As a supervisor of preservice teachers, I find that I am involved in each of these skills. However, ignoring is a very difficult thing for me to do. If a critical incident is occurring within the classroom of one of my residents, while he/she is teaching, I struggle to ignore it. In the example given in the article, students were acting out of control and the supervisor and mentor chose to ignore the behaviors. I often think that it is my responsibility, as the supervisor, to not allow those behaviors to continue. How might this affect student learning? What is the preservice teacher learning from this? Can the ignoring of an incident reach a peak, wherein, action must occur?
Supervisor-centered unpacking is another area in which I struggle. I find that I prefer to have the resident unpack the information through questioning by the supervisor. I have always held this belief that you shouldn’t tell people things that are able to figure out on their own. I also believe that when a person is able to figure something out on his or her own, the learning sticks. Unpacking something for someone else is difficult for me. I know how I think and what makes sense to me, but what if it doesn’t make sense to the person that I am trying to help? Is it possible to use the skill of supervisor-center unpacking too much? Can this skill be enabling?
This first week back from spring break has been fun as I have been identifying what pedagogical skills I am using in my practice. I would like to continue collecting this data to find out if I tend to use one over the others. I am left with a few questions….Are certain pedagogical skills more appropriate for specific developmental levels? Is it important to use all of these skills in order to promote the growth of preservice teachers? Can the skills be detrimental if used at the wrong time?