Brandon Righetti-Marweg

Spring 2020

Reflection on Student Teaching Experience

I had a wonderful time serving as a student teacher at Elsie Allen High School. EAHS’s

Science Department is kind, welcoming, knowledgeable, and helpful; that is the type of

environment I hope to join. My students were amazing. It was a joy to get to know them, and to

join the Elsie Allen community.. They were a fun, energetic bunch, and I was lucky to have

them. It was amazing to see how much they grew over the past year, both academically and

personally. Finally, I am thankful for the opportunity to work with and learn from Brian Deller.

He is an exemplary science teacher and a good man. I am excited to continue our professional

relationship moving forward, so I can continue to learn from and collaborate with him.

This experience taught me that the easiest and most effective way to manage a classroom

is through the quality relationships I form with my students, rooted in community, mutual

respect, and open communication. Connecting with students is far and away my favorite part of

the job, as well as one of my strengths. As soon as I began observing in Mr. Deller’s class, I

began getting to know each of our students and had a blast doing so. I genuinely enjoy their

company, conversation, and perspectives, and I believe this quality will allow me to have a long

career as a teacher. It was not long before I began to care deeply about each of my students, their

education, and their personal wellbeing. As the year progressed and I began to assume the role of

the primary educator and authority figure in the room, I found that the classroom management

piece was easier than I had expected. I believe that when you form quality relationships with

each student early on, and demonstrate that you care for them and have their best interests in
mind, they do not want to misbehave in your class. As I mentioned, these relationships are rooted

in community, mutual respect, and open communication. So when the occasional misbehavior

did arise, it could be easily and effectively resolved by pulling the student aside, respectfully

speaking to them as an adult to figure out what is wrong and, if need be, rationally explaining

why such behavior detracts from their education or harms the learning environment and

community. From there, I involve them in the discussion of how to best move forward; they

seem to appreciate having their input requested, and as a result are more likely to adhere to the

resolution moving forward.

In regards to unit planning, this past year much of my teacher preparation coursework

revolved around designing three dimensional lesson plans based on the principles of the Next

Generation Science Standards. At Elsie Allen, I was also lucky enough to work in Kelly

Mackura’s Earth Science class as an assistant. It was highly useful for me to see NGSS three

dimensional lesson planning in action, and she always tried to involve me in the process. Ms.

Mackura is an NGSS guru and teaches both Earth Science and Biology, and I will certainly

remain in contact with her moving forward; she has been an invaluable resource to me.

Mr. Deller taught me a lot about inquiry based instruction, both how to structure it as well

as how to facilitate it. He taught me a lot about how to scaffold the students’ experience, putting

them in the situations where meaning and understanding can be created by the students

themselves. I honed my ability to ask leading questions, to press students for reasoning and

evidence, and to get students to think with one another. We also spent a lot of time working on

how to structure productive student-to-student discourse.

 Mr. Deller and the EAHS Science Department made use of Standards Based Grading and

Assessment. From this experience, I learned how to create rubrics for students explicitly

outlining the knowledge and skills needed to meet increasing proficiency designations.

Additionally, I learned the importance of ongoing formative assessment. After looking over and

grading assessments, Mr. Deller and I would sit down and have a discussion about the results.

Where are the students currently? What have they mastered? What topics might they be

struggling on? What patterns can be seen in individual tests, as well as across the class as a

whole? From here, with the outlined NGSS standard and rubric as our guide, we would use the

results to inform subsequent lesson planning and instruction. Mr. Deller also taught me the

importance of ongoing informal formative assessment. We worked on how to make student

thinking visible to myself and the rest of the class through modeling, partner and small group

discussions, as well as written responses. This gives me a real-time picture of where student

thinking is at, what student ideas I could potentially build on, and where gaps in understanding

may be. This helps inform my instruction on the fly, catering to what my students are able to do

and where I need to help them grow.

Overall, I am deeply thankful for my time at EAHS. It was a wonderful experience, full

of great experiences and invaluable insights and knowledge. I feel that it has certainly prepared

me to begin a career as a teacher, and I am excited to continue learning and developing my

practice at my next school site.