Placement refelction

            At the end of the two placements for practicum, all I can think is that I cannot wait to student teach and to eventually have my own classroom. Being in the teaching role has never quite felt like a role to me, it has always felt like me. If I am scared of anything, it is probably taking the restrictions and guidelines that an administration and school department gives me and making it what I feel is necessary to teach the students. Overall, I’d have to say what excites me the most is that in the fall, I will get to meet a large group of wonderful high school students that I will spend an entire semester with. The worst part about the practicum placements was that they are not long enough and when the students start to get attached and really open up to you in their room, you have to leave. Luckily this is not the case in student teaching where I will really have the chance to get to know my students. This is definitely the most exciting part.

            To look at teaching two days and the differences. The second day of teaching is always completely different from the first. The first day of taking over a class, the students are not sure what to expect and they hold themselves back a little bit more or are more outspoken and forceful, trying to feel out what they are able to get away with. On the second day, students definitely fall more into their own paths and will let their sillier or more outgoing sides go. They see that while instructing their class, you will not bit their heads off.

            I am curious to find out where I will be placed and with whom. I know I can get along with almost anyone, but I really want to be placed with a teacher I completely click with and can show me a lot of really cool things. I have heard some horror stories, and that in itself is really scary to me when I think about my student teaching. But all in all I’m thinking positive, and I have not had any disastrous experiences yet.

High School Week 3

Week 3 at the high school was pretty awesome. The classes that Jess and I get to see are amazing and the students are absolutely wonderful. On Monday, we got the chance to bring in our own poetry prompts and have the creative writing class split into two groups and we each got to write with them. The prompt that I brought in asked students to write a poem about something that they do not know how to do. The students had fun exploring this, and one student even wrote a funny poem about not knowing how to be polite. I was able to get everybody to share in my group, even two students that my cooperating teacher has said never speak and have high anxiety about speaking. And here they were sharing their words with an almost complete stranger!

 This week, we were also able to run the journal activity for the class that we are going to be teaching next week. It was a ton of fun taking control of this class and seeing how responsive they would be to us. I think we are going to have a lot of fun. We saw some real brainy answers from these intelligent students that I see will be teaching me as much as I teach them. You can probably tell my excitement from reading this.

Jess and I also got the chance to share narratives we had written about instances in our lives. This is something my cooperating teacher calls an occasion paper. At the end of every quarter, every student is asked to write an occasion paper and share it in front of class. If they type it up and share it, it is an automatic A. This allows students to tell funny stories and hear their own writing being read, allowing them to notice mistakes. This activity was a lot of fun and I think I want to use this in my own classroom.

I’m basically super excited to be teaching this week. Jess and I have written some solid lessons that we hope can be fun for these students but also “rigorous.” It seems like we are on the same page with a lot of things and we have an excellent team dynamic that can shine in a classroom. The only worry I have is that we will run out of time. We have a lot that we want to do as we are introducing a book to them and we want to make sure we have enough time for our activities. I think that we will be fine though.

High School Week 2

When it comes to classroom roles and unspoken rules, the high school I am placed at is incredibly different from the middle school. In mostly all of the high school classrooms I am in, the students immediately sit down and begin to work on the journal question or prompt that is on the board. These are normally funny and interesting, allowing for the students to get their brain motors moving. One of the journal prompts even had students comparing and contrasting “Little House on the Prairie” with “The Walking Dead”. After they would discuss the prompt. This is polar opposite from the middle school classroom I was in where students would come in noisy and take a while to settle down when the teacher instructed to. Then they would go into teacher directed instruction instead of student led discussion on the prompt.

From what I have seen, it seems like academics are valued more than sociability in the high school as opposed to the middle school. There is also a general understanding in the classroom that no matter what is said during classroom discussion, no one’s answers will be judged. There is also an understanding that if you make a point on anything, the teacher will then ask students to elaborate on what they said for deeper understanding. This is very different from the middle school as I saw many students making fun of others if there statements were not very clear. The sharing environment in the middle school was more tense because of this, and students were less open to sharing their ideas.

