Sunday, December 21, 2008

Winter Haze

I am enjoying my first Winter Break since I was 15 during which I haven't had to work.

I should be studying for my Social Studies Praxis II coming up in January, or brushing up on my Geometry since I will be teaching it starting in February.

My placement is now official. I will be at A3 an artistically oriented charter high school. I have several friends who's children go there (as well as several of the older siblings of my students from this fall) and a few of my friends also work and/or volunteer there. I met with my Cooperating Teacher, Danny Ramirez and his partner teacher, Aaron (who is actually a woman despite the masculine spelling). They have 45 students in their class, and they teach a hybrid 'Inquiries' class including math and science.

The nature of he class is entirely inquiry based. No teacher lectures, we present the problem and the tools, the kids figure it out. This is NOT going to be an easy thing for me to do. Fortunately I get to spend a month adjusting to the school before I have to jump in and teach. They have a J term, which is a month long term where students attend only one or two classes, but they are specific and in depth. A lot of colleges do this. My father took a J term class called 'Man In Winter' that put him on the path towards his trips to the Arctic. Anyways, I get to choose which classes I want to help out in, I will be working in The History of Food, 20th Century Protest Music, or Science and Science Fiction. Needless to say I'm very excited.

However, for the time being I am finding myself settled into a lazy routine of video games, blogging, baking for Christmas and reading; and I couldn't be happier.

Friday, December 12, 2008

Christmas Music at the Holidays

Is it ok? Mrs. Keener has been playing some Christmas music, none of it is religious. Santa Claus and modern stuff. Peace on Earth, love each other etc. The kids have been begging for the Christmas music even. But is it ok? Technically as an arm of the government the school may not establish a religion, and if we had a Muslim or Jewish student in the class, they might feel uncomfortable, but I'm fairly certain that we don't have any.

I was very oblivious about other religions when I was in middle school. I saw Jews and Muslims as people who lived elsewhere, and I assumed everyone at my school was a Christian, like me, and went to church every Sunday. I soon discovered how wrong I was around the seventh grade, but the I can only assume that the students in our class are equally oblivous unless they are the one student who is different, which would be very challanging in of itself and even worse if you are blasted with Christmas music at school.

Any opinions? Is Christmas music, even non-religious ever ok in a public school? Does it depend on your school's culture? We could sing religious choir music sometimes, for its artistic merits. How would you feel about Christmas music being played in your child's classroom? Does the age of the students mattter?

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

As the term draws to a close, I have an opportunity to take a deep breath and look back on all that I've managed to over the past ten weeks. Honestly the thing I'm the most proud of is the amazing relationships I've begun at Briggs, both with my students (even the irritating ones are awesome)and the faculty (I am sure going to miss the sixth grade team). I feel a bit at a loss that I'm not going to be able to finish up the year (although it's too soon to say where I'll be in the spring) with these kids. I want to know how they do in the rest of middle school, and I want to know how they do in high school and beyond as well. Each kid has so much potential and a different set of skills, and a different set of weaknesses that will set up trials for them.

From a more academic standpoint I am very satisfied with classroom management experience I've had. Mrs. Keener's initial lessons on expectations etc. really made it easy to step in and uphold the same expectations, but I think that I also took a hand in initially setting up those expectations, so I can take some credit too. I know that I am an aggressive and some times overbearing person, so I was concerned that I would come across too harsh or strict, or conversely, I would be so concerned about creating a good relationship with students and NOT being so strict that I would be the 'buddy' teacher who doesn't enforce any rules. I feel that I achieved a happy medium. I think the students both liked me and respected me and in general they followed my instruction and behaved like responsible human beings, I never had any major behavior problems. I am a little apprehensive that I will freeze up if I am in a situation where I encounter open defiance, or an aggressive and angry student. Or even worse, that I will blow up and get in their face. Perhaps I'll have a chance to find out next term.
Another thing that I am very grateful for this term was the opportunity to sit in on a Parent/Teacher intervention conference. A student was consistently having problems being disruptive, unprepared and inappropriate in nearly all of his classes. He was one of my favorite kids, and I had another meeting later that afternoon, so with Mrs. Keener's permission I sat in on the meeting. Since I first started entertaining the idea of being a teacher, working with parents has always been one of my biggest fears. Not so much because I'm scared of them, but because of how I would react, I wouldn't want to offend or be rude to a parent that was attacking me verbally (even if they did deserve it). I've received some advice as to how to interact with parents, but I went into the conference expecting blame and excuses from the boy's parents. Much to my pleasant surprise, the parents were very supportive and grateful for the teachers and their hard work and input. They were at their wits end about how to help their son, and were looking for advice. What I expected to be an argument or blame game was instead a very productive brainstorming session during which several strategies for helping the student to be more successful for the rest of therm. Even better, it's clear now from the end of the term, that since that meeting there had been marked improvement, at least in our class, in his behavior and preparedness, as well as his rate of turning in homework. Though I know this is just one example of a parent interaction, seeing such a positive meeting was the push I needed to really change my attitude about interacting with parents, and to see it as a positive problem solving opportunity.

