Technology Integration: The Frustrations and the Benefits

Student teaching in one of the best school districts in York County has been a great blessing for me. At Central York, the students are fortunate enough to be on a 1:1 program. My 10th graders have iPads, which we integrate into almost every lesson.

When using technology, I have learned that the goal is to make sure the use is purposeful and authentic. Too many times we use technology for the sake of "using technology." When we do this, our students are not able to see the benefit the platform provides us. 

Today, my students were completing a list-group-label activity with the essential question: What can you tell me about Asian culture?

Five minutes passed by as the students collaborated on listing ideas. Another five passed as they then grouped and labeled the different ideas. At the end of the time, I asked my students what tools they used to obtain these ideas. They all looked at me like I was half-crazy.

"Uh... We just used our brains, Miss Fickes."

I smiled because this is the oh-so-obvious answer that I already knew. When my students shared the information they had come up with, a lot of them made qualifying statements like, "This may not actually be true, but..."

To bring me back to my original question to my kids, I asked how many of them used their iPads to clarify any questions they had. Crickets.

This brings me to my point about technology. The idea of technology integration, in my opinion, is to make the use of technology second nature. Instead of being unsure, why not use the device that his limitless access to information? If you went into Google, you could type in "Asian culture," and I know Wikipedia would pop up with a ton of information. It amazes me that my kids don't do this.

One student got out his iPad to try and identify the name of a type of landscaping for which he could not think of the name. When I walked by him, he quickly explained to me that he just had his iPad out because he wanted to find out the name of something- he wasn't cheating.

This shows me that the way we integrate technology into our classrooms still needs improvement. I don't think it's wrong to look up easy-to-find information on a device, obviously dependent upon the setting. I'm not saying whip a device out during a standardized test.

My point is anyone can Google "Asian culture." The lower level thinking questions that I am asking my students are easily accessible with a few clicks of their fingers. The important thing we need to ask ourselves is where do we go from here?

For my classroom, it will be to a myth busters activity. They will be identifying the stereotypes and myths that exist about Asian culture and working in partner pairs to prove or bust them. The format they will use to present this information is Piktochart. The students will use Piktochart to create an infographic that details the research of the students. There's a purpose, and it's authentic. According to Piktochart's website, infographics are, "visual presentations intended to communicate complex information, data, or knowledge quickly and clearly." It's a template that student can drop and click the information they find.

I look forward to seeing how it goes in my classroom. To introduce the project to my students, I created a screencast of me explaining Piktochart, as well as my expectations for the projects. This is the kind of technology integration I find useful. My students are utilizing their technology to create unique visuals that they can use as a reference during their presentations. I can't wait to see how this turns out.

Differentiating Environment with an Added Tangent

Our differentiation topic of the week is environment. In order to teach us more about differentiating environment, we were given a comic called, "To Teach: The Journey, in Comics." This idea of learning about differentiation from a comic was a little strange for me; however, once I began to read the comic strip, I learned a lot of good things about differentiating environment.

The classroom environment is oftentimes set from day one. One of the best ways I think you can create a positive classroom environment is through the code of conduct you create for your class. This summer I spent a two week observation period in Philadelphia in a school called the Science Leadership Academy. The code of conduct for the school was simple.

1. Respect and care about yourself. 
2. Respect and care about the community.
3. Respect and care that this is a place of learning. 

These guidelines create an environment that is centered on appreciation of one's self, as well as understanding and empathy for others. It also encourages collaboration; the classroom becomes a community of learners, where knowledge is valued and shared. Once this environment is created, differentiation is easily achieved. 

On page 40 of the comic, it says, "What would it mean to learn from the world and not just about the world? From nature, from history, from democracy rather than simply about democracy?"

Think about this for a second. How many times do we just TELL kids what things are instead of letting them experience it themselves. When we do this, we miss the point. They are no longer participants in the problem solving of learning, but rather passive participants who are informed by a secondary source.

Why do we get frustrated when our kids question us? Isn't that what we're there for? My favorite education professor in college presented every instructional strategy as "this might work." Instead of just telling us if you use this in your classroom, you will have success, he would tell us things like these are the results that I found when I used this activity.

It's a mentality that I try to keep with me at all times. We all get frustrated when we are constantly challenged, but I'm not quite sure frustration should be the go to emotion. Do we not ask our kids to allow themselves to be challenged? Is it not our job as educators to challenge them? Why, then, when the roles are reversed, do we suddenly become defensive?

I know I went a little off track here, but I think it is all important to keep in mind. The tangent was really to highlight, that we as teachers need to be apart of our community of learners. If we hold our thoughts and opinions above those of our students, I think we aren't giving our kids enough credit. It also shows contradicts a concept that we wish to instill in them: their opinions are valuable.

I know I'm guilty of getting frustrated, so this rant was a great reminder for me. I need to center on addressing education like my favorite professor- maybe this will work for you, or, maybe it won't.

Wait Time

I want to talk a little about the concept of wait time. I want to start off by saying it is a strategy that I struggle with. First, I hate awkward silence. I hate awkward silence less than a group of 15 year olds, but I still don't enjoy it. Secondly, when I was in school, I was the kid who had to fill that awkward silence. Provide a suggestion, so everyone doesn't sit there with a blank stare of their faces. Finally, how long is too long to sit in silence?

How does one acquire the skill of wait time? How do I become good at waiting for responses?

The answer from an administrator was years of teaching. I don't know if I'm patient to wait for my years of experience to begin. It is a skill that I believe an instructor should master as soon as possible. If I am not providing adequate wait time, I'm giving them answers. Instead of allowing them to think about the question I'm asking them.

I am going to start making a conscious effort to slow down. Not necessarily the speed of my lecture, but rather the speed at which I push my students to answer. Create a larger time frame. This way I am allowing them to use their own critical thinking skills instead of depending on me to formulate an answer.

Honestly, I'm a little disappointed that I made this mistake in the first place.

Invitation to Reflection

UBD Reflection 1-3: Which of the following do you think is appropriate content for a high school course in English?

• language study (grammar)
• language skills
• writing
• speaking
• listening
• reading
• viewing
• print literature
• nonprint literature
• communication skills
• students' own lives
• context of students' lives
• other (explain)

Right away, when I was evaluating these topics, I identified four which are necessary to include. In order to teach students about the language, they must utilize the skills of writing, speaking, listening, and reading. These four skills align to a few categories. For example, speaking aligns to communication skills, and writing and reading align to grammar. All four of the components together make up the category of language skills. Without much examination, all of these topics are necessary components of an English course.

The next two easy content areas to address are students' own lives and the context of students' lives. Learning needs to be authentic; in order for students to build connections to the content, they need to understand the relevancy of it. If we didn't include our students in our content, who would our target audience be?

The last three are also necessary to include. Viewing nonprint and print literature helps to create well-rounded individuals. Students who are not well versed in literature are not able to have the same insights as someone who is well read. An important 21st Century skill is critical thinking. If our students do not address these different texts with their critical thinking hats, they will lack the perspective needed to objectively view material.

Currently, I am teaching an Honors Humanities class. My students are required to read a novel, The Bhagavad Gita, which addresses the Eastern philosophy of Hinduism. Almost all of them have at some point in time asked the question: Why do we have to learn about other philosophies?

Here's the part where I begin the explanation of our globalizing nation and the importance of broadening our perspectives. It's usually met with some unblinking stares, and now and again, an eye roll.

Except for today..

Today, one of my students said, "I really don't care about what pathway he chooses. It isn't helping me learn to understand this book. Either way he's going to die in be reincarnated."

I paused for a second, and responded, "Now, what type of philosophical view is that?"

She answered, "Well, it's Eastern."

To which I said, "So, what have you learned?"

This is when I saw it click. She understood a difference between Eastern and Western philosophy. This student is really struggling with the content of this book, but in reality, she is learning information about the different philosophies, maybe just not as consciously as she would like.

My point is that all of these aspects are important to incorporate into an English course. It is our job to cover different material by viewing nonprint and print literature. It is our job to make sure our students are writing, reading, speaking, and listening. Most importantly, though, it is our job to make sure that our students are learning about their own lives, so they can have a better self-understanding. It allows them to self-reflect, to empathize, and to broaden their perspectives.

FINALLY, Understanding Restatement and Definition

For my Honors English II class, my students are working on vocabulary. The vocabulary words are taken from their current class novel, Like Water for Chocolate; however, they also all are able to be found on the SAT's top vocabulary list. Today, I had the students work interactively with their vocabulary creating a visual representation of a specific vocabulary group. The students have been learning about the importance of context clues, specifically restatement and definition clues, when defining vocabulary; as well as how to use these context clues in their own sentences. For this project, they had to combine the two elements of vocabulary and context clues. Here are the requirements of the project, as well as my example:

The students were given approximately 20 minutes to partner together and to complete the assignment. They were given free choice as far as format and design; the only real guidelines were the components listed on the board. Below are a few of the students' creations. I was really impressed by all of them!


