Letter to me (Online reflection #4)

Dear 18-year-old self:

Wow, we actually made it to graduation (and in just four years). I know it seems like this moment is eons away, it’s going to arrive sooner than you expect. Many things will be the same. Sarah will still be your #1 friend, supporter, and pain-in-the-butt. You’ll still feel sad when you think about how your older brother won’t be here to see you grow – especially when you realize you’ll be graduating college the same day your little brother graduates high school. And you’ll still want to be a teacher, you just won’t have accomplished it in the way you expected.

A few months into freshmen year, you’ll realize you don’t see yourself as an elementary teacher, working with the same class all day every day. Instead, you’ll listen to the nagging voice in your head that tells you to give secondary English a try. This will simultaneously be the best and worst decision of your life. You’ll laugh, fail, cry, learn, succeed and repeat on a never-ending loop.

Here are a few quotes that will literally get you through the next few years, months, even hours of your life. Look at these quotes when you feel like a failure. Read these quotes when you want to feel proud of yourself. Think about these quotes when you wonder why you’re here and what God’s plan is for you and what your purpose is here in this world.

• “I hope you know you’re capable and brave and significant. Even when it feels like you’re not."
• “The Lord will fight for you; you need only be still” Exodus 14:14
•  “It’s just a bad day, not a bad life.” – Mom
• “The kids who need the most love will ask for it in the most unloving ways.”

Now that I’ve given you some inspiration, I would like to share a few words of advice

• Listen to everything Dr. Cramer says. By the time graduation rolls around, she will have helped you and encouraged you in countless ways.
• Keep your mouth shut. Seriously. If you have nothing substantial, constructive, or positive to contribute to a conversation, do not open your mouth.
• Save up your money before student teaching begins. Do NOT start the semester with $0.03 in your savings account (sorry, mom and dad).
• Aunt Heather is going to be one of the most supportive individuals during your college career. She will get you jobs, write you reference letters, and be the perfect mixture of cool aunt and motherly confidant.
• Take care of your mental and emotional health during student teaching. You cannot be mentally present for your students if you let your anxiety cloud your mind.
• Make mistakes! You have so much time to learn and grow from your failures.

Lastly, know that you can do this. Hey – as Brad Paisley would say: “you’re still around to write this letter to me”. 

Layered Curriculum: Engaging and Motivating Students (Reflection #3)

Picture this: it's 8 AM, you're in a Language Arts classroom, and there are around 7-10 students (the only ones who consistently show up) sitting in desks. Can you imagine the mood, the energy in the room?

If a word similar to "dead" popped into your head, you would be correct. This class is one that my mentor teacher has struggled with since the beginning of the year. Although the students are not a classroom management problem, they pose another teaching hurdle in that they often become disengaged throughout the lessons. When discussing the classes I would focus on, my mentor teacher encouraged me to bring my fresh ideas to the students in order to give them a new face with interactive and innovative activities. With a class of less than 15 students, this seemed like an amazing opportunity to get creative with my instruction and become more intentional in designing lessons that truly engaged and motivated each student.

One of the easiest and most effective ways to accomplish this is to allow students the opportunity to make choices about their own learning. In The Highly Engaged Classroom, Marzano and Pickering establish four different ways to offer students choices: choice of tasks, choice of reporting formats, choice of learning goals, and choice of behaviors (14). Alternative Book Reports offer students both choice in task as well as the reporting format.

As I was talking with colleagues about my different ideas, one teacher suggested a method called Layered Curriculum. According to H. Donovan Colding in an article titled “Integrating a Layered Curriculum to Facilitate Differentiated Instruction”, Layered Curriculum was developed by Kathie Nunley and “. . . is a teaching method that builds on students’ varied learning styles and multiple intelligences”. The foundation of this method is allowing students to choose activities that best fit their learning styles, needs, and skills.

There are three levels in Layered Curriculum which correspond to the grade students receive: the C level requires that students show their basic understanding of a topic by choosing from a set of assignments, B level applies knowledge learned from the C level tasks to create new knowledge, and the A level requires students to think critically about the topic and produce tasks in the analysis and synthesis levels of thinking (Colding). Not only do students get a choice of tasks, they also get a say in their learning goals and can be held accountable for the grade they want to receive.

