Professional Practice 3

102095 Secondary PP3 Self Reflection Form

Pre-service Teacher Details

Pre-service Teacher Name: Pre-service Teacher ID:

Hannah Taylor 17494771
Pre-service Teacher Phone Number: Pre-service Teacher Email Address:
04 5067 9506 17494771@student.westernsydney.edu.au

Placement Details: If you haven’t complete 60 hours face to face you must provide a detailed statement of
how your experience meets the outcomes for Professional Practice 3. Attach evidence.

Placement Name: Placement Phone Number:

Arthur Phillip High School 02 9635 8638
Placement Address: Placement Email Address:
Macquarie St. Parramatta NSW 2150 N/A
Contact Person:
Zaynab Siddiqi

Describe in 500-800 WORDS any features and benefits of the setting you attended. Consider number of
students, location details, age of students, types of educational programs offered and any other salient
aspects of the experience. Consider how this experience will contribute to your development as a beginning
teacher.

AITSL Standards

The criteria for pre-service teacher reflection focus, the first, second, third and sixth standards.
● 1.3 Students with diverse linguistic, cultural, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds
● 1.5 Differentiate teaching to meet the specific learning needs of students across the full range of
abilities
● 2.2 Content selection and organisation
● 3.1 Establish challenging learning goals
● 6.3 Engage with colleagues and improve practice

Subsidiary questions:
What surprised you about your learning in your community setting?
What research about communities did you engage with before you commenced?
Why were you surprised about your learning?
What goals did you set for yourself in your service learning activities?
In what ways were you communicating with your community participants?
What do you believe the participants in your service learning project learned?
What did you learn? How will the experience shape you as a teacher in a classroom?
How would you help someone else learn what you discovered?
  
I found my time at Arthur Phillip High School to be enlightening for me both personally and professionally.
The school environment was drastically different to my own high school experiences, and my interactions
with the students and the school community in general encouraged me to reflect on my teaching goals
and life perspective.

The students at Arthur Phillip came from a large variety of cultural backgrounds, and many of these
students spoke English as a second or third language. I had researched this about the school before my
first tutoring session began, but I was still surprised at what the reality of that meant to my teaching in
both PP3 and PP2. The language barrier that ensued really encouraged me to construct my lessons
carefully, as I could not assume they would understand complex language or metaphors. In particular I
discovered that while my students may be able to chat fluently in English, that did not mean that they
would be able to use the correct terminology to discuss a poem or research civil rights movements. This
made me focus on not only the content I was trying to communicate, but the very words I was using to
teach the broader concepts. Several of my students were highly proficient in their first language but
struggled in English, and this was a timely reminder for me that just because they could not articulate their
responses in English did not mean they could not answer the question intellectually.

Each week my students came to me for homework or assignment help, or general course help, and each
week I was able to see that they were improving. One student in particular came to my first lesson with an
essay draft almost entirely plagiarised from Wikipedia. Together we removed the plagiarism and worked
on a new essay. During my last tutoring session, she showed me her second draft for a different subjects
essay, and was proud to tell me that she hadn’t plagiarised a single thing. I was very proud of her in that
moment, as she had grown as a learner and done an exceptional job researching her topic. I was also
happy for myself in that moment, as my goal through this placement had been to change one of my
students academic lives genuinely for the better. Seeing her achieve made the previous weeks of
correcting syntax feel successful, and made me realise that no student is a lost cause – they just need
patience and encouragement.

During the debrief meetings after every session, my peers and I would swap notes on what had proven to
be effective that week. Through this I was able to share that my students responded well to having a few
minutes of general chat before I started the lesson, as it allowed them to engage with me and build
rapport. A peer was able to share that he found dropping pop culture references helpful both in keeping
students attention and in relating complex topics to understood ideas. Another peer encouraged me to
brush up on my biology knowledge, as he knew several students were coming to tutoring that week
needing help. That lesson was particularly rewarding, as I used strategies I remember my sciences teachers
using to help my new students understand the topic.

Through my experience on PP3 I hoped I would be able to meaningfully and genuinely change a student’s
academic life for the better. I know I was able to achieve this as I saw several students receive marks they
did not think possible of themselves, and saw others understand ideas and topics that they thought were
too hard at first. I also wanted to gain a better understanding of teaching ESL students and differentiating
lesson plans. I found that while the initial lessons were at times difficult for me to teach, they were also
some of the more rewarding lessons to reflect on. I believe I now have a far greater understanding of what
it means to differentiate a lesson, especially for ESL students.

I really enjoyed my time at Arthur Phillip, and would encourage any pre-service teacher who wanted to
genuinely help students to do this program.

This form is to be completed and submitted to the ​notes/docs​ section of your profile within InPlace