I am looking forward to the opportunities that A3 will present as far as getting to know more about my student's backgrounds and have some more interaction with their families perhaps. I found it interesting that when I told my class that I was going to A3 next term several of them had older siblings that went there. It will be interesting to see the similarities and differences between siblings. Another of my goals for improvement is increasing the amount of activities that are are student centered, either group or individual activities. From what I know about the structure and ideas at A3 I should have ample opportunity to do that. It is very challenging for me to organize student centered lessons that are more inquiry based, as I think it is for most new teachers.

As I look back at the term as a whole I don't think that there has been a revolutionary change in my attitude or philosophies concerning teaching. Rather I am begun to refine and mature my techniques, and begin to build a toolbox of strategies. through the relationships I've built I have reaffirmed my choice to begin a career in education, and in general I have set in progress the process that, continuing through the spring and summer, will prepare me to have my own classroom.

Reflection: School Improvement Project

I particularly enjoyed this School Improvement Project. I have always really liked time lines and the way that they create connections throughout time, as well as being a device for comparison between cultures or societies. Social Studies is my secondary endorsement, but because of the way that the block classes work at Briggs Middle School I had little to no contact with any social studies classes throughout the term. This particular SIP allowed me to get involved with some of the social studies curriculum. I also appreciated the opportunity to work with a fellow student teacher. Melissa is primarily a social studies teacher, and her cooperating teacher was the primary organizer of this project, Laura Scruggs. As Mrs. Scruggs described it, this beginning of the year time line project was something she and the other seventh grade social studies teachers had been wanting to do for a long time, but no one had had the time to organize it and get all the different pieces together.

Since this was to be one of the first assignments of the school year, Melissa and I finished most of the work before school even began. The process of gathering dates was actually a lot of fun for me. We used the text book that the seventh graders used to draw dates from, and it was a fun refresher for me of World History. We enjoyed color coding and discussed the relative importance of various dates, as well as how we could tie historic events into the modern world that students had were aware of. For example, when the Islamic Empire moves it’s capital to Baghdad, we reflected that most students have heard of Baghdad, and associate it with Iraq, they may not realize that the places that these things are occurring today are the same as they were a thousand years ago.

After school began things got more difficult for us. Because I was with sixth grade and she was with seventh grade we were on totally different schedules, even our passing times were different, so collaborating was a greater challenge. It also became tedious to create the hand made copies for each individual teacher, as well as copies for us to keep in our files. The larger bulletin time line was more exciting because we were able to draw on the aspects of history that are particularly interesting to us to create a more detailed overview of the past 2000 years. I was glad to take advantage of the opportunity to share even a small amount of information about Andalusia under Muslim rule, as well as make some connections between cultures that students might not always see, such as the way that the beginning of the African slave trade occurred around the same time as the end of the complex and powerful African nations.

Unfortunately, my involvement with the project pretty much ended after we posted the laminated bulletin board timeline. Melissa, however, got to be part of the implementation of the timeline project in the classroom. Her particular class had a large number of students with a lot of behavior management issues, so she found that the complexity of the project was challenging for them, and even though they were provided with a list of the dates, many of them still failed to create the timeline in it’s entirety. It was also challenging for them to do their work neatly and in an aesthetically pleasing manner. I was able to review some of their finished products, as I helped one teacher, Mrs. Newson, to grade some of hers.

Retrospectively, the one thing that we have realized we should do differently is that we initially left the birth and death of Jesus off of the time line, when we had included the birth and death of Mohammed. Initially this never occurred to Melissa or I as a problem because we were working specifically within the confines of certain cultures. The cultures that we were dealing with around 0 AD were the Roman, Japanese and African cultures. Christianity wasn’t a major aspect of Roman culture for another couple hundred years, so we noted when Rome began to convert to Christianity, and that was all. However some parents complained about the lack of mention of Jesus, understandably, so my master copy now includes both the birth and death of Jesus. I look forward to using this activity in my own class some day.