One of the major things I have struggled with in this unit is helping my students to understand how to apply their understanding of restatement and definition context clues. When I first had them create sentences for homework, I was alarmed by the number of students who were way off base with what I was asking. I felt like failure; clearly, I hadn't explained it well enough. I used their sentences as a formative assessment, and I adjusted my plan for the activity today. I reexplained the concept of restatement and definition context clues trying to give them a almost step-by-step way to create the clues. Here's what I wrote on the board:

Restatement: expressing the same idea using different language
- Use the synonyms column of the list
* Example: The church was attended regularly by the pious congregation because they are devout followers of their faith.
Definition: use unfamiliar word and then explain what it means
- Signal words + definition of word
* Example: The woman attended church regularly, and the pastor called her pious, in other words devoutly religious.
     : signal word      : definition

As I went around to the different groups, I was able to see that a few of my students were still struggling with the concept. I sat down with them and had them show me what they thought were examples of restatement and definition context clues. As I worked individually, I saw that the real problem was my students didn't understand how part of speech played a role into the creation of these sentences. A lot of them didn't understand that for a restatement clue if you use the word as a noun, you must then use the synonym for the restatement as a noun also.

When I talked to Tara, I explained the students' confusion with parts of speech. She informed me that the Common Core does not have a real place for grammar; therefore, the students have little interaction with the parts of speech. This left me feeling frustrated, maybe it's a personal bias from my linguistics background, but I feel like these kids are missing out on an important element of writing. I'm not talking about teaching them traditional grammar, but there are proven case studies that show teaching generative grammar can enhance student writing. I am curious to see how the student's lack of understanding of grammar will play into their understanding of future elements of writing and vocabulary.

Overall, the lesson went really well. By having the students work in pairs, I was able to get around to each group and address any problems or concerns they were having. Another thing I was excited about was the students' engagement in the activity. They were definitely all active participants. I was a little skeptical about captivating their attention because I didn't want them to feel as though the activity was beneath them. Fortunately, they all seemed to enjoy the activity, and I was able to see a lot of their creative thinking!

Saying Good-bye

I thought this had posted earlier, but I guess not. Blogger apparently hates me.

This last week in the field was great. I had to cut it short for my own sanity, because I'm in a show on campus and waking up at 5:40 in the morning and doing a show at night didn't sound pleasant.

All in all, my time in professional block was great. It was definitely a learning experience. I learned a lot about building relationships with students--something my cooperating teacher was greatly skilled in. I also learned a lot about what I don't want to be like as a teacher--and I don't want that to read as any sort of snide remark against my co-op; I just know I observed a lot of things I don't want to do, which I think is good.

Overall, this was a really great experience and I am so happy I got to do this. I will go into student teaching a way more confident teacher as a result.
I was really pleased by the number of students who told me I was a good teacher when I left. It made my year. =) I'm told if you can get the endorsement of a tenth grader, it means quite a lot, so I am still on cloud nine from their kind words.

Creativity vs. Comas

Something hit me this week while the students were reading and attempting to analyze Julius Caesar.  As a class, students have been chugging through this classic piece of drama, and completing various typical tasks along the way: vocabulary, graphic organizers, quizzes. My co-op taught a myriad of short lessons about literary devices and skills that are familiar to the average English classroom, like rising and falling action, cause and effect, figurative language, and characterization. Sounds pretty solid, right? Sounds like the English classes we grew up in, where every piece of literature served to place check marks next to state standards and cover specific aspects of curriculum. The kids should, then, be learning a lot and taking much away from this play. But they're not. Most of them couldn't remember from class to class what we had read and in terms of doing any deep, analytic thought about the thematic nuances or the deeper meanings of the play, most were both disinterested and not fluent. What's more, these things didn't matter to them and, even worse, didn't have much bearing at all on the corresponding work they were completing. 

I was trying to figure out why these students were not getting it, why this unit was falling flat for them. After about a week, it became apparent: it was boring, painful even. The entire unit was lifeless, focused strictly on coverage, and did not possess even one creative aspect to engage students. Students walked in each day, sat down, trudged through as much reading as possible, filled out charts, answered objective questions, passively took notes, and worked on a long list of vocabulary. This was the scene for four weeks (they started a week before I got there) and would probably be the scene for at least one more week. To be honest, even I was bored, and I certainly wouldn't have wanted to be in their shoes. I was desperate to add some kind of creative aspect to the class, but was reluctant to give them even more work. So, for the non-hybrid English class, I asked them to create an epitaph for Caesar after he had been stabbed and the funeral speeches had been given. I wasn't expecting magic or anything overtly clever, but I was hopeful to at least provide a small break in the rigid routine and create some engagement. But they were completely stumped; it was as if I had turned their world upside down. They didn't know what to do and, even more telling, didn't know what I expected them to say. These students have been subjected to the same objective, multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, charts-and-tables, worksheet routine (in all of their classes, not just English) that they have a hard time being creative or thinking deeply about transferable concepts and meaning. This realization made me angry and frustrated, and made me feel sorry for these kids who are missing so much from their education.

This has proven to me how important having an engaged and creative classroom is. It creates relevance and gives the material life and purpose. Creativity gets students' juices flowing, facilitating deep thought and more memorable learning. (Ironically, I think students remember more from the creative, concept-centered classroom versus the objective, memorization-driven class.) I hope to never create a classroom that threatens to put both the teacher and the students into a boredom coma.

My final week in the field went well. I taught a lesson every day from my memoir unit, which was a great learning experience and has helped me develop my unit even further. Sadly, my students didn’t have enough time to finish their memoirs before I left; we were still conferencing/ peer reviewing their rough drafts on Friday. Thankfully, Mrs. B said she would send me some of their finished drafts when they are turned in next week so I will be able to see how they turn out!

I got to teach several gifted seminar classes this week. In one, I showed a TED talk by Daniel Pink about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, which led to a very interesting discussion about whether or not my students thought that extrinsic motivators (like grades) crush creativity. I also taught my usual short film classes, which went pretty well. My favorite was the day I showed “French Roast”, a 2008 Oscar-nominated film short. I recommend watching it, if you haven’t seen it already. It would make for an awesome mentor text; in my class, it led to a great discussion about morals and the power of forgiveness.

I hope everyone else's experiences went well!

Last Week In The Field

This week was filled with some more testing. On Monday the students took the diagnostic test that predicts how well the students will do on the Keystones. Then Tuesday and Wednesday were 8^th grade science PSSAs. So my students did not take the test but the schedule was cut short because of the two hours in the morning that were taken out for testing. During the two hours in the morning we just showed movies until the two hours were up. On Tuesday during class time we introduced the students to a new assignment. They will be completing a book review to end their persuasive unit. They have to convince their classmates to read a certain book. So on Tuesday we took them to the library. By the end of the period they had to have a book chosen and one reason why they think they could persuade another student to read the book. On Wednesday, the students watched videos of the mock trial presentations. They watched a class different than their own class and judged who should get the free heart transplant. They had to fill out a paper during the video and write out why they felt a certain group was more persuasive than the other groups. Then on Thursday we finally got back to a normal schedule. The students did some work with making simple sentences into complex and compound sentences. Then they worked on filling out a graphic organizer for their books. The graphic organizer will help them to remember the plot, characters, setting, etc so that they can better brainstorm for their book review papers. On Friday, I had the students write a free write based on the prompts turned in by fellow students. Then to review the lesson they learned on Thursday on making simple sentences into complex/compound sentences, I had them pick out simple sentences in their own writing to change into a complex/compound sentence as a formative assessment. To end, they just worked on their book review assignment. 

I also got to sit in on an IEP meeting for a student named Zeke. This week I finally got Zeke excited about reading by introducing him to a graphic novel. I read the graphic novel with him and so he got excited to come to class and tell me what page he was on to see if he was “beating” me. I was so happy to see a kid who hated reading actually start reading every free minute he had during class. The sad part is that I have to leave just as I was starting to make a difference for Zeke. Anyway, the IEP meeting was interesting. The meeting was basically just to update his IEP and make sure his parents were satisfied with everything the teachers were doing. Zeke is getting Cs and Bs in school right now and his parents seemed to be okay with that. Personally, I think there is more the teachers could be doing to make their lessons more engaging. Zeke is a kid who hates school and probably because learning is hard for him. If they did more to make him more invested in learning I think Zeke could do better. It is also hard because Zeke is absent a lot. He is gone almost every Friday because he goes to Hershey medical for some sort of tests for his vision. The teachers stressed that Zeke has to become more responsible for making sure he makes up the work that he misses.

