Competency 001
DOMAIN I-DESIGNING INSTRUCTION AND ASSESSMENT TO PROMOTE STUDENT
LEARNING
The teacher understands human developmental process and applies
this knowledge to plan instruction and ongoing assessment that motivate students
and are responsive to their developmental characteristics and needs.
Defense
Students often are at different places when they come into my classroom.
Some students are well skilled in manners and know how to work independently
to resolve conflict, while others need a great deal of attention and reassurance.
One thing that students often have to learn is how to deal with conflict
and not let their anger build up. Through mediation, guidance, and
management it is possible to help students to grow from where they are. Over
the course of this class, I have learned that students look at the various
types of authority and receive different types of motivation. In addition,
these various types of classroom teaching also motivate students.
I learned that management is not the sole source of dealing with classroom
management and that a balance is needed between management, guidance and
mediation. Management is often seen as teacher control. Most
teachers feel like they need to be in control all of the time, but the truth
is that in order to meet the needs of students who have trouble handling
conflict it does a great injustice for them. Guidance and mediation
becomes more of an essential classroom element as the students get older.
Students need to be guided to find the answers and sometimes they need to
be in control of their learning and their problems. If a teacher continuously
tries to control everything, the students will leave school without ever
having been able to learn the proper way to deal with problems that life
my deal to them. I currently, when a student is having trouble with
another student, get the conflicting students together in the same room and
help mediate the problem until they have the situation worked out.
My students have grown and are now more capable of working through their
problems without resorting to throwing fists at each other and cursing each
other out.
Different types of authority motivate students and it is necessary for a
teacher to find what motivates the students. Some students will be
motivated by positional authority and they will see that there needs to be
respect because of the title “teacher,” other students will be motivated
by expert authority and people who are experts on the subject may need to
be brought in to motivate the students, and still other students are motivated
by personal authority and need their parents involved. No matter which
way a student is motivated, I now realize that I have to find the source
of motivation and work from there in order to teach my students. The
real issue is finding enough out about the students to be able to work toward
motivating them. Classroom management can be a form of motivation.
Students are more motivated by a decorated room, desks grouped together,
and a smile on the teachers desk than they are to a drab white room with
nothing on the walls, individual seating arrangements, and a teacher who
never smiles. Management can make or break the motivation of students.
Guidance can be used to help students get excited about the content area.
The more a student is guided to learn and not just forced to memorize the
material the more exciting and motivating the class will become to them.
I now have seen that mediation also can be used to motivate students.
Up until now, I could not see mediation as anything more than a way to help
students deal with conflict, but over the last month I came to a realization
about mediation. Mediation brings safety and respect to the world of
the student. My students are much more motivated to do work for me
because I allow them to work through their differences instead of managing
their problems without knowing what is really the issue.
The amount of growth in the area of authority and mediation, guidance, and
management has grown tremendously throughout this course. I am happy
to have taken this class because I did not realize how much help I needed
in classroom management. Classroom management is the key to many problems
before they even begin.
Samples:
