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Reflection Paper – Unexpected Lessons
As a student in York University’s concurrent education program nearly ten years ago, the
critiques I voiced about my program were, in hindsight, totally lacking in creativity. I was
frustrated that I had a placement in a grade 4 class even though I was planning on teaching in a
secondary school. I was tired of hearing repeatedly about the theories of Dewey and Vygotsky. I
was writing more reflection papers than lesson plans. Most of all, I wanted my professors to finally
hand me the elusive “bag of tricks” that every pre-service teacher craves. In retrospect, I can say
that my time in the Faculty certainly prepared me for my career, though not necessarily in the ways
I imagined it would.
Lesson 1
I was, like many future teachers, an academically-minded and successful undergraduate
student. My goal was always to teach history at the secondary level to similarly academicallyinclined and hardworking students. Because my program was in concurrent education, I was taking
courses toward my history degree while also taking one course per year toward an education
degree and practice teaching one day per week. It was this weekly placement that taught me a
valuable lesson: educators should not expect to always teach in their subject areas.
Despite the results of many studies that reveal the positive relationship between teachers’
subject matter knowledge and student achievement (Darling-Hammond, 2006), my first placement
was teaching math and English to grade 4 students. I did not know about the research at the time,
but I did know that my knowledge and skills would be much better utilized in a history classroom.
Although I originally complained about the placement, it helped to prepare me for some of the
courses I am teaching today. Despite not having Family Studies qualifications and not having
children of my own, I have been teaching a grade 11 Living and Working with Children course for
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the past two years. If I once learned to successfully teach eight-year-olds, hopefully I can now
successfully teach grade 11 students about eight-year-olds.
Lesson 2
When I graduated from York University, the critiques I had about the theoretical
component of my pre-service program were somewhat different than those addressed in Lortie’s
1975 book, Schoolteacher. The student teachers Lortie describes reported that their education
courses were “too theoretical” although researchers discovered that the students actually meant
that their teachers “proffer(ed) impractical expectations and a utopian conception of classroom
reality” (p. 69). Although my own professors were clear about the realities of classroom teaching,
my critique of my education courses was that I was learning educational theory without ever
understanding why. This became the second lesson I learned in the Faculty: What we don’t
understand now, we can use to our benefit later.
In his critique of those who “bash” teacher education, David Berliner (2000) asks “where
but in programs of teacher education will these theories about teaching, learning and motivation be
studied and discussed?” (p. 366). It is only now, after more than eight years of teaching
experience, that I can finally see how the theory that I have been learning in my graduate studies
connect to my classroom practice. Today, I can only guess at how the theory I learned, and then
promptly forgot, in my B.Ed. influenced the way that I have been teaching for the past few years.
More than this, however, is the fact that I am now able to use theories about teaching and
learning to justify some of my practices to my principal. When she asks why I take my students
outside to do activities, I quote Dewey. When she asks why my students spend so much time
working with partners, I refer her to the work of Vygotsky. Although I could not see the
implications of my professors’ lectures at the time, I must have somehow absorbed their lessons. I
am glad to now be able to understand and justify my teaching practice.
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Lesson 3
Despite the lack of explicit connection between theory and practice offered by my
professors, they were certainly keen for us to try to make connections of our own. Although I am
sure that I benefitted in some way by writing daily or weekly reflection papers, I remember feeling
as though I was completing them not for the benefit of my teaching practice but because they were
being marked. Was the goal of repeated reflection for me to make connections between what I was
doing and what I was learning? If so, I learned a different lesson: Connections between theory and
practice are important, but connections between people are even more significant.
Since the 1970s, there has been extensive research supporting the importance of
cooperation and collaboration in education. Proponents of social constructivism, for example,
argue that learning communities can allow learners to “take risks and develop ownership of their
own learning” (Beck & Kosnik, 2006, p. 12). While practice teaching, the learning communities I
was part of provided more opportunities for me to reflect on my experiences than did reflection
papers. We were able to share successes and failures, provide feedback to one another, and
ultimately become better educators.
