My teaching experience 2023

My teaching experience

2023

My first ebook

Written By:
Lameeze Plaatjies

Table of contents:

My Teaching Philosophy
My Classroom Management
My Cv
Community of Practice
References

My Teaching Philosophy

Upon reflecting on my previous teaching philosophies, I have come to the realization that I have grown and changed tremendously over the years as a student teacher. I did not pay much attention to the various classroom strategies that has been made available to me in the past, I still have a lot to work on in my professional development as a teacher with regards to the successful implementation of classroom management strategies that will be beneficial to my teaching career. In my opinion, education is a powerful tool that has the capacity to bring change to people’s lives as well as in society, as a future educator my philosophical beliefs is based on the notion that a teacher should implement classroom strategies that caters to each learners’ individual needs while maintaining a classroom environment that is conducive to learning.

It is my personal opinion that a teacher should provide the learners with a welcoming, safe, and inclusive classroom environment where each learner is treated respectfully and where learners feel valued. In addition, the classroom should welcome creativity and spur curiosity to support the holistic development of each learner. As a future teacher I want to strive toward becoming an inspiration to the learners that I will teach, by doing so I hope to instil good moral values, critical thinking, and reasoning skills to support the learners’ development and to prepare them for their future.

While it all sounds good in theory, it will require a lot of dedication and the use of various teaching methods and strategies to reach these goals. My aim is to utilize scaffolded teaching methods in conjunction with a student-centred approach to teaching, ensuring that I facilitate the learning instead of depositing knowledge all the time that may hinder their critical thinking skills. I aim to provide a classroom environment that fosters active and collaborative learning strategies that deals with real life scenarios that the learners can relate to, by doing so learners can communicate effectively while problem solving in the teaching and learning phase.

I am dedicated to continuing my professional growth and implementing new and effective teaching strategies, I can only achieve this by staying informed about new developments regarding teaching and learning strategies. I look forward to collaborating with my colleagues and get input from learners
and parents to enhance my instructional methods.

To sum it all up, my teaching philosophy is based on establishing a safe, learner-centred classroom environment that provides endless opportunities for learners to develop intellectually, socially, and emotionally. As an educator, I commit myself to assisting my learners along their journey in becoming well-rounded, independent, and thoughtful individuals who are equipped to take on any challenges they might face in the future. I firmly believe that education is a calling and a lifelong journey, and I am excited to embark on this new journey that awaits me.

My Classroom Management:

Upon entering the classroom for the very first time in Semester 1 for observation week, I have made the observation that this specific group of learners where rather rowdy most of the time, my Mentor teacher often found herself screaming at the top of her lungs as she struggled getting the learners to settle down. In my opinion, learners do not respond well to a teacher screaming at them, instead, I thought that this would be a great opportunity to implement a classroom management tool that would be effective in managing noise levels within the classroom.

According to Ebrahim (2017) it is vital that teachers provide learners with a secure and respectable learning environment, meaning that respect should be reciprocated by both the teachers and the learners. Ebrahim (2017) suggests that teachers should implement reward systems that provide learners with positive reinforcement within the classroom to encourage good behaviour while having consequences for bad behaviour such as demerits or detention. The challenge that my mentor teacher faced is that she might have lost her learners respect due to her screaming, hence they continued their behaviour. I believe that children have the ability to match the teacher’s energy, therefore no change was observed in my first week at the school since this was a continuous cycle, come days were better than others but for the most part, it was rowdy, and my mentor teacher battled to settle the class down.

I fist tried Bouncy balls, an online classroom management tool that I discovered on social media while researching effective classroom management tools. This tool has amazing features such as emojis, bubbles and bouncy balls, the balls remained at the bottom of the screen while the learners were quiet, once the learners became noisy, the programme would automatically “Shhhh” out loud without me having to press any buttons. However, due to the school not having a projector, I have had to resort to using my laptop for the first few days but with loadshedding and the price of data, I was unable to continue using this tool.