~Educators demonstrate a broad knowledge base and an understanding of areas they teach~
One thing that I continually take pride in is my preparation and planning for each of my classes which then leads to my broad knowledge base about the areas I teach. This practicum I taught grade 11 & 12 English, and grade 9 Social Studies. As an English major, English Language Arts is a class that I am very confident teaching as I have a many resources and ideas to pull from. I make sure to prepare myself for anything that I am not as familiar with far in advance – I spent my own time, before practicum began, reading The Great Gatsby, Of Mice and Men, Kite Runner, and Three Day Road so that I could give the students the best experience reading these books as novel studies. I made sure to go through each book thoroughly in order to find all the important questions, quotes, characters, themes, motifs, and literary styles used. I believe the more comfortable and confident a teacher is with the material they are teaching, the more students will gain from their experience. While teaching grade 11 & 12 English, I also made sure to reacquaint myself with poetry, literary styles and structures, short stories, and plays. Although this is a diverse and broad amount of information within the scope of English, I made sure I was extremely familiar with the content and material to set myself up for success.
For my Socials 9 class, I spent hours doing my own personal research about Syilx and Okanagan history and culture. It was very important to me that students were exposed to their local culture in a way that was engaging and well-structured so that they would have a good experience. I spent hours going through resources and books found at the OKM library, the Kelowna Public Library, and many of the local Kelowna museums. Not only did I end up learning lots about the Syilx’s peoples history, I learned lots about Kelowna’s heritage.
Not only does upholding standard 6 help students have the best academic experience possible, but it allows teachers to engage in life long learning.