We believe the novice teacher should be a facilitator of learning for all students. This aspect of a novice teacher calls for new teachers to reach students of all levels and abilities. Novice teachers must use strategies, methods, materials, etc. that are differentiated to meet all the needs of students. No matter what school or area a teacher is placed, all teachers will have students of different ability levels, styles of learning, interests, etc. It is important that we notice these differences and create lessons that will meet our students’ diverse needs. If we create lessons with only one student’s abilities in mind, we will fail to reach the majority of the class and only waste time and cause disinterest.
To show my ability and experience with this characteristic of a novice teacher, I will include some of my differentiated lessons plans. Throughout my experience in the program I have taught students with different learning abilities. For each of the lessons I created for my PDS, I adjusted and differentiated lessons for gifted students, low ability level students, students with low reading levels, students with ADD/ADHD, and students with Asperger’s Syndrome. These lessons have multiple aspects that are differentiated for students, because my classes contain multiple students with varied needs and abilities. I do not only have two types of learners in my classroom so my lessons are not differentiated in only one way. These lessons represent my ability and experience with facilitating learning for all students by being differentiated in multiple ways to show that I want to reach all students as stated in the characteristic. The lesson I have included is an English Canonical text lesson that is differentiated for students with low reading levels and then additionally adjusted for the needs of one student with Asperger’s Syndrome.
We believe that the novice teacher should be liberally educated. The definition of “Liberally” is favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded. It can also be defined as generous in amount. I believe that this characteristic of a novice teacher expects teachers to have experience with and know about all topics of instruction. Although no teacher will be a master expert in every school topic, it’s important for teachers to make themselves very familiar with the content prior to teaching it. I believe that with the knowledge and experience of many content areas, comes also the responsibility of novice to teachers to present the material in new and engaging ways. There are many sides to this knowledge and instruction. By reflecting on the first definition of liberally, I believe that not only should teachers know what they are teaching, they should think outside the box and teach students in differentiated ways that reach each student best. What good is knowing all about something or everything if you’re going to teach it in a boring, lecture style method that will not interest or retain a majority of students? Ultimately, this characteristic must consider both sides of liberally by including the knowledge for content and the openness to new ideas for progress.
For this characteristic of a novice teacher, I have decided to include my CHPR unit lesson plans. I believe this is a representation of my wide span of content knowledge and the practice of new ideas for progress. CHPR is a class for health education which I had no experience with when I started the course. I learned much about an area of study that I had not considered. For this unit plan, I created 12 lessons plans around one main area of health and created lessons with varied methods of instruction and ways of assessment. The unit plan contains multiple lessons that use technology, several art integrated lessons, a culturally diverse lesson, and only 2 lessons with typical testing style assessment to show how broad-minded my methods of instruction in the lesson plans are. I think this assignment shows that I have met both sides of being liberally educated by learning much about a different area of study than my expertise and that I used new ideas for progress with my variety of lessons.