Currently, I am supervising and supporting a group of eight teacher candidates from
Queen’s University who are at my school for a month. As part of the Queen’s program, these
students are required to meet together for two hours per week to engage in professional dialogue. I
can only begin to imagine the power of these conversations. The students’ face-to-face reflection
time encourages them to make connections with others as well as between theory and practice.
The opportunity for me to make connections with practicing educators was also beneficial.
Even after I had been working in my school board for four years, one of my former associate
teachers phoned to see if I would be willing to take a Long Term Occasional position at his school.
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We still stay in touch and we frequently share resources and ideas. Perhaps not surprisingly, that
relationship has lasted longer than any of my reflection papers.
Certainly, my professors wanted me to take time to make connections between what I was
learning and what I was doing. I imagine, however, that the personal connections I ended up
making throughout my pre-service training have been much longer lasting.
Lesson 4
Throughout my teacher training, I assumed that I would feel more confident and be better
prepared to teach than my counterparts in consecutive education. I was not alone in this belief. Li
(1999) found that “some associate teachers guiding student teachers in schools still believe that
concurrent students are more committed to teaching than consecutive students and that concurrent
students are more prepared for teaching” (p. 185). It has only been recently that I discovered that
my assumptions, and those of many others, were incorrect. Li’s 1999 research reveals that
although concurrent students may have initially felt more confident than their consecutive
counterparts, “the consecutive students' feelings of preparedness to teach were not significantly
different from those of the concurrent students after the end of the fall term in the final year of
their teacher preparation programs” (p. 195-196). Despite learning that consecutive students felt
just as well prepared as I did, I am still glad that I had so many opportunities to practice teach.
Those many opportunities also meant that I learned the valuable lesson that all beginning teachers
learn: Teaching is exhausting.
If there was anything that could prepare me for the amount of work I was going to do in my
first two years as a classroom teacher, it was practice teaching while simultaneously completing a
BA and a B.Ed. I recall many weeks where I was averaging three to four hours of sleep per night;
prepping for courses and completing undergraduate work up to the standard that I had set for
myself simply required that much time. I can even recall my faculty advisor’s feedback after
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visiting my classroom one day. She explained that my lesson was excellent but if I kept teaching
such intricate lessons with the same amount of energy and enthusiasm, I would burn out in my first
few years of teaching. Today, I still teach intricate lessons with energy and enthusiasm, but
because of the amount of time I poured into familiarizing myself with the curriculum, designing
thorough unit plans, and prepping engaging lessons and assessment tasks, the past few years have
been much more manageable than during my pre-service program.
I always imagined that by the time I was finished my BEd, I would have all of the tips and
tricks needed to be a successful educator. By the time I graduated, I did, indeed, feel prepared to be
a classroom teacher. However, this feeling of preparedness did not come from my being equipped
with a bag of tricks. Instead, it was accompanied by sleeping bags and bags under my eyes.
Lessons 5 - 25
Having now read parts of Lortie’s 1975 book, Schoolteacher, I realize that my critiques of
my program, of the theory I was forced to learn, of the seemingly meaningless work and of not
being taught what I wanted to be taught, are the same as those of most student teachers. Despite
my perception that my pre-service teacher training did not prepare me for my career in the way I
expected it would, my program still had a profound effect on me. In fact, many of the lessons that I
can still recall are more “life lessons” than anything. For example, during a history placement, I
learned that popcorn will catch on fire if left in the microwave for too long. During social science
placement, I was instructed not to add extra water to a kettle once it had already been turned on.
And during that grade 4 placement that I so resented, I learned that I might not dislike young
children quite as much as I had thought I would. Although I was, and am, critical of my teacher
education, I still learned many valuable lessons. Teaching is, after all, “as much a learning
profession as a teaching profession” (Beck & Kosnik, 2006, p. 54).
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References
Beck, C. & Kosnik, C. (2006). Innovations in teacher education: A social constructivist approach.
Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Berliner, D. (2000). A personal response to those who bash teacher education. Journal of Teacher
Education, 51(5), 358-371.
Darling-Hammond, L. (2006). Powerful teacher education: Lessons from exemplary programs.
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Li, X. (1999). Preparedness to teach: A comparison between consecutive and concurrent students.
Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 45(2), 184-197.
Lortie, D. (1975). Schoolteacher: A sociological study. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.