EDU375 Fall 2006

My Reflections on CTEs and Students' Course Reflections

Teaching EDU375 for the first time as a first-year faculty is like driving in the dark. The lights on your car only help you see this much ahead. I am grateful that Dr. Kim Rombackh and Prof. Karen Hempson shared with me their great teaching ideas and assignment projects. I read a lot of books besides textbooks and borrowed ideas from each of them as the semester went on. With a syllabus in hand, I started, keeping in mind that flexibility is an important component in effective instruction. Students' levels, needs, interests, and expectations were taken into consideration as I planned each lesson.

At the midpoint of the first semester, I conducted a mid-term evaluation with both sections of EDU 375 students. Here are their evaluation samples. EDU 375-601 Fall 2005 Midterm Evaluation and EDU 375-602 Fall 2005 Midterm Evaluation. Reading the mid-term evaluations was a learning experience for me. Students reported reading assignments and course load were too much and I was a harsh grader. I revisited my course syllabus and opened up a discussion in class with students. While I made efforts to make this course rigorous, I was willing to adjust reading assignments for the remainder of the semester and increased group activities that helped enhance students' learning experiences.

For example, the Community Diversity Analysis Paper assignment was greatly facilitated by the peer review activity, during which students got a chance to read others' paper and help their peers revise the paper according to a shared rubric. In their papers, I could tell clearly that most students analyzed the diversity in the classroom they observed and understood that diversity comes in a variety of forms and it is the teacher's responsibility to address diversity issues in classroom.

The final course CTE from the two sections I taught differed from each other to a certain degree that I began to reflect on my behaviors and performance in two different sections. The Adjusted Mean for EDU375-601 was 4.33 and that for EDU375-602 was 4.73. I did find a group of students in one section required much more motivation than the other section. In the future I would consider applying motivating activities to such learners in my class.

In this Student Recommendation 1, Ashley Spiak wrote about my teaching in this course from her perspective to support my reappointment application.