Cumulative Reflection: Benjamin Holt College Preparatory Academy

I feel the roles I fulfilled as a simulated PE teacher at Benjamin Holt College Preparatory
Academy (Ben Holt for short) helped to better prepare me for being a professional teacher. I dont know
how much I grew in the way of lesson delivery, but I believe that Ive developed greatly in terms of
applying pedagogical strategies and concepts, as well as in creating, implementing and adhering to lesson
plans.
With regard to lesson delivery, I suppose that any type of practice that you get can only help you
as a teacher. However, Im uncertain about my growth in this regard simply because the experience
wasnt one that truly mimicked reality; the number of students I was teaching wasnt comparable to a
real-life scenario, safe for a single five-minute Instant Activity lesson. During my other two lessons of
instruction, our class operated with station-teaching, so the total amount of students that I had within my
group at any given time never exceeded eight or nine students. In addition, when I taught the Health 1
station, I was with a partner, so the experience wasnt a true indicator of what a PE class would really be
like. Given the amount of in-training PE practitioners we have in class, there really was no way around
this, which I can definitely understand. Moreover, I realize that this is one of the more introductory-level
Sport Pedagogy classes, so these teaching episodes at Ben Holt were a way to get everyones feet wet
with the experience of providing instruction in a PE setting.
Although I didnt view teaching at Ben Holt as an experience that would mimic reality in terms of
teacher-to-student ratio, there were definitely some things that I took away as positives from delivering
the lessons. For example, when Jack and I taught the instant activity, we were positioned at the far end of
the blacktop and grass area, nearest the street that runs along the school. This street, E. Morada Ln., is
pretty busy; I didnt realize how loud the cars driving by would be. Consequently, Jack and I quickly
learned the importance of voice inflection and projection. At the onset of the lesson, as we were trying to
tell the students where to line up, they were having a hard time hearing us because of all the traffic, so we
had to talk really loud. I thought this was meaningful because these were the types of obstacles that we

learned about in the classroom. Although it served as a bit of a distraction in the moment, I believe that it
only helped us in the long run because we actually got to use that moment to apply these voice projection
strategies.
Another positive that I took away from teaching at Ben Holt was developing the skill of lessonplanning. I have learned that the more detail I put into my lesson plans, the better prepared I am at
teaching, the more confident I am in delivering the lesson, and the better Im able to adhere to the lesson
plan. Moreover, when detailing a lesson plan, it makes me think hard about how I want the lesson to go.
This inevitably makes me think of possible things that can go wrong in the lesson, which in turn helps me
to remedy situations on the fly if an unplanned distraction takes place during class. One example of this
was when I was teaching a station on inner-foot passing. While I was giving instruction to the first group,
my back was to the sun, so they were facing directly into it. I didnt even realize this positioning at first,
but when I began asking questions of the students, I thought I saw some hands go up to respond to what I
was asking, when in fact they were just shielding the glare of the sun. While I was creating my lesson
plan, I had thoughts about what I should do if students get distracted by something in their visual field.
So, when I noticed that the sun was a distraction, I was able to react quickly by repositioning the group, as
well as appropriately positioning subsequent groups. Because of this, the sun was only a distraction for
about 20 seconds of my entire lesson.
I realize that the purpose of our simulated teaching at Ben Holt was to help develop our
pedagogical skills. Therefore, although I didnt get the chance to independently teach a large group of
students, these experiences served a very meaningful purpose. I feel that Ive developed in terms of
applying learned pedagogical concepts and strategies, as well as in terms of improving upon the skill of
lesson-planning.