Clinical Teaching Reflection

I performed a clinical teaching exercise with  Ross Martin, and Grace DeMarco for my education class. This is where we take over the class for a day and teach the class and lead discussion based on certain topics. The topic discussed in class was how to reform the inner city schools because, as of right now, the schools are failing and we are destroying the chances for students in these areas. Another topic discussed was the funding for schools and how there was a clear discrepancy between what is acceptable funding, and what is going on now.

The hardest part of this presentation was trying to lead them down the path I wanted them to take, without taking away their personal beliefs. To do this, we focused on national problems and issues that any person can relate to. This went along with the in class readings, but allowed for the students to keep their own personal bias when they thought about their own experiences.

I feel like we did a fairly good job when it came to sending messages to the students. I feel like we did a good job taking in a lot of options and picking out what was the best thing to do to tell the class the facts of the situations. It was hard to start a conversation, but that is part of leading a discussion like that, you have to be able to get students to want to talk about the issue. If they talk because they have to, there is a chance that you may receive  answers the students think you want to hear. I feel like the national scale discussion also let the students see how the problem effected them and not just a small portion of them.

I don't think that I was up to the standards that I hold myself too, because I held back a lot of personal input to help the students think about the questions we were asking. I feel that I started to become more confident and less introverted when I talked about the poverty trap, but I feel that I could have done a better job of conveying a message to the students.

This experience was good in that it  let me experience what it was like to lead that type of experience. It also really helped that I had two people that I could trust working with me. The hardest part was easily making the connection with the students at the start, but after that was made, I feel like it was a good presentation and discussion on inner city schools.