Thoughts on What Inspired Me to Teach and How My Expectations Lined up With Reality

I always knew I wanted to be a teacher. Of course, I had a few short-lived fantasies here and there, like becoming an astronaut or an archaeologist (strange, I know) but I always returned to teaching. When I was in first grade I remember coming home and drawing a picture of Mrs. Wiley writing on the whiteboard, and I clearly recall thinking how much I wanted to be like her. In Mrs. Wiley’s class I loved spelling tests and I always thought it was fun to study for them. By the time I was in third grade, I would invite my friends over and convince them to participate in made-up spelling bees. I would tell them a word and they all had to take turns spelling it out loud. I got upset one time because I thought “instrument” was spelled “instrament,” and when I got my own word wrong, I was really embarrassed. Around 6^th grade I started making multiple-choice vocabulary tests for my parents. I would look in a dictionary or thesaurus and find the weirdest words I could, and then I’d type it on the computer with a few potential definitions. After printing out the tests, I would give them to my parents and then grade them with much enjoyment. It never occurred to me until now what a strange hobby that was for a 6^thgrader, but I guess it shows how much of an interest I had in language arts. In 7^th grade and 8^thgrade I won the school spelling bee, but when I went to the regional competitions I lost on the words “adoboe” (which I had never heard of) and “bonanza” (which I knew how to spell, but I messed up because I was nervous).

In addition to spelling, and vocabulary, I also had an interest in reading and writing. My parents would read me novels every night when I was little like The Little Princess, The Secret Garden, Alice In Wonderland, orTreasure Island, and when I got a little older we would read more complicated books like Harry Potter out loud to each other. My parents also always encouraged me to write my own stories, and I had tons of journals with short stories and poems inside. Throughout high school I continued to write, and I saw reading for English class as a fun activity, not just as something I had to do. I suppose it’s always been clear to me that I wanted to get a job relating to English (never once did I consider pursuing math or science, although Forensic Science interested me briefly because I liked the writing analysis part), and it was not until my Sophomore year  of college that I decided to set my dream of being a teacher in motion. I never really thought about how significantwords (reading, writing, vocabulary, grammar) have always been in my life, but when I look back on the things I have always enjoyed, it is clear to me now that English is the best field for me.

When I get a job teaching high school in “the real world,” I want my classroom to be as comfortable and fun as possible. I remember in middle school I had a teacher who put chili pepper lights around her marker board, so that everyone’s eyes were naturally drawn to it. In high school, my French teacher had one wall covered with a beautiful mural of the Eiffel tower painted by a student. I also had one English teacher with a couch in her room, and a water heater for tea and cocoa. Being in her room made me feel at ease, almost like I was in a friend’s room rather than a classroom. My art teacher kept candy in her classroom, and let us all sit in comfortable “rolly-chairs” like the ones most teachers sit on.  Another teacher hung colorful scarves around the windows, and one even put up posters of her favorite movies and rock bands. I have numerous memories of the ways my teachers enhanced their classrooms over the years, and when I have my own classroom, I want to keep those things in mind. Ideally, I will display student work all over the walls, and accent the room with calming colors. I want to make the room a comfortable place where the students feel safe in their environment but not toocomfortable to get their work done. I want to incorporate aspects of my favorite classrooms over the years.

One of the most inspiring teachers I ever had was my 11^th grade Accelerated English teacher.  I took her class when I was a Senior, because I spent my Junior year abroad. I learned more from that teacher in one year than I did in the 3 years of secondary schooling I had before that. She assigned a giant workload, which was hard to keep up with at times. However, she was strict enough that she got everyone to participate and complete their work, yet nice enough to keep people from resenting her. The things she assigned were more than busywork, which is probably what I liked most about her class. She taught interesting lessons that provided context for the stories we read, and she assigned amazing projects that inspired a lot of us to use our creativity. We learned how to write all kinds of papers (persuasive and 5-paragraph essays, research papers, resumes, etc) and to this day I still use the knowledge I learned in her class. We read Macbeth, and she had us read in a circle together, stopping us every few lines to explain what was going on and ask if we had any questions or comments. It may sound like overkill, but I would still struggle with Shakespeare if it weren’t for that class. She also showed us clips of the same scenes from all different movie versions of Macbeth, and asked us to write or talk about which clips best portrayed our understanding of the scene. I thought a lot of her lessons were brilliant, and she was one of the most influential people for me in high school. Her class was largely what inspired me to be an English teacher.

