Tetreault 1Ashley J. Tetreault2/11/15

My name is Ashley Tetreault and I am a teacher candidate attending Central

Connecticut State University. In the fall of 2015, I will be student teaching. This will

be a huge milestone in my professional development as a future Elementary

Education teacher. I am very excited to have a hands on experience that will help

prepare me to teach in a classroom of my very own. Going into student teaching, I

have a few goals that I would like to accomplish so that I am a confident, organized,

and effective classroom teacher.

The biggest goal that I have is to learn effective classroom management

strategies. I feel fortunate to be able to student teach in the Fall because I will be

able to observe a teacher start the school year with new students. I hope to see how

my cooperating teacher prepares their classroom for students, the way they

establish day-to-day routine, what they do in terms of managing behavior, and most

importantly, how they get to know their students. All of these things contribute to

the management of a classroom, one of the most important things in determining

the effectiveness of the teacher and the success of students. I believe in order to be

a successful teacher, one must create a community of learners within their

classroom that promotes active learning, oppose to passive.

Another goal I have is to work on my ability to effectively organize a

classroom. From my experiences, I have learned the importance of this. Students

should know where all materials could be found, to further their learning.

Organization also contributes to an environment that is conducive to learning

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because students respond to it well. When a classroom is disorganized or cluttered,

it is harder for students to focus and they become frustrated easier. A well-kept

classroom is inviting and promotes a sense of community amongst students.

Students are proud of their classroom. For the teacher, being organized makes the

day-to-day routine run more smoothly. It is my hope to learn organizational

strategies that I can implement in my future classroom because after classroom

management, organization is key to being a successful teacher.

In terms of writing and implementing lessons, there are a few goals that I

would like to achieve during student teaching. My first goal is to get practice in

writing well thought out lesson plans, with clear objectives and solid connections to

the Common Core State Standards. I would like to observe my cooperating teacher

write their weekly plans to see how they adhere to curriculum, while supporting a

classroom of diverse students who have specific individual needs. I would like to

become a stronger teacher when it comes differentiating my lessons and making

accommodations to meet all of my students’ learning needs. Finally, I would like to

see how to best incorporate the Common Core State Standards when creating well

thought out and highly engaging lessons.

My second goal for lesson planning is to become better with time-

management. In my field experiences, and in the lessons that I have taught, I have

learned how challenging this can be. In some lessons that I have taught, the demand

or expectations exceeded the time frame that I was allotted. In other lessons, there

was too much down time or transitions were not well thought out. This, I know,

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impacted my effectiveness in teaching the lessons. During student teaching, I hope

to learn how to better gauge what is too rigorous or too simplified when setting

expectations for my students. I hope to work on how to make transitions and down

time go more smoothly so that I can maximize my students’ learning potential. Time

well spent in the classroom makes for a better learning experience for both students

and teachers.

My final goal for lesson planning is to become more effective when creating

assessments to assess students’ learning. In my experiences, I always get hung up

on how to best assess students. I would like to practice deciding which assessments

would be most appropriate to include in my lessons. This is important because, to

be an effective teacher, one must always know how effective their instruction is.

Students’ learning must be evaluated to see their progress in order to make

appropriate decisions about what comes next.

My last goal to accomplish during student teaching is to learn how to

effectively communicate with colleagues, administrators, students, and their

parents. This is another huge piece when it comes to being an effective teacher. I

look forward to seeing my cooperating teacher collaborate with other teachers for

advice and ideas. I want to know how to best communicate with administrators for

support and guidance when challenges arise in the classroom. I would also like to

see how my cooperating teacher addresses students’ strengths and weaknesses to

both the student and their parents. Creating this network of communication is

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imperative to the education process and is something I look forward to becoming

more experienced in during student teaching.

I am going into student teaching with the utmost enthusiasm. I will be open-

minded in my thinking and will constantly look for areas that I can improve on or

grow in. Student teaching is a learning opportunity, and I am certain I will have my

successes, but I also understand that I will have failures. I understand the

importance of self-reflection. Both my successes and my failures will help me

develop professionally so that I can better educate my future students. I also know

that my goals will shift as well. The ones I have mentioned here will always remain

as I constantly reflect on and evaluate my teaching philosophy and practices, but I

also know that new goals and aspirations will arise. That is the beauty of teaching:

there is always room for growth and improvement. Education is constantly

changing and teachers must adapt and make changes too. I look forward to this

challenge in both my student teaching experience and as a future educator.