Reflective Memo

EDEL 630 Student Teaching/Practicum

Huda Matto
26/2/2018
Teaching is my passion and I feel extremely satisfied with every successful lesson. I
like to help the society, and teaching gives me a great opportunity to do so. I am
passionate about educating my students, so I work with them and motivate them to
lead them to find inspiration in learning. I use different strategies to engage them and
share with them the knowledge.

As a teacher, I believe that I play a crucial role in the success of every learning
process. To guarantee that learning will take place, I make sure to create a learning
environment that is relevant to the students’ background. Throughout my teaching
experience, I learned how to love my students, know them and gain their trust upon
growing their independence and intrinsic motivation. I use their prior knowledge and
experiences as a base to connect them to the concept they learn in class in order to
guarantee the transfer of what is learned in school to real-life situations.

I have learned a lot about myself throughout my life. I learned how to be independent,
successful and responsible for my own choices and decisions. As a teacher, I have
acquired many useful skills, techniques, and knowledge, which allowed me to
confidently pass them along to my students. I always thought that the students’
education was my top priority and only responsibility. Most of the time, I succeeded
in achieving my teaching goals, but other times there was something that fogged my
mind and gave me the feeling of dissatisfaction. I came to know later on that this
feeling was ignorance. I was passionate to get my students engaged in the learning
process and help them gain meaningful knowledge that would help them relate and
use in their future experiences.

The most surprising thing that happened to me through the certification process is
how far I have come in my ability to write reflective memos. Another aspect that I
found surprising in myself was my ability to encourage my students to reflect upon
the past learning experiences and take the opportunity to use those experiences for
current ones. My students are now capable to reflect on their learning, cognitive and
emotional experiences.
I am so proud that my students became more engaged in the learning process and
gained the habit of metacognition. They make more sense of the word problems,
investigate, ask questions, share their thinking, and suggest solutions. They have the
ability to monitor their own work through continuous reflection. Passing the habit of
reflection to my students, added meaning to the context I teach.

Reflection during the practicum experience gave me the opportunity to improve my

teaching due to my engagement in professional learning. I am glad that I had a lesson
observation by Dr. Alain because he increased my awareness of how to improve the
teaching-and-learning situation. He was able to observe the lesson structure, the
classroom management, the teaching strategies, student-and teacher interaction and
even the pith of my voice. He was so precise when commented on the strengths and
weakness of the lesson, what went well and why, and what did not work well and
why? He was concerned about different things, such as the peer evaluation, so he
suggested some changes and alternatives. The observation’s feedback has already
influenced the way I plan and teach. Reflecting on my work helped me improve my
teaching strategies and gain the ability to schedule plans that respond to the students’
needs. In my opinion, class observation is one of the most successful strategies that is
being used in the practicum course to support teachers. I believe that AUD has formed
an enthusiastic teaching and learning community through the observation strategy. I
am looking forward to the next class visit armed with new targets for further
development.

I learned a tremendous amount of information and experiences since my enrollment in

the ME program. I learned to be flexible, remain open to continuous learning, and
improve my career. I am also learned about the importance of time and about the
importance of education in our life. I believe that reflection during the practicum
experience will motivate, help me to gain a better understanding and deepen my
learning.

During my learning experience in AUD, I had the opportunity to re-skill myself and
learn new strategies to support my mission as a teacher. Recently, the Practicum
course has helped me live an authentic experience by transferring my learning and
understanding into reality. I share knowledge, experience, and communication, which
increase my awareness in a way to understand the change and implement new ways of
teaching. I came to believe that learning is better through critical reflection. As
described by Mezirow (1997), “Transformative learning occurs when individuals
change their frames of reference by critically reflecting on their assumptions and
beliefs and consciously making and implementing plans that bring about new ways of
defining their worlds (Hatherley, 2011).

Teaching requires patience, which is something that I gained through my time as a

teacher. People think it is an easy job but that is not true. Not everyone can have the
willpower and patience to do what I do. It also takes determination and a good skill
set to teach the students. They need you to give them your 100% in effort, energy, and
enthusiasm. Through my time as a teacher, I can confidently say that I give that 100%
every day and I cannot imagine doing another profession other than teaching. I
believe it is my purpose in life and I hope that my students take the knowledge I
taught them to increase their skill set and broaden their mind to see things differently.
Bibliography
Hatherley, R. J., 2011. Mezirow's Transformative Learning Theory. s.l.:Athabasca
University.