9/11

At school on Friday my co-op allowed time for students in each of her classes to reflect on their memories from 9/11, and I was really pleased that she allowed for this type of “diversion” from her prepared lessons. My co-op shared her memories with the students (I shared a little too) and the students listened with wide eyes as she talked about her own uncertainty and fear. While the students were pretty young when it happened, they shared a variety of sentimental to silly memories from the day. One student remembered coming home from school and feeling extreme disappointment that her father hadn’t returned from a business trip with the chocolate he always bought for her from the duty free store. Others remembered coming home and seeing their parents glued to the TV for hours. After the students talked about their memories, my co-op asked everyone to complete a short free write about a time in their life that something (big or small) happened that changed them forever. I loved how she was able to talk about 9/11 and then draw an essential question from the discussion to help the students personalize the idea of a life changing event. Everyone wrote and no one complained about not having anything to say. I read the pieces after class and learned something new about each student. Some students wrote about death, divorce and moving to the U.S. from a different country; others wrote about meeting a new best friend and learning to ride a bicycle for the first time. It was an excellent day at school.

"Guess What I'm Thinking" Questions

I really liked the section of chapter 2 regarding what the author calls "Guess What I'm Thinking" questions. I witness this daily in my placement, and I'm sure you all have to. This is when a teacher says "What is the mood of this story?" Different students give different answers none of which are really considered (they're not dismissed but they're responded to with something like "ok that could work") until that one kid says what the teacher is thinking and the teacher responds with a "correct" or "exactly." That student has a achieved a gold star and every other student who contributed has a small chink in their self efficacy. Stronger, confident students will keep participating while more self conscious students with slowly stop participating. Through this age old practice we are killing not only self efficacy, but also critical thinking and creativity. Steve talked last week about kids not being able to think for themselves, well no shit. Everything we tell them is black or white, yes or no. We dictate everything they do from how they perceive a story to whether they can or cannot go to the bathroom. Like the title of the chapter, the medium is the message. What we do in our class is what they learn. So though they may be picking up things like grammar and characterization they are most definitely learning things like "what the teacher says is right," "I don't need to know this because it's not on the test" and "I need to write correctly so i get a good grade."

This reminds me of the quote by Gardner in the reading as well where he says "As society becomes more concerned with precedent and custom, it comes to care more about how things are done, rather than whether they are done." And this is the message these kids are getting about English. They don't like reading because it consists of books and stories they don't choose at a pace they are not comfortable with. The teacher assigns three chapters for homework, while most of the class does it the smartest kid finishes the book and zones out for the next two weeks and the most challenged reader gets through one chapter and quits. They don't like writing because they don't connect with it. It's meant for research pieces and PSSA. Forgive me if this has just been a ramble. This stuff has just been on my mind and perhaps I drew connections to the text that I just wanted to be there so I could get all this out. Either way though.... thoughts?

Frustration

I know everyone is posting about the readings, but honestly, i have yet to even get to them because i was home at a wedding this weekend.  Anyway, my post is more about my experience in school last thursday...

Two things that majorly irritated me.  Number one: Reynolds had school on Thursday during the flooding.  Now yes, it does stink that we had to go in when everyone else had off, but that's not what bothered me.  What bothered me was that the superintendent didn't close school and think of the safety of not only his students, but more so his teaching staff.  Half of the teaching staff was not able to come to school on Thursday or show up on time because they had commutes.  Many of them had to put up with closed routes, multiple different detours, and harrowing trips.  What's the point of having a school day when you don't have ample teaching staff?  Secondly, we had students slipping and falling all over the halls and outside in the puddles.  I and my co-op were just very irritated.

Secondly: My students were supposed to work on laptops on Thursday because my co-op didnt have time in the morning to make her copies for the day (because she was late to school).  We have a cart of thirty laptops in our classroom.  Only about half of them would turn on...and then only about half of those actually connected to the internet or didn't shut down as soon as they started up.  Our honors section is supposed to start research papers this week.  How can they work on them if they don't even have proper equipment? Not to mention that these laptops seem older than my kids, and have numerous buttons missing on each one.  My co-op also informed me that there's only ONE tech support person...for the entire district.  That absolutely blew my mind that there was no one there who we could call to help us and get our class back on track. 

I understand that urban schools are generally more poor and don't have as many resources as other schools...but it just really annoys me that these kids can't even have general access to technology that is now a standard part of every day life and should be standard in the classroom.

Crap-detecting and entropy

As a disclaimer, I have not gotten to page 60 yet, but want to address the ideas of crap-detecting and entropy as related to my experience thus far in public school teaching. First of all, the crap methods that are being driven by standardized teaching when it comes to reading skills. We know that most children, who are good readers, were read to as babies and toddlers. They experienced reading as pleasurable and as a natural part of everyday life. They had the opportunity to organically grow through the various stages of reading, beginning with the mimicry of pretend reading. I recall my own children pretending to read, as they spoke a memorized story, with the open book upside down! Most children develop reading stamina by being pulled into a good story and wanting to know what happens next. Instead of conducting independent reading workshops, which would allow below grade readers to practice getting lost in a story and, thereby, build stamina, we put textbooks with "pieces" of stories in front of the students and stop their reading every other sentence to ask a scripted question that lets the teacher know if they are paying attention to the text. This is absurd, but it is the method that is dictated to and embraced by the teachers who adhere to a curriculum director's mandate. Some brave souls admit to secretly conducting real reading classrooms, but they say so in whispers.
This is a very good example of entropy: not much creative energy left in a declining system.

Chapter 14

Chapter 14 of Class Matters (I cannot get the italics to work here) has implications for my students at junior high and for me as a teacher at that particular school. First of all, I immediately thought of a boy in class who told me that he was being raised by his grandparents because both his mother and father are in jail. This was my very first day in the classroom and I was working with the students to make Life Maps. It was remarkable to me that he shared this news with no hint of embarrassment and in a loud enough voice for anyone near to hear. My prior experience in suburban schools would have suggested that this bit of information about a student's family life would be whispered in shame. It was refreshing to see that this young man was full of confidence in his bearing and it was simply a matter of fact on his list of life experience. I have continued to observe that his academic work and social interactions are neither inhibited nor shaped by this fact. He is a leader in the classroom, smart as a whip and, despite a playfully mischievous streak, he has become my "protector" when the class gets rowdy. He is quick to shout out, "Be respectful to Mrs. S!". My point in sharing this story is that the student is an example of how important it is for teachers and community leaders to remain vigilant in keeping this bright, engaging child on track with his limitless potential. It would be easy for him to fall on his parent's path when he enters the high school years and has more freedom for temptations on the street. How many stories, such as Angela Whitiker's could have been prevented with guiding hands and hearts?

Secondly, the chapter has implications for me as a pre-teacher learning the skills of directing lesson plans. The limited resources of the urban school I am in, means I work without the technology that my suburban counterparts have readily available. Should I get a job in the suburbs, I fear that my teaching skills will not be practiced sufficiently in areas of putting technology to use in the classroom. Something to consider!

Chapter 4

It took me a bit to figure out whether or not I was reading the correct article. After it began to make sense to me, I thought that there was a ton of connections that my urban students could make in regards to fitting into society's "norms". I won't list the connections so that I don't blow my wad before class. "Blow my wad".... is that the correct expression? I think my wife is rubbing off on me. She butchers every expression known to man.

Some of her finest musings have been:

"I'm running around like a chicken without any heads"
"It's like killing two stones with a bird."

Ugh. Anyway, see ya Tuesday!

Question for classmates