Sarah Al-shdifat

Teaching Statement & Professional Goals

Dec 3rd, 2015
As the semester comes to an end, I reflect on the experiences that I encountered
throughout the semester and the professional goals that I want to work towards. My
experience in practicum has certainly taught me a lot and has made me realize my areas
of strength and areas that still need further development.
Thinking about my personal philosophy and how I imagine my future science
classroom, I certainly see the social constructivist theory playing an essential role. In my
teaching practice, I want to incorporate as much collaborative learning as possible
allowing the students to engage and explore the content with each other. Personally, I
believe that social and interactive learning is where the most learning will occur when
using the social constructivist theory because students are able to communicate, discuss,
and form ideas with their peers.
Considering how salient science is becoming in the 21st century, I believe that it is
essential for all students to learn science as part of the curriculum. Science is everywhere
around us; from the food we eat, to the cell phones we use but do the students know that?
Teaching science to our students broadens his or her horizons and opens up many
opportunities for students to engage, explore and learn about the world around them.
Teaching science to students while they are in elementary school allows for students to go
to their secondary schools prepared with prior knowledge to build upon in the science
courses that are taken in middle school and beyond.
Although the students come to our classes to learn science, we must be able to get
to know the students in our classes as well. As perfect as one can imagine his or her

classroom and students being, unfortunately it will come with its issues. Issues of equity
in my classroom will be important for me to recognize and address, as needed, because I
definitely want all students to feel respected and safe. Working with diverse adolescents,
issues of equity will be evident in the classroom whether it is with English language
learners (ELLs), special education students, gender differences, and/or socio-economic
status. To make sure that all students understand and respect others and their differences,
I will address the issues that may occur in my classroom through setting clear guidelines
and making sure that inclusion is part of my instructional strategies. It is essential for all
students to feel welcomed and treated fairly because I want all my students to have a fair
and equal opportunity to learn and succeed; all students should have a right to a fair
education.
Reflecting on the ideas of how I want to teach my future science classes, I believe
my students will benefit from my teaching because I want to make sure that all students
are included and that my classes are as student-centered and engaging as I can make
them. This is important to me because I want my students to leave my classes having a
good understanding of the science content taught and to be successful in their classes
beyond mine.
Considering that I will begin student teaching soon, professional goals I want to
work on are: (a) brushing up on my science content knowledge, (b) learn more strategies
I can use to better manage my classroom and, (c) to learn more about strategies I can use
to better handle difficult situations that may occur. I have set each of these goals because
I have realized through my experiences, thus far, that I am not as proficient on my
content knowledge as I would like to be, especially since I havent been exposed to the

material in so long. I also believe that it is important to know the content, in order to
teach the students because I do not want students to have any misconceptions since it
would be hard to then clear any misconceptions once they are developed.
Another strategy I want to work on developing is to better manage the classroom.
I remember one situation in particular that occurred during my practicum, where I was
teaching and I had the students doing different activities at the same time. I recall having
a really hard time giving the directions, monitoring the students, and keeping them under
control because I felt there was too much going on at the same time, to only pay attention
to one group and not the others. Managing the classroom will take a lot of time to get a
handle on, but for now, I know this is a goal I want to work on improving so that when
Im on my own, I can handle the classroom appropriately.
Equally, I want to work on strategies to better handle the difficult situations that
may arise. With teaching adolescence, its bound to happen that everyday there will be
something different. Teaching seems to come with a lot of surprises each day, which
includes crazy situations that may be hard to handle. Although I learned a lot throughout
my experience in practicum, I want to make sure to maximize my learning by observing
and gaining new strategies from student teaching so that I am prepared when I have my
own classroom.
Reflecting on the course overall, I feel that I definitely gained a lot of new
strategies and knowledge to implement into my student teaching and beyond. Thinking
about what inquiry-based teaching and learning in science means, I would explain this to
my non-science peers by explaining to them the purpose of our teaching and learning.
Inquiry-based teaching and learning in science means to apply the science being taught;

students should be able to investigate, ask questions, critically think and do the thinking.
Teaching science needs to be collaborative and student-centered rather than the traditional
lectures and PowerPoints everyday that most science students are used to. If I would to
ask or talk to others who not science educators, I would explain this to them by telling
them about the inquiry phases and how they are applied within the content.
Throughout practicum and science methods II, I have learned many new ideas as
well that I didnt have until after this experience. Something important that I have
realized is that it is much harder and more stressful then it appears to be. I know from
previous experience working with school-aged children that it is a challenge, but now I
am seeing this first hand in a classroom as well. My ideas, in general, have not changed
much from the initial ideas I had about science teaching and learning, but I was able to
actually experience the ideas and put them into perspective through my practicum.
Another important aspect of teaching science is creating a scientific classroom
discourse community among the students; I believe applying this instructional strategy is
essential. Throughout my teaching experiences, I want to create this discourse community
by allowing students to express his or her feelings, communicate amongst one another,
and have regular thought-provoking discussions within the classroom community.
Through having a scientific discourse community, assessing students knowledge and
misconceptions become more apparent and help the teacher recognize areas that may
need improvement.
Considering a scientific discourse community being created as part of the learning
environment in the classroom, I find it important to be assessing the students learning.
From what I have observed thus far, I believe that the relationship between student

learning and fair assessment practice should be aligned because it is the most logical way
to assess the students. Assessing student knowledge should align with learning and fair
practices because if the students have not learned it, they wont know it. We as teachers
should not dock student grades based on how we feel about that certain student, but rather
on his or her performance and understanding of the material that the student is learning. If
we can make sure to assess students learning consistently and fairly, I believe that it will
help assist us with balancing our curricular goals and required testing to meet the science
education standards.
In our society, science education is extremely important for us to teach students
about. As I had mentioned, science is everywhere around us; we cannot escape it. It is
also essential for us to be teaching scientific literacy to our students. Many people,
especially children, have many questions that can be answered by science. Allowing for
our students to learn and investigate science for themselves can be very powerful because
they now have the power of that knowledge and are able to have those questions
answered. To be able to allow students to reason, critically think, and connect science
with the real world is essential. Real scientists do not sit in a lab all day, as some
students believe; scientists have to do a lot of reading, writing and talking and this is
something that our students need to be informed of. Science is a subject we cannot afford
to cut out of schools because it is just that important; understanding what and how life
works all goes back to science and why it is so important to make sure that children are
learning about it because they are our future.