 The last day at the middle school was so bittersweet. While it will be nice to have a break from getting up at 5:30 every morning I am really going to miss the kids. They made cards for me and some even gave me hugs. I might even go in next Friday because they were begging me to come back. I am truly lucky to have had such a great experience!

Trials in Substituting

The beginning of this three week stint provided me with an interesting experience that I was not quite expecting: I got to play substitute. It was on a Wednesday and the students had an early dismissal at 1pm, which I thought would make my day significantly easier since that meant my co-op's last class wouldn't meet. (His last class is a traditional class, but more than half of the students have IEP's and, many days, a lack of motivation.) However, this day was one where I couldn't wait to bust out the doors and drive away and maybe call in sick the next.
They had an actual substitute with me, who was actually a recent Millersville graduate, but my co-op told her I would run the show. This was easier said than done. Each class began with "Yes, a sub!" as students filed into the room and followed with attempts to bargain their way out of the small amount of in-class reading that needed to be done. After completing guided reading, students avoided doing work like the plague. Many resorted to playing games on their iPads (one of the biggest downfalls of devices in the classroom) and ignoring multiple requests to get to work. This was all expected and taken with a grain of salt. It was not until Literacy (a remedial class for mostly ESL students who have not reached reading fluency), which is usually my favorite class due to their high energy, that things went south.
These students, who are masters of time wasting but will usually comply when told to get on task, almost completely refused to do anything for me. They talked over me, were incredibly loud, were walking around, and refused to do work. One student, just as everyone was turning to the page in which we were to start, got out of his seat and sat down at a computer to check basketball scores. I told him to get off the computer and come to his seat, to which he replied, "Just a minute, Miss, I want to see who won." I sternly told him once more to get off the computer and he ignored me. I had to make the entire class wait while I walked over and closed the computer on him (which another student was now surrounding). He and the other student said that my doing so was "disrespectful", to which I retorted, "No, you guys are being disrespectful. Get in your seats." I was tense, frustrated, and defeated the rest of the period, and I think the students sensed it. Some of them took advantage of my demeanor and some of them seemed to feel the way they would if their parents were disappointed in them. After my negative report on the class to my co-op, he reprimanded a few of the students the next day, and the atmosphere in class was again tense.
I feel bad that things went the way they did and I constantly question if I handled things correctly that day. It also makes me question how I carried myself prior to being put in the position of a substitute; why was I not able to gain enough of the students' respect to have them listen? Would they have listened better to the hired substitute if it had been just her? Or would it have been worse? I'm really not sure. The sub said she thought things would have been worse if I wouldn't have been there, but I wonder if part of the problem is that the students already knew that I wasn't really a teacher. Also, I was disappointed that my co-op never prepped his students for his absence. He was absent for a meeting, so he knew that he wouldn't be there and could have told the students of his expectations for their behavior and work ethic and warned them of repercussions for misbehavior. I know my teachers in school used to tell us stuff like this all the time when they had a substitute coming in and I'm wondering why he didn't find this to be necessary.
Regardless, this was definitely a learning experience that I will not soon forget. I know that I will probably end up substitute teaching after graduation, so I am thankful for the glimpse into the reality of it, even if it was a fairly negative experience. Also, I'm going to have another shot at substituting this Wednesday and I'm hoping that things will go better this time. I don't want my last day there to be a bad one.

Testing, Testing 1-2, 1-2.

This week I graded until I thought my hand was going to fall off. I've known for awhile that I really don''t want to give traditional paper and pencil tests and this week confirmed it! My goodness, if you could have seen the amount of grading I did you would weep for me. I can't imagine giving paper and pencil tests on a regular basis. But then again..."the Keystones are coming up!" So, you know, it's kind of a given. 

Overall, this week was good. The Boston Marathon Bombings were a hot topic; I must admit, I feel quite bad for these students. They, even more than my own generation, have grown up in a terrifying climate. I hope things get better for our nation. I can't imagine guiding a discussion on such horrific topics. The whole situation really shows the importance of staying up with current events. The weeks before the bombings, students were constantly asking questions about North Korea. 

Sadly, I haven't had much of a chance to teach. Occasionally I'll step in, but not quite as much as I'd like. But all in all, it's been a good experience. I'm happy to have the experience come to end soon though. I feel like I've learned quite a bit in these last few weeks, but between school and rehearsal, I'm at the end of my rope. 

Hope everyone else is doing swell. =)

Syncopated

Starting last Friday, I taught this week, two normal periods and three truncated ones. Testing wreaks havoc on the schedule and an early dismissal Friday added it's own version of a short schedule. It didn't seem a bad thing at first- short periods should be easier, right? Nope, the short days were the hardest, throwing off my rhythm and just generally kind of weird. I'm not sure what to make of it. Friday and Monday went swimmingly, they were up and moving and interested, but the other days didn't seem to come out right regardless of how I set the day up to get done what needed to. I felt like I was off my own rhythm, tripping over words and ending up with a stilted, awkward seeming flow to the class, so different from other days I've taught.  Not completely sure whether it was something to do with my planning or the shortness and rearrangement of the periods- definitely going to think about this.

Keeping it together

This week I’ve been more grateful than ever for everything that I learned in “Teaching Writing” last semester. I got to teach the first five lessons from my memoir unit to Mrs. B’s class at the junior high, and I used so many tools and techniques from last semester that I kept wondering where I would be had that class not existed. The students are now in the midst of drafting their own personal memoirs, and they’ve also created six-word memoirs as well as “Where I’m from” poems. If we have enough time next week, we will publish it all on a class tumblr and include relevant photos, videos, etc. There is something so satisfactory about seeing students respond to writing assignments with enthusiasm and creativity. At the high school, I used Keirstie Martin’s mentor from last semester (I bet a bunch of you remember it… it was the “love letter” from a toothbrush to a bicycle tire) as a freewriting prompt for another teacher’s class. Some of the letters that the students wrote were hilarious! My favorite was “cutting board to the knife” by an eleventh-grade boy.

Ok, enough gushing. There is something else I want to talk about, and it isn’t nearly as happy.

 I almost cried yesterday when I read the beginnings of a certain eight grade boy’s memoir (we’ll call him “Jake”). He was the first student to walk up and ask that I read what he wrote. It was completely voluntary—I hadn’t even suggested that the students share their drafts yet. So this boy came up and quietly asked that I read what he wrote, and as soon as I took his paper he sat down stared hard at the wall.

“Sometimes I wanted to beat the crap out of my brother,” began the paper. I groaned internally and prepared myself for a paper of shameless brother-bashing. Instead, I was shocked by what came next. The paper continued to explain that the little brother was autistic, and that while Jake used to get frustrated by his younger brother’s disability, he had learned over time to love his brother for who he was and to look out for him at all times.

 This happy surprise was followed by a nasty one: Jake’s paper continued on to describe a scene in which he was left at home alone with his brother, and, while under his care, his little brother had a seizure. It was when I got to the words “it slowly dawned on me that my brother was dying” that I struggled to keep it together. The story was unfinished, so I handed the paper back to Jake, thanked him for sharing and told him that I looked forward to reading the rest. At the time, I couldn’t think of how else to respond. This boy is only in eighth grade and he has been through events that are more traumatic than anything I have ever experienced. I’m impressed that he was willing to share his story and I wonder how often he’s shared it before. I’m also wondering if I responded to it the right way. With the whole class there, I didn’t want to make a fuss or draw any attention to Jake, but I still feel like I should have said something more than I did. How would you respond if a student shared a story like that?

Week 2 Observations

This week included more PSSA's and presentations. The students were presenting their mock trials where they were fighting for their clients to recieve a heart transplant. The presentations were interesting, but the week included a lot of observing. Monday was the only day I got to teach. I did a group freewrite with the students and it actually was really awesome! The difference in the stories the small groups came up with from one picture was amazing! The students really enjoyed it too. They have actually started making their own prompts and bringing them in! I love this because they are getting excited about writing. Today, my co-op decided we were just going to have a reading day in the library and one of the students was disappointed I wasn't doing a freewrite prompt. I promised her that we will get a chance next week.

