Blog J

While student assessment is obvious to happen in a classroom, it's often forgotten that teachers are assessed as well. Right now with my small amount of experience in the field, the thought of being observed and graded on my teaching skills seems very frightening! There is so much that goes with teaching that many people do not even realize. During a lesson, the educator must decide on the spot how to deal with things like interruptions, questions, unrelated comments, and bickering, all the while keeping it together so the students cannot tell there is any issue at all. Pointing out interruptions may distract more students causing a snowball effect. While monitoring a certain child's choices and continued behavior during a lesson or activity, teachers must decide in their head how they must deal with any given situation.

I've often heard in this field that it is extremely important to choose your battles. When you are in charge of 20 students, many situations come up at any given time. Knowing how to correct a student's behavior and let them know you do not appreciate it is an important task teachers must accomplish frequently. Most of the time, a simple look or silent gesture will do. These options notify the child to stop while keeping the rest of the class's attention on the activity with little to no distractions. For a teacher, knowing which situations to address aloud, which to speak privately to the child with later, or which to ignore will help the classroom run much more smoothly.

Resources:
Ksmith19 (2015). A Teacher's Day. 8 November, 2015. Web. Made using Gliffy. http://www.gliffy.com/go/publish/image/9382793/L.png

Maloy, R., Verock, R., Edwards, S., & Woolf, B. (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc.