School of Education

102605 Secondary PP Community Engagement

Self-Reflection Form
Pre-service Teacher Details

Pre-service Teacher Name: Pre-service Teacher ID:

Mimi-Jane Quynh Tram Nguyen 1841 5780
Pre-service Teacher Phone Number: Pre-service Teacher Email Address:
0411 756 259 mimijane.nguyen@gmail.com

Placement Details: If you haven’t complete 60 hours face to face you must provide a
detailed statement of how your experience meets the outcomes for Professional
Practice CE. Attach evidence.

Placement Name: Placement Phone Number:

Bass High School (02) 9726 3644
Placement Address: Placement Email Address:
Arundle Rd, Bass Hill NSW bass-h.school@det.nsw.edu.au
Contact Person:
Penny Koutzas

Describe in 500 WORDS any features and benefits of the setting you attended. Consider number
of students, location details, age of students, types of educational programs offered and any other
salient aspects of the experience. Consider how this experience will contribute to your
development as a beginning teacher.

AITSL Standards

The criteria for pre-service teacher reflection focus, the first, second, third and sixth
standards.
 1.3 Students with diverse linguistic, cultural, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds
 1.5 Differentiate teaching to meet the specific learning needs of students across the full
range of abilities
 2.2 Content selection and organisation
 3.1 Establish challenging learning goals
 6.3 Engage with colleagues and improve practice

Subsidiary questions:
What surprised you about your learning in your community setting?
What research about communities did you engage with before you commenced?
School of Education 10 What goals did you set for yourself in your service learning activities?
What do you believe the participants in your service learning project learned?
What did you learn? How will the experience shape you as a teacher in a classroom?
Reflection

Despite being placed in the Senior Learning Centre at Bass High School where I would
predominantly engage with students in year 12 to assist them with their HSC, I also engaged with
the Learning Support team assisting teachers with NAPLAN preparation and teaching timetables
to year 7 students in order to minimise student future struggle when they engage in higher level
Mathematics. I was able to fully engage with a diverse range of students as Ramadan was on whilst
I was there, I conversed with students from very low–socioeconomic backgrounds and students
with a wide variety of goals such as going to university to study, continuing on to a trade through
TAFE, or working full time. It was a very eye-opening experience as previously in the past from
my personal experience, students were pushed to go into university rather than pursuing a trade
and having conversations with my supervisor and students allowed me to see the importance of
establishing personalised goals and study schedules for students to help them achieve their best.
Because the students were so diverse learning needs and level of Mathematics, I had to be flexible
in my explanations in order for students to form their own understanding of mathematical
content. The biggest hurdle for me was when a student asked me for assistance on a mathematics
topic of Networks that I had yet to look at as it was part of the new syllabus. As I wanted to assist
the students to the best of my ability, I took the time to learn the topic, researched for the most
effective and efficient methods of teaching and answering questions for students, and developed
resources for the new topic. A lot of students liked to be guided through questions whereas other
students liked to attempt a question themselves and be corrected through positive feedback of
their working out. This will contribute to my development as a beginning teacher as I was able to
learn how to scaffold questions and give constructive feedback. A memorable experience occurred
whilst I was assisting with NAPLAN preparation. Three year 7 boys in the top mathematics class
entered the room in order to complete six NAPLAN-style questions. One boy was recently moved
to the top class because of his abilities but felt incompetent in comparison to his peers when they
got all of the questions correct but he was only able to answer one question correctly. The boy
started bursting into tears and I was bewildered with how to handle the situation. Calmly, I sent
the other two boys back to class and had the boy calm down before conversing with him. I learnt
how to deal with the situation by validating his classroom experience, acknowledging his efforts
that he has made to assist his learning, and providing my personal experience with learning. After
conversing him, I asked him which areas of mathematics that he would like to go over again and
provide full support to him to the best of my abilities. Going through that event will allow me to
calmly handle situations like this that may occur in the future and improve my practice in order
to support not only students who are thriving in mathematics but also students who want to
genuinely learn mathematics but struggle with accessing content and feeling incompetent in
comparison to their peers. This experience has allowed me to differentiate learning for students,
develop different ways of explaining content knowledge and develop a range of resources that will
assist me in evolving into the best teacher that I can become.

Note: For PPCE, the point of contact is Penny Koutzas, the Senior Learning Centre Coordinator
and her contact information is koutzas@basshigh.nsw.edu.au whereas the information on the
PPCE listing is different therefore delaying response to WSU students’ application.