PSII Practicum

Reflection: Week 2
Jennifer Matosevic
March 15th, 2019.

This week, I found that the single, greatest lesson I learned about my development as a

teacher was that the context of every class that I teach is, and will be, different. I created a goal

sheet, where the students were to set SMART goals to achieve for this year’s festival season, and

I introduced it to every band class. When I collected the sheets at the end of the week, I found

that there were some classes where I received a high volume of them, and others where I only

received a few. I think that this could be because of the way that I introduced it. For the older

grades, I think I should have introduced it in a different way, maybe focusing on their musical

goals beyond high school. This is something that I will definitely consider for the next time that

I introduce goal setting in a music classroom. I think that recognizing this fact affected my

practise by making me more aware of how I will introduce concepts to different classroom

contexts throughout the remainder of my practicum and as I move into teaching.

A risk that I took this week was leading my Science 7 class in a lab experiment. This was

something that I was both nervous and excited to do because of the classroom management

aspects. I was really happy with the results of the lab and there were definitely aspects that I

would have changed about my classroom management, but I feel much more confident and I

absolutely consider planning another lab for a future lesson. Another risk that I took was

introducing a goal setting sheet to all of the band classes. I was nervous about this because I was

not sure how the students would respond to it, but I am really looking forward to going through

the ones that were handed in and seeing what goals the students have set. If I were to do this

again in another class, I would change some of the language on the sheet to make it more

accessible for the students.

 One of the goals I set last week was to continue to work on learning all of the student’s

names to help improve my classroom management. This week I have definitely learned more

names and I am starting to be more confident in calling students by name during class. In

Science 7, I have learned the names much faster than I have in the band classes, I think because

they have a fixed seating plan. This has really helped with my classroom management,

especially during the lab that the class did. With this goal, I believe that I am going to be

working on it throughout the duration of my practicum, but I am pleased with my progress to

date. My second goal was to focus on improving my conducting and fully integrating my left-

hand expressively to add to the right-hand pattern. I really worked on this goal this week by

practising at home in a mirror and trying different left-hand movements in the various band

rehearsals. I am going to continue to practise and try new conducting techniques throughout my

practicum, but I am really pleased with the progress that I made this week. Overall, I am really

happy with the progress that I made this week and all the different things I learned about myself

and my teaching.