My Current Reality

Hello. My name is Tessa Mauer, and this is my

current reality presentation.

I'll start with a short introduction about myself and then

jump into the reflection questions.

My background teaching is pretty limited.

I've worked in tutoring settings with kindergartners in college students

and an online summer education program with middle schoolers, but

I've never had to create my own lessons.

So I'm pretty excited to start with this class and

learn a planning conception before I've really built up in

your big biases or habits.

After this program, I plan to teach secondary English and

for this project, I chose questions in two areas a

things that I see your areas of weakness for myself

and be concepts that I want to keep in mind

every day of my teaching.

And I thought it was important to focus on those

from Day one.

So the first question I chose to answer was, What

choices have I given my students lately?

And it's not something I had really considered before, because

so much of teaching seems structured from the top down,

and choice seems like a privilege, not a right, but

it's actually huge for student growth and opens opportunities for

critical thinking and building decision making skills.

So it's absolutely an area that I'm excited to grow

in and going to be keeping my eye out, especially

for opportunities to incorporate my own planning.

In the past, I had a hard time thinking of

when I gave students choices.

The best I could come up with was if they

didn't wanna work on one piece of homework, they could

choose a different subject.

Um, but one of my ideas for the future and

it's a small one time thing, but it's a start

is to play this game where you give them a

choice, for example, that first one is they have to

choose between pancakes or waffles.

Then whatever they don't pick is erased from the world,

so nobody gets to have it.

So, for example, I would choose pancakes, and then I

would take that, and I would compare it to the

next thing pancakes or apples, and you continue going down

that list.

And as you can see, the choices get more important

and more impactful.

And so it's pretty fun to do this with people

and listen to their thought processes and how they came

to their decisions, and I thought this would be one

a good way to get to know my students.

But to Thio get insight into their thinking and see

what's causing some of their choices.

Then hopefully with that information, I can kind of tailor

my teaching to their interests as well as their processing

at that point.

Another part that I see as an area of weakness

for myself is what new strategies have I tried lately

that might benefit a student I'm struggling with.

I thought about this primarily in terms of academic issues,

but obviously there are gonna be behavioral challenges that will

have to address is well.

But in the online program with the middle school students,

a student was having trouble with a math problem.

So I pulled him aside.

And I remember trying to use a cup in a

ball to demonstrate the concept, and you could tell he

was really engaged and you wanted to get it.

And for some reason, the way I was communicating things

just wasn't clicking.

And for the life of me, I couldn't think of

another way to explain it without just giving him the

answer. So again.

This is an area where I'm excited to build a

repertoire of creative strategies and especially ones that air centered

in education.

But since I don't have a background and teaching or

schooling related to education, um, I I again just kind

of drew from general human principles when I was thinking

about how to address these challenges in the future.

So one of my first thoughts was Ask another teacher

that may not be that helpful in the moment.

It would have to be and after the fact kind

of reflective thing.

But of course, getting their expertise would be great asking

another student to help.

I think sometimes that shared perspective that they have because

you know, there same age, experiencing the same things in

school, to some extent same cultural, cultural exposure.

To some extent, they might have a perspective that is

better framing information than I could have.

I think another big one is to just be honest

with a student and tell them that you want to

help them and you're trying your best, and for some

reason your communication just isn't clicking.

I think that kind of quells frustration and helps both

of you up, open up space in your brain to

try new things or take a break or whatever needs

to happen.

And then my last idea was to ask the student

for input on how they wanted to handle the problem.

Um, I think that's good because it builds by in

which then makes it more likely that they're willing to

put effort into that as well.

I have this picture of a mug here, it says.

Take chances, make mistakes, get messy.

And that's a quote from a Children's TV show called

The Magic School Bus.

But I just really like it because I think in

this case it encourages me to try something new and

go out on a limb and be creative.

So the next set of questions are really those things

that I want to keep in mind every day, going

to school the first one.

How is my demeanor and attitude towards my class today

effective for student learning?

I think this is embodied really well.

In a quote from Roald Dahl.

If you have good thoughts, they will shine out of

your face like Sunbeams, and you will always look lovely.

I think that just really captures the idea that what

you internalize is what you externalize and what other people

see and observe.

So when thinking about the kind of attitude and demeanor

I wanna have, it's not about striving to appear one

way, but what motivation I need to draw from internally

toe, then express the things I want to express.

So for me, I have sent myself goals, and I

think I'm thinking about my past behavior.

I want to believe that I have embodied these for

the most part.

Um, that's hard to say because that's a self assessment,

and e think you often times to yourself in a

positive light.

But regardless, these are things that I want to carry

into the future.

So I separated attitude demeanor kind of arbitrarily, based on

my own connotations of the words e Think of attitude

is a little bit more temporal, and demeanor is a

little bit more stable.

But regardless, I think they both draw from internal motivations

for than an external appearance.