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Come together, right now...

This week has been a sense of things coming together. As I discussed in my last post, I was sort of put on stall due to the needs of other classes and such. But this week, things have gone my way. We've been able to review for the test, do some reteaching and even create the cool foldable flap books that the kids got to use on their test (not that most of them did...) In the early part of the week I was able to work on catching up those that had been gone, and Wednesday everyone except for one absent person and the girl who missed all of the week before took the test.

It always confounds me the lack of study and test taking skills that these sixth graders have. They have sitting next to them a flap book with step by step instructions for how to multiply fractions, and two methods for dividing fraction. Yet many of them still did the wrong methods, or forgot to do steps, or mixed up division and multiplication. I couldn't believe it. I think that in my class I need to spend some serious time teaching study skills and strategies. Maybe something like a fifteen minute mini-lesson every Friday or something. Of course, with older students (theoretically) it will be less of an issue.

Well, we tested on Wednesday, and then allowed those who wanted to to re-do things that they missed on Friday. All in all it went pretty well, with no scores below a 70%. Though one student still needs her opportunity to retake. Now we're jumping into decimals, and the students seem to be having a much easier time with that. Its a bit more similar to things they are already (theoretically) good at. My big challenge now will be making my webquest functional. A webquest, for those that don't know, is a project that is hosted online, and most of the research and work are done online, and then presented in a computer format, often a power point. We are going to do one where the students have to plan a Winter vacation trip to NYC. They have budget of $2500, though I may increase this. The details are here. Monday I introduce it, and Tuesday we start working on it. Hopefully I can get it done in the time allotted. This is the first project I've tried to teach and I really hope it doesn't bomb. I guess good planning is really the only thing I can do right now, the students will determine the rest.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

On other people's schedules

I had challenging situation this week. First of all I had two students who were out sick all week, one of them is a student that I am taking data on for my term project, she is also a girl who needs a little extra help usually to really grasp stuff, so I'm really concerned about what to do to get her caught up when she gets back to school. The other girl's mom has been amazing about coming in nearly every day to get homework for her daughter. She even had me explain to her what I was doing with the students so that she could teach it to her daughter. What an awesome thing to do.

So on top of having those students out of school completely, this is also the week that the sixth grade drama class performs their play. I am totally supportive of the drama program and I'm thrilled that the sixth graders get to put on a play. I am also glad that they perform it during school so that the other students all get to see it, however it did make planning my lessons on Thursday and Friday really difficult because one of the play performances was during my math class, so I didn't have nearly half my class for two days! Of the students I did have were some of my top kids. Now I couldn't very well teach a bunch of brand new stuff, because the drama kids would be totally lost, but I also couldn't just ignore the students who were in class either, especially a few of those really 'high flying' kids who were pretty much demanding a challenge.

So here is what I ended up doing. Thursday I retaught the algorithm I had been teaching earlier in the week. It's a way to divide fractions by finding a common denominator work. I like it because it functions the same way that the model method for dividing fractions works, and it builds off of the algorithm they already know for multiplication (multiply the denominators and the numerators straight across). But it is asking kids to think a little more then simply 'flip and multiply'. To make matters more difficult, the other math teacher, as well as many kids parents or previous teachers have taught them the standard algorithm. So getting them to do it this way has been difficult and some of them are just finally getting it now. So I retaught that.

My teacher's policy is that any homework that is a 60% or lower must be redone in order to receive credit, so I have a lot of kids with 'missing' work, either they didn't' turn it in or need to redo it. A lot. As in more then half the class. So after reteaching the algorithm, I posted a dozen practice problems on the overhead, and students could work on makeup/late/redo work, or work on the practice problems.

A couple of my high students wanted a challenge, so I briefly explained to them the extra step in dividing mixed numbers (still using my common denominator algorithm) and then let them work independently out of the book to practice that (even though we aren't getting to it officially until Monday).

Friday was more or less the same, except instead of reteaching the algorithm, I spent some time teaching dividing mixed numbers, but again, I didn't spend very much time on it, just an introduction, because that is my topic for Monday's lesson. I'm glad that students ended up getting some time to work on late/redo work because the number of missing assignments now is about half of what it was on Wednesday. Sixth graders are still really committed to wanting to do well in school and getting all their stuff in, even if they don't always have the organizational or study skills to make it happen effectively.

