EDCI 602: Personal Reflection

Because we have only been teaching summer school for a week and a half, we have a limited number of samples to draw on for this exercise.

My students have been most successful at my lessons involving rote memorization. We had a fantastic first day with rules and consequences and, once these had been explained and implemented day two, learning the 8 parts of speech, went quite smoothly as well. My first theory to explain the success of these first days is the nature of the material, which required only that the students write down or memorize and then regurgitate specific pieces of information. The students also had some prior knowledge of parts of speech so I suspect that they felt fairly confident giving examples in front of their peers even though they were not always right. Additionally, modeling for these goals was easy and effective. A noun is a tree. I want you to sit in your seat LIKE THIS. Having a clear correct answer makes the students feel more comfortable, and at this point all the answers were at the first DOK level, "right there."

My students were least successful at the lesson in which I attempted to combine identifying and labeling ADJECTIVES and ADVERBS. This unfortunately seemed simple to me at the outset, but my students had a much harder time than I expected. After going through separate examples of adjectives, and then adverbs, and identifying the word being modified in each case and that word’s part of speech and subsequently applying the definition of “adjective” or “adverb” to confirm our assessment, I tried to combine the two. The students, I believe, struggled with this for a number of reasons. First, they are unaccustomed to having to think in order to get a correct answer. The answer was not “right there” for them; rather, they had to go through many steps to arrive at a correct answer. Furthermore, I feel that I could have been more explicit in my instructions about how to label the modifiers and WHY we were labeling the part of speech of the modifiers as well. After 50 minutes on adjectives and adverbs there is no reason other than simple failure to convey information that a student should have “big” as his “describer,” “tree” as his “word being modified,” “noun” as the part of speech of the word being modified, and yet have labeled the “describer” in this sentence and ADVERB. If he got all the pieces in place that I was trying to teach him except for the final step to success, I should have been more diligent in checking for understanding of the instructions of and the purpose for the activity under discussion.

Overall I think that my instructional procedures are effective for certain types of learners (visual and auditory) but that I could improve on including different learning styles. For example, if student X is a kinesthetic learner I could be sure to bring in some type of manipulative each day such as index cards labeled with adj’s or adv’s to be sorted into different columns or sticky notes on the board that would need to be physically arranged by a student into the appropriate column. This would undoubtedly help the entire class by providing a different way to look at the same problem, and would effectively differentiate for the kinesthetic learners. Also, based on my analysis above, I should probably plan more explicit transitions clearly explaining the connection between two ideas before I ask the students to embark upon drawing connections in a rather uncharted way, which is often intimidating to students as well as less likely to produce the same desired end result.

With much to learn …

Failures: AY 2006-2007

Failure Story

Rather than a single unsuccessful venture, I am going to focus on the way in which I most profoundly failed each of three critical components: my students, my parents, and myself.

Part I : Students

At the end of the year, my most egregious offense against my students seems to have been a lack of planning. I do not owe my students a complete, typed, by-the-book lesson plan every day; they will never know the difference. I do not think that my occasional failure to return student work in a timely manner for the first overwhelming term drastically affected the climate of my classroom or the success of my students. I stayed after school, I attended their functions, I showed that I cared. What I never did for them was show them where we were going, where we had been, and how the two were related. I rarely knew what I was teaching more than a day or two ahead of time, and that resulted in a classroom that felt just slightly off-balance most days.

Oftentimes, it seems, you don’t know what you’ve been missing till you try it. Finally in the fourth term, and for only one of my three preps, I made a tentative schedule for the last month of school and it made a world of difference to my students. They came in to class knowing what to expect. They were mentally prepared for upcoming assignments, their parents called me with questions, and the students themselves demonstrated a greater sense of responsibility for the work they knew they had to do. Being perfectly honest, I did that one schedule a lot more for myself than for them, because we had an assignment to complete, because I needed to figure out how many classes we had left, because I realized belatedly that it would make things a lot clearer not only for them but for me, too. But when I told them in class about the long-term schedule they clamored for a copy to the point that I interrupted class and ran off a set of my own hand-written notes of “what to expect for the next five weeks.”

Not every student kept up with it, not every student read it, not every student listened in class when I explained it to them but it made enough of a difference to enough of my students that I realized I really should have been doing it all year.

It is easier for them to care about something if they think it matters, and it is easier for them to believe that it matters if it is tied in to topics that then tie in, in some way, to their lives. Looking back, I wound up with a few pretty decent units that were, in fact, related. Had I merely discovered this before teaching the material, taken the time to write up a schedule and a brief explanation, and passed this information along to my students, perhaps we all would have been a little bit more successful.

