EDU375 Spring 2006

My Reflection on CTEs and Students' Course Reflections

When I started to teach EDU 375 in spring semester, I cut down PowerPoint presentations during instructions. Instead, I increased group activities and discussions. Students had more opportunities to present their group discussion highlights and they gained more practice presenting ideas and demonstration lesson plans. Primary and secondary sources are important in this course. In spring, 2006, I had all students go to the library and checked out Jackdaw kits to learn important information on a topic of their choice. I continuted with most of the coures assignments in this course. One of the course assignments I changed is the Learning Log. In fall, 2005, students shared that the Learning Log entries should have a clear structure and reflection questions should be assigned before they began to write into their Logs. Spring 2006, I used five reflection essays for students to share their insights on the assigned chapters and articles and demonstrated lesson plans.

Please click here for a sample of EDU 375 Spring 2006 Course Reflections. Students also wrote recommendation letters to support my reappointment application. Please click here for Student Recommendation 2 and Student Recommendation 3.

The CTEs of the two sections I taught in spring 2006 still differed from each other. I knew exactly what happened this time. I almost predicted the results of the CTEs. One section's adjusted mean was 4.10 and the other section's adjusted mean was 4.76. Due to the bonding experiences I had with students at the Raquette Lake in February 2006, I felt that my relationship with students was better than the first year when I taught this course. Students in one section, though, took advantage of this relationship and did not want to "go the extra mile" to achieve excellence. It was my fault that I sometimes couldn't help comparing them. Although I never shared my evaluations of these two sections in class directly, I could have easily implied that in many ways. For example, when students presented their lesson plans, I encouraged them to incorporate multimedia into instruction. One class accepted this suggestion so positively and used multimedia in their lesson plan presentations. Yet, the other class did not accept this suggestion readily. Instead, they read the notes on their PowerPoint slides and their presentations were not as effective as those of the other class. Please review the students comments on CTEs for these two sections and help me come to an alternative interpretation of my performance in the course.

I will watch for my evaluation of the students in two different sections if I get to teach two sections again in the fall of 2006. How I get across my expectations in a strategic way is a challenge for me, who always has high expectations for her students. At the same time, I continue to teach this course so that its rigor gets retained and goals achieved.

A couple of students commented on the clarity of the assignment instruction. I spent hours this summer to work on instructions of the assignments. For each assignment, I explained what they are expected to do and how it would be evaluated. I uploaded the assignments on WebCt with an example for each assignment. For new assignments that the course has never had before, I will discuss with students to make sure they understand what to do. Before I officially assign a task, I always make sure students understand what they are expected to do.

Students' reflections of the course showed that they prefer that I assign the unit plan earlier in the semester. In fall 2006, I will start assigning the unit plan in the fourth week of the semester. By the end of the fourth week, cooperative groups will be formed so that students could start working together.

I look forward to teaching this course again in fall 2006.