David Kass 18567377

Personal Reflection

My Professional Placement has proven challenging. I was placed at Miller Technology High School,

teaching Mandatory Technology to a year 8 class and Automotive Technology to years 10 and 11. My

previous placement was at a selective school (Hurlstone Agricultural High School) where behaviour

management was a non-issue. Off-task behaviour was the worst behaviour Hurlstone students

would exhibit. I also had it easy at Hurlstone, in hindsight, in regard to programming because I was

teaching three classes the same Unit of Work and it was almost exclusively practical because the

students had not had a teacher who could teach practical for a term or more – they had been doing

textbook work until I arrived. Once I had the practical work in motion, lessons required little to no

preparation.

Coming to Miller was a different story. Being a regular school, I had normal behaviour management

issues I wasn’t prepared for, as well as programming being required of me which was far from

straightforward, not least due to my lack of access to the School database and arriving part way

through Units of Work. Over the course of the prac, I had several different mentoring teachers, some

of whom gave valuable and worthwhile feedback, others who gave little to no feedback. Some of my

classes had work left for them which was essentially designed for a casual to deliver – it was

inflexible and sometimes not enough work to keep the students occupied.

Only in the final week at Miller did I feel as though I was getting a handle on what I was doing. In

weeks five and six of my seven week prac, I felt particularly discouraged about my career choice as a

teacher, but the last week was so much better that it didn’t stick. My prac, originally only six weeks,

was extended by a week at the request of my supervising teacher because I was having difficulty.

I am going to discuss my three most pivotal learning experiences. Most of my development occurred

during the last week. In the fifth week, my mentoring teacher’s mother died, so she wasn’t able to

continue coming to school. During the remaining two weeks, the Deputy took over mentoring me
 David Kass 18567377

when he had time to spare from his duties. In the end, this was only five classes but it was with his

guidance that I made greatest progress.

On Wednesday of the sixth week I had a practical lesson with my year 11 Automotive class. I was

having students complete a simple project using sheet metal. The emphasis was on demonstrating

techniques precisely and the creation of a short portfolio showcasing the tools and skills used.

Although I prepared the necessities for the practical component, there were areas that were lacking.

Some tools I didn’t have enough of for every student in the class at the same time, which disrupted

the lesson flow, particularly at the beginning. Even though this lesson was reasonably good, my

supervising teacher had a lot of things to comment upon and I learned the level of scrupulous

preparation that he applies to his practical classes. He guided me through the preparation for my

next class (year 8), who were making a wooden pencil box. He also went through how I ought to

handle packing up at the end of the lesson. The lesson I was preparing for didn’t turn out as well as it

should but I learned the value of preparing scrupulously for practical classes and saw the benefit said

preparation has for organisation.

The lesson I delivered the next day was a double and the first practical lesson I had delivered to year

8 and was not as effective as I had hoped, but not because of any lack of preparation. Previously I

had team-taught woodwork lessons with my other mentoring teacher. Working with such young

students, I felt I needed to explain the processes they were carrying out in great detail. This blew out

into me giving 45 minutes of instruction before anyone began work. Less than a dozen nails were

hammered in that lesson. For the next practical lesson with year 8 I changed all this. Preparation was

the same and was once again effective. It was only a single period but I made my instruction at the

beginning of the lesson quick (less than ten minutes). The students who I wasn’t working directly

with stayed on task and many times more work got done than in the previous double. This was the

first lesson in which I felt as though I had it together and my mentoring teacher’s feedback said the
 David Kass 18567377

same. The things I still had to work on were only organisational details to make the lesson run a little

smoother.

Lastly, I am going to discuss my most challenging class. Of twenty students in my year 10 Automotive

class, only two had any interest in working on cars. I was told this is normally the silver bullet for

behaviour management – students who are disengaged with school will have at least a passing

interest in cars and in an Automotive class will stay on task. Not so for this class. With this class, I

learned the most about making consequences for unacceptable behaviour known and following

through. I also worked at this class from the opposite direction. I chose some of the students who

would lead the class in off-task behaviour and general misbehaviour and gave extra attention to

building positive relationships with these students inside and outside class. It is a well-established in

teaching research that positive student-teacher relationships promote student engagement (Akers,

2017, Engels, et al, 2016, Flynt, Brozo, 2009, Conner, Pope, 2013, Lee, 2012, Quin, 2017). I feel as

though I only got through to this class properly at the very end of the prac. In week 7 I had a very

bad lesson in which, on one occasion I ended up shouting at the class, which was less than ideal, and

then kept most of the class in at lunchtime for more than 10 minutes. The following lesson with this

class was my last lesson of the whole prac. It was a practical lesson and I laid out very clear

consequences for behaving unsafely in the workshop. The students were comparatively golden and I

didn’t need to remove a single student from the workshop. At the end I told them it had been our

best class together and also it was our last class together. The students thanked me and shook my

hand. It was very sweet.

Although I had difficulties, I learned a lot on Professional Practice.

 David Kass 18567377

Bibliography
Akers, Ruth. (2017). A Journey to Increase Student Engagement. Technology and Engineering
Teacher, February 2017, 28-32.

Engels, Maaike C., Colpin, Hilde, Van Leeuwen, Karla, Bijttebier, Patricia, Van Den Noortgate, Wim,
Claes, Stephan, Goossens, Luc, Verschueren, Karine. (2016). Behavioral Engagement, Peer Status,
and Teacher–Student Relationships in Adolescence: A Longitudinal Study on Reciprocal Influences.
Journal of Youth and Adolescence, Volume 45, 1192–1207.

Flynt, E. Sutton, Brozo, William G. (2009). It’s all About the Teacher. The Reading Teacher, March
2009, 536-538.

Conner, Jerusha O., Pope, Denise C. (2013). Not Just Robo-Students: Why Full Engagement Matters
and How Schools Can Promote It. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, Volume 42, 1426–1442.

Lee, Jung – Sook. (2012). The effects of the teacher–student relationship and academic press on
student engagement and academic performance. International Journal of Educational Research,
Volume 53, 330–340.

Quin, Daniel. (2017). Longitudinal and Contextual Associations Between Teacher–Student

Relationships and Student Engagement: A Systematic Review. Review of Educational Research, April
2017, Vol. 87, No. 2, 345–387.