Personal Statement Re-Write

This is a personal statement I wrote after the completion of my teaching practicum experience through the Master of Teaching program, which I wrote to include more specific examples of my teaching practice and organised under the three main APST headings.

Professional Knowledge

Knowing our students is fundamental to being able to tailor our teaching to their particular needs, preferences, culture, and language. I get to know my students building relationships and rapport with students so that they feel comfortable communicating with me frankly. I use this communication to inform and adjust my approach to teaching for each specific class of students I work with. For example when I was teaching two year 10 mathematics classes I used this informal formative assessment through my rapport with the sudents to determine that one class engaged with group work while the other predominantely preferred individual work. Even so, within both classes each individual students preferences differed. In response to this I adjusted the next task, offering both classes a choice between two equivalent activities, one being a group task and the other individual. In one class, most of the class opted into the group work, but still a few chose the individual task while in the other class most opted for individual work, and only one small group formed for the group task. In this way I only had to prepare two tasks (which for two classes seems a reasonable workload on me, but the students that chose the individual task expressed their gratitude for being given the option, and those that chose the group task engaged much more than they did with individual tasks I had given them inthe past. In particular, some of the students who struggled to meet a passing grade in an earlier group task, excelled when given the choice to work individually thereby demonstrating the impact of tailoring the methods to cater to their preferred method of learning. I beleive it can be important to push students outside of their comfort zones and allow them to experience different things, but also that it is critical to begin from their comfort zones, and allow them to experience some success there, before pushing them beyond it. Allowing flexible learning and multiple options for the students to choose from can be a powerful way to allow them to start from their comfort zones and experience some success before expanding their horizons. Particularly in mathematics where confidence and self-efficacy are such key restricting concepts for many students, this approach it crucial in my view.

Knowing the content allows for me to place the learning into a larger context, giving it more authenticity and making it more engaging for our students. It also allows us to be aware of the potential future problems students may encounter and equip them to face those challenges appropriately. Because of my extensive mathematics and science experience prior to getting into the teaching profession, I can share my experiences with my students to explain to them where in the real world these skills can be used, and why they are important in an authentic way. For example, in a stage 2 mathematical methods class of mine I had a student ask me how p-value cutoffs where determined and if they where always the same, so I told them a story about the process by which we would determine the cutoff in a medical decision making process involving endometrial cancer — based on weighing up the consequences of being wrong in either case. The students listened with rapt attention, at least partly because they knew it was a true story, and it was a real example of statistics having a life and death impact on many patients lives. When teaching stage 1 chemistry at BHS I was acutely aware that when students went on to study in stage 2 and first year university, many of the theories I was teaching them would be replaced with more complex models, and that many students often struggle with frustration over being taught “wrong” models previously. As such, I adjusted my teaching to make sure I mentioned that there where a sequence of models we use in chemistry, each in the sequence explaining more about the observations we make, but that the ultimate scientific “litmus test” was always observation, not theory. If a theory makes a prediction, and you observe something that contradicts the theories prediction there is nothing to be done — the theory is wrong. Students appreciated this perspective of science as we moved through the unit, matching their experimental observations to the theory, and they appreciated being told that later on in their learning journey they would be exposed to observations that would contradict the current models, and so they would have to discard the current theory in favour of new, more complex, theories that explained their new observations.

