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Running Head: TEACHING PLATFORM

Teaching Platform
Abigail Still
University of South Florida

Running Head: TEACHING PLATFORM

As a future educator I am already starting to create a picture in my mind of how I plan to


manage my own classroom. I personally believe that classroom management should fall on both
the teacher and the students, and that both play a vital role in being responsible for how the
classroom is managed. This being said, I would like my classroom to feel as if there is an equal
balance of power between the teacher and his/her students. Respect and love should be expected
from both parties with no exceptions, if we do not do so how can we expect them to enjoy school
and want to learn from us. It is a lot easier to teach someone if they are open and willing to learn
and if they are excited to be in your classroom. I want my class to work together as one giant
family or team, and love one another, and I want us to utilize and embrace the different strands or
backgrounds that we all come from to make us better people. This can only happen if we are all
respect one another and our differences and learn to work well and accept our peers with open
minds. The picture below is a contract that my CT and her class created and signed, promising
that they would treat everyone with respect. I love this idea of holding them accountable to
being a good person. Making expectations clear right off the bat is a system that is important to
implement and encourage the specific wanted behavior from them, but I also believe that class
rules are a lot more useful when the students feel that they have a voice when it comes to putting
classroom rules in place.

Running Head: TEACHING PLATFORM

While blogging throughout my journey to becoming a teacher I have been able to reflect
on strategies I like, as well as ideas that stand out to me as practices I want to implement within
my future classroom. One classroom element that I have fallen in love with is the use of yoga
balls as a replacement for the traditional desk chair. Research has proven that, sitting on therapy
balls improved behavior and legible word productivity because kids are able to burn off excess
energy while bouncing on the ball.(Schilling, Washington, Billingsley, & Deitz). I saw this first
hand in my field experience, as the students in my collaborating teachers classroom are on task
for the most part of their days and she never seems to face any real behavioral issues. I love this
strategy because the students all seem to respond so positively to them and they see the use of
yoga balls as a privileged, so why the balls are awesome outlet for their energy I want my future

Running Head: TEACHING PLATFORM

students to understand that the balls are a responsibility and that they should be making smart
decisions while they are using them. Pictured below are students in my classroom sitting on
their yoga balls.

Setting specific roles and responsibilities are vital in creating a well-managed classroom.
As a teacher I would like the idea of having a set of job titles hanging up in my classroom; line
leader, desk checker, assistant, filer, board cleaner, trash collector, electrician, attendance, paper
passer, etc. Every Monday I would instruct my students to place their name on a job title,
picking a different job every week, and this would be their individual job that they would be
responsible for that week. I included a picture of the system my CT uses, in which each student
has a clothespin with their name on it, to move to the specific job that they wish to have that
week. This builds a team-like environment; through these jobs I would teach them that it takes
lots of hands and group collaboration to make the classroom run smoothly and efficiently. I also
like that this strategy holds each student accountable for a responsibility because throughout their

Running Head: TEACHING PLATFORM

lives they will be held accountable for every action they make or do not make, so this is a great
way to teach them responsibility.

Learning and experiencing different discipline strategies over this past semester I have
come to the conclusion that I will most likely have a cooperative discipline style of teaching
versus assertive or beyond disciple styles. I talked a lot about my preferred style of classroom
management specifically in one of my blog posts (http://abigailstill.weebly.com/blog/classroommanagement). I feel this way because I really like the concept of having students and teachers
working together as a team to create a code of conduct, as I stated before. I want my students to

Running Head: TEACHING PLATFORM

feel empowered and have a sense of belonging in our classroom and as their teacher I want to be
one of their main sources of encouragement. I will encourage them to strive to focus on their
own individual academic achievement, as well as encourage individuality as strength. I want to
instill in my students the importance of having attainment values, having an intrinsic desire to be
good at a task, and also to set mastery approach goals for themselves which allow them to
improve intellectually and develop competence (Bohlin, Cisero Durwin, Reese-Weber, 2009, p.
280.) Each of my students is going to be a completely different person, with different needs,
strengths, and weaknesses, but I want them to accept this as something positive and be able to
build and grow from their individual traits while also embracing and learning from our peers
traits.
Having daily formative assessments will definitely be something that I plan on
implementing within my own classroom. Exit tickets, class discussions, interactive activities,
lesson summaries, informal quizzes such as Kahoots are all strategies that I want to use to in
my classroom for my students to be able to demonstrate their comprehension of the lessons
content and objectives. I am grateful that I was able to implement a Kahoot activity with the
students for one of my observations which I blogged further about on my site;
http://abigailstill.weebly.com/blog/formal-observation. From collecting daily data with these
tools I will be able to see where my students stand with their knowledge on each lesson, using
this data I will be able to know what each student needs more help with or what they are
grasping with more ease. Of course I will have to use summative assessments as well, such as
unit tests, final projects and standardized state testing, but I would like to make these a generally
infrequent occurrence. With regards to unit tests, I would also like to give my students a chance
to earn partial credit back by making test corrections because I would like to give my students an

Running Head: TEACHING PLATFORM

opportunity to learn and reflect from their mistakes. With test corrections I would like for them
to re-write the question missed, re-answer it with an explanation of how they arrived to their new
answer, and a reflection on what they did wrong causing them to miss the question. I feel that
this will strengthen their critical thinking skills, while also allowing them to build off of their
mistakes.
I am so excited to build and grow as an educator over these next few years and I am so
ready to learn new strategies and ideas to help change the lives of students. One of my main
goals that I aspire to achieve in my career as a teacher is to be a role model in my students lives
and not only to encourage them to strive for their best in their academic careers but also to strive
to be the best person they can be in our society. I want to teach my students how to be loving,
smart, open-minded, question-asking individuals in society and to always know their worth.
Another goal that is very important to me is to ensure that I am doing everything I can to teach
my class to love school and love learning, I want them to look forward to coming into my class
and learning new things, I want them to have their own intrinsic motivation to learn and succeed
in academics. Over the next two years in this program I would love to learn how to make all
these goals a reality, it is so easy to put on paper but I know when I am in my own classroom it
will be a lot harder than I think. So I cannot wait to learn more through my experiences and see
how I will grow throughout my time in Cohort 3.

Running Head: TEACHING PLATFORM

References
Bohlin,L.,Durwin,C.C.,&ReeseWeber,M.(2009).EdPsych:Modules(2nded.).NewYork,
NY:McGrawHillHigherEducation.
Schilling,D.L.,Washington,K.,Billingsley,F.F.,&Deitz,J.(n.d.).ClassroomSeatingfor
ChildrenWithAttentionDeficitHyperactivityDisorder:TherapyBallsVersusChairs|
AmericanJournalofOccupationalTherapy.RetrievedNovember17,2016,from
http://ajot.aota.org/article.aspx?articleid=1869415
http://abigailstill.weebly.com/blog/classroommanagement
http://abigailstill.weebly.com/blog/formalobservation

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