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Courtney Krueger

Professor Aria

Behavior Observation in Education

April 29 2019

Best Practices Paper

During my observations at Mendham Township Elementary school, I observed a lot of

great lessons and teaching, but one moment that really stood out to me was how the teacher I

observed handled students that struggled. Before my observations even started, my teacher sat

down with me and explained to me some of his philosophy of teaching and education, and one

thing that I really took note of is when he said, “For every bad thing about a student, every flaw,

everything they struggle with, there is a good thing, something they excel at”. He explained to

me how he believed that every student has strengths and weaknesses and highlighting the

strengths can help them improve on their weaknesses, which is something I constantly saw him

demonstrate in the classroom.

There was this one kid in the class, let’s call him Bobby. The teacher explained to me

how Bobby was a really great kid, but is the youngest student in the class and struggles with his

writing. It is hard for him to put words together and spell them correctly, but he has amazing

communication skills. While doing a writing prompt, you could see Bobby was struggling, 7

minutes into the writing time, he had yet to put a word on his paper. The teacher walked up to

him and asked him what was up, Bobby claims that he couldn’t do it, but the teacher insisted he

could. He told him how sometimes starting is the hardest part, so he gave him a starting sentence

and told him to go from there. He then asked him what was the first thought that popped into his
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head after the starting sentence, he then told him to elaborate on that. Once got started, Bobby’s

ideas really started flowing and he wrote 3 whole pages.

This to me was a really big teaching moment because the student was struggling, and the

teacher guided him and also reminded him him of his strength, which was talking. In asking him

to explain outloud what his thought process was, it helped him to sort out his ideas and then

beginning writing. For students who are not strong in writing, staring at a blank piece of paper

can be overwhelming, which is why taking it step by step was beneficial to him. This is why he

gave him a starting sentence to give him a little nudge. The teacher could have given up on him,

accepting that he is not strong at writing and couldn’t do it. But instead the teacher motivated

him and helped him reach his potential, which I think is one of the main goals as a teacher. This

was a great reminder that every student is capable of so much more than they let themselves to

believe. And how important it is to focus on students strengths and guide them to use those to

improve on things they struggle with.