I plan to use this Layered Curriculum method while reading Keesha’s House with the students. Each student will be required to complete the C level by choosing from the tasks offered, but it is up to the individual student to determine their learning goals and how much work they are willing to put in. Hopefully, by using a text students can make connections with and giving them options as they read and learn, the motivation and engagement in the classroom will be increased.

References

Colding, Donovan H. “Integrating a Layered Curriculum to Facilitate Differentiated Instruction.” Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Web. 6 April 2016.

Marzano, Robert J. and Pickering, Debra J. The Highly Engaged Classroom. Bloomington: Marzano Research, 2010. Print. 

Maintaining my sanity by managing the classroom (reflection #2)

Many aspects of my student teaching have become easier as the weeks have gone by, but it seems that others have not. Several teachers I work closely with are not planning to return next year and are struggling to remain checked-in to their responsibilities for this year. I hate to admit that I have been affected by their daily mentality and often feel uncertain about the idea of becoming a full-time teacher.

One thing that I have struggled immensely with this semester has been classroom management. I feel that my lesson plans are strong and engaging. However, some classes are easier to work with than others. At my placement school there are large class sizes with 25+ students in every period. Rather than put my whole self into establishing a well-managed classroom, I have found myself ready to give up and feeling incompetent. Whenever I notice one class improving there seems to always be another class that needs adjustments in the management plan. My mentor teacher tells me that I need to be “more mean” and send students out/write them up/give them detentions. After much reflection and some reading into educational sources, I have come up with a few techniques I will be trying to implement in my classes.

                The misbehavior in my classes are often disruptive but rarely make others feel unsafe. This means that I do not usually send students out of the classroom but often spend the whole class period reminding, pleading, encouraging, arguing, etc. While reading Secrets for Secondary School Teachers: How to Succeed in Your First Year, I have come to realize that this creates an in-class source of entertainment for all the students. Rather than correct misbehavior in front of the whole class, the authors suggest I remain poised, confident, and fluid in my actions and talk to students individually in a calm and quite tone (Kottler et al. 70-71). They also encourage teachers to “. . . direct the rest of the students to engage in some activity so they aren’t frozen in the role of audience watching the drama unfold” (71). Although a lot of students do not seem to respond well to this now, I believe with some diligent practice they will get used to this method of correction. In the event that I do get into a public argument with a student who tests my authority, the authors state that it is my responsibility to figure out what went wrong and how I made the problem worse – for example: raising my voice, showing my disgust, etc. (73-74). Additionally, they reiterate that misbehavior is not personal and should not affect my emotions (which I have heard hundreds of times – but it doesn’t’ hurt to hear it again).

                Another source I looked at was Classroom Management for All Teachers: 12 Plans for Evidence-Based Practice. In this text, Cipani provides twelve different strategies for managing a classroom, ranging from rewarding on-task behavior to preventing dangerous and disruptive behavior. One of my favorite strategies as the “Signal Time-out” periods. With this technique, students will monitor their own behavior and determine whether it is on- or off-task. When a student is exhibiting off-task behavior, they will receive a signal card that will alert their attention to their off-task behavior. The Signal Time-out period gives many students a chance to see that their behavior is disrupting other work and will hopefully help them see how their individual behavior affects the whole class. I am excited to try these techniques over the next few months and will no doubt be returning to these texts for more ideas on classroom management.

Sources:

Cipani, Ennio. Classroom Management for All Teachers: 12 Plans for Evidence-Based Practice. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, Inc., 2004. Print.

Kottler, Ellen, Jeffrey A. Kottler, and Cary J. Kottler. Secrets for Secondary School Teachers: How to Succeed in Your First Year. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press, Inc., 1998. 69-76. Print.

Putting the ‘pro’ in research project: how to scaffold big tasks to ensure student success

At first glance, research projects don’t seem like a big deal. When I am assigned a research project, I know how to get started and find the resources I need to complete the project. So when I worked with my mentor teacher to plan a research unit for my first few weeks, I was hopeful that it would be a breeze. However, with 6^th graders, this task is not so simple. Off the top of my head I know that students will need to learn how to or at least be refresh on how to find sources and information, take notes, cite sources, organize their research, and format their writing. If I am getting overwhelmed just thinking about planning and teaching these concepts, how are my students going to feel when I hand over the project and turn them loose?

