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!

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.

Organization is Key

Over the past few weeks, the amount of work that teachers have to do has astonished me. This week, however, has been exceptionally staggering. It is finals week, and the students have unusual schedules: the classes come in on all different days, and they have tutorials during first and second period. I can’t remember what my finals were like during high school, but I don’t think they were this confusing. My mentor teacher has been more stressed than usual because of the amount of papers she needs to grade before next week (when final grades are due) and she is also busy preparing the final for our juniors. They will be taking a fairly difficult quiz on Kindred, writing a journal prompt in response to an article about life in the Antebellum south, and participating in a vocabulary game. This week has been full of photocopying, grade-entering, paper-sorting, and flailing around in general.

My teacher brought up the fact that not many people realize how much work is involved with being a teacher. She confessed that she often comes in to school on the weekends to grade and organize her things for the upcoming week, and it’s not unusual for the other teachers to do the same. She said that because of the amount of work she assigns, she constantly has completed assignments piling up faster than she can grade them, and she feels like organization is an uphill battle. She discussed this in front of the other teachers today as well, and they all agreed that this is the case. I laughed nervously when one teacher told me, “When you’re a teacher, people are going to scoff and think your life is easy because you have summers off, but in reality, you more than make up for that free time in the amount of after-school work you do every day.” It’s true, I never thought about the true difficulty of keeping track of roughly 150 students’ assignments. It involves sorting, grading, recording, passing back, filing, and lots of mental energy. The worst part seems to be that once a teacher gets done grading a whole day’s worth of assignments, the next day comes around and they have to do it all over again (on top of planning, teaching, and managing the classroom). My teacher pointed out that she has me, a special ed assistant, and a teacher’s aid helping her every day and she is still “barely keeping her head above water,” as she said. I suppose the trick is just to stay organized from the very beginning, plan carefully, and have a concrete grasp on time management skills. This week has been a big eye-opener for me, but I’m glad I’ll know what to expect when my time comes!

Learning Names and Leading Discussion

This week has started off well. I have already made some more big breakthroughs in terms of my own personal goals, and it’s only the first real day of the week. There was no school yesterday because it was Martin Luther King Jr. Day, so naturally the students and teachers were in good moods because of the long weekend. The extra free day also allowed my teachers and me to jump right into the curriculum. We are starting a new book with the juniors, which everyone is excited about: Kindred, by Octavia Butler. After finishing The Crucible, the students are ready for something a little more fast-paced, and this book is perfect. It is about an African-American woman in the 70’s who is sent back in time to meet her ancestors, who live in the Antebellum South. One of her ancestors is a white male slave owner and the other is a slave, and it makes for a really gripping story. Last week my teacher did a series of anticipatory activities with the students about the book. One activity included a worksheet with a bunch of scattered words pertaining to the story (“trauma,” “patriarchy,” “ancestry,” “slave narrative,” “loss,” etc.), where the students had to write a paragraph guessing what the book was about based on the random words. Another activity featured different “stations” at 5 different tables, and each station had a different activity (listening to songs sung by slaves, reading a paragraph about Harriet Jacobs, writing a response to Frederick Douglass’s poetry, and more). These activities got the students really interested in the upcoming novel and by today they were ready to get copies of the books.

My teacher began each class by having me hand out a book to each student, which was the first time I have really been able to show them that I do know most of their names. Last week I spent a fair amount of time checking out about 90 of these novels from the library, and assigning one book to each student with the student’s first name on a visible sticky note on the front. When I handed out the books, the kids looked at me with surprise as if to say “oh, you know who I am!” I had to discreetly consult the seating chart a couple of times, but handing out books allowed me to test myself and showed me (and the students) that I really do know more of their names than I thought. It was a small accomplishment, but I think of it as one baby step toward being an effective and caring teacher later in the quarter.

Near the end of 5^th period with the juniors, I got to lead a discussion with the students about the work they did in the station activity last week. When I first got up in front of them they all looked at me with great interest, because they hadn’t heard me talk much at all until this point. They listened intently and I think they were a little shy to volunteer their opinions because they were not used to talking to me. They warmed up a little more as time went on though, and they were eventually reading their written responses out loud for the class and providing feedback for one another. Before I addressed them as a class I was really nervous and afraid I wouldn’t be able to say what I wanted, because I knew it was the first time they had heard me speak to all of them for more than a few minutes. I was pleasantly surprised to find, however, that I didn’t show any visible signs of stage fright, and I kept my composure. We had a really nice class discussion, and now I feel like one of the hardest parts of student teaching- making that first attempt to actually “teach” something to a new class- is over.

Why Check For Understanding?

