The process through which I have gone from deciding to return to school, to pre-service classes, and now finishing

up my semester of student teaching has been a long and sometimes challenging journey, but it is precisely those challenges that have prepared me for this valuable and rewarding profession. As I complete my Master of Arts in Teaching degree from Drake University with endorsements in all social studies grades five through twelve, I am compelled to look back on some of the things I have learned and reflect upon how they have impacted me as a future teacher. I will focus on a number of aspects of my journey, but I will specifically focus on how students learn, components of an effective teacher, measuring student progress, accommodations for both disabled and gifted students, and finally I will sum it all up with the most important thing I have learned in the program. There are a number of ways in which students learn, but they all come down to a few main ideas: scaffolding, motivation, and retention. When considering motivation, I adhere to some of B.F. Skinners most basic concepts of behaviorism and operant conditioning. Students need to see a reason why they need to achieve. When they are younger, you can provide concrete rewards as motivation for achievements, but as they grow, their thinking becomes more abstract and they are better able to recognize long-

term rewards and consequences, such as college prospects or job opportunities. These can lead to intrinsic motivators like concept mastery. This is where you can get students focused on higher order thinking skills, which is where true learning takes place. When addressing retention, I employ an abbreviated version of the Atkinson-Shiffrin model of memory. This model says that most experiences are originally received by the senses and almost instantaneously placed in the short-term memory (STM). The STM can only hold information for about thirty seconds if not rehearsed for storage into the long-term memory (LTM). While this theory has plenty of flaws, there are important factors on which I focus, which have informed my teaching. The first is that rehearsal is important for retention. I have found that reviewing material multiple times is crucial for some students to remember material. The other most important feature is that information can be readily accessed from the LTM, but it is best accessed if it is connected to prior knowledge that is already well established in the LTM. This leads into the importance of scaffolding. Scaffolding, I have found, is perhaps the most important aspect of student learning. Not only does it help with retention, but also with comprehension of material. Lev Vygotskys Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) theory fits most closely with these ideas. The premise is that children

have a level of potential based on their level of development. Those who are more developed, regardless of age, can achieve more and need less guidance, but at the beginning, they all need help understanding the basics. This has informed my teaching in two very important ways. First, it reminds me that although I have obtained mastery in my content area, many of my students are just beginning, so I must remember to focus on the basics and ensure those foundation blocks are solid before I start trying to build upward. Secondly, as a secondary teacher, I am going to have students with wide varieties of development, experiences, and background knowledge. Focusing on the ZPD for individual students will help me focus on differentiation as well as how I am approaching gradual release. After considering the ways in which students learn, I must next consider the components that make a good teacher. The first one I thought of was that of reflection and adaptability. Teaching is an exercise in continual practice. What I mean by that is that it is never perfect and there are always things that con improve. That improvement comes from considering how youve taught, what worked, and what didnt. After youve done that, the funny thing is that you can implement changes and have things be better, the same, or worse. That is where the adaptability factor comes in. Every school year is different. Every class is different. Every

student is different. Because of those differences, you can never be completely sure what practices will work with which students and classes. Being able to think on your feet and change directions on a dime is one thing that makes a great teacher. The second crucial component that is so personal to me is passion. You have to be passionate about this work in order to do it right. You have to be passionate about your content, your students, your fellow teachers, and about learning in general. Without a love of learning, you cannot succeed. My background as the son of a teacher who loved the profession growing up yet went to the business world and was miserable gives me a special level of recognition about the importance of passion. Beyond passion for the profession though, it is vitally important to have a passion for student learning. You have to believe that each individual student has the right and the ability to learn and that their learning is desperately important to the functioning of society. Without that belief, it is difficult to imagine success and happiness as a teacher. If you do believe in that necessity of student learning, the next step is how to ensure that students actually are learning what we teach. That is done in the form of assessment. You must utilize informal assessment as a part of every lesson, in my opinion. If you have finished the day without

checking for understanding, you have likely lost kids along the way. Whether it be through think-pair-shares, quick writes, or exit slips, you have to make sure kids are getting it, and you have to provide feedback. The results of those informal assessments then need to inform your instruction going forward. Perhaps you have to reteach a concept. Perhaps individual students need additional guidance. Whatever it is, you have to make sure you build the framework for all students before you move on. In regards to formal assessment, this is a continued necessity in order to demonstrate our students proficiency levels, but I believe we need to rethink summative assessments to some degree. I am a huge proponent of standards-referenced grading based on the results I have seen in how it affects student critical thinking skills. Even if our standards continue to focus on basic knowledge, if we form our instruction on making students ask why? they will retain the basic information longer even if they continue to struggle with higher order thinking skills. The point is that these ideas will continue to challenge students, and that is vitally important. Challenging students with formal assessments should also be ongoing. There should not be an end point, but rather a continuum of learning. Students learn at different rates and we do them a disservice with we give them a deadline for learning.

In addition to students learning at different rates, students also enter our classroom with different abilities and sometimes disabilities. There are a lot of ways that we can and should help students with disabilities to achieve in the general education classroom, but I will focus on just a couple. In regards to physical disabilities, we will often have students with either sight or hearing problems. In those cases, it is important to address the issues with proximity and technology. Students with hearing problems can often either be sat close to the front or the instructor can be fitted with a small microphone with the student wearing earphones that are nearly undetectable. For students with eye problems, sitting close to the front is also a start, but also utilizing e-readers and specialized printouts can be helpful. For students with developmental disabilities, it is important first to review their IEP and see what their history is as well as what practices have been effective in the past. It is helpful then to have a collaborative teacher who is endorsed in special education, but that is not always an option. In those situations, it can be helpful to read aloud to the student or to let them explain their answers verbally rather than in writing. It is important that they are able to demonstrate their knowledge regardless of whether or not they do it your way. No matter what, it is likely that you will have to spend more individual time with those students. That helps more than anything,

and it is important to remember in those situations that equal is not always fair. Some kids need more help, and that should be available. On the other end of the spectrum is a group that often gets overlooked in modern education; the gifted and talented students. These students often have greater background knowledge or earlier cognitive abilities, which allow them to understand concepts at much higher and faster rates. This often leads to boredom and sometimes can lead to behavior problems. These can be serious problems, but a flexible teacher can also easily overcome them. First of all, it is important to change modalities frequently within the class period. Do not do one thing for any long period time. Include reading, speaking, writing, viewing, and listening in order to involve all student learning styles and preferences. It is also important to give them options for how they wish to demonstrate their proficiency. Allowing gifted students to use creative and often more challenging means can keep them stimulated and can lead to amazing levels of growth. All of this comes down to one very important question for me to answer; what was the most important concept that I learned during this semester of student teaching? The answer to that is simply a reaffirmation of something I already understood. Knowing your students is the most important part of teaching them. You have to know them in order to teach

them in the way that best fits their needs, you have to understand them in order to get them to relate to you, and you need them to relate to you in order for them to respect and like you. The fact is that most students dont do well in social studies because they like social studies. They do well in social studies because they like their teacher, and that is the point from which we all must begin. You can have all the theory and experience in the world, but it you cannot relate to students, you cannot effectively teach them. With that in mind, relating to students will be my primary goal as I begin my career.