As I reflect on what initially attracted me to teaching, I find that my actual experience with teaching has been everything I expected and looked forward to. I have not only been able to design my own lessons that teach, inspire, and excite the students; but I have been able to create a fun and safe learning environment for my students. Additionally, I have loved getting to know all the students and seeing their brains work when they analyze, write, read, discuss and participate in classroom activities. So far, teaching has definitely been rewarding for me.

There are a few things that I was not fully prepared for when I first began teaching, but I have improved upon those things since then. Classroom management was one of the parts of teaching that I understood in theory, but it wasn’t something I was skilled in until I had been teaching for a while. I have found that, for the most part, efficient classroom management is like fluency in a new language: it isn’t something you will be able to fully understand or grasp until you immerse yourself in it. I could tell a person everything one needed to know about classroom management, yet when it came time to implement the skills I learned, I found that the situation was different than how I pictured it. The students were never blatantly disrespectful or rude to me, and they never did anything to warrant a referral or any form of serious punishment. The only problem I had was that there would be side conversations while I was talking, during movies, or while the classes were reading independently. I felt that these weren’t terrible infractions on the students’ parts, but they still needed to be addressed.

After a my second week of teaching, I had the students write mini evaluations for me, on which they wrote two things they liked/things I did well and two things they disliked/I needed to improve on. To my delight, I got glowing reviews…but the one thing that I kept seeing over and over was that I needed to “get mean” or “be more confident” when disciplining people who wouldn’t stop talking. After reading those evaluations and hearing the same feedback on that issue over and over, I knew I had to do something. So, I decided to adapt what I had learned about classroom management in order to apply it to my current situation. I couldn’t manage a classroom with new routines (my mentor teacher’s old routines had already been too deeply engrained in their minds), as I had been told to do at SPU. I couldn’t send people to the principal, because they weren’t disrupting the class in a serious or malicious way . I couldn’t yell, because it’s not my personality and I’m never angry enough to have that kind of reaction. I couldn’t send people out in the hall, because I wanted them to be present for the lesson. Instead, I solved the problem in a number of ways: I made a seating chart, I spoke more sternly, and I told students that they would lose daily participation points for having side conversations. These strategies worked beautifully!

Once the classroom was under control, I was able to deliver lessons more efficiently and ensure that all the students were listening and participating productively. Since then, my teaching experiences have been great, for the most part. Teaching is definitely a LOT of work, and it can be hard to try and fill the shoes of my mentor teachers. Occasionally there are days when I am tired and surly and my lessons suffer mildly, but I am always able to bounce back. Overall, I couldn’t be more pleased with my teaching experience. Seeing my students excited and engaged in the lessons makes everything worth the effort!

Creating “Found Poems” with The Great Gatsby

This week, I began a “found poem” project with the juniors, who are in the midst of reading The Great Gatsby. A found poem allows students to look through any book and create a poem using phrases from the text. This way, the students will pay close attention to the diction and syntax of a story, and hopefully come to appreciate the beauty of the words even if the story is fairly dense. After beginning The Great Gatsby, may of the students found that they were getting behind because of Fitzgerald’s flamboyant language. Some students loved the book, taking great interest in the story and being intrigued by the unfamiliar language. Most students, however, found it difficult to understand what was going on or stay interested in the plot, so they took on a negative view of the book. It has been hard to get those students excited about what they are reading, so this lesson on found poetry was great. The kids got to show their creativity and dig deeper in the book with their table groups.

