Patrick Killelea

C&T 491

6/24/2019

Journal Reflection #5

My first thoughts pertain to the differences between teaching high school and elementary

school students. Although most of my experience has been with elementary school students, I

didn’t really think that my teaching methods wouldn’t need to be changed much in teaching

high school, but I have had to make a lot of adjustments. High school students are more patient

and they are more focused when doing group work, which I am reluctant to do in elementary

school because of classroom management issues. Another difference is that they have stronger

cognitive skills and can work around roadblocks in activities. During our haiku lessons, a few of

the pairs had writer’s block, which can be impassable for some elementary school students, but

the high school students were able to work around these issues and complete the activity.

After finishing the first two lessons of our second lesson plan, I have noticed that it has become

easier for our partner and I to work together. My partner and I had problems making our last

lesson plan because we really didn’t know each other’s strengths, weaknesses and tendencies.

Now that I know that my partner is good at designing slides, adding creative input, and editing, I

feel much more comfortable working around her strengths and filling in the gaps. Our

classroom teaching has also improved and we now know when it’s time for the other person to

step in and take over. I’m glad that this partnership has improved because it relieves my

worries about what could happen when partnerships doesn’t ‘click’ in the beginning. As a

teacher, I don’t worry about making a bad first impression in the first week of school because I
know that I will eventually prove myself to any ‘haters.’ I now have the comfort of knowing

that if a co-teaching partnership doesn’t work at first, it will eventually get better.

My final thought is about the positive school culture at Kyunghwa. I have noticed that there

aren’t too many student cliques and whenever we randomly put students into groups, they

seem to work well together and enjoy each other. It’s possible this is because our students are

all Christian and have a similar backgrounds, or maybe it’s because teachers stay here for a long

time and develop a solid team chemistry, but I believe it’s more than that. I think there must

be strong and positive leadership at the school by the top administrators. Teachers seem to

have followed their example and teach the students to be inclusive in non-explicit ways.

Recently, our class discussed hidden curriculum in schools, and although the term has a

somewhat negative connotation, I think the term applies here. I think the positive school

culture helps students who would otherwise be on the fringes of school society. High school is

a stressful time, especially in Korea, and this gives them one less worry.