Sneak peak into my TI

I don't want to ruin the TI I'm going to present on Tuesday by going into great detail , but I thought I would blog a just little bit about what's going on in my American lit class. My first day teaching, I had the students complete a writing sample so I could assess their individual abilities. As I started reading them, I knew right away that I was working with a very diverse group of students: some of them couldn't write in complete sentences and used no punctuation, and others were obviously really comfortable with writing and ready to take it to the next step. Without thinking, I pulled out a post-it note and grouped the students together according to writing ability. Because grammar is such an important part of our classroom, it didn't seem fair to make the high-level students sit through grammar lessons each day because their writing samples reflected their understanding of the concepts. On the other hand, some students really needed help with simple sentence structure, so it is important (according to L-S) to teach these students the basics of simple grammar by drilling them every day. I knew right away that differentiation would without a doubt be vital to my success in this classroom.

Before the second week ended, I already had confrontations with students from the high-end and the low-end of the academic spectrum. The gifted girl went home and complained to her parents that we weren't moving through the material fast enough for her; she was bored and didn't feel challenged in our classroom. I met with her parents yesterday (more about this on Tuesday). The same day, a struggling student grumbled under his breath, "I hate this class!" When I pulled him aside and asked him about it, he said we needed to move slower. He felt completely lost and hopeless in our classroom. Each day, he completely shuts down; he puts his head down on his desk and usually refuses to participate. His body language suggests that he is unengaged, and maybe has had a bad experience with school for a long time.

The pressure is on for us to come up with something that works for all of our students. The social structure of this classroom is really dynamic, even complicated. There are students that openly proclaim they hate each other, so we have to be really careful about creating groups. I will share more with you on Tuesday when I discuss my TI. I have been trying different strategies, and I look forward to hearing your suggestions!

Continuing the conversation

I got a great suggestion from a teacher on the English Companion Ning. I asked about something better than reading guides because that is just about all my co-op and I did for "To Kill a Mockingbird." One of the teachers on the Ning recommended using dialogues to promote understanding. The example she used was "after reading the chapters with Mayella's and Tom's testimony, give the kids this:

Albert: "Mayella Ewell is lyin' trash!"

Hilda: "Actually, I feel sorry for her."

The students then continue this conversation, making Albert and Hilda explain their viewpoints with evidence from the text. Share these the next day at the beginning of class."

I never thought of anything like that! Sure it isn't fool-proof, but it's certainly better than questions on a reading guide. I know that reading guides serve a purpose and it is a great way for information to be in the same place, but doesn't it get old after a while? It does for me, that's for sure.

Relevancy during Shadowing

I shadowed my student last Friday and it was really great. We'll call him Robert. He is a student whom my co-op and I kind of have mixed feelings about. I like the kid and, despite him being a pain most of the time, don't mind having him in my class. My co-op doesn't really like him, though. She doesn't think he has a chance to redeem himself. I don't know if it's because I'm more willing to work with him, but he seems to respond better to me than my co-op. The co-teacher also brought up the point that he is of Mexican background and culturally he might appreciate males more than females (my co-op and the co-teacher are both female). Anyone have any thoughts on this? I would have never thought about that until they mentioned it. Anyone else experience this?

I asked Robert at some point throughout the semester if he liked to write. I saw that he was always drawing and I thought I would occasionally see a hint of writing mixed in with his stuff. To this he told me that he likes writing poetry and sometimes short stories. Bam. There it is. There is my connection to this student. Well, after weeks of asking him every time I saw him if he could bring in some writing for me to check out, still nothing. But during my shadowing I was able to bring up some relevancy during his computer class. He was writing a blog post that had some pretty bad grammar and sentence errors which made it slightly difficult to read. After helping him with some of them I brought up the point of needing to write well to be a successful writer. This seemed to make sense to him.

I'm really glad that I could shadow this specific student and get to know more about why he does what he does. I wish we could shadow all of our students and learn this much about them!

Teaching Vocab

As all of you can understand, I became really bored with teaching vocabulary (after the third week). Even from the beginning, I wasn't sold on the idea of teaching it. Every Monday I had to introduce 10-12 new words to students and then quiz them on the words that Friday. And the quizzes were no joke. The students were asked to spell each word as I read it aloud, match the word to its definition, come up with some original sentences using the words correctly, fill in the blank with the appropriate vocabulary word, and even work with affixes as they were asked to learn prefixes and their meaning; a new word using a prefix from the unit would appear on the quiz and the students were asked to make an educated guess about the definition of the new word. And I have to admit, I ran into some words that I had to previously encountered; I found myself googling words the night before a vocab lesson to determine the appropriate pronunciation.

I had the freedom to experiment with the teaching of vocabulary in a variety of ways. I had the students do a lot of group work, create art work and other visuals about the words, act out the words, etc. etc. We pretty much tried something new each week. But I am still confused about the whole idea of teaching vocabulary and I don't know where I stand on the issue. In the world of English teachers, it is a controversial issue. Some don't believe in teaching it-- they think vocabulary is learned through reading and communication. Others believe that teaching students new words is increasing their lexicons; therefor, it is an asset to the teaching of the language. I guess I just don't buy into students being asked to memorize words that are not even in the dictionary, like "pseudo-Aesculapian". It is really important that high school students learn the definitions of words that I had never even heard of?

