Friday, March 31, 2023

Ten Ways to Make Your Teaching More Effective and Rewarding

Teacher Conference Reflection

The standard that I chose to reflect on for this assignment in regards to the teacher conference is Commitment to Students and Student Learning: Members are dedicated in their care and commitment to students. They treat students equitably and with respect and are sensitive to factors that influence individual student learning. Members facilitate the development of students as contributing citizens of Canadian society.

The first workshop that connects with this standard and that really stood out to me was with Tony Ceelen called ‘Ten ways to make your teaching more effective and rewarding’. This workshop goes in depth on various strategies to help educators create a safe and supportive environment for their students. The strategies that were discussed allows educators to build a healthy dynamic with students and their parents. Some meaningful strategies that were mentioned in the presentation was having students write in a daily journal where they can write something about themselves that they would want their educator to know about. This gives educators the opportunity to get to know their students on a personal level because they feel that it is a safe outlet to express any thoughts, interest, or challenges they may be going through. To add, the educator can write responses back to the students in order to continue to develop positive relationships with the students. Another strategy that was mentioned was calling all parents on the first day of school to start the school year off on a positive note, due to the fact that parents tend to receive calls only when the teacher wants to report bad news about their child. One statement that stuck with me during this workshop was ‘Communicate with parents because you want to and because you like to, so that when you have to it will be easy’. With this mindset, parents will most likely be more understanding and easier to communicate with because they will most likely have more respect for the teacher and there will be a sense of trust as well.

The second workshop that connects with this standard was with Carol-Doyle Jones called ‘Traversing Texts’. In this workshop, we discussed how to teach difficult and sensitive topics to students using various read-alouds, novels, and poems. The books that were provided were based on a variety of universal concepts, such as kindness, sense of belonging, injustice, residential schools, etc. The books that we explored as a whole group enables students to engage in higher level thinking when reading and analyzing different perspectives, and they also help them to see the situation from a point of view outside of their own. Even though these topics can be challenging to teach young learners, using age-appropriate texts can make it easier for students to initiate conversation, which in turn can help students feel safe and secure as well as will allow them to feel comfortable to ask questions that they may have when they arise.

Overall, these workshops have given me new learnings that I will definitely be implementing in my own classroom as a future educator. I truly believe that with these new learning experiences, I will be abiding by this standard to ensure that I am continuously creating a secure and safe environment for my students where they feel respected and heard when in the classroom.