One thing that the students were happy about was that they were not being asked to create beautiful poetry out of their head. They liked being able to look through the book any pull out any “poetic”, interesting, or pretty-sounding phrases, and arrange those in a way that made sense to them. After finding roughly 12-14 lines or phrases, they wrote them in any order they wanted on a big piece of poster paper. Then they drew a picture to accompany their poem and chose a fitting title. The introductory lesson went really well; at first the students were moaning and groaning when they heard the word “poem”, but then they quickly understood what was expected of them and got right to work. I gave them a couple opportunities later in the week to add the finishing touches on their posters, and by that time they were asking specifically to work on the poems because they enjoyed the activity so much. After seeing their posters, I can tell that they really did gain an appreciation for Fitzgerald’s elegant way of writing. They found beautiful words, sentences, and phrases, and they drew great pictures as well. Here are some examples of the juniors’ found poems:

Learning Firsthand about Ethical Responsibilities

For the most part, being at the high school has been pretty smooth sailing for me over the last few months. I haven’t had any major problems or concerns with the students, their families, or the school…However, this week was a rude awakening for me in many ways, and I feel like it’s important to reflect on this. But first I want to say a bit about the lesson I was teaching on Thursday when an incident occurred:

During my first period class on Thursday, I asked students to create mnemonic devices for the Night vocabulary words they selected on Monday. I explained that a mnemonic device is a memory aid, or something to help a person remember factual/objective knowledge. I showed them an example of my mnemonic device for the meaning of the word “floundering”: I told them that the word means “to have difficulty or behave awkwardly”, then showed them a picture of Flounder from “The Little Mermaid” and said they should think of a weird little fish flapping around in a strong current. I gave a few other examples using a Prezi presentation,  and asked them to come up with their own mnemonic devices after seeing mine. They liked doing that because they got to draw, think of silly explanations for words, or write little rhymes. It allowed them to think about words more creatively and come up with ways to understand the definitions more clearly. After they came up with their own mnemonic devices, I put them into the Prezi that my examples were already in. I included some of the pictures they drew and all the creative definitions they came up with. The link to my presentation is below:

http://prezi.com/89telr6htrut/night-section-3-vocabulary/

After presenting my mnemonic device examples and asking students to come up with their own, I began walking around to all the tables in order to make sure that everyone understood the assignment. I was at one table helping a student come up with a mnemonic device for the word “brutality” when, ironically enough, a case of brutality happened right before my eyes at another table. When I had my back turned to the door, a woman who I had never seen before came in to the classroom. This is a big school and I don’t know all the staff members, so I assumed she was a teacher coming to talk to someone. She walked over to one of my students and began talking to him quietly, and nothing seemed odd about the situation…until she started getting louder. Then, the woman was suddenly at eye-level with the student, yelling in his face and using cusswords. The entire class got quiet and watched what was going on, and after a few seconds of yelling the woman grabbed the book the student was holding and proceeded to hit him with it. Before anyone could say anything, the woman stormed out of the class shouting “everyone have a good day!”.

Honestly, I was shocked. I didn’t know what to do because it was such a bizarre situation, and the whole incident happened in a very short time span. I think all the students felt similar reactions, because they all sat with mouths wide open in silence. I told everyone to get back to work and tried to carry on as if there was nothing wrong, because I didn’t want to embarrass the student even more or make the situation seem worse than it already was. A little later, I asked the student if he was okay and if he wanted to talk about it later, and he said he was fine…but after about five minutes he ran out of the room crying. His friends went after him and I let them talk to him in the hall for as long as he needed, and on their way out one explained that the woman was the student’s mother. I thought it would be best for me to stay in the classroom and let his friends console him, because he didn’t seem to want any help from me.

After class, I asked my mentor teachers what to do. They said I should go talk to the school counselor for advice about the whole thing, so that’s what I did. I went up to the teen health center and spoke with the guidance counselor, who told me I was legally obligated to call Child Protective Services. I had never done this before, nor had I even been faced with a situation like this, so I was very nervous. I wondered, would the student know I “told on” his mom? Would this stir bad things up and negatively affect his family even more? Did I even have the authority to do something like this? Despite my misgivings, I decided that since I was a witness to the incident, I had to report it, just like the counselor said.

