Teaching Statement

One day, each year, my students walked into the classroom to see winter had exploded there. Snowflakes hung from the doorway windows, silver tinsel garland adorned the Promethean Board and whiteboards, soft white lights shimmered along the trim of the room, cool-hued decorations dotted all other available surfaces. In the course of two class periods my room had become a winter wonderland of learning (pardon the corny sentiment). I greeted each class warmly as they entered and were enveloped by the soft glowing lights and sweet cinnamon scented air. Even my most cynical students were delighted.

The pleasant change in atmosphere served multiple purposes. Not only was it a fun way to welcome the season, it also set …show more content…
After a few minutes discussing in their small groups, we moved into a guided Socratic seminar. The classwide discussion of the poem lead to a strong grasp of the concept, and every year students impressed me with their own poetic phrasings. We “breaked” from our deep thinking to create snowflakes and informally discuss our strongest winter memories. The concept of a break made their work feel fun while truthfully they were staying on the desired topic, providing useful information to draw on in the last phase of the day’s lesson: …show more content…
I closed the lesson by asking students to self-assess their skills on a scale of 1-5, each question representing a different depth of knowledge level: How well did they understand the meaning of the terms? How confident were they in their ability to identify them in poetry? How competent did they feel in assessing the purpose for and effect of their use? How comfortable were they in using the techniques purposefully to create their own works? Results guided my teaching decisions for what steps to take next in the