Using my students to improve my teaching

It's those moments that I think "I never would have thought of that" that become some of the most powerful lessons. One example is an experience I had student teaching. If I haven't mentioned this before, I had an awesome student teaching experience. I remember struggling for several weeks with knowing how to determine if I should move on or not. I would often ask my cooperating teacher what he thought. He taught me that I need to find out from my students if I should move on or not. He also taught me that I should use my students to improve my teaching. There is a principle here that I know would have taken me years to find on my own, and I am so glad that I learned it.

The reason that I haven't posted anything for a few days is because of TAKS testing. Last week Tuesday through Friday the students were taking different benchmark exams. Yesterday I decided to spend some time talking about their preparation for the TAKS test. I handed out a half sheet of paper with two questions: "What are three things that helped you prepare for the TAKS test?" and "What are three things that you wish we did differently?" The responses were very enlightening. For my discussion here, I am not going to go into depth about how we reviewed although from my past 7 years of tutoring I have learned how to prepare students for tests. The point is my students were telling me my strengths and my weaknesses. I will continue doing the strengths and work on the weaknesses.

I do these kinds of activities occasionally in my classroom. At first my students weren't sure what I was doing. One student thought that I was trying to "save my job." I just explained that I want to be a better teacher and that this would help me know how.

This is a powerful principle that has helped me improve as a teacher and I thought I would share that with other readers.