Educators understand and apply knowledge of student growth and development.
When looking at my previous understanding of what students know, I assumed that a lot of natural learning occurred. When I entered the classroom as a teacher candidate, I discovered that was not entirely true. There is a lot of curiosity in students, but there is also a lot of unknowns. There is a need to, as an educated adult, relearn how to not understand things.
I hold a business degree and feel pretty confident in my ability to share my learned understanding. When I was in my 3-week practicum, I was asked to teach about financial literacy. This would have been okay, had I considered the enormous amount of scaffolding I was given in order to understand a lot of the content area. There are some students that had no issues understanding and applying their pre-existing knowledge. There were other students that could not developmentally conceptualize the concepts that I was sharing. I know this is something I have a lot of learning, but I also know that taking a step back to prepare for students that lack the ability to conceptualize like an adult will greatly benefit me.
I felt that I was better prepared to approach the learning needs of my students in my 4-week practicum, and hope that I will be able to bolster this area of learning in my 10-week practicum.
My largest area of growth has been around my acceptance that I don’t know what I don’t know.