Administrative Panel-Some New Advice For Success

            I thought it was really great that the administrators took such a long time out of their busy day to speak to us. I left that class with a lot of knowledge, reassurance, and advice to help me today and in the future. I was actually able to take two pages of notes stating some of the things that the administrators said to us. I will not go off on a tangent explaining every phrase that I was able to write down however, I do want to elaborate on a couple of points that were made.

            Something that was said that really stuck out to me was that it’s okay to make mistakes. As a college student who wants to be a teacher I am afraid to make mistakes. I think that any mistake I make when I get a job could potentially ruin my career. Getting a job is extremely competitive and I think having the reassurance that it’s okay to make mistakes as long as I grow from them and think, “What can I do next time” is very helpful and a relief. The next step is to actually work on improving from my mistakes (obviously), which could be asking for help, looking up other lessons, or even talking to my students. I also connected this statement with the able vs. willing graph that Mr. Laplante drew on the board. I agree with this diagram and will strive to be able but will most importantly to be willing to improve and do my best as a teacher.

            Another point, which I was unaware of before listening to this panel, was that the risk zone is where most learning takes place. It did remind me of Vygotsky’s Zone ofProximal Development and it made me think of how I learn. I never thought of learning in a risk zone to be the way we learn best because I would have thought that learning takes place in a comfort zone. However, I do see that most learning will occur in a risk zone. The way I think of it now is that students need to be challenged in order to learn and that the risk zone is where students are challenged but not extremely overwhelmed or unaware, like the danger zone. It also makes me think of times where I have tried learning advanced material that I do not have any prior knowledge. I am not learning because it is too difficult and confusing for me. I need outside resources such as the Internet or other texts for extra help so that I am out of the danger zone and can actually learn. When I create my two lesson plans for this class I want to observe what zone the students I teach are in. This will be the first time that I will be teaching high school students and it will be interesting to see if maximum learning is achieved.

            These are just a couple of points that I really liked from the presentation last Tuesday. I really enjoyed listening to the administrators speak and it was great to hear their own personal stories while they spoke to us. I also am very thankful that they took time out of their day to speak to us!