Engaged Learning Reflection

     As I was reading Engaged Learning today, I came across something that caught my eye in the "Modeling Engaged Learning" chapter. In talking about writing, VanDeWeghe quotes Katie Wood Ray, "Either we can be walking, breathing, talking examples of all we advocate for our students, or we can have them sitting around wondering why we are trying to get them into something that we are obviously not into ourselves."
     I already talked to some of you about my co-op's sixth period class. It's a remedial class designed to improve their knowledge/skills of English in order to improve their testing scores on the Keystone exams/PSSA's. There are only four students in the class. On a good day, two of them are actually doing their work. They are argumentative and don't like to do anything except for stare at a book or an article until the class is over. My co-op makes them complete "double-entry journals" where they have to write down a section or quote from the book/article they're currently reading, and then write a response or reflection on their selection.
     In a conversation I had with my co-op last week in the library when the students were conducting research, he told me that he actually HATES to read books; however, he does like to read The Onion (satire), and news articles/current events. However, when these students who feel forced to read are instructed to read for the class period, my co-op sits on a stool at his podium and checks his email. This is not modeling ANYTHING about reading. His sixth period students are left wondering, 'why are we sitting around forced to do something that Mr. Coleman isn't into himself?' He could at least sit and read the newspaper while these students are supposed to be reading themselves.
     It was just interesting that VanDeWeghe clearly stated something that we as teachers don't really do ourselves. While we think about modeling our writing/thinking processes with students, we also need to think about what we're telling our students to do, and what we're actually modeling.

Testing My Patience

Sorry for not posting early, folks.

I had to take time to filter my feelings and process my thoughts before posting.

Last week, when we were still in classes, the principal from my field placement came into to talk to the students in our special education course. After presenting on the topic of Keystones and flipping through dozens of Powerpoint slides, he concluded his presentation by saying: "Do I want my teachers to teach to the test? Of course I do."

This upset me greatly.

I told my cooperating teacher about the talk and she relayed the story to the Department Chair at the school where I'm doing my observations. The chair of the department then leaned over the table, looked me in the eyes and said, "Welcome to the real world. My number one priority as a teacher is to get these kids to pass the test. Would it be nice if they learned something? Sure, it would, but that's secondary."

Overall, the whole testing culture is testing my patience. I can't even really formulate any sort of eloquent response to these statements; I'm frustrated. Getting students to learn will always be my number one priority, regardless of how much pressure is placed upon me due to some silly test. If that makes me a poor candidate for a job opening, then so be it.

First Week Back

Hi everyone! This week passed pretty uneventfully. I was supposed to begin teaching my memoir unit, but the class was behind on their previous unit and spent the whole week doing presentations so I won't begin the lessons until Monday. I did get a chance to teach lessons on thesis statements, outlining research papers and a short film called "The Lost Thing" (a 2010 Oscar winner) which was a good learning experience for me (and hopefully for the students, too!). The student book presentations in Mrs. B's class at the junior high were really fun to watch because Mrs. B gave everyone choice in what their presentations would be. The students had made videos of mock interviews, book trailers, picture books, artwork, power points, websites and traditional essays to showcase their knowledge of their novel. Because they were allowed so much freedom, they were really creative with their presentations. It was so cool to see that kind of enthusiasm fill an entire class!

Making the best of PSSA week

This week was a drag because the PSSA's took two hours of our day every day. So for part of class we did freewrites or brain challenges to give the students a break. The students are really enjoying doing the freewrites and I actually gave them an assignment to do a freewrite photo prompt. It is due Monday, but some of them excitedly turned them into me today! For the rest of class the students are just working on their mock trials. They are doing an assignment where their client is in need of a heart transplant and they have to persuade the judges to give their client the heart. They have opposing clients that they are going up against so they have to consider the other groups counterarguments. The groups seem really engaged with the project and I am excited to see the trials next Thursday!

Missed Opportunity (Week 3)

In my 3rd week at LCHS I've observed another situation where I really wish I had my own class. In my co-op's freshman English classes and in her Creative Writing class she is teaching about transcendentalism nature writing/throeau etc. This week, as you may have noticed, has been warm, finally. In LCHS there is no air conditioning; it gets really hot in the third floor classrooms. We spent all of Tuesday writing in our seats and listening to lecture. The kids were distracted and kept looking out the window. My co-op kept mentioning the heat and how she was sorry that it was unavoidable. In creative writing class she had them sit and write about being outside (they were to describe a natural scene, or write a poem about nature they observed) while sitting at their desks in a hot room. 

Why not go outside? 

There is a large field, vacant during the school-day hours, for baseball and football. We could have went over there and wrote outside and actually been in a natural setting. 

It almost seemed ironic, or hypocritical. Something didn't seem right. 

So we sat and wrote. The heat put some kids to sleep. 

So if that isn't disheartening enough, here is a poem I wrote after school on wednesday about Lucia, an ESL student in my co-op's freshman English class.

___

Lucia chews gum every day,

and always has to be told to spit it out--

Must be scolded before she sits,

when she walks in to doorway

to English.

Whether she does her reading or not

(If she did she’s a liar and is she didn’t she lies)

She is never called on,

so she sits back,

applies lip balm,

looks  around,

looks at me, scribbling,

in the back of the room,

chews more gum,

is never called on…

except for to spit it out immediately.

Sometimes in class they popcorn read.

And when it comes to her she says each small word,

Flower, call, pig, four, hands.

but the teacher says the bigger ones before she has a chance.

On her locker is a peeling Spanish-flag laminate

barely hanging to the metal door

by dried up Scotch tape donuts.

And each morning she finds it on the linoleum floor,

picks it up,

sticks it back on,

each time pressing harder, for a few seconds longer.

Then walks to class,

sticks a stick of gum between her lips.

In class they study grammar and she puts her head down on her purse like she’s listening to it.

Sometimes before the end of the day, even as early as 1, 130,

when the air is dirty dry and hotly sticky,

the flag comes unstuck already--

It is already on the ground.

When the teacher reads aloud

but comes to a Spanish noun,

like banjo (which she says banjo)

Or ha-hac-haci--

Lucia offers “Hacienda”

She is told not to interrupt.

And scolded for her gum. 

Research Unit

Hey Guys! I hope you're all having a good start in the field for these three weeks! I just wanted to quickly share with you all something that my co-op stated this morning. The students are currently working on a research unit... this paper that they have to turn in must show the effects of one thing on another i.e. the effects of the invention of the rifle on American society (an actual topic one student chose). I asked my co-op if there were any instances where a student would surprise him, meaning, a student who normally doesn't do well hands in an 'A' paper. He said at this point in the year, he knows the good writers from the bad writers, and they pretty much don't stray from what they were (basically labeled as) at the beginning of the year. I thought to myself.... WOAH! DID HE JUST SAY THAT? If his students aren't improving in writing throughout the year, what are they doing?!? He said that he would like to turn the research paper into a presentation, but there just isn't enough time in the curriculum. While I can understand that there is a time crunch during this time of the year, I wonder why he can't squeeze in daily, or even weekly, writing activities in a writer's notebook to help students improve their writing from the beginning of the year. The only support/modeling the students have of the research paper is what he has posted on the class wiki. The example is my co-op's chosen topic of how money affects baseball (he is a baseball coach). While this topic is relevant to high school students who like sports/baseball, I think he could choose a topic that is more relevant to model, like the positive/negative effects of starting high school later than elementary school. Do any of you find your co-op's using writer's notebooks effectively in the classroom? If so, how does your co-op make time for this?

Grammar again:P

Back into the classroom only to find that I missed even the last days of their poetry unit and we're doing verbals. This pleases me not. On the other hand Friday I start my mini unit on "Flowers for Algernon" amidst the infuriating pointlessness of PSSAs. If it bad that I feel like this will be much more fun and possibly more educational when I'm taking the lead?

Standing firm while the water flows by

I almost fell out of my chair to hear one of Kozol's stories echoed in my classroom, though with a different sort of spin. I'd never heard anyone say "fishy fishy" until I read it in Kozol, but then a few days after reading it, I heard one of my middle school boys saying it, in that tone reserved for something that has a hidden meaning. I was pretty sure it was Not nice, but without having the faintest clue of what it did mean, I just gave the student a little glare and left it at that. I later checked on Urban Dictionary, but that didn't help much, beyond confirming that, in most settings,  it's probably not nice.