Next year …

Part II : Parents

In essence, I failed to communicate with my parents. The only parents I saw were the ones who came to see me, and in most situations those are the ones you need to see the least. I rarely informed parents of what we had going on in class, I never provided them with an opportunity to actively participate, and I failed even to let them know when their children were failing.

Again, slight improvements in the fourth term: I created a website for one of my classes that informed parents of upcoming assignments as well as my contact information. The website also linked to an online grade book, so parents did not have to wait for bi-weekly progress reports that may or may not have gotten home to see what their student had failed to turn in. This helped, and more parents contacted me. Again, next year will be better.

Part III: Myself

The way in which I most profoundly failed myself was a daily denial of all the work that had to be done. To some extent, this is healthy and necessary, but when it carries on for weeks or even months it becomes detrimental not only to the students and the instruction but to one’s own psyche as well. As I let things spiral farther out of control, as I took less and less responsibility for things that I knew had to be done, I became variably despondent, desperate, or sometimes both. For the third term that I taught, I graded almost nothing until two days before midterms. I took two personal days, spent the entire time grading papers, and managed to submit something to the administration. The build-up to Christmas break was worse. I graded nothing from midterms to exams while assigning massive projects with painfully specific rubrics, projects that were eventually graded on a cold night in January based, yes, on completion.

I drove away from my school on a December afternoon with the announcement still ringing in my ears that all grades must be in before we left for break. I received for Christmas, from my mother, a corkboard with a painting of schoolbooks and the words “Ms. Smith – Teachers Shape the Future.” It stayed in my car for four months because I was unable to muster the courage to acknowledge that someone, anyone, even my own mother two hundred miles away, actually believed in me.

I graded nothing over break. I cried for three days before I came back, and spent the first three days of the first week of third term teaching very little, sleeping less, and feverishly grading anything I thought someone might call me on if I didn’t. Grades were submitted Wednesday of that week (even mine) and third term was a near-miraculous reversal in which I vowed, Scarlett O’Hara style, to never put myself through that again.

Papers were graded almost instantaneously, grades were recorded, papers were redistributed, and term’s end hasn’t bothered me since.

But that was a hellish 9 weeks.

EDCI 602: Learning Goals

The overarching goal we set for our students for the first week of school was: TSW define and identify each of the 8 parts of speech in sentences. Along with this we included subject/verb agreement, identification and correction of sentence fragments, and a discussion of the difference between the parts of a sentence (subject, verb, etc) versus the parts of speech. For the remainder of summer school we plan to continue working on basic grammar skills (subject vs object, subj/verb agreement, etc), mechanics (mainly punctuation), effective writing skills, and reading comprehension (identifying main idea, summarizing, etc).

We selected these skills based on four broad categories: the mississippi state frameworks, the MCT test, the EBS objectives passed to us from the school district, and our assessment of the likely problem areas for these students based on a year of teaching similar students elsewhere. The skills that we plan to teach are generally basic and necessary skills that every student needs, and because of the situation and the grade level we have designed lessons that allow space for prior knowledge in the form of contributions in class, but that do not rely on this prior knowledge in order to acquire the desired skills.

The inductive strategy we included in our planning was an activity in which students organized various words written on index cards into different groups based on the 8 parts of speech (all cards fit into one of the 8 categories = concept formation). This activity helped us assess students' understanding of the different functions of each of the 8 parts of speech (a sort of pre-assessment) and gave us a brief opportunity to individually help students who were struggling. Additionally, through words that can serve as more than one part of speech we were able to discuss the idea that there is not always just one right answer and that it is important to pay attention to all the parts of a question rather than assuming that your first guess is the right one.

For the next two weeks we have organized each day into four "subject" blocks (grammar, punctuation, writing skills, and reading comprehension) in the hope that this structure will help our students organize the information that they receive as well as providing some consistency in the midst of changing teachers in order to effect our ultimate goal of student learning.

The Good, The Bad, and THE ADMINISTRATION: cont'd

I have spent the last three weeks of my life saying again and again and again to various groups of students: It's not you.

Every one of my peers who is leaving my school cites the administration as the reason, but when the ninth grade MYP kids come into my room listing off the horrifying 80% of teachers they had this year who will be gone next year how do I make them understand ... it's REALLY NOT YOU.

