving me with a sub. Even though she knew the sub personally, my CT graciously let me take on the math lessons while she was gone. I was excited for the practice in giving direct instruction. Up until this point, I had been following along in the teacher’s copy of the math curriculum and helped a couple students with homework questions outside of class, but this was my first chance to be the one at the front of the room.
I spent three days doing practice problems, going over homework answers, and peppering in review of some foundational skills. Our lesson was mostly focused on rewriting negative and rational exponents. If you had asked me on Wednesday how the lessons went, I would have said “Good! At least, I think so!” Many of our Algebra 1 students have very low resilience, so I couldn’t tell if they were not grasping the content or simply choosing to disengage. The students who did participate seemed to be “getting it”… right?
The truth is, I didn’t know… until Thursday at our school’s presentation night, in which families and community members come to see final presentations of each student’s trimester long, individual project. It was here that I was called over by my CT to chat with a parent. This mom told me that she didn’t know what I was doing, but something clicked with her kid in math. Math wasn’t her own best subject, so she expressed gratitude at my helping her child understand the content.
I was ecstatic.
I’m sure my lesson delivery needs work. After all, there’s always room for improvement, especially in teaching! However, this story proves that my efforts to help this student believe in her abilities and simply try contributed to a real, positive impact. I had sat with her after class and held her hand (metaphorically, of course) through complex math problems, proving to her that she was capable.
As my time in Sophomore Block is three quarters done now (crazy!), my big developmental takeaway continues to be that all students- regardless of age- benefit from teachers scaffolding success. We can all use a confidence boost.