So the lesson learned is that even though it may eventually be my classroom, I will still have to work around others schedules. And also that some catchup time for students can make all the difference for them getting things or not getting things.

Monday, November 10, 2008

Things I've noticed

Students sure behave differently when they are on a field trip. This was a while back, but I never got a change to write about it. On the bus to and from Sky camp, I observed how opposit some students behave. Maddy, who is a great student, pays attention, always asks for help and is very respectful was really loud and rambunctious on the bus. Grant, a student who doesn't pay attention, cracks jokes, doesn't always turn in homework was sitting quietly without cahtting with others, just playing his hand held video game and minding his own business. I must admit I was very surprised.

I've also noticed that there is a trade off for semantics of homework. I may have mentioned this before, as it bugs me. A teacher can require that homework be in a certain format. Problems in collumns down the left side of the paper, one line between each problem etc. However, that level of detail for homework layout causes confusion and unnecessary 'mistakes' for the kids. It is a trade off though. The homework that is all organized exactly the same is also much easier for the teacher to grade. Is it a fair trade off? Something else that enters into this discussion is whether homework should be given a grade for being done, or if home work should be graded as assessment and given a score out of a total.

Something I noticed just today is that for a warm up, if you plan on going through the problems, more then two questions is too much, you'll spend half the period going over the warm up. Stick to one or two. If the warm up is just to jog their memory, and they won't be correcting it, doing four or 5 problems is acceptable, but then just move on after they have completed it.

Saturday, November 8, 2008

Cave Man Day

Things are going much more smoothly with my unit this week. We are way behind where I had planned for us to be, but it's more important that the students are getting this, then that they stay on schedule. My observed lesson on Tuesday went well, all things considered, though I wasn't able to video tape the whole thing (the battery died) I did get the first 15 minutes. I am avoiding watching it because I hate the way my voice sounds recorded.

On Thursday we did a very interesting Prehistoric Man thing. Rather then have 3rd or 4th period, the 6th graders were divided up into clans (Clan of the Cave Bear, Clan of the Saber Tooth Tiger etc.) They rotated through five different stations. One was 'Mammoth hunting", some folks from Doris Ranch had spears with the stick you use to throw them (I can't for the life of me remember the name of it) and were showing the kids how to use them. There was a painting of a Woolly Mammoth on cardboard that they were trying to hit (this activity was out in the field). Also outside was a pavilion under which they were making fire by rubbing sticks together. Indoors there was a 'stick dice' game spread out on furs where depending on which symbols were showing when you threw the sticks you received points. There was also a 'cave painting' activity in which students painted on butcher paper using paint brushes made of sticks and leaves. Finally (the one Mrs. Keener and I were in charge of) there was totem making. Students used clay to create pendants with the image of their clan's animal.

Now Mrs. Keener is not a social studies teacher, and doesn't really know much about the stone age (or claim to know). About halfway through the activity she asked me if I knew what the totems were for. I replied that they were a spiritual or religious symbol. That people believed that the spirits protected them and had power. During the next rotation, Mrs. Keener proceeded to use that as part of her introduction to the activity, but in my opinion, she took it a step too far. First of all she used a subjective second person present tense. "You all worship your totem, you will make a pendant to celebrate your totem". After telling them what they are going to do and how they are feeling about it, she led them through this mock prayer to the great spirit type thing. It made me feel really uncomfortable. This kids may have thought it was silly, and she may have thought she was adding meaning, but it seemed inappropriate. She could have discussed the issue in a more third person objective way. I was afraid that those children who's parents are very religious from a mainstream religion might be offended or angry, thinking that the teacher was promoting paganism of some sort. And those children who may be Pagan or Wiccan or something might be offended that their religious views (totemism, shamanism, natural spirits etc.) were being mocked. No win for anyone! I'm glad she decided to try and educate the kids a little more about what they were doing and why, but she could have chosen a more sensitive way of doing it.

