Personal Reflection

For my second professional practice, I was placed at Moorebank High School which is a
semi-selective, co-educational public school based in south-west of Sydney which caters
for about 1078 students. Given the context of the school, I was expecting less behaviour
issues from a semi-selective school however, upon arriving at the school, I found the
students to be of similar nature to those at any other public school. The students across
the school were streamed into classes as per their academic abilities. I was allocated 3
classes to teach including a low-ability year 8 class, a mixed ability year 10 group and a
standard year 11 class who were second highest achievers of the standard Year 11
maths group. I found the year 8 and 10 group the most challenging in terms of behaviour
management. Although with the year 8 group such issues were expected, however some
of the behaviour issues faced with the year 10 group was unexpected and challenging.

A major key factor which arose during my practical being a able to show assertiveness
as a teacher and gaining of control a disruptive class. When I first began my practicum,
I found myself struggling with class control and behaviour management due to the soft
nature of my voice. During the first few lesson I found my mentor teacher intervening
during the lesson to regain the control of the class – which I found embarrassing to some
extent. In the early days of block teaching practice, I researched Essential Skills for
Classroom Management by Classroom Profiling (2019) and attempted to implement the
ten suggested principles in my teaching strategies. Towards the end of my practical, I
could regain control of the class simply with a few verbal and visual cues.

Another key factor was proving to my mentor teacher that his bottom year 8 class was
capable of achieving more than what he gave them credit for. I was shared between two
mentors and found one of the mentors frequently shutting down my ideas for the lesson
by claiming that his year 8 class was not capable of completing the task due to their
limited ability. Although most of the times I took his suggestions on board and changed
the lesson to his requirements, towards the end of the practical I started voicing my
opinion and insisted that I would like to try the the activity with the class. To my
mentor’s surprise the said activities was very popular with the class and had even the
disengaged students engaged in the activity- with one of them scoring the highest mark
in the task.

One of key highlights and a major turning point during the practical was developing
positive relationships with students and realising that I had earned the respect of the
students- which was pointed out by a casual teacher who was observing my lesson in
the absence of my mentor. Although there’s still room for improvement in terms of
behaviour management, it was satisfying to know that the students respected me as a
teacher and I could encourage positive behaviour by speaking to students individually
and holding them accountable for taking away learning opportunities from their friends
and classmates.

In terms of classroom management, which was one of the major challenges I faced
during my practical, I found that taking over the class mid-way through the teaching term
and that to for a short period of time did not give me an opportunity to trial all of the
management strategies which I would have liked to. I am a strong believer of a positive
management strategies which I found difficult to implement given the circumstances of
the practical. As a pre-service teacher I did not have access to Sentral (the student
management system) nor did I have an opportunity to give out merit certificates or make
positive phone calls home as a reward for positive behaviour. I was only provided a class
list midway through my practical, upon request, which allowed me to learn students
names and focus on their individual learning needs. I found my mentors constantly
pushing me to punish negative behaviour with negative consequences, in response to
which I tried to explain to them that I preferred to focus my teaching style on positive
reinforcement- away from controlling or authoritative nature of teaching. (Rogers, 2006)
Given the lack of resources, I practiced positive reinforcement in the most subtle manner
by acknowledging student who were on task or encouraging those who were distracted
or disruptive by showing confidence in the ability to complete the classwork. These
strategies were helpful, as I witnessed a few words of confidence turn misbehaving
students into engaged, high achieving students – especially for the junior classes.
However for senior classes, I noticed that not giving consequences for negative
behaviour resulted in chaos and more disruptions in the lessons to follow. After much
consideration, I have come to conclude that maybe negative consequences have been
the only behaviour management style that they are accustomed to thus explaining their
reluctance towards other management styles.

The practicum was definitely insightful in terms of teaching practices and determining
what works in the real classroom. I applied the theoretical studies from university to a
live classroom and found that theoretical applications are not always practical – a lot of
the times there are other factors affecting this application such as the engagement level
of the class and the day and time of the lesson. One such situation arose during my first
lesson with the year 10 group where I had planned a variety of activities ranging from a
meet and greet to an online quiz. While the meet and greet task worked like a charm
with the year 8 students , I found the year 10 students were extremely closed to the
idea and were disruptive throughout the task which called for me to end the task and
switch to something different. This unexpected change in lesson structure was noticed
and complimented by mentor as a recognised teaching technique.

I also faced some limitations in terms of operating in another teachers classroom. Firstly
I felt as though having their classroom teacher in room, the students still saw them as
the “authoritarian” of the class. Especially with one of the mentors, I found that having
the teacher in the class was a distraction itself, as students chose to liaise with him on
a friendly level whilst I was delivering the lesson. Furthermore, the students lacked
access to ICT devices which prevented me from incorporating ICT in my lessons and the
very few ICT tasks which I did incorporate in my lessons was shunned by students stating
they didn’t not have data to attempt the task.

I believe this experience will have a positive influence in shaping my career as a teacher
as I got to experience the dynamics of a class and appreciate that each day is different.
Where a strategy may not work on a particular day, it may be perfect for the same
class on another day. My mentors’ feedback was mostly focused on developing skills
and areas which I lacked in the classroom. In my attempt to perfect these skills, I have
gained professional knowledge and clarity regarding teaching as a profession.
Reference list:

Essential Skills for Classroom Management. (2019). Classroom Profiling. Retrieved from:
http://classroomprofiling.com/the-essential-skills-for-classroom-management/

Rogers, B. (2006). Cracking the hard class: Strategies for managing the harder than average
class. (2nd Ed.). London, UK: SAGE Publications.