Best Practices - Definition of Pedagogy

"Content pedagogy refers to the pedagogical (teaching) skills teachers use to impart the specialized knowledge/content of their subject area(s). Effective teachers display a wide range of skills and abilities that lead to creating a learning environment where all students feel comfortable and are sure that they can succeed both academically and personally. This complex combination of skills and abilities is integrated in the professional teaching standards that also include essential knowledge, dispositions, and commitments that allow educators to practice at a high level."

For me, truly effective pedagogy is a process that is based in research, reflects practices that are shown to be effective in real life and fits a teacher’s personal philosophy.  It isn’t just a few tricks or activities, fads or quick-fixes.  It is a wide set of skills (such as performance, content knowledge, and mediation) and a temperament (patience, consistency, and flexibility) that make a great teacher.

The most effective teaching creates a challenging, knowledge-rich environment where students are pushed to interact with authentic sources of information and each other to construct their own meanings.  There, they develop and practice skills that they need in school and the “real world,” like working cooperatively, self discipline and synthesis.  This helps them academically and in their own personal lives, and it helps students mature into thoughtful and critical adults.  The best pedagogy enables and empowers students rather than filling them with knowledge.

Effective pedagogy must sustain a balance that is neither chasing new fads nor clinging to traditional methods.  It must be flexible and responsive to students’ needs while maintaining core standards.  The best teachers need to be committed to their students and still maintain professional distance.  This seems like a delicate tightrope act for people without the right temperament and emotional maturity to be a teacher, but for the right people, it certainly is rewarding.

My pet project

 Frau Pioli's Deutsch Website

I have been working on this website on and off for over a year now.  It was my go-to resource for everything I needed for my student teaching In-Depth Investigation and I continue to improve it for a future classroom.

I designed the site to be used by a high school German student, but it could also be useful for parents.  There is a parents' page, and most of the site is written in English.  Throughout the site, I have opportunities for parents to interact with their students to talk about German class- they can watch YouTube videos together, go over grammar learned in class, check homework and just catch up with what we're doing.

My favorite part of the website is the writing section.  I took the time to type up some of the students' work so that they could share with each other or their parents.  It is satisfying to know that the work you do means something and is not just read by the teacher, graded and tossed out.  Publication is an important aspect of class work.  Publication pushes students to make high quality work, encourages peer editing and shows that I value the work they have done.

Vocabulary is usually not all that exciting, but the vocabulary section contains the fun random words that students asked about during class time.  They are the words that students in this age are actually interested in learning, which makes it much more fun!  I color-coded them for visual learners, and I like to include related words to give them a little exposure to word building.

My biggest problem with this website is the YouTube page.  I go through occasionally to check and make sure that the videos are still available, but YouTube is constantly changing and it is difficult to keep my list up to date.  I included a space at the bottom for students to post their own videos, and one of the best days of my student teaching is when one freshmen actually used it!

If you are interested in teaching or learning German, you could check out my grammar pages.  I do not usually use direct grammar instruction, so I designed these pages to be used as support for students who could benefit from having rules outlined clearly in English.  This is also available for parents to page through and discuss with their students.  I have tried to make everything as clear, color-coded and thorough as possible.  The grammar pages are the largest section of the website and I continue to build them.

For student teaching, I taught 2 weeks of environmental science to the advanced German class.  It was an inter-disciplinary "unit" which taught concepts from biology, ecology, social studies and government.  We even took a field trip to collect live specimens from the stream behind the school.  If you would like to see pictures, writing examples and lesson plans for my student teaching In-Depth Investigation, you can find them here:

Wasser, Wasser, Wasser!