Natasha Lyons
Appalachian State University
Bachelor of Science: Elementary Education
Concentration: Math, Science, and Technology
 

I teach to inspire students. I want to inspire students to want to learn and want to grow in their learning to become a well-rounded citizen. I get pure enjoyment out of seeing where a student started and then see where they ended when they left my classroom. Seeing how my students minds are growing and changing to further their knowledge on a particular content area shows me as the teacher that I am helping them learn and grow. I love to see the excitement on my students' faces when they are really able to grasp a new concept and understand what the concept means for them in their everyday life because it shows me that they are excited about growing in their learning. I teach more than math, science, language arts, and social studies. I teach skills that are transferable to the students’ everyday life. I teach students to take the content that they learned in the classroom and relate it to an aspect in their life. This not only helps reinforce the content that I teach them in the classroom for comprehension but it also helps the students see how they can really use the knowledge that I teach them in the classroom as a skill in their everyday life. The instructional strategies that I use in my classroom are really a combination of the four main types of instructional strategies with a focus on experiential learning and interactive instruction. I really feel as though these two types of strategies go hand in hand with each other. When teaching students, there is a level of direct instruction such as lectures and demonstrations by the teacher but I feel as thought this can be done in a very interactive way through brainstorming with your students on particular content topics or think, pair, share activates to really get students engaged and more involved in their own learning. I also think that with this interactive learning, there is a level of experiential learning going on because you can tie in experiences for your students through a field trip, learning games, or really just exploring a particular topic by interacting with the content topic. Their students' test scores cannot solely measure the teacher’s effectiveness. I feel as though the way that a teacher interacts with his/her students and how they take to their learning shows how effective a teacher’s teaching is. If a student is really able to grasp a concept and really apply it to that student’s everyday life, then a teacher has been effective in making sure that the students are in charge of their learning. A teacher should use their students’ assessment scores and students’ self-evaluations to construct their lessons plans. This ensures that the teacher is really teaching his/her students to learn new knowledge and challenge themselves with what they really need to know to have those transferable skills. Being sure to videotape your teaching is a great way to be sure you are being proactive in your teaching and to see where you can improve.