In Checking For Understanding: Formative Assessment Techniques For Your Classroom, by Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey, the importance of assessment is stressed from the very first page. Without properly checking for understanding, the authors say, teachers might overlook students who are behind and too shy to speak up. Checking for understanding can range from simple interactions to formal assessments, but no matter how it is done, it should be done as frequently as possible.

Checking for understanding is a very important step in the teaching and learning process, and unfortunately, most of the assessment done in schools is ineffective. Many teachers think that students “get it” even if they do not, and once a teacher moves on to a new subject, the opportunity to correct those students’ lack of understanding of a particular topic may be lost. One fact that doesn’t help the situation is that even if students think they understand something, they may have mentally missed a lot of information that would enrich the way they think of that topic. When students don’t know what they don’t know, it not only complicates the teacher’s job later on but stunts the growth of knowledge in those students’ minds. By checking for understanding frequently and effectively, that problem is eliminated. Students become aware of all sides of a subject when they are prompted to think about what their teacher wants them to get out of each lesson.

When done in a timely manner, checking for understanding can correct misconceptions and improve learning. In this case, “timely manner” refers to checking for understanding almost all the time. It should be done during the lesson and directly after anything is taught, while the information is still fresh in the students’ minds. That way, any confusion can be nipped in the bud. Doing this frequently during class also gives the students a model for good study skills, because it teaches them how to process new information and constantly question what they are learning. When teachers check for understanding, the students become aware of how to monitor their own understanding of a subject. Some useful strategies for checking for understanding, which also double as excellent study skills for students, are the following: Re-stating the material in one’s own words; asking questions about the material, and thinking of examples that relate to the new information. When teachers ask students to do these things in class, the students begin to recognize those activities (no matter how quick or small) as meaningful ways to make sure they know what’s going on.

As mentioned earlier, many things “count” as checking for understanding, whether the teacher is giving a formal test at the end of the semester, or checking to see if a student is awake and ready to learn on a daily basis. The main goal of checking for understanding is to work on closing the achievement gap by making sure students keep up with what they are being taught every week, day, and hour.

Decorating a Classroom

How a teacher decorates his or her walls is one of the most important aspects of a classroom. Because students are enclosed in a classroom for long periods of time, the walls can either act as barriers blocking out the world and confining students’ creativity, or they can create a pleasant, interesting, and fun place for students to learn within.

Using walls wisely means enhancing the space you’re given and making sure that everything you put up is conducive to student learning, happiness, comfort and involvement. One of the teachers in Chapter Two discussed the importance of simple and colorful decorations. These prevent the room from looking plain and boring, and they remind students that the classroom is not a prison, but a nice place to be. Marty Pope says on page 38, “I think you have to keep the walls fresh. I’m positive you can actually kill brain cells with sterile walls and bulletin boards that don’t change for 9 months.” I agree- I read a study that said most students are only able to focus their full attention for the first twenty minutes of class, and after that they become “bored” more easily. Having plain walls would only compound that problem, and by putting interesting things on the walls, the teacher can ensure that the students are still thinking about school instead of where they’d rather be.

This brings up another point: it is essential that teachers make sure the things they’re putting on walls are all school-related. On page 38, teacher Val Bresnahan says that she begins the year with blank walls so that she and the students can “build” the walls together. She says the first thing they put up are the classroom rules. I like this approach, because it lets students know that they have a say in what their classroom looks like, and by putting the classroom rules up first, the teacher shows that the rules should be one of the first things that students become familiar with. The walls can serve all kinds of purposes, while remaining relevant to what is going on in school. At one point, the book says good teachers use their walls to accomplish the following:

Teach collaboration and cooperation, create learning communities, affirm and celebrate the individuality of their students, communicate their missions, build vocabulary and inspire excellent writing, provide information not found in textbooks, to serve as instructional aids, practice and review required skills and content, share values with students, and motivate and inspire students. (McEwan 41)

I’m a firm believer that another good strategy for decorating the walls is to display student work. I’m definitely going to do this when I have my own classroom, because it affirms the importance of student opinions and creativity. I remember when I was in high school, I felt proud to have my work on the wall because it felt like I was setting an example for what good work looks like. I also felt that it meant the teacher really cared about what I did, and that all my assignments had the potential to be special enough for a wall somewhere.

One more interesting thing I read in the book is the way different colors can elevate or lower blood pressure. Warn colors like red and orange cause feelings of anxiety or unease, and colors like blue and green can have a calming effect. McEwan writes, “The wise use of color to transform a depressing atmosphere into one that is pleasing and appropriately stimulating may well have a positive effect on both student attitudes and behavior” (50). This is something that many people may not realize, but it makes a lot of sense. I also read once that the colors yellow and red can make people feel hungry (which is why McDonald’s uses them so much) which is not something I would want to do. When I have my own classroom, I’m definitely going to have lots of cool, calm colors on display.