That was the most startling connection, but hardly the most profound or pedagogical. The classroom that I'm in has been mired in a grammar unit (yes- a whole unit) for all but the first day or so I was in the classroom. Since about day 3 I've been rather inclined to beat my head on the desk. The kids have a packet of worksheets, mostly straight from the book, and we have plodded steadily through them day after day. I know that there is research that shows this context-less instruction to be ineffective at best, and my coop even admitted one day that most of them probably won't remember much of this, but still the classes are subjected to this mind-numbing march of sentence complements. Why? "Because it will improve your writing". No, it won't, not taught like this anyway. One of the lies Kozol despises. one of the days I worked with a sub, a student asked why they need to know this. I let the sub answer, because my answer might have made trouble we didn't need. This is not my classroom. I wanted to say "You don't need to know this. You will never use it (unless you're going to be an English teacher or an editor). It might make you better at revising, but not done this way". I can see where knowing what the sentence complements are and how one can identify them might be useful, but it should be done with mini lessons, using sentences from student work or what they are reading and always with the goal of improving student's writing in mind first- not used as an excuse to teach something that some textbook or curriculum stuck in the 1800's thinks they should do. Most of these 8th graders can use these structures unconsciously to some degree, and these drill and kill worksheets don't make them any more likely to use them. Half-desperate I 'idly' mentioned that there might be Schoolhouse Rock clips to support these (anything's better than worksheets) and my coop agreed that there were, but that one gets tired of them pretty quickly. *headdesk* Even worse- I visited the high school for one day because I'd mentioned that I'd never seen bloc scheduling in action, so my coop arranged for me to visit a friend's class. Every level I saw (excluding the creative writing class) had similar grammar worksheets, the only difference being that they only spent part of each class on them instead of the whole thing.

 Another thing I've noticed that bothers me is that the kids don't seem to do much writing. I saw some of their research papers before they were handed back, and there were several that I saw that I would have had the student revise and resubmit again, rather than accept what was given- it's not about the grade it's about getting better at writing, and at least one final draft held the exact mistakes of the earlier draft. Not cool dude, not cool. More troubling though, is that I'm not certain that they'd done any major writing before that, and I'm not sure they will after. Definitely have to include something in the small "Flowers for Algernon" unit I've been given to plan and teach.

The PSSA writing tests were painful to watch, especially as we proctored a group of students with IEPs and the only thing the special ed teacher or any of us could do was read the prompts for the essays. Not all the questions even, just the essay prompts. We weren't even supposed to remind kids to attempt every question if we saw one left blank. No child left behind indeed.

I like my coop, really I do, but there are so many things I politely disagree with- more in my head than out loud- I am a guest. There seems to be precious little support for wiggly and wobbly, though there is some room for it. They do regularly work with partners, which at least gets them moving, but what they do in those pairings is generally worksheets, which seems like a waste. The room is somewhat decorated, and there's a little warmth there, but the selection of free reading books is small and looks untouched, and there are no decorations that are also interactive. We've played a few games, but they seem to support the content only at a low level. Direct instruction followed by practice is pretty much the standard, and while we have co teachers for two of the classes, the norm is for them to occasionally switch off and that's about it. For heavens sake there are three adults in the room those periods while I'm here- I think we could afford to take a few small risks! My coop does give me plenty of opportunity to teach, and good feedback, for which I am grateful, but too often it seem to me that she has settled and gotten stuck in the midst of a curriculum that commits read- and write-icide daily, teaching in a manner that is comfortable rather than effective.  It's almost ironic though that the days I feel I've taught best have been the days she's been out sick and I've taught with the subs. It is interesting to see the looks on the middle schooler's faces the first time you actually use a little authority, rather than just being a quiet helper. Or when they say something they shouldn't and only then realize that the person behind them is more teacher than student. I like the middle school kids. They seem to be a little more open and honest than the high schoolers, for all that the high schooler's greater cognitive development makes some discussions possible that might fly over the 8th grader's heads.

I'm beginning to think that the person for whom the classroom should be least comfortable is the teacher.

Hybrid, Visitors, and a Really Long Rant

This is not my classroom.
I have to keep telling myself that. I have to remember that I am only here for five weeks, that there have been about a dozen others visiting this classroom just this year, and that I have not been here since September and will not bere here during the antsy days of June. This is not my classroom, these are not my students, and it is therefore not my curriculum.

I have many discrepencies about how my co-op's curriculum is designed, taught, and assessed. It would be an unfair overstatement, however, to say that he is not a good teacher because of these things; in fact, it seems that he possesses some of the same insights into education as we have discussed and has a small arsenal of more creative, engaging teaching materials. This arsenal is just dusty, as it was pushed to the dark corner of the closet in the wake of new programs and curriculum requirements that have been imposed throughout the past few years. Most recently, the school has introduced the Hybrid program. Students enrolled have blocked subjects (English and Social Studies for sure, possibly Science) and are provided with iPads, which sounds like a dream to 21st century teachers looking to implement technology in the classroom. During class, students rotate through three stations including direct instruction, group work, and independent work, which also follows suit with modern educational pedigogy that endorses multiple learning styles, group work, and constant changes in activity to enhance interest and engagement.

But looks can be deceiving. It didn't take more than a few periods for me to recognize that this program was nothing more than a clever disguise, a flimsy plastic mask of strategically (and loosely) incorporated bits of modern, educator-supported teaching pedagogy hiding a face we are all too familiar with in the American classroom. Compass (one of the websites used) is simply a talking online textbook and is just as painful as the published dinosaurs sitting on the shelves of traditional classrooms, but - quite inconveniently - cannot be bookmarked or accessed from student iPads, making something that should be more accessible less so. Group work is nothing new, but is rather a technological take on worksheets; little authentic, engaging discussion is brought about in these groups, but is rather filled with either distracted chatter or the all-too-familiar plowing through of work: heads down and personal connections/applications disregarded. Online quizzes are nothing short of a joke and students are given three tries for each quiz because some of the questions are grossly misleading or incorrect, but my cooperating teacher says he doesn't know how else to make sure students are absorbing the information from Compass. I doubt that he lacks the ability to think of something better than these ridiculous surface-level objective quizzes to assess comprehension, but that he instead feels restricted either professionally or internally/creatively by the confines of the program.

I had been seething every day as I watch this revamped crap be promoted not only to students, but to teachers and administrators under the name of technologically innovative practice. No one seemed to be rallying against it, subversion seemed to be nowhere in sight. Everyone was falling for it, everyone was buying this transparent disguise. Last week, a teaching veteran who was going back to school and observing my co-op's classroom for an assignment voiced the same concerns I had been keeping silent the whole time. Her face scrunched when I told her the narrow selections of poetry the students were introduced to and the excrutiating nature of the drama lessons as she whispered, "You have to wonder if the people who created these things have any love or appreciation for literature." I wanted to hug her, to exclaim, "Thank you, thank you!" at her acknowledgement of what I knew had to be true. I spent as many spare moments with her as possible, whispering out of earshot of my cooperating teacher, swapping discouraged remarks and propositions for better instruction, glad to finally feel as if I had an ally in my inner rally against Hybrid, even if she was an extremely temporary fixture in the classroom.

Fortunately (and also unfortunately), assessment is hit or miss. Besides those horrible quizzes, final summative assessments - or at least the ones I've witnessed - have not been completely off base. During the poetry unit, students were paired up and told to create a lyric poem about anything they wish and put it into a Powerpoint presentation that reflected the meaning(s) of the poem. This was not a bad assessment, especially since it included more than one creative medium. However, students were not as well-equipped as they should have been for this project, as they were introduced to a paltry amount of poetry and were given no choice as to what kind of poetry they wanted to write, nor any avenues for inspiration. In terms of their final persuasive writing assignment, little guidance was provided in helping students choose topics to write about. It was great that my co-op wanted students to have complete control over their choice of topics, but I sensed that most would have difficulty and possibly a lack of focus in choosing without a selection of topics to get them thinking. I quickly put together a broad list of 50 topics, making sure to give thought to what 10th graders may find relevent, and was estatic to see some intense engagement come of it. However, the research process found most students unfamiliar with how to distinguish reliable sources, what ideas to research, or how to recognize spin and/or biased information and studies. I assumed (foolishly, it seems) that research techniques had been taught to these students already and that they had experienced sufficient practice in the department. I wish I would have been aware of this educational oversight, because I would have proposed the idea to my co-op of letting me present a short modeling lesson in research techniques and literacy. I was also frustrated that my co-op, an experienced teacher, hadn't thought to even provide students with a short set of notes on the subject for them to reference. Again, the visiting teacher agreed with my observation, saying, "You're right, it should be taught. It's a whole different kind of literacy." So why was this ignored? Was my cooperating teacher not teaching it because it wasn't part of the Hybrid curriculum? Had he become too dependent on the outline of this program? And what sort of penalties will these students face upon completion of their papers; will he deduct points or will they suffer most in the long term due to still not attaining research literacy? Either way, it is the students who will once again suffer at the hands of an insufficient system.

