Reflection:

On the last week of BSHS, every MAT had to reflect on one of our solo lessons from this summer. Our requirements were to have a:

• Lesson Description
• Examples of student work
• What does this say about who I am as a teacher?
• What did my students learn?
• How would I change the lesson to improve it?

In order to answer these questions and present my reflective lesson, I chose to do a PowerPoint which is above. I drafted my three days various times with help from my mentor and team teacher. When reflecting on my lessons, I had to come back to the drafts below to see how what I had planned actually occurred when I taught.

What I realized was that the three days sequentially made sense which helped my lessons build off each other. While that is true, it is evident even from these drafts of my lessons, that there was a lot of material and not enough processing time. My Guatemalan lesson daily goals were to contextualize the Guatemalan Civil War, show examples of resistance and solidarity, and tie in the current immigration border crisis with the Guatemalan civil war. Evidently, it was a lot of content given to students, so each daily debrief lesson helped me form checkpoints of understanding each day and throughout the day.

One checkpoint was to have students participate in an informal assessments such as analyzing the "Gloriosa Victoria" painting by Diego Rivera depicting the beginning of the civil war. This informal assessment proved successful, since students were able to depict who was in the painting and what it demonstrates about the war. I knew I was able to move on from contextualizing the war onto texts that represent solidarity and resistance. The students participated in a Final Word activity where they read texts of solidarity and resistance that allowed them to create posters to teach their classmates. They were then able to learn about the border crisis happening now which was used in their Socratic Seminar on the last day to close the case study on Guatemala.

What I realized from these three solo lessons was that I had trouble with clarity of instruction, because there was so much content I wanted to cover. I realized how difficult it is to simplify, modify, and scaffold content for students that are in grades 9-12. Additionally, this showed me the importance of giving students processing time. Finally, it was important in my professional growth to try and implement the frameworks and pedagogy of Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings, Dr. Bree Picower, Dr. Jeff Duncan-Andrade, and Dr. Shawn Ginwright. I tried and even though it was a rough try, I hope to implement them more successfully each and every time I teach.