Reflective Essay
Reflection on 4th Year School Placement
Joint (Hons.) BA in Education and Design or Fine Art
STUDENT: Maja Nowicka
SCHOOL: Our Lady’s Greenhill, Drogheda
PRINCIPAL: Geraldine Mulvihill
ART TEACHER/S: Jenny Carolan and Aine Currans
CLASS TIMES/GROUP: Monday - 9.00-9.58 1st years, 14.35-15.33 2nd years
Wednesday- 9.00 5th years AH, 13.37 -14.35 2nd years, 14.35-15.33 4th years
Thursday- 9.00 -9.58 -2nd years, 9.58-10.56 2nd years
Friday - 9.00 -9.58 1st years 12.24-13.22 1st years
OVERALL EVALUATION OF 4Yr School Placement
Our Lady’s college is an all girls Catholic school founded by the Presentation Sisters in 1940 which is now under the trusteeship of CEIST with the enrolments of approximately 1000 students in the year 2020. The school has an open enrolment system, the vast majority of students are from local primary schools with the remaining travelling from areas such as Clogerhead, Bettystown, Layton and Julianstown, the school also has exchange students from France, Germany and Austria. The school has 40 classrooms as well as a library which can be used for independent research as well as a large classroom during the pandemic, 3 computer rooms, 5 science laboratories, 3 art rooms, audio visual room, school chapel and most rooms are fitted with an interactive whiteboard.
Over the past placements my teaching had greatly developed. I enjoyed being in the school environment teaching all the different year groups and this made me realise that this is the right path for me. I feel as if I have grown greatly as a person and an artist during my placement. I have developed in my personal abilities and qualities by trying new art disciplines and teaching methods especially with the obstacles I had to face this year. I’ve seen a development in my planning for lessons as well as creating new resources and gathering new research, my time management skills had greatly improved with the guidance of my tutors and the fantastic host teachers that guided me through my time in Our Lady’s College. Throughout the year I’ve noticed growth in my communication skills with all my students, this is visible as I had built a relationship with the girls. This bond has helped me build confidence in the classroom as well as gain respect as a teacher. With regard to this planning many different units of learning for my classes which all have different abilities, I have learned a lot about differentiation and how to apply it in the classroom.
My strengths would be, classroom management and the ability to keep my students engaged and intrigued in the tasks, I have gained this skill by being in two completely different school environments which was very eye opening to me.I have created many visual aids and handouts for students to grasp a better understanding of the task as well as the skill I was teaching them. The use of support study artists and visual aids has helped students develop a better understanding of the art world around them which has greatly stimulated their creative thinking and their approaches. The area I have greatly worked on was effectiveness of planning - I have put a lot of effort into the learning intentions for the students to meet the success criteria for their brief. This has helped me with managing each lesson and keeping them flexible to meet the students needs. I believe that this has made me capable to plan for the different levels of students and have appropriate schemes for their needs.
Doing my placement block in 2020 has taught me how to use the classroom effectively to meet the school COVID protocols and to keep the art room a safe learning environment for the students. This experience is a great skill to carry over to my future teaching career which can be added to many different layers of learning. Another asset I have is questioning and evaluating the students. I try and keep the evaluation methods in the classroom very different, rather than sticking to one method, I try and keep the evaluations as interactive as possible so all students can learn from each other and grasp an understanding. I keep the questions both Higher order questioning as well as lower order questions so all students can answer at least one question to their ability. However there are many more things I want to further my knowledge on.
My weakness would be in relation to time management, I believe I get too passionate in class discussion that I would spend too much time in one area such as a PowerPoint or the support studies discussion, if I had timed myself this would give me additional time to students task or evaluation, going forward I would research different possibilities to stick to the time I give myself as unfortunately the class may be only an hour long. Another area I would like to focus on in the future is differentiation and the success criteria. I'd like to gain a better understanding of how I could orchestrate the unit for as many students as possible to make sure it will meet their needs. I want to get better at creating success criteria, as I feel obligated to validate all the students are ticking the boxes of all the criteria. My last flaw I’d like to improve is to project my voice in the class, the last placement had taught me to do so as the requirement of wearing a mask was in place, however I think I need to sound more confident in what I’m saying, I want to be heard by the students and I want them to see that I know what I am doing, It’s my belief that this will make me a better teacher.