I am curious to what the cause is for these two worlds to be so different. The middle school was more diverse than the high school and there is a big age difference between seventh graders and 11^th graders, but could the difference also be caused by the differences in the instructor. I wonder if the middle school classroom had a journal to do quickly would students be more willing to share and settle in quicker, or would the students still lack the respect to not laugh at classmates’ misguided answers or statements in response to questions.

I think it would be interesting to see what would happen in the high school classroom if the teacher got rid of journal entries upon entrance. I’m curious if the way students come in and settle quickly would deteriorate without the prompt. I definitely plan on using journal prompts in my classroom so students can settle in right away.

High School Week 1

This past Thursday was the first day Jess and I were able to go to our high school placements, and while I was excited before, I am now even more so. We spent the whole school day with our cooperating teacher who is fantastic. Even though we were only able to see three classes in action we also were able to attend a charity club meeting and accompany our teacher during her hall duty. Our cooperating teacher and the students we met were very welcoming and some even spoke to us. This is excellent because the first think I look to do in every classroom I enter is build a relationship with students. We all know that we do not learn from people we do not like.

This school is so different from any high school I have ever been in before. Not only because is it so small, but because the school is almost entirely white. I was really nervous and uncomfortable at first knowing that I was going into this since I had never experienced such a thing, but I think I fit in more than I expected to.

To go into the classes we saw, the first was a creative writing class. In this class we watched a def poet perform and then we wrote with the students. It seems like the focus of this class is to explore as many types of writing as possible, and to just write a ton. I’m excited to be in this class more as it seems like such a safe place to display writing.

The second class we watched was an 11^th grade honors class. In this class we watched a few presentations on human trafficking and sweatshops. These were all interesting and very well done. The class seems to be a very well behaved one and all students were respectful during the presentations.

The last class we saw was another 11^th grade honors class. This class had just finished reading and writing on the novel Beloved and for this class period they were continuing to watch the movie. Before the movie was continued, the teacher went over some mistakes in the students’ papers and then highlighted some great sentence examples.

The community that is created in my cooperating teacher’s classrooms seems to be a warm and friendly one. I am super excited to be returning there this week. I can already tell that Jess and I are going to have a lot of fun in this school. Designing and implementing a lesson for one of these classes is going to be truly excellent.

Middle School Teaching Reflection

            Now that I have taught my lesson, I have some views on my strengths and weaknesses in the classroom. I had taken charge of this seventh grade class in weeks prior guiding them through a close reading of a short story. We identified plot elements and vocabulary located inside the story. This time was very different. My lesson was very student oriented and student led, so while I was in charge, the students were the ones really dictating what was being done in their own work. To be honest, the uncertainty of a student led class is a little nerve wracking, and I prefer leading class as the teacher. However, this is probably because this was not “my” classroom and I am not that familiar with students.

            A lot of my lesson went as I expected it to. I expected certain students to participate more than others and I expected to keep student focus and interest by making many transitions. I was also able to get student laughs at the silly jokes I made. I try to make the classroom a place to smile because it makes learning a little bit more fun. I also expected students to give me a good recap of learning at the end of the lesson, which they did splendidly. They defined debate and explained the correlation between debate and an argument essay.

            When it comes to surprises, I had a big one that threw me a little off balance. There are some students in the class that normally are in another room receiving additional help that were a part of class that day. I am not used to seeing them and wasn’t sure of my point of entry with them. They came in half way through the first part of my lesson, but I was quickly able to get them up to speed, and on the second day of my lesson, was able to give them a little extra help on the part of the debate that they were assigned.

            What I learned about myself was that even when I am nervous and shaking on the inside I can maintain control of a classroom and hide any sign of uncertainty or nervousness. I also learned that one on one student engagement is incredibly important to understanding. While I am still sure that Middle School is not the place I want to teach, I had a fun time. I do like that age, just more as a mentor or tutor rather than classroom teacher. I am happy I got to experience this though.

