Teacher Talk- Trey King

Today Mr. King came in and talked to us about teaching approaches, management and expectations. This presentation was interesting for me, as I have been working with Mr. King for the past six weeks at Fall Creek Middle and High School. For once I felt like I was a student of Mr. King’s as I truly got to experience his teaching style through his presentation. Mr. King is a very soft-spoken teacher, who hates to raise his voice in the classroom. His gentle approach forces his students to listen intently in order to hear everything and pay attention. If at any time Mr. King does raise his voice (to my normal talking voice) the students are truly bug-eyed and in shock as they know that they must of done something wrong. I noticed through my practicum experience with Mr. King that I started to adapt this approach, by consciously making an effort to talk quietly to grab the attention of my students.

Mr. King addressed some issues we all feared with teaching and student teaching. Some of the topics that came up included; dealing with student conflict, grading rubrics, making time, and experimenting.  He had some great answers to these topics; choosing your conflicts or battles as what ones are the most important, if you make a grading rubric you can reference it and use it as support, you simply just have to make time, and experimenting is what student teaching is for.

He also strongly recommend us all to read the book Love and Logic as it would help us with parenting and classroom management. He made a good point about expectations. If you grade your students against themselves, they can feel successful instead of setting too high of expectations for your students, and they fall short, they feel unsuccessful. Another pointer he gave us in terms of classroom management dealt with influencing your students with good behavior, not controlling them and when enforcing something, you must stick to it. All in all it was a great presentation by Mr. King.