Sunday, November 2, 2008

My unit begins

I administered my pre-test on Monday, and started my unit on Tuesday. As I've mentioned before I have about ten kids in my class that I've never had before. All of the kids in my class are at or above where they should be as far as the material I will be teaching. There are two students that lack the confidence in their math skills that would allow them to excel, even though they both scored above average on their pre-test and have showed ample progress throughout the term. On the day we switched one girl came up to me after the switch had occurred. Even though I had told everyone before that the people staying with me would be doing a little more advanced, slightly accelerated math, and the kids with my partner teacher would be doing a little more practice, she needed to reconfirm for herself, "Is this the higher math class, am I supposed to be here?" This girl fits the stereotype for a 'popular' attractive young girl, and she receives extra scaffolding in reading. She has told me before that math is hard for her, which I told her was good thing, it meant she was learning.

I have to admit, my first two lessons were really discouraging. The students were well behaved, they respected me and participated in the discussions I attempted to instigate. But it was all really deadpan. No one seemed like they were having any fun. I don't know if it's me, or the material, or my methods, or them or what. When I have taught lessons before, like when there was a substitute, I felt confident, the kids were engaged and teaching energized me. This was just draining. Part of my problem was that during Wednesday's lesson, I got confused and switched up a few of the examples that I had planned to use that day, and some that I was planing to use on Monday. Not only that, but no one had told me that due to an assembly it was a shorter time period then normal. Due to that I am now about a half a class period behind. It shouldn't make too much difference, I just may not quite be to the lesson on Tuesday that I was planning to teach for my first observation. We will have to see how things go on Monday, and how far we get. I could take extra time on Monday, and then teach what was originally Monday's lesson on Tuesday. Or I could try and move through it really quickly and 'catch up' for Tuesday. Tuesday is designed to be further exploration of the concepts introduced on Monday, so it might work either way. I will have to look more at the two potential lesson plans before I make up my mind.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Frustrations and Challenges

People get stressed out about things. Sounds obvious, but I've had several examples for me of people stressing, and affecting their choices and behaviors. One person is faced with a situation that seems to me like she is being asked to do something she knows how to do, but asked to do it a different way. A stressful and frustrating situation, no doubt. However, she has chosen (in the instance to which I was witness) to deal with the stress by taking a superior and exasperated attitude and tone of voice, and demanding answers to her questions, in specifics immediately. No doubt she deserves answers, and is justly frustrated. But it seemed like the way that she went about attempting to get those answers was counter productive to the specific situations, as well as putting the person she was asking on the spot, and in what could potentially have been an uncomfortable situation.

In a similar vein, but a different situation, I know that my Co-op teacher has been under a lot of stress in her personal life, things I won't go into. I have noticed they she seems to allow this to affect the way in which she interacts with students. Now I'm sure this is unavoidable in some situations, and obviously no one can completely control themselves, nor is anyone perfect. But things that she might tolerate under ordinary circumstances she reacts more strictly to. Students whose jokes and clowning she might laugh at, not get them a trip outside the door for a minute to calm down. Let me clarify, that I don't think she is over reacting to any of these off task behaviors, on the contrary, I think it is good that she is beginning to disallow some of the messing around. But, she is making a change in the way she deals with things, which might be difficult for students to adjust to. I imagine it is very difficult to avoid doing this sort of thing to a certain extent, so we will see how I do at this next month. I already know that there is one student in particular who annoys me so much I have no paitence for off task behavior from her, that I might tolerate in another student, and i have to work very hard to combat that, and not allow it to show.

The moral of the story is to find healthy ways to deal with frustration, or to not let things get to you at all. I'm trying, but I can always use more practice.

I ran into one other big challenge this week, as I was preparing to start my unit. This one has to do with teaching cooperatively with partner teachers, etc. But first a little bit of background. We have heterogeneous math classes, meaning there is no high and low class, it's a mix of all levels. However, we are still expected to differentiate for a multitude of student levels and abilities. In order to do that, one strategy that my school is implying is some splitting of the classes. So I will have half of my kids, and half of Mr. Smith's kids for a period of time, and then we will divide again, differently, or go back to the original classes. I'm not entirely sure how the whole thing will work, I'm just doing what they say, since I don't really have any clout in the matter. One of the biggest challenges of doing this though, is the two classes must absolutely stay 100% together, and must be consistent with what they teach. When you have one teacher for a whole year, it's ok to do something a little non-traditionally, or quirky, if it's what that teacher expects. But switching back and forth every few weeks, we have to have consistency. Now here comes the issue. When I learned to perform operations on fractions, we wrote the problem out horizontally, all on one line. We then did computations below and around the original problem. The way they do fractions at Briggs, is straight up and down, with the fractions stacked, you do the work only to the right of the problem. I've never seen this before. In fact, I wouldn't know about it now except I asked Mr. Smith to look over the pre-test I wrote up (since his students would take the same test too) and he told me to change some of them to that direction. I have found that it's been really tough for me to simply change the direction that I write equations. It makes sense, I understand it (though I like my way better), but I am going to have to be keeping myself in check for the next few weeks as I write equations out, that I am consistent with what the students have already learned, and will continue to learn after my unit is done.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Backing Up