So, I spent my time after school filling out CPS paperwork and talking to another counselor, who gave me the contact information for the student’s family. I was heartbroken to find out that the student in question is homeless, he has two little sisters, and his father is not around. The family doesn’t have a permanent address because they have been staying in many different places, and the mother is trying to get a job in the trades to support her kids. The entire situation made me feel sick…I was afraid of interfering with my student’s life outside of school, and it seemed like his mother was under a lot of stress. I told the counselor this and she said I had to call no matter what. Even though it might seem like a big deal, calling CPS could hopefully improve the situation. She also said that the incident in class today might have been a cry for help on the mother’s part; which I hadn’t even thought of. Thinking about the motivations of a woman who would be willing to come to school and beat her own child in a classroom full of people really made me see the whole thing in a new light.

Anyway, when I finally worked up the courage to call CPS, I found that it wasn’t as complicated or scary as I expected. The woman on the other end of the line was friendly and professional, and she said she would file the information and look into the family’s situation. She said that CPS would take action depending on the circumstances, so they might offer family counseling or some kind of helpful support to the student and his mother &sisters. The entire process was very strange and foreign to me, but the other teachers assured me that although this may be my first time, it wouldn’t be my last.

When I reflect on what happened that day, I find that the most valuable thing that I can take from this experience is the fact that as a teacher, one never knows what students are going through outside of class. I never would have guessed that this student was homeless or in any kind of domestic violence  situation, and it makes me wonder what other kinds of situations my students are dealing with when they get out of school. It also made me step back and realize that I need to be more sensitive about those possibilities, and always consider the fact that there might be more going on with a student than I realize. For example, the student who was brutalized in class today has been late every morning, and falling asleep during class. I also noticed that he seemed distracted and not really focused during my lessons. At first, I was really irritated by this, and I assumed it must have been because he didn’t like my lessons or the way I taught. The counselor who had access to his information told me that he has to walk his little sisters to school every morning because the family doesn’t have a car or money for the bus. After hearing this, his tardiness and behavior in class suddenly made sense. It really put things in perspective for me and made me realize that I have been pretty closed-minded about my students and their behavior. This experience taught me that I need to be sensitive and consider all the possibilities before jumping to conclusions about a student. It made me realize that there are many things I still don’t know, and it has caused me to look at every student in a new light. Instead of getting upset and taking it personally when a student is angry, tired, quiet, outspoken, or consistently doesn’t do his/her work, I need to step back and think about all the reasons why this might be. I think overall, what happened this week may have been one of the most valuable and emotionally significant lessons I will ever learn as a teacher.

Explaining Wiesel’s “Night” with the Whiteboard

This week, the students in my 9th grade class began reading Night.

Before I began teaching this semester, my mentor teacher played audiobooks for the students during class so that they could listen and follow along in the text. Many of them have trouble reading at home, so they liked the idea of reading in class and they came to accept the audiobooks as a suitable form of reading. I found, however, that although they seemed to be paying attention, many of them got into the habit of using that audiobook time to rest their brains and not really listen to what was going on in the story. I suspected this was the case when I was still observing, because many students didn’t seem to have a full grasp on the last book even after listening to it, reading it, and completing worksheets about it. My suspicions were confirmed when I played Section 1 of Night for them and then asked for volunteers to summarize what they had just heard. After hearing crickets as I waited for an answer, I took a step back and began to ask simple questions about the text such as “How old is the narrator?” and “Who is Moishe the Beadle?”. A few students were able to make guesses, but it was clear that many of them hadn’t been listening or absorbing the story at all. Since the period was nearly over, I didn’t have much time to discuss Section 1 in detail, so I decided to use the next day to break the story down step by step.