On a different but no less frustrating note, my teacher is resistent to let me teach and appears to feel inconvenienced by my presence. Again, this is not his fault. Due to the restraints of Hybrid, there is limited wiggle room for outside instruction and activities, placing him in a compromising position at the prospect of allowing a student teacher to add in something new that would not only increase students' workload, but also potentially throw off the flow/schedule of his classes. The opportunities that he is willing to offer me in the realm of teaching are limited to simply taking over his own direct instruction Power Point already created for the unit, teaching the material exactly as he would. I have tried to give input whenever possible or contribute things (such as the list of persuasive essay topics and a character map for Julius Ceasar), but no original teaching has taken place and I am uncertain of whether or not it will during my placement. My co-op also explained to me that when the school informs him (not asks, mind you) that he is receiving a student teacher/observer, he doesn't even pay attention to who they are or when they are coming. He has had about a dozen or more student teachers "trapse through" his class just this year and he has given up on trying to keep track of them or care if and when they show up. I don't want to paint him as resentful of me; actually, he told me at the end of the two weeks that he would miss having me in the room. However, I think he feels as if the administration is not keeping in mind how having a student teacher or observer in the classroom affects him and his students. On top of this, observers from the Hybrid company occassionally stop in to see how the program is being utilized, teachers within the school periodically sit in on each other's classes to keep up on fellow teaching styles, and teacher assistants are present during classes with high concentrations of students with IEP's. It's no wonder that he feels like his classroom is constantly intruded upon with so much constant traffic going on with no regard to his (or his students') feelings on these visitations. I think I would be tired of seeing others ushered in and out of my room too.

Overall, I don't think my co-op is a poor teacher by any means. I think that he is merely a victim of the educational system that always feels the need to micro-manage teachers. We are educated and trained to teach - so why are we being squeezed out of practicing our craft by standards, textbooks, and scripted programs? My co-op used to design his own lessons, his own activities, and his own assessments, but was "asked" to replace all of this with a $20,000 program that makes him supplementary in his own classroom. There are some evident frustrations with the implementation of this program, but there is also a decrease in the pressure to design an entire curriculum, a decrease in the hours spent pouring over a word processor creating test questions, lesson plans, and meeting state standards since all of this is included. Teachers have said for years how much time they have to spend doing all of these things just so they can perform their jobs, so is it so surprising that despite qualms and a choking of creativity, teachers may embrace this break a bit? I can't deny that it certainly seems easier this way. But at this point I would welcome the challenge of a fresh, teacher-designed unit that fostered engagement and authentic learning.

Some Thoughts on Kozol

On my very first day of field placement, I noticed that student kept pausing by the board on their way into or out of the classroom to fiddle with something. At first I thought that they were just adding notes to the teacher, since my coop keeps a lot of random things posted on her smart board, but after seeing students pause their between every class, sometimes in pairs or groups, I decided it was time for a closer look. What I found in that spot was little magnetic clothing. Baseball jerseys, a chicken suit, floral skirts, and a men’s suit all surrounded a little magnetic Einstein. As I stared, Mrs. H. glanced over. “Oh, that’s our class Einstein. He gets dressed and undressed about fifty times a day,” she said in an off-hand tone.

When I read chapter nine of “Letters to a Young Teacher”, I kept thinking of the little magnetic Einstein.  The high school students in my class may be a little old for fuzzy caterpillars, imaginary instruments and wiggly, wobbly teeth but that doesn’t mean that they are too old to have fun during class time. Bringing things like magnetic Einstein, a floating shark, and a monkey slingshot (yes, these are all present in Mrs. H’s room) doesn’t distract students from their lessons—it lightens the classroom atmosphere and puts students at ease. For instance, whenever the class has to read a text allowed, they use the “slingshot monkey” instead of just going in a circle. The student in possession of the monkey has to speak and when they are done speaking, they slingshot the monkey to whoever they want, and that person has to read next. This keeps the students moving and on their toes even during the rather mundane task of a class read-aloud. No matter how much I wish otherwise, I know that I’m going to have many students who find English or certain aspects of English boring. The trick will be for me to find ways to make it interesting, and bringing fun things into the classroom is one way to do that. It shows students that we, their teachers, recognize them not as robots but as real people with real needs.

Changing the topic (and jumping forward a bit), something that really jumped out at me was in chapter 12, when Kozol says that teachers should be “transparent” in identifying their beliefs as their beliefs (pages 158-159). Teachers need to own their beliefs so that students have the opportunity to (as Kozol puts it) “judge or challenge what they say accordingly”. This make sense to me, but I get the feeling that if I did this too much as a teacher I might just get fired. I believe that it’s important to bring up “hot issues” in class, but in today’s uptight society it may be better to keep our personal opinions about these issues to ourselves. I keep wondering whether it would be better to present both sides of an issue as best as I can without telling students on which side I stand. It seems to me that as long as a teacher doesn’t allow his bias to get in the way of presenting an opposing view, he will be able to represent the view well and his own opinion may not be necessary. On the other hand, I worry that if I don’t express an opinion enough in class my class I will miss opportunities to model supporting opinions during class discussions. After all, the ability to argue and support their beliefs is a skill that I want my students to have for life. Perhaps it’s best to try to find some kind of balance; I’m not sure. So far, I haven't seen any teachers really take a stand or express an opinion on a controversial issue. What do you think? Does a teacher’s opinion belong in the classroom?  

Kozol Response

I'm not really sure what chapters we're supposed to be blogging on for Kozol, so I'll just talk about a handful of things that caught my interest in the book.

In Chapter 10, Kozol discusses high-stakes testing--something that puts a great deal of pressure on my cooperating teacher on a day-to-day basis. She is constantly talking about the Keystones. In the faculty room, it's no different. Teachers are constantly talking about their former students and how well they did or did not perform on the test. It's depressing. When Penn Manor receives the results for the Keystones they entirely restructure the schedule and send students who failed into a remediation course.  Pairing this up with Kozol's attack on high stakes testing made me uneasy about the whole process. It's pretty clear that the whole drilling sessions thing doesn't work. If test-drilling, or remediation as it is called at Penn Manor, was actually effective Kozol points out, then "it would [be] given to all children in the school throughout the course of the entire year" (113). The fact that test preparation has caused kindergarten children to lose their nap time is absolutely disgusting (114). It's also distressing to think that a teacher must manipulate a poem into curriculum by attaching it to some "officially ordained proficiency" (117). Why must exposure to something new and beautiful be justified? Why can't learning just be organic? Why must education be viewed as "industry" creating products (139)? The education system seems to mirror an assembly line at times. Students are not Ford automobiles. They are human beings; some times it's beneficial to deviate from preordained plans--at least that's my opinion.

In Chapter 12, Kozol advocated for teachers to stop teaching lies. I was particularly inspired by Kozol's suggestion for teachers to rebel against the textbooks that are riddled with lies by supplementing the text with clippings, articles, and other 'corrective' texts (154). Detecting truth from "crap"is an important skill for our students to develop in our information-saturated world. By bringing alternative texts in the classroom, a teacher can empower students by asking them to question the things they read, hear, and see. Additionally, this transparency on the teacher's behalf allows the students to challenge the teacher in a similar and healthy manner, thus leading to a never-dull class (159). This invitation to challenge and question engages students; it forces them to think. THAT is precisely what I want out of my students. I want to abolish passivity. There is no room for that in my classroom.

In Chapter 14, Kozol relays a great story about how he was fired for reading his students Langston Hughes' poetry. To me, this story was insane, but I can make sense of it since it happened in the climate of Boston in the 1960s. Overall though, the story (up until the getting fired part) showed me, yet again, the importance of Ethnic Literature. The way his "stoic" students interacted with the poems was really moving and it solidifies the importance of a wide array of literature in the classroom. We cannot force our students to read the works of dead white men solely. Occasionally (or frequently), we need vibrant, modern writers to seep into our stuffy curriculum, even at the risk of being charged with "curriculum deviation" (197).

All in all, Kozol's book was a great read. It forced me to view the world of education in a much different (and more enlightened) way.

Some Observations from the Field: Week 2

Week 2

This was an awesome week for me. I really learned a lot. One of the coolest things about teaching is that every moment you're teaching, you're learning. That's probably in the Top 3 reasons for my desire to be a teacher.

The week started with me teaching a mini-lesson on apostrophes--a simple brush up lesson for the students. (Every week, my cooperating teacher has one of these small brush up lessons on grammar, so when she asked me if I wanted to teach I jumped at the opportunity.) I worked really hard on creating a Prezi for the mini-lesson, so I could consolidate all these funny, real world misuses of the apostrophe.

When I taught the lesson to the third block class, it tanked. I felt like I was teaching at a morgue. The students might has well have been a room full of propped up corpses.

Lifeless stares. Silence. Hoods on heads. Heads on desks. Hell on earth for a teacher.

Block four comes. My stomach sinks as students walk into the room. "It can't get much worse than Block three, right?" I say to my co-op.

