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Taryn Geroche
Ms. Alyssa Barnes
EDUC 485B
Teacher Work Sample
13 May 2016

Student Teaching Experience Reflection

I am so grateful for the opportunity I had to teach at Conrad Ball this semester. Being a
teacher is so much more than planning and teaching lessons, and in all of my previous
practicums I have never been able to be involved in all of it. Coming out of this semester I feel
confident, because I feel like now I have truly experienced what teaching is like.
There were a few parts of this semester that I feel went really well, right from the start.
From the second or third week of the semester I was planning my own lessons, and overall I
believe that my lessons went well. There were some days where I could see that every student in
the class was engaged in the lesson, and those days felt like an incredible triumph. Of course,
there were days that students were off task and had to be redirected, too. I really learned the
importance of having a solid, well-thought-out lesson plan I am capable of winging a lesson,
but class runs so much more smoothly when everything has been thought through. I then learned
that the other half of making class run smoothly is classroom management and expectations.
Even the most wonderful of lessons can be overlooked by the students if they are off task or
distracted, so classroom management is key to making a lesson successful, too.
This semester I had the opportunity to work closely at co-teaching with my cooperating
teacher, as well as co-planning with the other sixth grade math teacher and the rest of the sixth
grade team. I am typically an introvert, and I never would have thought that I would feel the
need to plan lessons with someone else, but this semester my mind was completely changed.

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Having the opportunity to plan with other teachers turned out to be a huge blessing it meant
slightly less work for each of us, long days spent together grading and bonding, and higher
quality work than I could ever have produced on my own. I truly felt welcomed in by the sixth
grade team; they treated me as an equal, a valued member of the team, which was a high honor
and an incredible learning experience. It is now one of my professional goals to always continue
in collaboration with other teachers, because I have seen the tremendous results that can be
produced.
I learned some valuable lessons this semester in the classroom. First, I realized how
easily I sometimes jump to judging the book by its cover when it comes to students. I pointedly
remember one incident this semester when I said to a student, This is easy! because I assumed
he knew what he was doing. Later I was corrected the student in question often struggled with
math, and me calling something easy which may not have actually been easy for him was a
mistake. I am convinced more than ever that it is imperative to get to know your students,
academically and personally. I also learned how important it is going to be to stay positive
through my many years of teaching. It is easy to fall into the trap of lowering your expectations
for a certain student. Sometimes students just get on your nerves, to the point where you want to
just kick them out of the classroom all of the time. However, keeping a positive outlook toward
students, I believe, is incredibly important. It is my personal goal to make sure that I not only
say that I believe in every student, but that I always believe it and act on it. At the root of
teaching is a deep compassion for students, and that flame must never be blown out.
On the practical, classroom side of things, I feel grateful for all the opportunities I had to
learn about different aspects of our education system. Because I was valued as part of the team,
the staff included me in training for PARCC, and I was extended an invitation to participate in
Project-Based Learning training, an offer that not even every Con Ball teacher accepted. I feel

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like I now have a solid footing to guide me when I need to administer state tests, and PBL
training taught me a philosophy of teaching which I will now always incorporate into my
classroom. In staff meetings I got to interact with counselors, hearing their side of the education
story. I had relevant conversations with the gifted and talented coordinator and the special
education teachers, letting me know what all of the aspects of the school environment are like,
not just my own classroom.
In the future, the first thing I will do with my class is establish clear, strict class
expectations. This semester I liked the set of rules that my cooperating teacher used, so I chose
to keep his rules and expectations for the class when I took over the teaching. This was perhaps
not the most effective way though then the rules did not sound authentic when I used them in
class, and the students started pushing the boundaries to see what I would let them get away
with. I now understand more than ever how important it will be next year to establish the rules
early on, in order to create an environment ideal for learning for the rest of the year.
My final goal is to continue to pursue a mindset of differentiation. It has always been a
part of my teaching philosophy to say that I believe every child deserves to learn in the way that
is most suited to them, but this is way more easily said than done. While I feel like I
accomplished a bit of successful differentiation in my classroom this semester, particularly with
the advanced class, there is still so much more that I could do for those students who need extra
help, or an extra push. Differentiation is truly a mindset, and I hope that it is one that I can
cultivate more and more in myself in order to meet the goals of my teaching philosophy and the
needs of every student.
On the whole, I am immensely grateful for the learning opportunities I had at Conrad
Ball. This school and its staff and students have inspired me to be the best teacher that I can be,
and looking back on this experience will always remind me of what it truly means to teach.