After re-reading the first section and typing up a quick summary in the morning, I got to school a little earlier and drew simple pictures on the board to illustrate each major part of the plot from section 1. Drawn in a very loose comic strip form, I numbered each step of the story so as not to confuse the students. When the students began filing in, they looked with fascination at my strange mural on the whiteboard and asked what was going on. The bell rang, and I explained that I was going to thoroughly explain Section 1 with pictures, because I find it easier to understand a story when I can diagram it and see it in picture form. The students looked and listened with rapt attention as I pointed to the picture numbered “1” on the board and introduced the book’s narrator, 12-year-old Eliezer. I explained where the book was set, and the fact that Eliezer was a very religious young man who studied the Talmud and Kabbalah regularly. We talked about the meaning of the words “Orthodox” and the phrase “deeply observant,” and I told them to pay attention to the narrator’s references to his faith, because it proves to be a large theme in the book as he questions it during his experiences in the death camps. The lesson continued in this way for a while, with me pointing to the pictures in sequence; explaining, asking questions, and answering their inquiries about the story line and themes in the book. I think it was a very successful lesson because I could tell by the end that the students had a firmer grasp on the first section of Night. From them on, I decided to take the book slowly and make sure they understood it every step of the way. Knowing that the students had a stronger understanding of the beginning gave me confidence that they would be able to build upon that foundation for the rest of the semester, which will make the lessons much more rewarding for both me and the students.

A New Way of Presenting

Before the freshmen begin reading Elie Wiesel’s Night, I want them to have a fair amount of background knowledge about the Holocaust. I have done a few anticipatory activities about the book to give the kids a bit of context for the story, but I wanted to give them a little more information in a format that would review information or teach them something while keeping them interested. I was inspired the other day when I was listening to a podcast for teachers, and the topic of “Prezi” came up. The podcast said that Prezi is a new alternative to PowerPoint, and it is quickly spreading around the country as one of the top ways to present information. They said that Prezi is a little more labor-intensive than PowerPoint, and here is why: Instead of using “slides,” you put all your information on a giant whiteboard-esque background and arrange it with a “path” so that as you click through the information, the screen will zoom in to your words. You can add twists, turns, themes, and more, but you have to position each word or phrase individually and determine the size, angle and order in the “path” in which it will be shown. Prezi sounded like an interesting tool, so I decided to go home and try it. I was pleased to find that it was actually really fun to use, and although I did in 3 hours what I would have been able to do in 45 minutes with PowerPoint, I was really excited about the results. My presentation was a compilation of words that I thought the students should know when learning about the Holocaust and Night, and I added pictures to the presentation as well. These words and images included topics that I had talked about in earlier lessons this week, plus a few more terms that I wanted to introduce or review. Here is my Prezi:

http://prezi.com/ml6ibn_w8c6s/night-vocabulary-words/

When I showed the students, I talked a bit about every section, so there is more information not included in the presentation that I used to elaborate on every term. Before I showed this to them, I told the students that it was a presentation, but if they tended to get motion sickness they might want to avert their eyes between terms. This piqued their interest and got them wondering what I was about to show them. When I presented the information, I heard lots of “ooh”s and “aaah”s, and the students were completely attentive throughout the entire lesson. I was so happy! At the end of the presentation they actually said “that was so much more interesting than a powerpoint!” and “that must have taken you such a long time!”. It seemed like they really enjoyed the lesson and found it informative, which is awesome. I would recommend Prezi for any teachers who are trying to spice up their lessons.

A Tiered Lesson on Identity, Stereotypes, and Discrimination

Here are some of the students' "identity cards". They wrote adjectives and sentences about themselves on their cards.

This is the tiered version of a lesson that I taught on Monday. In this lesson, which was taught to a 9th grade inclusion Language Arts class, features the topics of identity, stereotypes, and discrimination. It is a fairly simple lesson, but it is meant merely as as introduction to issues of prejudice that we will delve deeper into as the quarter progresses.

Here is an example of a student’s analysis of stereotypes in an advertisement.

1. Subject: English

Grade: 9^th grade (inclusion class)

2. Standard: EALR: Reading Component 3.1: Develops ideas and organizes writing

GLE 3.1.1: Analyzes ideas, selects a manageable topic, and elaborates using specific, relevant details

3.  Key concept(s): Students will know the meaning of the words identity, stereotype, and discrimination, and how these things are still a large part of American culture.

Generalization(s): Students will understand the connections between those three words, understand why identity is important, and understand how stereotyping and discrimination can be hurtful.

