Reflection

I must say that this school year has brought it's own unique set of challenges. Last year, my classroom was not my own. I shared it with the graphic arts teacher, therefore I could not arrange things as needed for my program. This year, I was able to "take over" the room and now I have it solely for my program. I was able to use the tips given to us at NTI to arrange the classroom for optimum instruction within my program. It has been great to use all of my resources this year with instruction.

However, since enrolling in the NTI, I have learned many different strategies and methods of instruction which I am excited to employ into my class lessons. Using these methods and strategies has been a challenge because I can have up to four, yes that's right, four different courses within a single class period. Therefore, the challenge has been using the "transfer in, set induction...etc." when I have four different curriculums going at once. Last year, each student received a project module which matched their curriculum. The students would have to work on their own to master the content while I floated around the room to tie up the loose ends for each student individually. Last year seemed to be more organized than this year.

I find it very hard to actually "teach" (lecture, demonstration, etc) when I am only speaking to maybe half of the class at a time. This leaves the other half of the room to "work", but they find themselves doing other things while unsupervised. The solution for this problem would be to only have one course per class period, but my administrator believes (and I agree) that my numbers would go way down and the program would not be as popular.