Professional Practice</h2>

Central to my teaching ideology is to recognise each individual students unique strengths, and to encourage the development of relationships based on mutual respect of each others unique strengths. In my practice I always look out for unique learning opportunities to encourage student participation. For example, in my year 10 science class at NMHS I introduced a summative practical: to bounce balls in an investigation of the law of conservation of energy. When first introducing the class I left determination of the independent variables for the experiment deliberately vague, and instructed the students to come up with some on their own instead of giving them the scaffolding document in which it was suggested that different types of balls be used and dropped from different heights as the two independent variables. Some students struggled, and for those I had some copies of the scaffolding document on hand to help them along, but introducing the task in this way gave other students the opportunities to suggest different variables, not suggested in the scaffolding document. One student in particular came up with the idea of using a slightly deflated beachball or soccerball, and then inflating it to see the difference inflation made. This was particularly notable because this student had not been particularly engaged in class, and had had middling academic success in the previous term showing consistent disinterest in class up until this point. But when I came to the next class with a pump, ready to test their idea they immediately engaged with the task, was completely self-driven, and produced an excellent prac report to describe it. Allowing students to engage with material and make it their own can engage students that might otherwise be disinterested and this was one of the most valuable memories I took from practicum. Using open ended questions in this way to engage students in work by giving them a degree of ownership over it is one of my favoured techniques, as it also allows students to self-asses and determine their own problem to solve to a degree, and so the difficulty of the problem is also partly in their control. Another example of my using this technique was in my year 10 mathematics class at BHS, I offered a two-stage choice for the assessment of the indices unit: first, students could sit either a fairly standard test, or they could choose to attempt a more open-ended directed investigation. Second, in the investigation the final section involved them constructing their own problem to solve, and so they could determine their own difficulty level — some chose to construct a problem that was easy to solve (which is a high-level thinking skill in and of itself), others chose to challenge themselves and deliberately constructed a problem that was difficult to solve. Giving the students choice in this way allowed the students to tailor their own learning experience, and choose assessment in this case that was more inline with their own learning styles and preferences.

For students to learn and excel they need to feel comfortable and safe. As such, an affective approach to student wellbeing is crucial. By producing an environment in which students can feel safe, I can help them to discover their strengths and excel. I do this primarily by building relationships with my students. This is a subtle process that takes some time, but gradually trust is developed and through that I can gain some insight into how my students are feeling and make adjustments to the classroom environment in order to help them feel more comfortable. For example, in one of my classes I ran an activity in which I taught the class how to fold A4 paper into silver rhombic dodecahedra and had them investigate the properties of this shape. The process of folding the paper is quite therapeutic, and as I ran this activity after already having had the class for a few weeks and having established relationships with them enough that they felt comfortable coming up to me and telling about their feelings, one student came up to me after class and admitted that she had been suffering from severe anxiety and that had been the reason that she had missed alot of classes but that folding the paper rhombic units had actually helped her feel a lot more comfortable in class. As a result I modified the classroom environment the next week by putting a stack of paper in the corner of the class and informing the class that if anyone was feeling overwhelmed or anxious during class that they could move over into the corner and fold some rhombic units for dodecahedra as a calming exercise. Several students beyond the original one who had come to talk to me took advantage of this corner in the weeks to follow, and several of them told me about how it had helped them calm down after having had some pretty severely traumatic events outside of the class. Some of these students attendance rates also improved after this. Its in ways like this that I aim to create a safe environment in which my students can feel comfortable and productive. If students are in an uncomfortable environment or feel unsafe it is completely unreasonable to expect them to be able to learn, so as teachers providing a safe environment for our students has to be one of our highest priorities, not just because without that it would be impossible for our students to learn, but because everybody deserves to feel safe. It is literally in the international bill of human rights.

Professional Engagement

Learning is a passion of mine, and I have never stopped learning at any point during my life. Through discussion with colleagues and self-reflection I identify my weaknesses and areas of ignorance, and constantly work to better myself and improve. I particularly benefit from open discussions with colleagues who hold very different views/ beliefs and use very different teaching methods to me, as this is when I learn the most. For example on my placement to BHS, one of my mentor teachers had a very different teaching style to mine. Through discussions with her and with the students I gained alot of insight into how there truely is no single best teaching style, there is simply teaching styles that better suit certain students, and teaching styles that better suit different teachers. I learnt that there is alot of value in learning from teachers with different teaching styles than your own, because pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone and learning these different skills can be incredibly valuable with faced with students who do not respond to your preferred style. Professional development is always a pleasure for me, and while I was at BHS and they had a numeracy focused professional development day I offered to take a workshop on probabiltiy and share my expertise with the rest of the staff. I even had one staff member approach me several days later and thank me, because she had apparently suffered from severe maths anxiety, having a minor panic attack on the morning of the PD day because she realised it would have a numeracy focus, but she said that the workshop I ran had opened her eyes to the possibility that maths might not actually be all that scary and more connected to concepts with which she felt comfortable than she had previously realised. I was very proud of her, and I only wish I could bring experiences like that to more people.