There are two things in my notes, that I have failed to blog about. As follows:

September 30th
I observed Laura Scruggs. She was the first person at Briggs I found I really liked (she is the one who complemented my hair!). She teaches 7th grade Social Studies and Language Arts, she is the teacher we worked with for our time line, and is Melissa's cooperating teacher. She is ex-military, and Denis, our VP insisted that all of us make a point of ovserving her.

Apparantly I observed her on a good day, the students were more well behaved then usual. The group in her morning class are particularly challanging. I hear there are several IEP kids, as well as other behavior issues. The afternoon group for her is the 'Algebra class', and so there is a smaller percentage of high flying kids in her morning class as well.

The day I observed they were presenting interviews they had done with a student and were imitating that student in an effort to get the class to guess who they had interviewed. The biggest thing I notcied at first is how different this class was then my own. Part of it is that perhaps this class is just more difficult in general, there is the 7th grade Algebra class during this time period, so none of the 'high fliers' are in the class at all. On the other hand, I have heard from many people that seventh grade is the hardest, and that they are the meanest.

The activity that they were doing was presenting an interview that they had done of another student. They spoke as if they were the interviewee, and then the rest of the class had to guess who it was. In addition to the verbal information, many students also did a physical imitation of their persion. The class thought the whole thing was pretty funny and were fully of snickers and giggles. They laughed at the reason that people recieved the name that they did, and at the hobbies people put down and in general were not respectful. Mrs. Scruggs was frequently having to remind them; "Attention to the front, please".
It seems like the seventh graders are a lot more self conscious then the sixth graders. They are more nervous about presenting, and seem more afraid that what they do won't be ok. Less of a willingness to try.

When things started to get out of hand, and the kids couldn't focus at all, Mrs. Scruggs told them to stop, and take a break, but not leave the room. I thought this was a good idea. It gives kids the opportunity to stretch their legs and get some f the antseyness out without spreading the kids out and loosing track of them. When the break was over, she ws easily able to countdown from ten, and the students went back to their seats. During the break I noticed that the class immediatly split into the girls and boys sides of the room.

Later on during the interview process Mrs. Scruggs interrupted the class and very pointedly said "Some of you are being rude". This seems like the sort of tactic I would try and employ, although I'm not convinced that it was an effective one...

Soon after that they changed activities. Mrs. Scruggs had them pull out their spirals. She had a set up for the spirals that I hadn't seen before. They had a table of contents, and had numbered their pages, so there was a limited amount of space for each entry. But, they also knew exactly where to look in order to find their notes on a certain subject.

Today they were doing an activity called 'Hit the Bridge'. Using bridge words, or conjunctions. She had the acronym (fons BAY) to stand for the words, the capitals being the most commonly used. The then spent some time writting compund sentances and using examples of all of the different conjunctions.

In the middle of the explanation her overhead projector broke. She very smoothly moved to using the white board instead.

In order to integrate this lesson with the social studies she had been doing she had them use topics from the timeline that they had been making.

The lesson was effective and efficient, if not perhaps the most enojoyable for the students. And she maintained control of her classroom at all times.

Word Processing; likes and dislikes

Unti planning is chugging along. I wrote my pre-test yesterday. I ran into a problem that I'm sure plagues math teachers everywhere. How DO you write equations in Microsoft Word? Are there special math word processing programs that you can use in order to write these things? Now I know why my tests in calculus were always hand written by my teacher. Fortunately I have decent handwritting, so in the future I might choose to take that route. For the time being however, and the perception of proffessionalism I will continue to try and type them. The pretest required nothing more complicated then fractions and division signs. But I could not figure out any way to make the fractions be vertically aligned rather then on a diagonal from one another. Which is no big deal in every days use, but when you are teaching students the algorithms for multiplying and dviiding fractions (or even adding and subtraction) having a clear sense of top and bottom is key.


