Standard #9 Teachers are able to evaluate themselves.

1. Teachers are able to evaluate themselves.
2.  
   The teacher is a reflective practitioner who continually evaluates the effects of his or her choices and actions on pupils, parents, professionals in the learning community and others and who actively seeks out opportunities to grow professionally.

I understand that self evaluation is the key to teachers continue to grow and better themselves as educators throughout their career. I believe a good educator is never satisfied with their work, and is always striving to become better for their students, improving their knowledge of their subject area, teaching methods, and other ways they can improve their student's educational experience. 

This is a reflection from one of my weeks of student teaching that had many challenges. 

This was a very long, very big week. We are in tech for Hairspray, so I have been spending 13 hours at the school, which I honestly love. 

Acting 4 has been a little hard to deal with this week. Senioritis has kicked in hard core, and they are not as invested in doing the show as I hoped they would be. We talked about promotion of the show, transition music, and rehearsing the scenes. We have it whittled down to the 6 scenes we want to use. So things are still moving forward, but I just want more enthusiasm. 

Improvisation class is going very well. I introduced same scene different style, and they did extremely well with that.  They also loved Good Cop/Bad Cop. They really are having fun, but also growing as a class. 

Acting 2 FINALLY finished reading Raisin in the Sun. It took too long to read through the show, but I don’t know how we could have gone faster without me assigning at home reading. The first class of the week was when the topic of color blind casting was questioned by a student. We were already planning on having a casting discussion the following class, but it was going to end up with me saying we are going to do color blind casting. However when the student brought up concerns I could not ignore them. I talked with Kevin, and we decided to add in a scene from Clybourne Park for the “non-black” actors. What I hate about this is that most of my “non-black” actors are Hispanic, so the race STILL does not work. However, it is not offensive for a Hispanic man to play a white character in a play the way it is for a white man to play a black  character. During our discussion, where I had them write down their opinions before we shared, I had each student talk without anyone responding first. Its was very interesting because most of the class said we don’t care about race, casting should be based on whoever the best actor is. But when I announced the casting I said I agreed that with a show like A Raisin in the Sun, we need to stay true to the race the characters were written for. Most of the students were happy with their casting. I do have one male student who I needed to cast as a female character, because of the breakdown of demographics for the class vs the scenes, and he is fighting me on it. Today in class I tried to do a fun day, but they would NOT settle down. Their energy was all over the place. I think it was still a semi-productive day, but it was probably the toughest class I have had all semester. 

The following is part of a self reflection all staff was asked to do at my secondary placement school for student teaching, Pius XI Catholic High School. 

Choose three of the values, name them, and give an example of how you lived that value this school year.

1. Value Student Centric

How I lived this core value: I try to do what is best for my students in all parts of my work as an educator. I plan my lessons trying to do activities, projects, and shows that my students will connect to and value. For example, In my Acting 4 class the class is writing their own devised show, so each scene was written by the students in their own voice and on the topics they chose. In Acting 2 I allowed the students to pick their own monologues from a movie of their choice for performance. Also, when we were discussing A Raisin in the Sun, a few students raised concerns about non black actors playing black characters. I listened to these concerns, and cast the scenes from A Raisin in the Sun and Clybourne Park accordingly. I wanted to value the student’s opinions, had a few discussions about it, and adjusted my lessons to reflect their concerns. I want my students to know that I will respect them and their voices, as long as they are being respectful of myself as a teacher. I think about what is best for the students when making decisions about my classes and shows. In improvisation, I try to find activities that will help the students learn about the principals of improv, but also enjoy doing. For example, my improv class first semester did not like competitive games. They got far too riled up and it often became a not productive learning environment. So I took competitive games out of the curriculum and classes became much more productive and fun.   

2. Value Social Justice 

How I lived this core value: I try to teach social justice in my acting classes and when directing my productions. While working on Hairspray, I had a lot of discussions with the actors about what the social message of Hairspray is, and how each character is important to communicating that message. I also have worked to integrate social justice teachings into my classes as well. The devised theater piece started with the class having multiple discussions and activities using theatre for social change techniques. These are designed to probe groups into thinking about breaking down stereotypes, assumptions about others, and think about themselves in a social critical way. From these activities we then decided the topics we wanted to write about, and create our piece. In Acting 2, we have had lots of discussions about racism and sexism, stemmed from reading A Raisin in the Sun. 

3. Value Teamwork

How I lived this core value: In all of my classes and productions I stress that we are a team, and we all need to work together to be successful in whatever we are doing. I instill that every person in a cast or a class is just as important as everyone else. I build a community feeling by allowing every student to voice their opinion in a discussion. I also try to do team building activities in class and in rehearsals, building the bond between the students and allowing them to trust each other. I am very careful to make sure that each cast member knows that what they are doing on stage, and their part of telling the story, is just as vital to the play as anyone else, chorus member to lead. And I also try to talk about how productions can not happen without a crew, and the rest of the team who are required to make a show happen.