Throughout my pre-internship experience, I received plenty of positive feedback from my cooperating teacher. However, I wish to have received more critical and constructive feedback. I believe that constructive criticism and critical feedback would have helped a lot with adapting and improving my teaching practice. Although this was the case, I was able to work with the constructive feedback that was given to strengthen my practice a little bit. Some of the more constructive feedback included speaking louder, practicing attention cues, and revisiting directions and asking students if they have questions or if further clarification is needed. From this feedback, I was able to implement them into my professional development plans and work on these areas over the next few weeks.
For my future professional development goals, I specifically intend to practice my classroom management skills. One of the pieces of advice I received was to work on attention cues and I believe that these are critical to classroom management. Over the last few weeks in the field, I learned how difficult classroom management is for myself. However, it is an area I will improve on. I believe that the consistency of the three-week block (rather than only being in the classroom once a week) will really help with this, as I will be able to continuously practice different classroom management techniques. I also hope to find a technique that works for myself and works well with the students that I can practice and maintain with the students for all three weeks. In addition to this, I would also like to improve how I organize lessons – specifically time management, as I found that my lessons often go over time. Additionally, I would also like to learn more on assessment and practice different forms of assessment. Although I did not receive a lot of constructive criticism, I found that reflecting on how my lessons went allowed myself to figure out my own areas of improvement. With that, my final goal would be to continue building relationships with my cooperating teacher and colleagues to discover ways I can build on my goals.