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:

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.

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.

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.

A Lesson From The Best

Philip Beadle teaching clip

One of the most interesting lessons I have seen over the past few months was taught by Philip Beadle, 2004’s “Secondary School Teacher of the Year” in Britain. Teaching 9th grade English, Beadle uses innovative strategies to get his students feeling enthusiastic about potentially dreary subject matter. The video clip (the link can be found above) begins with Beadle explaining the day’s activities, which included a few rounds of “argument tennis.” Beadle explains that this particular lesson would feature two rows of chairs facing each other, where students would sit and debate in pairs about whether Macbeth willingly chose to kill the king to gain the throne. I could feel my eyes glazing over on the students’ behalf when I heard the word “Shakespeare,” because  I feel like his plays have been a rather sore subject for many kids. From a teacher’s perspective, it can be hard to get students to absorb the antiquated words in Shakespeare’s work, let alone get them to understand what is going on. Because of that, I half-expected Beadle’s students to groan at the suggestion of sitting and talking about Macbeth for an entire class period. However, Beadle is the teacher of the year. Once the “tennis” commenced, I watched and listened as the students filled up the room with noise. To my amazement, they were all talking about the play, just as Beadle had instructed.

The biggest question that initially came up while I watched this clip was, “how does he get them to really care about this subject matter?” During my observation in the high school, I have seen a lot of kids who just roll their eyes when  they are asked to have meaningful discussions about the books they’re reading. It seems like many 9th graders abhor the idea of being asked to do anything related to persuasive, text-based arguments in class: without even really listening to the assignment,  the words “critical thinking” will often trigger the response “I don’t get it” from many freshmen.  However, Beadle’s students were passionate about their opinions and it was clear they had put a lot of thought into the preparation for their debates.

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.