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. 

Detecting Crap and Failing To Do Anything About It

I'm in my second full week now at LCHS. Last week  taught my first two classes, periods two and nine of freshman academic English. I left school today feeling pretty down on myself.

For the entire semester I've been watching my co-op, a teacher in her twetnty-sixth year of teaching, do lecture style lessons with little differentiation save for group-work on worksheets. She is good at lecturing and leading (and when I say leading I mean, controlling and commanding) whole-class discussion. Half of the class answers her questions and seems to learn the novel (Fahrenheit 451) although they may not be sure why they are learning the things they are. The other half does enough to get through these discussions by following along enough to answer her surprise questions when she calls on someone random. They also know who to group up with when it's time to break into groups. It is all very teacher-centered teaching. I have detected this crap from day 1.

So naturally, when she decided to being letting me take over the freshmen (who she claims, "can't handle" more innovative teaching styles), she told me what I should do. Today marks the third day that I spent pretending to be her, leading slow read-throughs of sections of the novel, teacher-centered IRE questioning, and lecturing. I am not good at it. But I don't have much experience with any form of teaching, and when I teach she sits in the back and interjects when the students are missing something she thinks is important, or when students point out things she doesn't agree with. She frowns when I begin talking about something that didn't come from her prepared notes. It makes me nervous and causes me to falter when speaking.

Second period seems to like me so they are very participatory in the discussions and we often end up having good conversations, some that even pull away from the very ingrained IRE format they know. (What i mean here is I, the teacher, asks a questions, the students respond, and I evaluate their responses). They enjoyed the poem I showed them last week and had fun writing their own stanza about abuses of technology. So, even though I teach them like a young male, Mrs. C, they seem to be learning (60% of them) and they seem interested (75% of them).

Period Nine is a different story. Today very few of them responded to questions and no one wanted to share the poems they wrote or didn't write last week. Half-way through the lesson I saw students looking at the clock, and I even looked myself, hoping it was closer to 3 than it was. I am not cut out to be a lecturer, at least not at this point in my life. Mrs. C blames the students and says they are tired and eager to get out of school. She also says, "these ones just aren't as bright". But I know it is my fault. I cannot blame these kids; I need to do something differently.

I am detecting my own crap. I am following a misdirected path and doing little to change it.

I am sitting down now to plan some things for my lessons in her Sophomore American Lit class tomorrow. She  gave me her materials before I left and said, "here, do what you want with this". But "this" is what she wants me to do. I know I should do something different, but I don't know if I have the courage. I don't want to overstep my boundaries in this classroom and have her dislike what I am doing. But, I know I am full of crap when I am putting my own need to be liked by the teacher over the needs of the students.

But also, I don't know exactly what to do if I were to do things differently. Currently I have a model who is modeling the ways of teaching that I don't want to learn. One of my classmates told me, "Well, at least you are learning how not to teach," but I don't know if that's a good thing.

I have some things to figure out tonight, because I don't know if I can handle another period of awkward stares as I stand at the front of the room and stumble through prepared questions, looking for prepared answers.