I am starting to get a clear list of things that I do and don't want in my classroom. I love the expectations from teh begining. Having the students help compile them. I even sort of like the 'give me five' thing, although I don't prefer it to just generally respecting one another. It's better then shouting. I like the use of comedy and humor that Mrs. Keener uses, she is goofy and silly and makes things fun.

Things I don't like so much, or would do differently: As I've mentioned before, if I ask for questions from students, they will not be allowed to make comments. They should know the difference between questions and comments by now. I also have noticed that sometimes Mrs. Keener makes a big deal out of things that would be less important to me. For instance she criticized one student for having doodles on her homework, or for putting the homework problems in rows instead of in collumns. Another thing that hs be driving me nuts is that there is no generic place where the keys to homework sheets we've done go. I assume this is because Mrs. Keener has been working with the same materials for many years, and she knows where she keeps them. However, when I am dong something like grading late work, and she has already put the key back, I have no idea whre to find it. I think a good play would be to have a binder where all of the keys for the worksheets done each term were kept. They would only be replaced to their fiile after that assignment was no longer going to be accepted as late. Be that the end of the week, the month or the term. I also think that in addition to graded work, I would choose to give students some sort of participation points for being present. Mrs. Keener sort of does this with the warm-up. Students get credit for simply having done the warm up, I like that, and would choose to do somethign similar. But students who are absent do not get marked down on the warm up. With participation points, it would reward those student who were in class every day, even if they didn't necessarily do well on their homework or tests. I have had classes that do this both in Middle/High school and in college and I think it is an effective way to help level the playing field as far as grades are concerned.
I am also not a huge fan of the way that the late policy works here at Briggs. It is something that has been agreed upon by all the sixth grade teachers. Management is the biggest issue with late work. How do you know when a student turned something in? I would perhaps get one of those old-school date stamps like libraries used to have, and when a student turns in some work, they would have to get it stamped, or they would recieve no credit. One day late would be one grade off, two days would be two grades, etc. Depending on the age, late work would either stop being accepted after a week or so (except in special circumstances, this policy would be for older students) or would recieve a maximum of half credit if it is later then a given date, but still be accepted (for 6th and maybe 7th graders, as the continue to try and make that transition from elementary to middle school). This isn't a perfect policy, I would have to do some polishing. If I were in a position to be teaching Pre-Calc or Calc, I don't think I would accept late work at all, except in the case of absence. But then again. I also don't like grading homework. I don't know if this would be functional with Middle School age students, unless it was perhaps with the advanced group, but I would like to assign homework questions, but not have them be turned in or required. That way students did homework if they needed to. The day homework was 'due' the students would have opportunity to ask questions, and then we would move on. Grades would be based upon participation points, tests, quizes, and projects. This was the way my favorite math classes have always functioned.

Between my Behavior Management class and the student teaching, I feel like I am starting to come up with a coherent personal policy/philosophy, which I suppose is the point.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Meetings and the Commencement of my unit planning!

I am having a difficult time readjusting to a busy life in which many things are badgering for my attention. Currently my personal life, and my practicum are where I am most inclined to spend time and energy, and I'm finding it difficult to give focus to my class work, despite the fact that the class work is what had eminent deadlines. Along that strain, I left my notebook with my observation notes at school, which is making it a bit of a challenge to write a thoroughly thought through reflection for the week.

One thing that is fresh in my mind is the (two actually) meetings I had on Friday. I normally don't come into school on Fridays, and had come specially for a meeting about the new curriculum that I will be teaching from. It also so happens that there was an intervention type meeting for a student in my class who has been having trouble. I sat in on that and found it enlightening to say the least. I know that I personally find that I am most dreading ( about teaching) the interaction with parents. I'm afraid I won't gracefully put up with parents who think their children are God's gift to the entire world (not just them.) Or the parents who expect me, as a teacher of a class of thirty, to change my entire teaching style/structure/whatever in order to suit their student. However, the parents of this particular kid were great. Without getting angry or placing blame on the student, they acknowledged that he had issues and challanges. They made a point of saying that they didn't expect teachers to change the way they taught, but were seeing help from the school to make the transition from elementary school to high school a bit easier on their child. The meeting was really positive, there was praise for the student as well as discussion of his problems, and after discussion from/with all of his teachers, the counselor helped to create a specific plan for how improvement could be made. I was surprised (though I suppose I shouldn't be) how much behind the scenes decision making there can be. For instance this student has some interpersonal issues in some classes, but not in others. So he is creating a list of those students he wants to sit by, and can work well with, and those students he really doesn't want to sit near, so that the teachers can arrange him in a group situation in which he can be successful. I would never have thought of straight up asking the student who he wanted to sit with. That seems so... unfair. But if this student is able to work positively in that group, then that will allow the other students to work without the disruption he was previously causing.

