Teaching+Rationale

As a teacher I feel that one of the most important things to do is to create a “safe” learning environment. We need to create a classroom environment that the students feel comfortable to ask questions and talk through their difficulties. If we do not create a “safe” learning environment our students will never feel comfortable enough to ask questions in class. If students feel that if they ask a “dumb” question they will get teased by other students they will never correct the misconceptions they have about certain topics. In chemistry in particular the material tends to build on itself and if a student has trouble with the material in the beginning it only gets harder. This is why it is so important to create a classroom environment that the students feel comfortable asking question and know that there is no such thing as a “dumb” question. One way to do this is to get the students to be involved in the discussion and have students answer each others questions when possible. I will arrange my classroom to have the desks in groups so that the students are sitting with their peers which will help them to feel comfortable and helps to create a support system with their classmates. Also, in the beginning of the year I plan on having my student create the classrooms rules. By doing this my students will understand the classroom rules and feel that they are fair because they thought of them. One other problem that exists in teaching high school chemistry is that many students are required to take the class and have no interest in chemistry. This makes it difficult to connect to the students because they have no initial interest in the topic. It also creates the problem of motivation because if the student is not interested in the topic they may be unmotivated to learn the material. A teacher must be able to motivate his/her students, especially the students who are not initially interested in the topic. There are many different ways that I plan on motivating my students. One of which is to keep my students actively involved in the class. I can do this by getting the students involved in the discussions and doing laboratory experiments. In a chemistry class laboratory experiments are required in the class which makes it easy to get students involved. I will also connect my class to real world scenarios when I can. This is essential because many students are always thinking, “why do I need to learn this? I’m never going to use this.” If we as teachers can connect our class to the real life it can be so beneficial to our students because they will know that there will be times when they will need to know the information that I am teaching and it will motivate them to pay attention. Motivation is huge in getting the students to pay attention in class; just as important is teaching to the different types of learnings. There are many different kinds of learners (auditory, visual, and kinesthetic) and in our class we may have students of all learning styles. We must vary our teaching techniques to connect to all of the students in our class; in other words we cannot lecture every day. I do plan on lecturing but not as the only means of teaching, there are a vast amount of educational chemistry videos that would be great to show in class. Also I plan on doing many experiments and projects. These projects will also help the students to see how chemistry connect to the real world.