In the midst of one of my many priceless conversations with Mr. Roth during our planning block ... 4th period ... which had for no apparent reason been shifted to the 3rd period spot ... which was doubly confusing because then suddenly you're taking the wrong kids to lunch ... right. In the middle of our conversation, in which we're wondering what we'll do with our third block kids when we DO get them anyway, because technically this is exam week and they've already tested so they have nothing to do, the third(/[fourth]) block bell rings ... TWENTY MINUTES EARLY. I rush back to my room to get my stuff together, he continues tearing his hair out in his own inimitable way, and the students move from their fourth period to their third period classes. Next. Three minutes AFTER the early bell, which would leave us with our third block classes with nothing to do for OVER TWO HOURS, an announcement comes on the loudspeaker: "Teachers please ignore the bell, it was sounded early, students should REMAIN in their fourth period classes, repeat please remain in your fourth period classes" So we tell all our third-block students who are streaming in to go BACK to their fourth block classes (which, naturally, comes BEFORE third block anyway), soon after which the loudspeaker comes on AGAIN announcing this time that students are to report to their third-period classes at this time. Send the five fourth-block kids who have actually returned to class back on their way, and report to hall duty to direct the understandably confused flow of traffic. hm.

MYP ninth graders take:
English: me / Mr. C
English double-dip: Mr R
Chemistry: Mr. D // Mr. T
Computer Elective: Ms. P
Math: Mr. B
Spanish / French: me / Ms. R / Mr. B
History ... ? whatever

Mr. R., Mr. D., Mr. T., Ms. P., Mr. B., Ms. R. .... they're leaving. six out of the nine possible teachers they've had, most of whom are first or second-year teachers are running out of this school like it's catching and how are these kids not going to internalize that ... just a little. How do you come through a system in which a ninth grade student has been passed for three straight years due to "problems in the district" (meaning their teacher ran out and the sub never got his stuff together so they passed the whole class) and not notice ... just a little ... that nobody really seems to care.

And it's NOT THEM. but actions speak louder than words, my friends, and I will be joining the fleeing crowd next year, running out and leaving someone else to tell them ... it's not them.

because I can't live in a world where I am ignored and disrespected and lied to by my superiors. because I refuse to reside in a community that kills my brain cells merely by the mundane tasks it requires of me on a daily basis. because this isn't a career for a sane person.

But it's NOT THEM.

the good, the bad, and the administration : AY 2006-2007

Went down to Mr. Roth's room roundabout the second-to-last week of school to ask him what he was doing with a particular student we shared. Impressed that I already had my grades together, he was prompted to comment, "You've had a good year."
I think the look I gave him must have been similar to the jewel Ben got when he asked me ... in DECEMBER ... why I thought someone should join teacher corps: Are you OUT OF YOUR MIND?!?!
In Jake's case, I followed up the incredulity with the comment "I wanted to shoot myself in the FACE for the majority of the year."
His immediate response: "Hey, I STILL want to shoot myself in the face most of the time. But you've done well, people have learned things. You've had a good year."

And so it goes.

"The Good" : Amber C.
In my "regular" English class, she always had something to say but, unlike most of my other students, what she said was usually related to what I was trying to talk about. One of my brightest students overall, she kept class discussions lively and kept me from tearing my hair out some days.
Favorite story: I grade daily work for completion, mostly. As in, if you DO it all, you get a big fat happy one hundred, Amber's usually embellished with a "great job!" because her work is ALWAYS a cut above the rest. Amber worked with Sasha in a partner activity near the end of the year. Sasha typically makes 50-70 percent on daily work and less than that on tests, but since she worked with Amber on this one THEY, of course, got a hundred. Whoever passed out the work handed the paper back to Sasha rather than Amber and Sasha yelled out across the room to Amber "WE GOT A ONE HUNDRED!!" Amber immediately lets out a high-pitched squeal, runs over, and gives Sasha a great big hug.
This is a DAILY work grade, Amber has gotten hundreds on everything she's turned in all year, and yet ...
what a beautiful child.

"The Good," cont'd: 7th Block B-days and C.M.
my 7th block class was one of the first to notice that I was a real person (not just a "teacher") and start asking me questions about myself. They were the first to figure out how old I really am, that this was my first year teaching, and to start asking questions about the tawdry connections between me and the mysteriously handsome teacher across the hall. Once it became OBVIOUS (from various 1-3 minute long between-class conversations in the hall) that we were in love, I had C.M. in my room taking a test after school. True to form, he was carrying on a enthusiastic conversation with me in the midst of carelessly marking multiple choice answers on a test he'd failed to make up two months earlier when I gave it in class, but when Mr. S appeared in my door from across the hall C.M. became unusally silent. When Mr. S at last withdrew C.M. immediately informed me that he couldn't be caught talking to me in front of my boyfriend like that. I threw him one of my now-infamous looks of complete and utter skepticism to which he flippantly responded, "It's okay Ms. S. It's aright to date a black guy."

Clearly, that was the only thing standing in my way. :)

[To be continued...]