           

The answer, at least the answer I’m going with, is scaffolding. With so many different concepts to teach, it will be absolutely critical that I plan the teaching and practice of these concepts so that students have the tools and experience needed to be successful in their research and writing. In an Edutopia article titled “6 Scaffolding Strategies to Use With Your Students”, Rebecca Alber makes several suggestions for scaffolding complicated tasks for students. One strategy that I will be using in different ways throughout this unit are graphic organizers. Instead of thinking about graphic organizers are another worksheet to fill out, Alber encourage us to see these organizers “. . . as training wheels; they are temporary and meant to be removed” (Alber). During the research project I plan to use graphic organizers to help student collect information and organize it to correctly format their texts. I definitely think the students will feel less overwhelmed if they already have an organized layout of how their writing should look before they start on the informative essay.

Another way to scaffold complex tasks is a form of show and tell and involves the teacher modelling the process for students. When students see the teacher thinking aloud about the process he/she is completing, they see a way to think critically about the information they are learning and researching (Alber). Harmon and Marzano also provide this strategy as a way to introduce complex tasks in Practicing Skills, Strategies, and Processes. Worked examples, as they call them, are “step-by-step demonstrations or models of how to execute a skill strategy or process” (35). These worked examples also help prevent students from feeling discouraged by a complicated process (35). Two ways to use this strategy are student scripts and self-reflections. When using student scripts, they are “written by the teacher and then read aloud by students”. Self-reflections, on the other hand, are written by students after they have reflected on their own actions and steps (Harmon, Marzano 36-37). Each strategy would be beneficial in helping students see the process they are working through while researching and writing. My mentor teacher and I plan to model research strategies as a way to utilize worked examples during the research project unit.

Hopefully, in a few weeks we will have quality research projects as well as students who now have a better idea of the research and writing process.

Alber, Rebecca. “6 Scaffolding Strategies to Use With Your Students.” Edutopia 24 May 2011. 

Harmon, Kelly and Marzano, Robert J. Practicing Skills, Strategies, and Processes: Classroom Techniques to Help Students Develop Proficiency. West Palm Beach, FL: Learning Sciences International, 2015. 35-38. Print.

How to Take Over the Classroom for a Day (genre reflection 2)

Get to your placement school with a few minutes left in the period before yours. The mentor teacher will inform you that she is leaving for the day and wonders if you could take over the class. You feel an impending sense of doom, like those heart-wrenching, stomach-clenching panic attack moments when you can’t remember if you submitted an assignment or not and have to log on to check.

For a second, you’ll wonder: “is this legal? What if something terrible happens and I get sued?! Would my mentor teacher be in trouble? Should I tell someone about this?” But don’t say any of this to your mentor teacher. Instead, say you’re totally fine with taking over the class even though you’re totally scared. Tell yourself not to freak out. Freak out anyway. Regain your composure and make sure you have all of your lesson plans ready. This is, after all, the first week of your teaching unit

Stick to your lesson plan or change it up; try something different. Do whatever the heck you want! There’s no one there to tell you you’re wrong. Yell at the kids under the table during bellwork. That’s your own fault. You should have known they couldn’t handle getting out of their seats for a value line. Keep looking at the para there to help you in a what-the-heck-am-I-supposed-to-do way that he either refuses to acknowledge or misses completely. He’ll just laugh and try to talk to you about what you do on the weekends.

Try to maintain classroom procedures. Say things like, “Your conversation level for this activity should be 0” even though you know they’re going to talk as loudly as they want anyway. Write a detention for the girl who was constantly out of her seat, tapping, talking, and hopping on the floor like a frog. Calmly and quietly go up to her and tell her why she is getting a detention, like this: “(Student’s name), I am giving you a detention because you did not follow or listen to directions”. She’ll get pissed, refuse to sign the detention slip, scream “I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING!!!!” and then storm out of the classroom. After the bell rings, wait the required 10 minutes for the students to get out of the building and then leave as quickly as you can. Cry all the way home because now you’re not so sure you’re cut out for this job and are suddenly questioning every decision you’ve ever made that brought you to this point.

Repeat this procedure every Thursday for the next 6 weeks until the semester ends. Eventually, the students will get better and will at least halfway listen to your instructions. You’ll begin to feel more confident in yourself as a teacher but there will always be a part of you that wonders, “Am I even good at this?”

