After three whirlwind weeks, the practicum portion of EDUC391 has come to an end. As my first foray into the classroom as a student teacher, these past few weeks have been filled with many emotions, ranging from sadness to joy, and frustration to relief. There were many highs and certainly some lows, but overall, I feel like I’ve grown so much, both as a person and an educator. I want to talk a bit more specifically about what I did well, what I need to work on, and what comes next for me in my journey to becoming a better educator.

STRENGTHS

I think my biggest strength during this practicum was my ability to quickly get to know and form relationships with the students. The morning and afternoon classes were both Science 8, and I felt like I did a good job of earning both their trust and respect during my time there. At the beginning of my practicum, I typed and cut out a bunch of intro cards (see below) for the students to fill out and used it as their “exit slip” from the class that day. It asked for some interesting facts, their name, and their pronouns, as well as a spot to draw a picture if they wanted. This allowed me to quickly get acquainted with them and was especially useful for the students who were less keen on talking to me at first. I also felt very confident in the content we were covering during my time there, and I had many examples and personal anecdotes lined up everyday that I believe made the lessons more personal and relatable for the students. Showing that I actually knew what I was talking about seemed to help with my credibility for sure.

STRETCHES

I think I had two big struggles during this practicum. The first was planning for assessment. While I had assessments for the students, sometimes I found myself assessing after the fact. For example, I would have a small quiz made to test their knowledge of a concept we just covered, but I was not as intentional as I could’ve been when choosing which questions to include, instead favouring the “little bit of everything” approach. As a result, the assessment was not well tailored to the class and they did not do as well as I had hoped. I put a lot of the blame on myself for this, as I was the one teaching them so I should also know how they need to be assessed. The other struggle I had was being too cautious. This might sound a little weird, but I think due to the nature of it being my first ever practicum, I was a bit afraid of trying something that would completely fail. This fear held me back a bit and I ended up not taking risks that could’ve ended up not working, but also could’ve been great learning experiences. I strive for perfection, but sometimes I think I have to realise that there’s no such thing as perfect learning and it’s in the imperfection where some great growth happens.

NEXT UP

Looking ahead to EDUC490, there are lots of goals (including working on those stretches), but I want to pick one thing to focus in on. I really want to have more hands-on activities as part of my lessons. While I tried to have some things for my students to do in my 391 practicum, I sometimes felt that there was too much time talking and not enough time doing things. Often, I was hesitant to do labs and activities that would take lots of time because I didn’t want to have to rush through other material, but I think it would’ve been better in the long run for the class’ learning.