Berliner Blog #3

Regarding reading the article, "An Educator's Guide to Teacher Reflection," there were a lot of example that coincided with my experiences in my fieldwork.  The section that most overlapped with my fieldwork was when they discussed the idea of repositioning.  According to the article, reposition connotes the idea of changing your perception by moving out of your old position and creating new positions from which to a view a situation.  It involves developing the capacity to look at what’s happening, withholding judgment, while simultaneously recognizing that the meaning you attribute to it is no more than your interpretation filtered through you cumulative experience. This applies to my fieldwork because although I judge my fieldwork teacher a lot for most of her actions, it is her classroom and she clearly sees those actions appropriate.

            For example, when a student acts out, one teacher sees a personal attack while another sees a cry for help.  The other day, a fifth grader wasn’t working on his packet and she took it as the student was being lazy and not doing his work.  In my perspective, the student is having problems at home and he is unable to fully concentrate because his mind is balancing so many different ideas at a time.  Knowing that his parents are going through a divorce, the teacher continued to yell and punish this student instead of keeping in mind the factors outside of school.  I thought she should’ve pulled him aside and spoke to him… maybe even have him talk to a school psychologist, but she didn’t see this fit.  In this case, we both must reposition our ideas to fully understand one another’s point of view.  Conferring to the article, it is the teacher’s interpretation of the student’s behavior that determines how the teacher will respond.  It’s a teacher’s personal framing that shapes how he or she attributes meaning to classroom experiences.  After reading this article, I now judge my teacher less because her point of view is very different than mine, and I am now able to reposition my view to fit hers in some ways.

            The article discusses seeing new ways of interpreting a situation which enables the teacher or myself to move beyond a limited perspective and assign new meaning to the classroom situations encountered.  In this case, by repositioning a seemingly negative event, I was able to seize the opportunity to discover the potential in a situation.