Introduction An important part of being an educator is reflecting on my strengths and weakness so that I am able to continue to grow where I am strong and improve where I am weak. My current strengths include my ability to build strong relationships with my students, inclusion of diverse texts in my classroom, discussions about diversity, incorporating pragmatic writing skills so that my students can succeed in what they are most passionate about, and my awareness about what is going on in students’ lives. My current weaknesses include my inclusion of technology in my classroom and my ability to pace units and lessons into a reasonable amount of work for my students. In this paper, I will discuss two of my strengths as an educator as well as two of my weaknesses. These strengths I will discuss are my ability to build strong relationships with my students and the ability to find diverse texts for my students. The weaknesses I will discuss are my ability to incorporate technology, and my ability to make my lessons more reasonable workloads for my students.
Strength: Ability to Build Strong Relationships One of my strengths as an educator is my ability to build strong relationships with each and every single one of my students. I build these relationships by engaging in conversations with my students about their strengths, weaknesses, and interests so that I can best design my teaching to best help these students succeed. I maintain these relationships by continually checking in with my students by providing meaningful, timely feedback on their work, talking continuously about how they can improve while complimenting what they are doing well, and incorporating their interests into the classroom. Another way I maintain these relationships with my students is by creating a classroom environment that fosters student input. Each of my students will understand that their individuality is important and valuable to the classroom, and by celebrating their individuality, my students will learn the skills to voice their opinions, passions, and beliefs in a safe space.
Strength: Passion for Diverse Texts Another one of my strengths as an educator is my passion for including diverse texts to teach themes and the skills that they need to succeed in English/Language Arts, such as reading comprehension, reading analyzation, writing, and communication skills. For example, when teaching autobiographical writing, rather than requiring all of my students to read the same autobiography, I would allow my students to choose an autobiography about a person they are interested in or someone from their cultural background. This would allow students to have conversations that include a multitude of backgrounds and experiences. Not only will my students have fantastic examples of autobiographies, but they will be able to have dialogues about diversity and about how a person’s place, culture, or background impacts their lives.
Weakness: Incorporating Technology One of my weaknesses as an educator is incorporating technology into my lessons in meaningful and engaging ways. I am a traditional person when it comes to reading and writing and I believe students are too invested in technology. For these reasons, often, I have my students physically mark up texts and write out their work by hand. In my classroom, I prefer to engage my students through writing and through discussions and through short, in-class writing assignments. Most of my current technology incorporation in my classroom includes PowerPoint as a visual aid for lectures and technology as an option for summative assessments. I would like to learn how to include technology into my lessons so that I can improve my students’ learning and further their thinking both inside and outside the classroom.
Weakness: Time Management Another one of my weaknesses as an educator is time management. In my lessons, I tend to include a lot of small activities and in my units, I tend to think about projects that will take an adequate amount of time. That being said, as I think about my future classroom, I need to think about the realistic experience of a school year. I need to be prepared for inclement weather, holidays, and students being out due to illness, family emergencies, and school activities. As I reflect on my lesson plans, I need to think more critically about what’s realistic, fair, and respectful to ask of students rather than what I have planned. Conclusion As I further myself through the rest of my M.A.T. program at James Madison University, both through practicum and student teaching, I hope to be able to incorporate my many strengths and weakness as an educator. While both in my practicum and student teaching, I aim to be able to include my ability to build strong relationships with the students I’m working with, my writing skills, my knowledge of diverse texts, my passion for diversity and inclusion, and my passion for teaching communication skills. I also hope to be able to work on my confidence as an educator, my technology incorporation, and my personal pacing guide as a teaching, so that I can remain keeping my students focused, engaged, and continually learning in my classroom. Over the next year, I aim to push myself to draw from my English/Language Arts content knowledge and incorporate the best teaching pedagogies, beliefs, and classroom management techniques to best prepare me for my first year of teaching and for a career in education. In order to help me work on my weaknesses, I will be using Special Professional Associations (SPAs) as tools to learn how to work on my weaknesses. Special Professional Associations that I will use as tools are the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). NCTE will be used as a tool to help me better pace my ELA classroom as NCTE has pedagogies that have been extensively researched that have been proven effective in teaching English/Language Arts. ISTE will be used as a tool to work on incorporating technology into my classroom.