But honestly, does that feeling ever go away?

Project Based Learning (online reflection #3)

After teaching my lesson this week I realized just how difficult it is to plan lessons for an Enrichment class. The hour I attend my placement is not only the last hour of school but the students’ second Language Arts class of the day. I know that if I had to attend two Language Arts classes a day in middle school, I would be pretty bored and burnt out. My mentor teacher’s vision for her Enrichment class is a project-based classroom where students would mainly be applying what they are learning in their Language Arts classes to demonstrate their learning. In a chapter of The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences, Joseph S. Krajcik and Phyllis C. Blumenfeld explain the purpose of a project-based classroom, stating it “allows students to investigate questions, propose hypotheses and explanations, discuss their ideas, challenge the ideas of others, and try out new ideas” (1). In an Enrichment class, this would mean thinking about themes in literature and exploring how they work in real, everyday life.

            But if we are going to give them these kinds of performance tasks, how do we go about introducing and assigning them? In an Edutopia article, Shawn Canney provides six pieces of advice to teachers who are trying a PBL classroom for the first time. The advice I found most helpful included giving concrete deadlines and setting goals: in order for the project to work, students need to know what is expected of them and when (Canney). One way to achieve this is to provide a detailed assignment sheet and scoring guide or rubric. Much like Canney, my first try at the PBL classroom will probably look like a huge failure, but this is why it is so important for teachers to reflect on what is going well in their classroom and what isn’t. During his projects, Canney reflects personally as a teacher and has an open discussion with his students both during and after the project. In order to have a successful PBL classroom, it is clear that I will need to be both reflective and thorough in my planning and teaching.

           

            One idea to implement in a PBL classroom is the alternative book report. With these projects, students are required to apply their understanding of a novel and respond to it in a new way with more insight than a summarization. Some examples of an alternative book report include creating a social worker’s report about the home life of a character, a character’s college application, and found poems from an important chapter in the novel. You can read about 50 different project ideas here. I think the students in my mentor teacher’s Enrichment class would really get into this project and enjoy picking their own topics. Right now we are writing our own mystery stories and it has been so fun watching them talk about their ideas and feed off of each other for inspiration. Allowing them the freedom to make their own decisions and be creative would definitely help keep them engaged in their second Language Arts class of the day.

Canney, Shawn. “Learning by Doing: A Teacher Transitions Into PBL”. Edutopia, 21 September 2015. Web.

Krajcik, Joseph S. and Blumenfeld, Phyllis C. “Project-Based Learning. The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences. (2006). R. Keith Sawyer (ed). Cambridge University Press.

Sharing My Story: Reflecting on the 2015 KATE Conference

The 2015 KATE Conference was jam-packed with fresh ideas and memorable conversations. In all there were seven breakout sessions with six different topics presented during each session. Although all the sessions I attended were excellent and full of valuable information, my favorites were “The T* in LGBT*" and "Professional Proactive: Combating Teaching Like a Champion". Several of my classmates were presenters at the conference this year and their sessions were all amazing as well!

During “The T* in LGBT*: Disrupting Normative Gender Culture through Young Adult Literature”, Dr. Cramer introduced the audience to books which feature transgender characters either as the narrator or a central character. I have noticed a lack of representation for LGBT content in my own placement, so this session was beneficial in helping me get started in planning how I will represent these characters and perspectives in my own classroom.

"Professional Proactive" was a session just for first-year teachers. I was so excited to attend and it did not disappoint! Attendees got to discuss their tips and tricks for classroom management, building relationships with students, and authentic assessment strategies. The best part of this session came when Isabela Nickel – the presenter and first-year teacher herself – shared the best apps and websites she has discovered to help make life in the classroom as efficient and perfect (ha!) as possible. Being surrounded by other pre-service and first-year teachers was so refreshing and comforting because we are all in the same boat in our experiences and being pretty much scared out of our minds.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed attending the KATE Conference and meeting like-minded professionals who were passionate about the same things I love. As one attendee said, we all feel unsure about ourselves when we try something new, which is what I feel like I’m doing every single day. Right now it seems like this feeling won’t ever go away but after attending the KATE Conference I feel validated in my choice to begin a career in the education field. I will definitely be back for next year’s conference and can’t wait to put the ideas I learned at this year’s conference into practice!