So I want to display enthusiasm for any kind of

learning. Whether that's a vocab term, kids are learning how

to build on argument successfully.

They passed the math test, they learned a new football

route. Whatever it is, I wanna have enthusiasm for that,

because that inspires happiness.

If they're learning something they're excited, excited about, and that

has ripple effects that we can never see.

I also want to demonstrate resiliency and flexibility, um, one,

because it makes me a better teacher if I can

recognize that something isn't working and change course, but be

because I want those to be characteristics that my students

learn is well, especially in today's world, when standards are

high and mistakes can feel earth shattering.

But they need to know they're not, and success is

still possible after a failure.

I want to be calm.

That seems in opposition to enthusiasm, but I think both

could be achieved by changing up your communication style.

I think Communist creates the best environment for learning because

students feel like they could slow down and take their

time, and then calmness kind of lends itself to also

being approachable.

I want students to feel like they can come and

ask me questions without the fear of looking dumb or

getting embarrassed, or any other concerns that they may have

the next big idea that I want to bring to

my class every day.

Do my actions as a teacher show my belief that

all students can learn at a high level?

And to me, this is the crux of teaching, helping

each student realize that they're valuable, no matter their skills,

talents or intelligence, they absolutely have something to give.

And again, I think this is embodied well in a

quote. Students don't care how much you know until they

know how much you care.

To me, that just means that students make the most

progress when a you have a meaningful relationship with them.

But be they feel supported by you in in order

to show, show that support or belief.

E think a few things are important, Um, verbalizing it

and demonstrating it in terms of verbalizing it.

I think it's really important to counter doubt.

When I was tutoring the college students, we were in

a group of about four kids and one was really

struggling with something in their English essay.

I think it was a concept, our own theme and

the other kids were picking on him because that was

something that they thought it was easy.

So I knew immediately in that moment that I needed

to stop.

The kids who are making the comments and redirect my

students focus to what progress he could make again.

It's hard to say how well I did that, Um,

because I actually don't remember the outcomes of that essay

or what parties remained.

But I do remember feeling good about how I handled

it and how I tried to lift that student up.

Some other things that I want to keep in mind

for helping to show my belief in my students are

praising engagement and improvement rather than achievement.

I think Prezi engagement can be hard because it's easy

to praise kids who get the point because they kind

of helped move your lesson along.

It's harder to praise kids who are engaging but are

off the mark.

I think a lot of that comes from tone and

comes from trying to incorporate their comments as best as

you can.

So tricky things, but definitely something that I want to

be an area of focus for myself and praising improvement

over achievement.

So looking at growth, potentially adding in, I don't know,

sort of like a sub grade for growth as opposed

to actual final achievement.

I'm still kind of playing with that idea, and then

in demonstrating it, I think it's important to give equal

attention to all students, both in the classroom and outside.

So and thinking about again that engagement peace, making sure

you're calling on students of all levels on gun also

think about grading and how much time I'm spending on

essays and by giving people equal attention in one of

the other big pieces I want to keep in mind

every day is what have I done lately to relieve

stress and focus on my own mental health to ensure

I remain an effective teacher?

And it's counterintuitive to say I'm going to stop doing

this thing that I need to do so that I

can enjoy myself and then be better at the thing

I was doing.

But that's exactly how it works.

So I'm trying to remind myself of that principle more

and more, and some of the things that I like

to dio are listen to music.

I love music, and I hope that it's something I

can incorporate it into my classroom somehow.

But right now you know, listen to songs here and

there. Dance dance is a great way to have that

physical release of stress.

And I have absolutely noticed differences in the days when

I let myself enjoy a song for a little bit.

And then I will continue to be productive far longer

than if I just tried to push through.

And that kind of leads me to the next one,

which is taking breaks.

I have a tendency to make giant to do lists

and then feel like I need to do it all

right then, and if I stop doing it, then that's

a failure, and I just kind of stuck completely.

But again, I've noticed when I allow myself chunks of

time to go do something that I enjoy and kind

of planning out what tasks I need to do between

those that has really helped in using my stress around

getting those things done, but also getting more things done.

So I'm definitely becoming a fan of breaks.

Whether that means five minutes for a song, half an

hour for a TV show, 15 minutes for a walk,

kind of whatever it could be.

So that is my summary of my current reality from

those five questions.

I know that I built in a lot of forward

thinking into this project, but for me, that's the purpose

of reflection.

I don't think we were asked to do this simply

I mean, obviously, because we're not supposed to do well

in the past.

But I wanted to be very cognizant of the fact

that a I don't have a lot of experience to

draw from to answer these.

But now that they are in my head, what can

I prepare for to make myself successful in these areas?

So it's very, very useful exercise for me and so

many questions that it was difficult to pick through, Um,

but I am glad to have had the opportunity to

do this.

My Current Reality

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