Petr Holubar

Trish Engelhardt
April 23, 2016

Practicum Reflection
As my semester at the Rocky Mountain High School (RMHS) is coming to an end, I am
full of new impressions, experiences and ideas about what it means to be an educator. This has
been so far the most hands-on experience of my teacher licensure program at Colorado State
University, I have been an integral part of planning and instruction in my class, but most
importantly, I have been a part of the culture, the fabric that makes this particular class work.
These young adults are an inspiring group, a considerate, smart group, I have no doubt that my
students will accomplish amazing things in their future.
I have also had an amazing experience with my cooperating teacher Joshua Ring. Mr. Ring
creates a challenging but caring atmosphere in his class - students know that a lot is required of
them, but they also know they will receive guidance along the way. Mr. Ring brings a witty sense
of humor to his class, undoubted expertise and professionalism, after years of teaching, he gets
excited about the material and he loves being in the classroom.
With each semester of practicum, I get more and more optimistic and excited about
teaching and this semester was not any different. Being in the classroom charges me with energy,
talking to my students is fascinating and invigorating, preparing the lesson material is fun (and
more time consuming than I ever imagined), at the risk of this sounding like a cliche - Im having
the time of my life.

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I also learned that all that energy needs to be structured and reined in a bit - I need a
skeleton lesson plan in front of me at all times so I dont get lost in one particular point. I always
expect the students to be excited about the same things as I am, which isnt always the case. I
learned a lot about myself in the classroom - I learned that I am not a mind reader and neither
are my students - clear communication, expectations and explanations are key to success. I am
amazed how much time it can take to set up an exercise or a project. The lead time into a project
is very important - thats when a good teacher explains the What Why When and How, it is at
the same time a sales pitch, a declaration and a negotiation with the class. It is also the time I
tend not to budget in my lesson plans. Mr. Ring explained it to me very well - Us teachers tend
to make the mistake of assuming we are teaching a bunch of like-us-minded people. What he
means is that him and I might not need convincing that studying world cultures is necessary to be
a proficient speaker of a world language, but our students often do.
The same must be said about measuring achievement - my students dont necessarily have
the same expectations for themselves as I do. Meeting the students where they are at is harder
than it might appear and I had to constantly remind myself about the class proficiency level so
that I would not overwhelm them. The last thing I want is my students to shut down simply
because the task is not appropriate for their language skills. However, I want to push my students
and challenge them so that they dont become complacent - finding the balance is something that
I will closely monitor and strive for during student teaching.
Part of measuring students achievement is also engagement, participation and drive to
learn more. It is always a good day when the class is humming with conversation, when we sing
as a group, when we exercise or dance, when we have fun leaning. I think weve been having a

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very productive and very lively semester and I hope that I contributed to that. I think I have
helped to motivate these students to continue with Spanish in the future.
My teaching philosophy has evolved during this semester as well. Big part of it has to do
with the organizational and planning aspect of teaching. Having to prepare 90 minute lessons, I
couldnt simply rely on a textbook or a general theme, it helped me tremendously to make a time
budget for each activity. Another important aspect of my teaching philosophy will also be to align
it with the culture and philosophy of the school where I teach. This may seem contra intuitive
since it is my philosophy, but my classroom does not exist isolated from the rest of the school and
it has to correlate with it.
I had virtually zero classroom management issues this semester. This is of course due to the
culture that Mr. Ring established and also the nature of all members of the class, it happened to
be a phenomenal group of individuals. I like the classroom physical set up - tables of four - that
turns the room into small groups, which are easy to manage and also allow for differentiations or
modifications if needed. I dont expect all my classes to be this way, but this was, in a way, a nice
confidence booster.
There are several teaching strategies that had worked well for me this semester, they can all
be categorized as variations of either KWL (I like to use this strategy every lesson, wether or not
it is formal or informal), RAFT (I absolutely love the Role part of this writing assignment) and I
also like the Frayer model for vocabulary exercises.
KWL is the base of what we do as teachers - we assess what our students know, we establish
where we need to get to and then assess if we actually got there. I mentioned that I use this in
both formal and informal way, I will have a lot more face to face time with my students during

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student teaching which will allow for more informal application of this strategy. By virtue of the
time we will spend together, it will become easier to assess where my students are academically.
RAFT and its variations allow me to manipulate a seemingly ordinary topics and turn them
into engaging and fun stories. I can choose to assign either one of the four components (role,
audience, form, topic) and it will dramatically change the students perspective, allow them to use
a different vocabulary register, think creatively, practice various modes and types of
communication. Id like to develop my own library of great RAFT assignments to build on
successes.
Finally the Frayer model forms multiple connections to a single concept, but it is time
consuming so I dont necessarily want to use it for large amounts of new vocabulary. It is suitable
for grammatical concepts and cultural units. This teaching strategy has the biggest chance of
success reaching all types of learners.
I will not be student teaching at a school on the 90 minute block and I fully expect to have
an even more time management requirements than I have had at RMHS. I am staying flexible
and open minded to new strategies and ideas. Each school that I have had the chance to visit
taught me a different skill and showed me a slightly different view point on education. RMHS
and my cooperating teacher Mr. Ring showed me the reality of a school that is based on
principles of respect and trust, that believes in integration of all students, engagement in extra
curricular activities, high academic expectations and most of all, high moral expectations. I have
had a tremendous semester and enjoyed my time at RMHS, I built lasting relationships with the
staff and students and I know I want to be back in the future.

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