Parents and/or caregivers are vital in assisting in the educative process of their child. Good solid students are likely to do well regardless of parental involvement, though bringing the parents in could enhance their learning and propel it to a higher level. Having the parents ensuring homework is being completed and that the students are staying on task at home, could guarantee that said student will improve their learning. It is a strategy to stop students reaching year 9 and 10 and throwing away all their talents.
It is even of greater importance to involve the parents of students with behavioural problems, or students who struggle at school. Often teachers do not know why a child has certain problems. Although we can try and help the students, bringing the parents in to assist will greatly enhance the educative process. We can get background knowledge of the student, understand their home environment and make better more informed judgements based on that. Parents know what their children like and how to motivate them. This could prove welcome knowledge in attempting to help students. Teachers and parents could also work out plans that could be introduced to further enhance a students learning.
These are the four goals that I set for myself before my internship began:
1. I aim to create and deliver lessons that cater for students of all abilities.
2. I aim to establish and maintain a safe, creative and challenging learning environment for my students.
3. I aim to learn the names of all my students in each of my four classes.
4. I aim to seek out and inquire about ongoing professional development.
Goal 1: I believe that I partially completed this goal. While I did attempt to differentiate certain lessons, introducing different levels of work for the mixed ability class I had, I could have done more. I feel that I was held back by programme and time restraints. I had a certain amount of time to complete certain curriculum content and was not able to spend time breaking work into levels for each student. I created and delivered great lessons, though maybe not always catering for students of all abilities.
Goal 2: I believe I achieved this goal. I ensured that my classrooms were always safe, I had students sit in their chairs correctly, they treated each other with respect and there were no incidents to report. Never did I have a student ask me for more work, I always made sure that if a student was finished I had more work for them. My classroom was always challenging and I tried my best to implement creative lessons as much as possible.
Goal 3: I learnt every students name by week 5 of my internship. I put a lot of effort into this and it was achieved. Learning their names proved important as it became a positive strategy to quell poor behaviour.
Goal 4: I did inquire about ongoing professional development. Although I found it was not a major concern for me at this time in my career, it did allow me to build a rapport with different members of the staff. This was especially useful in removing my anonymity with the executive team.
jakecdowers
Jake Dowers' Education Blog 