The effective educator consistently utilizes a deep and comprehensive knowledge of the subject taught to:

1. Deliver engaging and challenging lessons;
2. Deepen and enrich students’ understanding through content area literacy strategies, verbalization of thought, and application of the subject matter;
3. Identify gaps in students’ subject matter knowledge;
4. Modify instruction to respond to preconceptions or misconceptions;
5. Relate and integrate the subject matter with other disciplines and life experiences;
6. Employ higher-order questioning techniques;
7. Apply varied instructional strategies and resources, including appropriate technology, to provide comprehensible instruction, and to teach for student understanding;
8. Differentiate instruction based on an assessment of student learning needs and recognition of individual differences in students;
9. Support, encourage, and provide immediate and specific feedback to students to promote student achievement; and,
10. Utilize student feedback to monitor instructional needs and to adjust instruction.

A great deal of being an effective teacher deals with lesson planning and design. Some teachers are able to do shortened plans based on bullet points and some need to have an extensive version with pre-planned questions. I have been known to do both, depending on the subject. However, the outcome should be a lesson that is engaging and challenging to the students. If they are not involved or challenged, the students will get bored, be distracted, and not want to participate overall. We as teachers have to compete with the immediacy of technology and the generation that has not grown up without some form of technology to entertain them. This makes our job difficult, but necessary for the teachers to be that much more creative. I believe this is a very important concept for educators because it walks the students through the necessary thinking processes. I was able to apply this strategy through the AP Theory course, as there is a lot of reading from the textbook to get the total amount of information. I taught them how to break down information from the textbook using techniques from the content area literacy course at UNF, and when the students came to the board they were asked to verbalize their thought process while applying the subject matter with the proper techniques.

Identifying gaps in the students’ subject matter knowledge is also an extremely important skill that teachers need to possess, for obvious reasons. If a teacher does not identify gaps in the subject matter knowledge, the student(s) will either not fully understand a concept or could potentially not be able to successfully move forward in the course. Again, in AP Theory, if a student does not have all of the proper information, and fundamentals to where there are no gaps in the subject matter knowledge the student will not be as successful as they possibly could be. Everything in this particular course builds upon itself and the gaps need to be addressed quickly and efficiently.

This skill at one point in my lessons was an issue for me this semester, for some reason. I am not exactly sure why but I learned the hard way that I needed to be more aware of the students’ preconceptions and misconceptions. If I am more aware, I am able to modify my instructional sequence to correct those issues. I have learned that I cannot maintain too close to my lesson plan as things easily change depending on what the students understand.

Relating and integrating the subject matter with other disciplines and life experiences is a little tough when it comes to music. The relationships to other disciplines are not as clear as with other content areas. However, relating to life experiences is relatively easy because music is a discipline, which requires hard work and the understanding that there is no instant gratification. It is now less difficult for me to think about the integration of other subject matters as I have practiced it extensively because I really was not skilled at doing so at the beginning of the semester. Because of music, I realize that I have to work on the concepts that I am not the best at so I do not have deficits.

Teachers should have a series of leveled questions prepared for the students to answer, driving them to think critically and think of concepts in new ways. When the students employ higher-order thinking strategies, they are able to think more analytically and understand concepts at a deeper level.

As previously mentioned, teachers now must compete with technology for student attention. Current educators can either ignore this fact or use it to their advantage and integrate technology into their lessons. I have found the latter to be a much better choice than the former. When I integrated technology into the lessons, I found that the students were more interested, more willing to participate, and therefore understood the concepts with more proficiency.

Differentiating instruction is an important component leading toward student success, which begins with the recognition of individual differences in students. If a teacher cannot distinguish the difference between students’ learning patterns, styles, and proficiency in concepts then the teacher will try to teach everyone in the same way. Educators must understand that not everyone leas in the same way or even at the same time. We have to understand that fact and learn the students, as well as us, have to lea our material.

As teachers, support, encouragement, and feedback are incredibly important to student achievement. This reminds me of the last day of my internship when I rehearsed a musical selection for the Christmas concert. There was a student that did not completely understand when to play their part and when they did it correctly I made sure to specifically state to them that it was correct, with positive reinforcement. It was fun to see the student’s face turn from slightly scared to a smile because he knew that he had done well. I am continuing to work on this as I do not give enough specific positive reinforcement to students.

Using student feedback, educators are able to adjust the needs of instruction and change the instructional plan if necessary. Some concepts that I taught in AP theory were surprisingly easy for the students and I had to change the instructional plan because there was better understanding than I thought there would be. On the opposite side, there were definitely concepts that I did not know would be as difficult and would need to divert from the lesson plan; because I utilized student feedback to monitor the instructional needs, I was able to change the plan.