Going Forward into Teaching

Discuss your strengths and areas for continued growth as a future teacher based on the student teaching experiences in Seoul.
At this point in my teaching career I fear that I have far more places for continued growth rather than strengths at this point. I think a strength I have in the classroom is creating lessons that integrate different media, games, and student involvement. I try to make social studies fun. It is the least popular subject in the U.S. despite the American interest in history and current affairs. I want to show students that history can be fun and there is always more to be discovered. Another strength I have in the classroom is my willingness to admit that I don't know it all. I had a student who was extremely good at devising questions I was completely unable to answer in class. At first I was unnerved by this but then I viewed it as a learning experience for us all. If we had time at the end of class I would look up the answer on the internet or look it up after class and tell the students during our next lesson. I want students to know that its OK not to have all the answers, no one does and no one ever will. Its good to be able to admit you don't know something, then you are giving yourself an opportunity to learn something new.
Some areas I need to improve are my lecturing skills. I tend to rely on the PowerPoint slides and my notes to give lectures. I wish I was so familiar with my subject area that I could just tell the story of history in a much more interesting way. I also need to improve my lessons my adding more diversity into them. I would like to come up with new ways to get students engaged with history and "doing history" through investigations and web quests. There are so many fun activities out there to do in a history classroom I hope that in the future I can integrate some of them into my teaching. I should always try to remember to continue learning my subject area so that I demonstrate to students that learning is a lifelong pursuit.

Activities of the Week