Middle School: Week 3

            This week my class got switched around. The 8^th grade finished their common assessment and the 7^th grade started taking a practice PARCC test which I got to watch the students do and see what kind of questions are going to be on the PARCC.

            To start off with the PARCC, the 8^th grade was given packets with biographies on Amelia Earhart. This is unlike the real PARCC which will be digitally given. After the students read the biographies on their own, they then had to answer questions which had the students making inferences and removing in formation from the text, then they had to give a short written answer to a question about the struggle that Earhart had to go through. This PARCC test is looking pretty tough and involved and I wonder how the students will fare in the future when they have to take the real PARCC test.

            Moving on to the 8^th grade, this week they started a book called Nothing but the Truth by Avi. This book poses some questions about school rules and student-teacher relationships. It also poses the question of “What is truth?” Each class started off with an activity called a carousel where they walk around the room in groups answer questions posted on chart paper around the room. The questions read, “What is patriotism?”, “What is Truth?”, “What is respect?”, and “What are some rights as a young adult that you think you should have, but do not?” The first time this lesson was done my cooperating teacher was being evaluated by the Vice Principal and the lesson went very well. I was walking around the room helping students to answer the questions and prepare for the discussion on the questions that would follow the activity. The students were also given home-made writing journals that the students could use to answer questions on the text. My cooperating teacher learned how to make these at the RIWP Spring Conference!

            When the next 8^th grade class came in, I got the opportunity to run the carousel and the following discussion. This class has some behavior issues and during discussion it got off topic a few times, and I was able to corral them back into the lesson pretty well. Overall I think I had a lot of fun doing this and I am helping my fear of middle school a little.

            On Friday the class I was in split up into their reading groups that are dictated by their reading scores. I sat in with one of the groups and even read a few parts myself a loud. This was a lot of fun and I got to see students helping each other figure out hard words that they fumbled over. They were doing this in such a nice way that warmed me right up and I’m smiling now that I’m reflecting on it. I’m really excited to teach my self-made lessons this coming week!

RIWP Conference

            The RIWP Spring 2014 conference was amazing and I wish I could have gone to every single last workshop and absorbed everything! To start, hearing Mr. Newkirk speak on narrative was absolutely inspiring and I had flashbacks to my seminar class and the importance of reflecting on our own experiences and other’s to understand the world. Narrative is really central to everything. Newkirk’s introduction was also inspiring. The fact that he addressed student work by first saying “this is what I learned”, then asking questions is an amazing way to highlight student strengths then get them to dig deeper into their own work. Sometimes personal conversation is the best way for people to develop ideas and I plan on using this idea on my own students.

The first workshop I attended was really awesome. It was poetry speed dating and we got to participate in an activity that we can use in a classroom where students get 10 minutes to write a certain kind of poem before going to another kind for the next 10 minutes, and so on. This is a cool activity that I can see students really getting into. It is low stakes and gets the creative juices flowing. Poems can be silly or serious, there are no real rules other than the type of poems that need to be written. It was great hearing other people share their poems. I can totally see myself using this activity in my future classroom to get students producing and having fun.

The second workshop involved focusing on how important characters are to a story. For this workshop, we did an activity that the person leading the workshop had used in her own junior high classroom. We started out by putting ourselves in the shoes of an uninterested student then saying something that the student would say about doing uninteresting classwork. We then each created our own characters, split into small groups of 3-4 people, and were given a single prop and a setting. We then had to create a situation using our characters, prop, and setting. Next,  we acted out our mini scene. This activity was a lot of fun and I could see it really working in any classroom, especially in an English classroom, using different characters from different books to make them interact in a way they never would. This would show students just how important character traits are to the way a story develops.

Overall, this conference was a great one. I had a lot of fun and learned a lot. All the presenters I saw were awesome, I just wish I could have seen more workshops. But, that is one of my character traits, I want to do everything and learn everything.