My cooperating teacher strongly believes in the teaching of vocabulary, and I am not sure if I agree or disagree with her. She knows the statistics and the cites the studies-- once a word is heard however many times, and it used however many times it becomes a part of the lexicon. If this is the case, and students are genuinely increasing their vocabulary-- it's a good thing-- right? During my weeks teaching vocab, I introduced the students to about 100 words. If they are retaining this information, and using the learned words in their college essays-- which they say they did-- it's not a bad thing, is it? I kind of have a feeling that the majority of the words are memorized for the quiz and immediately forgotten, and it makes me sad to think about the wasted class time.

What do you guys think about teaching vocab? Is it a waste or is it useful?

On the Socratic Seminar

My cooperating teacher recently went to Rome for some teacher training, and she returned with some really amazing ideas for our classroom-- one being the use of the socratic seminar. She was excited to try it, and we immediately brainstormed ideas so that we could experiment with it right away. Our eleventh grade Brit lit students had been working on "sonnet packets" where they were required to identify the rhyme schemes and meter of the poems. We started to come up with ways to utilize the already existing sonnet packets for a socratic seminar later that day. Suddenly, in the middle of our brainstorming, she received a phone call that her son needed to be picked up from school immediately. She gave me the green light to experiment with the socratic seminar during the last period of the day. I thought about it over lunch and decided to go for it. I am so glad I did. It was by far the best and most rewarding experience I've had so far in my teaching experience.

I moved four desks to the front of the room forming a pod. I asked the students to free write for five minutes about the first sonnet in the packet which was Spenser's sonnet 75. The students were somewhat familiar with it, so I didn't feel bad asking them to analyze its meaning and themes. I explained that I needed four volunteers to discuss the sonnet in front of the class. Without hesitation, four students walked to the front of the room and began a discussion. I kept quiet for awhile as they spoke about the ideas of true love, monogamy, death, and legacy. I actually got tears in my eyes a few times during this activity. I knew my students were intelligent and articulate, but it was one of those moments that I was truly and profoundly proud of them. I could see that they were genuinely understanding and grasping the timeless themes in a classic piece of literature. And I just sat there and listened, and asked appropriate questions when necessary. At one point, I moved the conversation to the modern day by asking them to name songs that discuss similar themes or ideas. The majority of the class ended up participating in the socratic seminar that day, and I can say with honestly that this was a definite turning point for me as a student teacher. If you ever have the chance to experiment with the socratic seminar-- just do it! You will not be disappointed.

Trouble with Budgets

So, as I'm sure you are all aware, budget cuts are looming on the horizon for a lot of schools if they haven't already begun chopping away. Almost everyday that I am at the school I am exposed to conversations about budget cuts, union issues, and school board decisions. It can be somewhat disheartening at times when you are a young student-teacher ready to finally run full-throttle in a classroom. However, it can also be somewhat rewarding to not be completely idealized about the future of education. I'm trying to be aware of the reality of public education while still staying excited about teaching, after all, it is about what is best for the students. Has anyone else been dealing with these type of issues? I was talking to my co-op today about teacher unions and trying to gain a better understanding of how it all works. I can definitely see how it could be easy to get wrapped up in the politics of education but it is sooooo important that we keep the students at the forefront of these conversations.

A little taste of real teaching

So today we had prep first period so my co-op used the time to deal with a bullying issue that has been going on for a couple days now. What we didn't know getting into it was that it was going to escalate to the point where my co-op spent the majority of the first 3 periods out of the room, making phone calls, and in the guidance office as everything unfolded.

So naturally this left me unattended and unsupervised in the front of the classroom for 2nd and 3rd period. Fortunately I had planned the CA lesson for the day so I had been planning to run the class from the beginning anyway. I jumped in and began and actually looking back didn't even really notice my co-op running in and out of the room. The lesson went smoothly. I was happy with it, and was also able to make some changes for the next class 2 periods later.

Because the bullying thing took much longer than anticipated and I did not know what the plan was for social studies, I just continued my lesson into the next period. (Fortunately I tend to underestimate how long activities will actually take so therefore I over plan without trying).

So, four good things came out of today for me:
1. I got a taste of  what student teaching will be like by going from one class to the next without a break.
2. I got a taste of what being an actual classroom teacher feels like by not having my co-op in the room to back me up and support my decisions and management of behavior.
3. I was able to reflect on my lesson (almost automatically) in such a way that I could modify it for the next class.
4. I realized that I am able to plan and teach for a block period (I was worried) if ever I would actually have to. What I thought was maybe a 50 minute lesson turned into a 90 minute lesson. (Which I know is both good and bad, but today it was a good thing. I was trying to find positives in the day).

Just wanted to share a little victory in this stressful time. =) What are some positives for you?? Hang in there! We're almost done! =)