4. Background:

Students will probably know a lot about identity already, and they may know about discrimination and stereotypes as well. However, I’m going to spend time focusing on their individual identities in the beginning of the lesson so that they get a feel for what we will be talking about, and then I will move on to a discussion about stereotypes of different kinds of people. After naming a few stereotypes that we know of, I’ll teach the students about discrimination and how stereotypes can cause it. Lastly, I will give them an activity based around identity but focusing mainly on stereotypes in popular advertisements. This way, the students will have already learned how these things are interconnected, and I will use scaffolding to teach how my topics fit into our culture.

5. Which part of the lesson will you tier?  (Content, Product, Process)

• Content:  I won’t be tiering the content, because I think it is fairly easy for all skill levels to understand and it is an important foundation for the rest of my lessons this week.

• Product: I want to keep the product the same, because the outcome at the end of the lesson should be consistent for everyone. The information that students will need to know is easy for everyone to show evidence of understanding in, even though their understanding may come by way of different means.

• Process: Tiering the process seems to be the best way to separate the levels of this lesson, because it will allow students who need extra time and support more opportunities to learn in their own way. Additionally, it will provide the students who work at a faster pace to learn several aspects of the content without getting too far ahead of everyone else.

6. Type of tiering (readiness, interest, learning profile)

• Readiness: Because this is an inclusion class and it features a wide range of learners, I want to build these tiers around the ability levels of the students. There are some who will probably know a lot more about the topics coming in to the class and therefore have a lot more to say, write, and think about. Other students will want to learn the content more slowly and methodically, which will require more in-depth explanations of the lesson topics.

• Interest: I think this is a lesson that all students will be interested in, because its main basis is identity and understanding oneself. Kids who are more interested in one section of the lesson than another are welcome to do any extra work that they would like to do, but in general I think this is something that everyone will want to learn about.

• Learning profile:  Because the students are taking the multiple intelligences test, the lesson features different learning styles in a very literal sense. However, I don’t want to tier the lesson by grouping kids in their different learning style categories, because I don’t think it would necessarily work with this topic quite yet. Students will certainly come to understand more about their strengths and weaknesses in particular learning areas, though.

7. How many tiers?

1. Tier 1: students who have great trouble understanding concepts

Students will begin by filling out “identity card” that has their name, words that describe them, and an interesting fact about themselves.

Students will take multiple intelligences test, and we will discuss their individual results as a class if they feel comfortable.

I will explain the definitions of identity, stereotypes, and discrimination to the class. Students will ask questions and tell me what they know about these words. I will write what they say on the board.

Students will draw a thought map based on what they said about the three words. I will work with them to connect ideas and concepts on paper so that they can better understand the different aspects of these topics.

Students will then choose an advertisement from the pile I brought in and answer the questions in the assessment below.

1. Tier 2: students whose comprehension meet grade level expectations

Students will begin by filling out “identity card” that has their name, words that describe them, and an interesting fact about themselves.

Students will take multiple intelligences test, and we will discuss their individual results as a class if they feel comfortable. After considering their results, they will then write examples of how they learn best.

I will explain the definitions of identity, stereotypes, and discrimination to the class. Students will ask questions and tell me what they know about these words. I will write what they say on the board.

Students will brainstorm examples of stereotyping and discrimination within popular culture, and write their examples down.

Students will then choose an advertisement from the pile I brought in and answer the questions in the assessment below.

1. Tier 3:  students whose comprehension exceeds grade level expectations

Students will begin by filling out “identity card” that has their name, words that describe them, an interesting fact about themselves, and whether they believe identity is based on “who you are”, “who others think you are”, or both.

Students will take multiple intelligences test, and we will discuss their individual results as a class if they feel comfortable. Students will write a short reflection on how their results are a part of their identity, and how the way they learn affects their understanding of the world.

I will explain the definitions of identity, stereotypes, and discrimination to the class. Students will look up definitions of the words, write these definitions and compare them to their own interpretations of the words. They will then think about examples in their own lives, history, and the world today, and jot down their thoughts.

Students will then choose an advertisement from the pile I brought in and answer the questions in the assessment below.

8. Develop the assessment

As a final assessment at the end of class, each student will answer questions about the magazine advertisement he or she selected. (See example of student work above). The student will answer the following prompts:

1.)   What would you say about this person’s identity? How does he or she define himself/herself?