She shakes her head. "Make a slight change. Prompt them about what they already know about apostrophes before you start the lesson."

"You think that will work?"

"It's worth a try, right?"

"Without a doubt," I said with a gulp of fear as I glanced at the hazy eyed students entering the room.

Sure enough. It worked. Just prompting the students about their prior knowledge and activating their schema hooked them into the lesson more than a simple cold-opening.

The lesson went swimmingly from that point forward; the students laughed at all the silly misuses of apostrophes and they really seemed to be cognitively aware of the mistakes they had made in the past. I can't say for certain whether or not this knowledge will stay with the students, although they did do well on the mini-quiz that my cooperating teacher had prepared for the lesson.

Overall, this experience was just a great way to see the importance of self-reflection in teaching. I reflected on how my lesson was going poorly and my co-op suggested a slight adjustment to correct the problem. Who knows the change may not have even been the cause for the success of the second lesson, but it certainly didn't hurt. This self-reflection and the accompanying adjustment is the hallmark of a good teacher. Additionally, in order to be a good teacher, one must learn from one's mistakes. One must constantly learn--and that's why I am here--or at least one of the top 3 reasons why I'm here.

Some Observations from the Field: Week 1

Week 1

My mind was blown. I sat in the classroom with my jaw scraping the floor. My cooperating teacher had her students reading To Kill A Mockingbird aloud. Popcorn reading in a tenth grade class? To me, this was the equivalent of killing the classics, one painful syllable at a time. I came home after the first day of witnessing this and vented to anyone who would listen. How could this be happening? "Did this happen in your classes in high school?" I asked my friends, aghast.

I don't want to reflect upon my experience like it was a Cinderella story; I still hate popcorn readings, but I will say that I became more open towards the read alouds after seeing students actively engage in them.

That's just one of the valuable lessons I learned this week: be willing to try new things. Don't let your prior opinions cloud what you do or do not include in your classroom until you have evidence that it won't work. Be open to new ideas. Be flexible.

Rather than let the popcorn reading bother me, I sat and quietly observed how the students responded to it. Were they bored? Were they sleeping? Were they unfocused?

As near as I could tell, they were none of these things! In fact, quite the opposite. The students were actually engaged and focused. In fact, the read alouds made the book a shared, social experience among the students. They loved talking about it with one another. They legitimately looked forward to class so that they could read more of the book. Additionally, since everyone was going at the same pace, following along in their own copies of the book, everyone was quite literally on the same page. The book became a communal artifact that all the students had equal ownership over. The class investigated questions about the text in a safe, nurturing discussions. While I assumed they all hated having to read aloud, many of the students actually enjoyed the popcorn reading.

This experience was quite interesting, because it made me realize how I need to open my mind to alternative techniques as a teacher. I cannot just assume something will not work. I have to try it with my students. I have to suit my lessons to my classes, not my classes to my lessons.

Kozol/Week 2 reflections.

Chapters 8 and 9 were my favorite chapters so far in Letters to a Young Teacher. The chapter on teacher jargon was hilariously relevant to the types of word-trends I feel that we are all coaxed into when immersed in education study. I have found that these latinized verbs-that-stand-for-shorter-verbs-that-mean-the-same-thing have almost fully taken over my professional writing style. I am not sure if it is necessarily a bad thing. It is just a different code to speak in. However, if we are using these terms with our students in an attempt to be transparent in our teaching practices, we should make sure they know what they mean. Utilize means use, for example.
We should also be sure that we are not using these terms simply for their abstractive qualities. In other words, we should not use these words to help us say something when we really don't have anything to say.
Remember what Camus says in The Plague:

But tell us, Tarrou, what is it that causes all the troubles of the world? "Language. We don’t have clear, plain language." 

This is not always the easiest thing to do, but it is what I believe what Francesca and Kozol are really pushing back against. 

Chapter 9 was beautiful. If teachers can find ways to let children feel comfortable with experiencing merriment in the school setting, they are doing their job. School cannot be all about content learning and objective-reaching. Kids need time to look out the window. I love that Francesca realizes this but also sees how the kids can help to enlighten her within these moments.
This type of thing seems to lend itself more to younger kids. How can we inspire aesthetic merriment in seventeen year-olds, kids who are often much more worried about being grown up than being young?


So this past week I decided I needed to try something new with my Freshman periods (especially period 8) so I came up with something I thought was pretty cool. We are studying Fahrenheit 451. My colleague Eliot White emailed me this article (http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/i-am-very-real.html) written about censorship and book burning by Kurt Vonnegut. His book Slaughterhouse Five was actually burned in a school's furnace by the Drake school board in North Dakota. He wrote this letter to the president of the school board to explain that writers, including himself, were real people--people with pure and moral purposes. So I printed out this article for my kids to read. Afterward I was going to have them break into groups of four and each group would act as though they were their own school. These little school boards had to make decisions about how they would deal with censorship. What books would they allow? What would be the factors that would keep books from being allowed in their school? How would they deal with a teacher or student reading a book in school that wasn't "appropriate"? How would they deal with parents?

Since my Co-op doesn't like most of my ideas or give me much freedom, I decided to try the project without really giving her a full description of what it was I would be doing. So after we read the article, I broke the kids into groups and started explaining. When I began to walk around and facilitate the small group discussions, my co-op pulled me aside and said she didn't like the idea. "I wish you would have told me about this: I don't think it serves a purpose in their understanding of the novel," she said.
She's entitled to her opinion.
And yes, I probably should have told her what I was planning on doing first. But, I knew she wouldn't probably like it, and I really wanted to try it. I don't know if I made the right decision.
So she told me that instead of giving them the 20 minutes to work on this project, I should give them 5 and then have them get back to their seats so she could play a recording of Ray Bradbury reading an excerpt from the novel...
I was very annoyed but I did what she wanted. So for the final 15 minutes of the week, the students sat and payed no attention to a CD that my co-op played for them. I sat in the front and watched them not paying attention and watching the clock.
 I thought: this is a missed opportunity.

My Thoughts on Kozol

Recently, I had a discussion with my one cousin about schools. He is getting ready to send his three triplet boys to school and is still deciding where to send them. He lives in the Red Lion School district however, he went to Dallastown (rival of Red Lion). He refuses to send his boys to Red Lion because he went to Dallastown. He also refuses to send his kids to Central York because they recently built a new high school and the day the high school opened it was already overcrowded. So, he is looking at sending them to a private school. This really upsets me because I feel as though he has lost faith in the public school system. Red Lion is a great school and his boys would do fine there. However, he is going to spend lots of money a year to send his kids to a private school because when he went to high school Red Lion was full of nothing but "rednecks". To be fair when I went to high school there was still a fair share of them, but there was more to Red Lion then that.  This is the problem with our society. People don't want there kids around certain people and so they pay to send their kids to a private school. Why not let your kids learn to deal with different kinds of people? What makes your kids so much better that they can't go to the same schools as everyone else? Why not support those public schools and make them better rather then just avoiding them? Why not support Central if they need to expand their school instead of just getting upset that they were not able to predict the increase in students? It makes me so mad that everyone isn't offered an equal education!! It makes me mad that private schools exist to give some kids more of a leg up than others! Kozol talked about how this was a way to keep the poor, poor and the schools segregated. I 100% agree with this and I believe that it may take another Civil Rights movement to change it. I do not know exactly where I will be teaching but if I am in an urban school I  will make sure that my students are aware of how they are being kept down by our society. This should not be a secret. Parents need to start demanding an equal and AUTHENTIC education. No more teaching for the test! It is really frustrating how much reform needs to take place in education. I know it won't be changed overnight, but I am just glad that we are learning how to teach around the standards and provide students with authentic learning. My goal is to make a difference in as many students' lives as I can and maybe if we all have that same goal education will change for the better someday.

Learning from students

My two weeks at Donegal High/Junior High have been amazing! Maybe it's because I was homeschooled, and so I'm unfamiliar with public schools, but it seems that every day brought lesson after lesson for me to learn. The very best part was that I finally got some experience in teaching full lessons to real classrooms. My co-op allowed me to teach with whatever methods I wanted to use, so I was able to integrate many of the things that we've been learning in class into my lessons. At the junior high, I taught a gifted-seminar pullout class a series of lessons on short films. I used Paperman, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore and other film shorts from Pixar before leading the class into a discussion on the "deeper meaning(s)" that can be found within each piece. What surprised me the most was how engaged the eighth-graders would get during each discussion. The Paperman discussion led to a talk about the authenticity of technology in today's world, and students shared their thoughts about why texting and messaging does or doesn't promote authentic relationships. Some of the things that the students said were really deep, and I impressed by the critical thinking that each student showed. I admit, after my field experience last year, I was not expecting that kind of engagement or respectful behavior in a discussion between junior high school students. This experience was probably the most valuable lesson during my two-week placement: don't under estimate your student's capabilities! I also learned that just because a discussion stray off of the planned course doesn't necessarily mean that it's headed in the wrong direction.

