Journal Nine
October 28, 2019
#Adapt
An experience I have had that refines my past, current and future application of teaching occurred last week while teaching at Beattie. While we provide a lesson that gave students freedom of choice and exploration, it worked very well for third grade but not at all for kindergarten. We asked students to create the "perfect pet" in their sketchbooks by combining three animals into one. This built off of our exploration the previous class where we saw students creating monsters, characters or creatures. Kindergarten students and third grade students alike had these show up in their explorations. Third grade students did very well when we pushed the exploration to the next step, but kindergarteners had a hard time grasping the concept and many just continued their material explorations with no end goal in mind like in the previous class. This was a big learning moment for me as an instructor. The experience reinforced the notion that my teaching must always be open to adapting to my students and their needs. To resolve this problem created a new lesson plan to cater to the needs of the kindergarten students so that our current teaching adapts to them in the moment it was needed. In the past my perspective was that lessons and the way a semester or year would play out we pre-written and written in stone. I had no idea before that teachers were allowed the fluidity to change and tweak things as needed per their students. In the future, I know this will happen many times after I teach lessons. Just like in Peer Teaching, after teaching each day, I found something I would change or do differently. This is a teacher mind set! Things can always be better, improved on, omitted, or added. This experience influences me to remember my responsibility to my students to adapt to their needs hence my hashtag "Adapt". I used the image of a chameleon to represent this moment. The chameleon can quickly change color to adapt to it's environment. Teachers have to use their experiences and listen to their students in order to create appropriate changes to their lessons and teaching promptly just like the fast color changing chameleon.