2.)   What are 3-5 words that describe this person?

3.)   Does the depiction of this person fit any stereotypes that you can think of? Explain.

Students will also be assessed through their participation during the discussion on identity, stereotypes, and discrimination earlier in class.

My Definition of Differentiation

No classroom will have a group of kids who all think exactly the same. It is definitely the teacher’s job to adjust to the students: most kids are unable to change how they learn, and if kids could easily adapt to learn anything in any environment, there would be no real need for teachers. I think one of the main purposes of being a teacher is to inspire students to understand and care about information that students would not be able to understand on their own. Some schools focus on an individualized approach to teaching and learning, but the fact is, most schools are not able to implement that kind of system. In most public schools, it seems that teaching a class of students with all different learning styles mainly requires differentiation. The main premise of differentiation is that the teacher adjusts a lesson so that it can be understood and absorbed by all different kinds of thinkers. This is not an easy task. The main challenge that teachers face in this situation is that it can be difficult to make knowledge mentally accessible to everyone without watering down the content. It’s often tricky to find a balance between teaching in a way that helps students who struggle, and keeping the lesson fast-paced enough to avoid boring the highly advanced learners. For many teachers, having students with special needs in a classroom causes them to give extra attention to those kids. This leads us to the question, is giving special attention to struggling students is fair? I have found that in a non-differentiated classroom with lots of IEPs or 504 plans, teachers tend to spend so much time catering to the special needs of those students that they virtually ignore the students who are capable of learning quickly. Again, this makes me think that differentiation is the best route to go, because it allows students to learn the same subject matter at the same time. Teachers customize the lessons so that they provide appropriate levels of challenge for all students rather than “teaching to the middle,” completely overlooking the advanced students, or failing to provide help for the struggling learners.

Reflecting on the Benefits of Groups, Projects, and Presentations

http://www.learner.org/vod/vod_window.html?pid=1795

One of the first things expressed in the above video was that by requiring students to engage with one other, group work provides students with a new way of connecting to the material. Being able to complete a project alone is a good skill for all students to have, but successful group work reinforces cooperating, problem solving, and decision making, which are skills that students can’t learn alone. Group work is especially important for young students because it helps build their social skills at an early age: It encourages students to learn together and, in a way, forces them to get along with their peers while contributing new ideas and helping each other attain a common goal. In groups, kids can come up with better ideas by using combined brain power, and they can help each other understand the content better.  Knowing how to communicate effectively, cooperate, and socialize in a productive way are some of the most important parts of succeeding in the real world, and practicing those things is useful for students of all ages.

By participating in group work, students not only learn to work together; they also learn the course content in ways that are personal and memorable. Each learning experience is meaningful because the students must actively talk and participate. In the video, one teacher pointed out that it is common for many groups to have “hitchhikers,” who just coast along on the current of everyone else’s work, which is a good counterargument for the above statements. In high school, I remember being frustrated when some students would not contribute in a group setting because I felt it was unfair to everyone who was working hard. However, if a teacher holds every student accountable for his or her work and grades individually rather than merely grading the group as a whole, everyone will participate and the group work will foster meaningful learning. One of the best ways to prevent “hitchhiking” in a group is to assign a specific job to each student. That way, there will be clear expectations for each group member and the students will see what it is like to complete a project when everyone has a job. This goes hand in hand with the importance of the way a teacher structures a group. When teachers assign students to groups and give them individual jobs, the teachers are taking each student’s strengths and weaknesses into account and helping them succeed by putting them in groups that will work together. Teachers generally know who the natural leaders of each class are, and which students have social needs. They also know which students have disabilities, and they assign groups that they know will be equally spaced for everyone. When groups are structured badly, it can slow a group down, but a group moves efficiently when kids with a variety of different skills are mixed together.

Another huge part of working in a group is being able to present completed work to the class. Presentations are an extremely good way to build public speaking skills and for students to practice equally dividing group responsibilities. Presentations can be oral, visual, or both, but either way they allow students to show off what they have been working on together. It also provides teachers with an easy way of assessing student learning. After each presentation is over, the teacher can ask questions that pertain to the presentations so that each group can prove how much they have learned. When a teacher asks questions, it allows him or her to see whether the students truly have a clear understanding of what they are talking about. Providing feedback to the group also helps students work more efficiently in the future and know how to improve their finished product.  These are just a couple examples of how group work is beneficial for teachers and students as a whole.