Two Amazing Weeks

           Lucky for me, I have been blessed with a great cooperating teacher. From day one he has said he was open to trying anything I wanted to try and he wanted to hear my ideas. He admits that after for teaching for 20 years he knows he gets stuck in ruts on how to do things and so he welcomes change.
           The only thing that I can say really bothered me in his class was how many worksheet exercises they did. I am not a huge fan of worksheets everyday type learning. Despite this, I think he is a great teacher. He has a great personality and the all the kids absolutely love him. He is humorous and so he is able to make learning fun despite the numerous worksheets. The other thing I disagree with is that often all the language arts teachers pass out the same unit tests. So my cooperating teacher may not have had any part in making a test depending on if he had time to meet up with the group or not. I think each teacher needs to have their own tests if that is the way they choose to assess. Not every teacher taught the unit the same way or with the same information. He also doesn't plan his units using backward design. He said that the language arts teachers were going to start doing that, but that it got put on the back burner as they were focusing more on making sure they were hitting the Common Core standards. He is against the standards, but unfortunately he has to incorporate them into his teaching as we all know.
          To introduce me into the classroom he had me write a bio to the students and then they wrote a bio of themselves back to me. On the back of their bios they wrote questions they had about my bio. I answered all the questions they asked and passed back a worksheet with the answers on it. My cooperating teacher asked me to come up with a rubric for a poem they could write based off of my answers to their questions. They asked a wide variety of questions and so they had a wide variety of topics they could write about. I gave them the creative freedom to write a poem about any topic I talked about in the answers to their questions. This is when I realized just how creative these 7th graders were. I absolutely loved their poems and the variety of creativity I saw.
           When I finally got to go in for a whole week the first thing I was put in charge of was freewrites. My cooperating teacher had actually never heard of the freewrites we did in teaching writing where you write for 5 minutes without stopping. He also had never heard of mentor texts. He really loved my idea and so I am in charge of the freewrites we do almost everyday. The kids are loving it and I think their favorite prompt has been 'What would your last meal be'. Anything that has to do with food gets them sharing and talking.
          The next thing I did was introduce their persuasive writing unit. For this I had them start by sharing a time they wanted something from their parents or asked their parents to let them do something. Then they wrote a letter to their parents persuading them to let them do/have something. As a class, we then shared our letters and discussed the different ways we tried to persuade our parents. The next day I passed out envelopes full of different persuasive techniques and their definitions. Before giving any explanation of the techniques I had the students work in pairs to try and match up the techniques with their definitions. They really are smart and did pretty well with it. We went over the answers as a class and then talked about how the different techniques matched up with the techniques they used in their letters. On the third day, I had them individually go through a Prezi I had created with different examples of the persuasive techniques used in advertisements. They were then put into groups and given two techniques. They had to either draw or act out the two techniques in their own advertisements for the class. My goal (which I explained to them) was for them to make very creative advertisements that would help all of them remember all the different techniques because some of the techniques were hard (and there were 16 of them!). They really loved the project. They were excited to create the advertisements and told me so. Some choose to draw the advertisement and some acted them out for the class. When they presented whether they drew the advertisement or acted it out they had to tell us how they used the technique. All of them were very creative and some had us laughing a lot. It was a great experience and another English teacher even stole the project from me to use! It made me feel really great!
           I am so glad that my field placement is going so well for me. I honestly was questioning whether or not I wanted to still be a teacher. After working with the students these past two weeks I now know without a doubt that this is what I was meant to do. After talking with a student about school he made the comment, "I know we have to learn, but why can't school be fun?". I told him it was my goal to make school more fun and after the project he told me I was doing a great job! I am so happy that I finally feel like I know for sure that this is my calling.
           My cooperating teacher is now reading the book "Live Assessments" (that I gave him to borrow after reading it) and considering doing a debate as the final test for students. He also is considering using my idea of revising the letter to their parents as they move through the unit and having that be their final paper for the unit. I am really happy that he is so open to my ideas and that he has loved all of the ideas I have brought to the table so far.

Losing Control

I've always been told that I have a lack of respect for authority. I don't agree with that statement. If you want to reword it to say, I have a lack of respect for overly controlling authority- I'll fully admit to that. My father has raised, and continues to raise, me with a very hands off approach. In education, we'd call it a cognitive approach. When I get told when, how, and why I need to do something I feel isn't for my benefit, my drawbridge goes up. By drawbridge I mean the 5,500 mile high, Great Wall of China-sized barricade, I create once I feel overly controlled. My feet shake, my teeth bite my upper lip, and my hands search for something to hold onto. If I feel it's something I can't handle without losing my composure, I usually leave the room to regroup. 

After twenty years, I've learned how to flip the switch in different settings. My kids in my co-op's classroom haven't quite acknowledged this is what they're feeling. What they do know is they're frustrated. Take Will for example. On Tuesday his one teacher told him she didn't care if he learned another thing from her for the rest of the year. During the team meeting, she talked about how he's going to get to the high school, and he will be alt ed-ed. The math teacher on my team turned to me and asked, "Kristen, when you were in school, did you know a class clown?" Since my opinion was asked, I shared my story...

Senior year of high school, I was a hot mess- I even believe that's putting it euphemistically. I skipped school; I slept, talked, and texted in class; and I roamed the halls, a lot. There was no shortage of sarcasm or friends for me. When I realized my sarcastic remarks to teachers increased peoples' interest level in me, I ran with it.  Discipline wise, I had a well-respected father in the building, who every teacher would report to instead of the principal. One time my AP Calculus teacher wrote me up for texting in class. I got a detention, which I attended for 20 minutes before the wrestling coach in charge asked me to run errands for him. No one really questioned me. The truth was I had nothing under control. I was so far out of control that everyone's attempts to save me weren't taken at face value. Why was I the worst behaved in calculus? She was a second year teacher, with whom it was my second year in her class. She constantly yelled at me and kicked me out. Whenever she questioned me, she cited the previous year. I was always told how much more she had liked having me the previous year. Never once did she ask WHY I acted this way. Senior year I was court appointed to spend 10 hours a week with my schizophrenic mother. Child services later decided it was a bad decision, but only after they met with me in school. When? Right before calculus. Luckily, I didn't associate the two things at all...

Midway through my story, the woman who yelled at Will told me she never had kids like me in her classes in high school. "By the time I was in high school, all the classes I had were with other AP students. They all cared about their learning," she told me. I shrugged my shoulders and said, "I was in all AP classes and dually enrolled at Penn State York." When I finished the rest of story, I posed the question, "What does Will have going on at home?" To which I received the answer, "Well, I know he has stuff going on with his sister's boyfriend. I know they don't get along, but it isn't anything as bad as other kids on our team. Many of them have it a lot worse." As I mentioned earlier, when I feel like I'm losing my composure, I walk away. Thirty seconds of silence followed. I then left the room to get a drink.

One of my core beliefs is problems are subjective. I believe everyone has issues in their lives, but the severity of the problems differs. What is a catastrophe in one person's life could be nothing more than a mishap in another's. By not acknowledging this, we're essentially telling kids they don't understand what matters to them. Will is no fool. Whenever I tell him I know he knows how much he manipulates the system, a smile creeps across his face. The teachers are fed up with him because they just see him as manipulative trouble-maker. I see him as a challenge. The kid has personality for days. He dresses head to toe in the latest fashions with Jordans adorning his feet; homeboy screams leader. His outbursts in class and refusal to sit in a seat just highlight his need for attention. He thrives on it. I totally get it, and I believe, if redirected, he could become a beneficial role model. He already is great, but I believe it's my goal to push him further. Empowering him to become something, he doesn't yet know he wants to become.  

A quote from Johnathon Kozol really stuck out to me. He said, "Instead of seeing these children for the blessings that they are, we are measuring them only by the standard of whether they will be future deficits or assets for our nation's competitive needs." He emphasizes something I buy into in this quote- all kids have something to offer the world. When we oppress kids voices, they only seem to come out stronger in other ways. In the eighth grade, it comes out in the form of constant chatter. The teachers on the team call this year's group, the "chattiest bunch". All Will does is talk. Bet him he can't interrupt a class for a day, and he won't distract the class once. From my observation in my co-op's classroom, the more she tries to control, the more she loses the kids. Every day I sit with a boy named Dawon in the period 5/7 class. Yesterday, after my co-op finished giving directions, he saluted her. Honestly, it took everything in me not to smile.