Classroom Observation Reflective Summary

Reflective Summary
Throughout my class lectures and discussions in many of my classes, I recall one of my professors accenting the fact that teachers need to be flexible in their schedule and need to conform to the changes that are associated with the career. Upon hearing this, I didn't accept this fact she was giving me and never associated the term, "teacher" and "flexible" together. Nevertheless, after my observations this semester in the classroom, I understand why you need to be flexible in the teaching profession. Every class I observed this semester was dissimilar from each other.
Some class’s harbored students who comprehended the material better, were ethnically diverse, special education, motivated and lazy students. Each time I observed, there were particular occasions that I had anticipated to occur and other instances that I was astounded. I found it intriguing to see how the teacher responded when something in the classroom did not go as planned and then observe them trying to not let it affect their teaching plan for the day. After my observations, I am self-assured and avid that I want to become a teacher and will be a good one at that.
As a teacher, I believe you need to set the tone of the classroom and let them know that you are in control. The medium or atmosphere of the classroom needs to be accepting and eager to learn. All of the classes that I observed had great classroom atmospheres. By saying “great classroom atmospheres", I mean that most of the students were attentive to the teacher, eager to learn, asking questions and that no one person in the class was omitted from the class discussion or the learning of that particular day. Being the "student observer", I was curious to see how the students would act toward me and treat me in their class. Infrequently, I caught a couple gawks during instruction from prying students. For the most part, I was much embraced in their classrooms, as they frequently asked me questions about their school work or of me in general. I remember my first observations, I was very nervous upon entering the classroom. After that day I always felt comfortable in the classroom.
During my observations, I never saw the teacher leave any students out of the lecture that they taught to their students that day. I was very impressed to see that no students were neglected, but instead were incorporated into the learning plan for that day and got a chance to ask questions of the teacher to help further their learning.
Throughout my time in the classrooms with different teachers, I observed many different lessons that each teacher was teaching to the students. Some of the lessons included daily math skills, reading tasks, and working together at recess to rescue a dog. One of the most important aspects of being a teacher is having a good teacher-student interaction. All of the classes I observed had a good interaction between the students and teachers.
As a future educator, I believe my biggest challenge will be trying to become flexible with my schedule and trying to motivate each student to learn and be active in class. Much of this depends on where I will be teaching, whether that is urban, rural, or city. I’ll address these challenges by becoming more organized and doing projects where participation is graded and required, so then each student will be learning and never feel left out.
My strengths include being very determined, goal driven, hard working, learning, good people skills and motivating others. I will use these strengths to the best of my ability when I have my own class in the future. I want to continue with my teaching and learning process and obtain my teaching certificate in the near future. After observing this semester, I realized that I would like to work with 5th grade students because I think I would respond better to them. These observations were very interesting and helped me better appreciate the teaching profession.