Writing Short Stories

Because it was the week before mid-winter break, my mentor teacher asked her juniors to write short stories as a wrap-up to the quarter. These stories were required to be based upon the idea of time travel and include a literary element. Time travel was the main requirement in the students’ plots because it acted as a nice reflection on the story of Kindred, which is based upon time travel also. The students were allowed to pick any time period to begin the story in, any time period to travel to, and any circumstances upon which to do this traveling. By doing this, the students learned first-hand what it’s like to write a story with a science-fiction element, and it caused them to stretch their creative minds a little bit.

A lot of students wanted help with their stories, and this was probably the most consistent contact I’ve had with the kids one-on-one so far. When they were in the computer lab typing up their stories, I went around and talked with all of them individually about what they were writing. They excitedly told me about their story ideas, and asked for guidance in terms of setting, characterization, and other literary elements. It was really exciting for me to be able to understand the way all of them think and to see their writing skills come into play. This was one of the first times that they all directly asked for my help, which gave me hope. Because I had been doing more “intern” duties than “teacher” duties with the juniors, I was afraid they would always see me as a figure in the background, rather than a reliable teacher-figure who they could come to with questions. This week I really got to know a lot of the students even more than before, and it was a pleasure to be able to guide them through the story-writing process every day.

Using Projects and Performance to Check for Understanding

According to the Checking For Understanding textbook, seeing projects as opportunities to check for understanding rather than merely task completion gives teachers “insight into the extent to which students have transferred their learning to new situations” (73). One of my favorite things about projects and performances is that they can get students excited about a topic. Many teachers who experience “burnout” have given up on exciting assignments: they just focus on giving students busywork in order to assign grades. When a teacher stops assigning things that have potential to excite the students, there is a big problem. This has been on my mind a lot recently because I have witnessed teacher burnout in the school where I’m currently student teaching, and the teachers in question basically assign worksheets all day long. I have been thinking of assigning projects when I begin teaching full-time so that I can not only wake up the students, but check to see what they truly understand. By not mixing up the lessons, teachers make students bored with what they are supposed to be learning, and there is no real way of knowing if students even care about what’s going on. When more projects and performances are encouraged in the classroom, students become engaged, they are able to show what they have learned, and they are more likely to remember the content for a long period of time because they must use all different parts of their brains.

However, the book points out that as great as projects and performances are, they can be misused in the classroom. These activities should not distract a student from learning the main point of the topic; they should only enhance what the student is meant to learn. The book speaks of instances in which students got so caught up in doing a project that they failed to see the forest for the trees; in other words, they lost sight of the meaning behind their project because they were blinded by the act of doing it. One way to prevent this from happening is to make sure there is an essential question for the basis of the project, or, a question which promotes deeper thinking rather than a simple “yes” or “no.” If a student does a Hamlet project about why or why not he believes Ophelia was truly a victim, for example, he will learn more than if he simply does something that depicts surface-level information (i.e. the setting of the play).

Fisher and Frey write, “The importance of performance opportunities lies in their potential for providing other outlets for students to demonstrate their mastery of different concepts in ways that are not limited to more traditional school-based demonstrations such as reading, writing, and computational tasks” (80). This means that performances allow students to learn and express what they have learned in ways that are “outside the box,” so that they don’t get stuck in boring cycles within the classroom. Performance tasks are especially great in classrooms that have all kinds of learners because they give students a variety of ways to show their understanding of something, which is the core of differentiated instruction. In my own classroom, I want to use performances and projects frequently enough that students will continue to participate and be engaged in what they are studying , but not too much. These activities take a lot of work- they require lots of time to create and to grade, and they can also be hard for many kids who are not outgoing or particularly creative. Also, having students do projects or performances too much may become repetitive. I definitely want to give kids enough opportunity to express their knowledge through these activities, but for me, once a unit or semester is enough.