After that meeting, we had out curriculum meeting and I got my first taste of the headache that teachers have to go through to match their curriculum up. We have a new set of 'focal points' that we have to hit, in a certain order. And a district mandated schedule for how long should be spent on each focal point, and what your advanced and lower group should be doing, and when you should be working with both groups together etc. It was such a headache. Not only that, but the text book we are using doesn't match up with the state standards. Things are grouped differently, there are sub-chapters on things we don't need to cover. It was mind-boggling, and I can't say enough how grateful I am to have these two veteran teacher to work with on writing my unit plan. I especially appreciate how both of these teachers (Mrs. Keener, and Mr. Smith) treat me as a peer, a peer with less experience, but they don't talk down to me, or try and cut me out of things. They go out of their way to include me in all relevant conversations so that I get a true experience.We have a real pedagogical challenge in that our classes are heterogeneous, but we are expected to teach differentiated lessons to the high and low students. So there will be student swapping and team teaching, it will be really important that we stay at the same speed as we move through the chapters. Part of the focal point plan is that each subject is learned to mastery, so I am going to have to be creative to find ways to continue to work on multiplying and dividing fractions without boring the students (or myself!) After an hour or so, and a long phone call to the principal, we started to get things hammered out. I now know that I will be teaching a unit on converting between fractions and decimals, and then multiplying and dividing decimals. I will start my unit on Monday October 27th, and we plan for it to be four weeks long.

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Curriculum



I've finally gotten the book that I will be teaching out of. It is called Math Connects, by Glencoe. We are piloting the curriculum so this is a 2009 book, and the curriculum hasn't been used before. There is so much material included with the kit. In addition to the central text book and teacher editions of said text book there are two levels of horozontally alligned books designed to fulfil the needs of students who are below level in their achievement and to suppliment the regular book with investigative lessons and activities. In addition to the three sets of books, there are four cds that have software and documents on them. Each section of the book (eg. 3-4) has 6 different work sheets that are on the cds. These can be printed out and used as homework, extra credit or however you want to. They are differentated so that some worksheets are suited for below average students, some for special needs, some for English Language Learners (ELL) and some for students who are above average. A few of the worksheets are even available in Spanish. It's a great opportunity for differentiation for homework to. Some of the 6th grade teachers have expessed concern over the fact that their classes are heterogeneus as far as math levels are concerned. Without a lot of extra effort we can catagorize students based on pre-assesment and assign different homework for different students so that the advanced students are still challanged, but the struggling students still can get the extra help.

The one big drawback that I've noticed with this curriculum so far is that hte book is not arranged the same way that the Oregon State Standards are (the now core points). In the state standards, fractions and decimals are ordered based on operation. As part of standard 6.0, the students should learn to add and subtract both fractions and decimals. Then during 6.1 they learn to multiply and divide both fractions and decimals. The books organized by catagory. One chapter on performing operations on decimals, followed by a chapter on converting between fractions and decimals, and then there is a chapter on perfoming operations on fractions. While this drawback creates a little more work for techers, and means that teachers must coordinate more in order to keep several classes in the same place, it is not a huge hurdle to jump over.

This is of course my preliminary impression, I have yet to begin my untit planning since Mrs. Keener and I need to me with Mr. Smith, the other 6th grade math teacher, and plan out which chapters we are doing in which order.

Monday, October 6, 2008

One of my student's projects

I was totally impressed by this kid's science project. I was impressed with a few others too (especially a couple from some of the boys who are really quiet or often off task in class). But this student's video was really clever and funny. The assignment was to present their [abstract] 'vision' of science. I would love to share lots of student's work, but since this guy put his video on youtube.com, I feel ok linking to it. This is the same student that asked me the question about evolution.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Some teacher humor

From my Behavior and Classroom Management class:

Monday, September 29, 2008

Long busy day

Today was the first day of my classes, and I anticipated a bit more stress then usual. Today was particularly unique, however, because Mrs. Keener was unexpectedly sick. She came in long enough to leave a lesson for me and the sub, but that was it. She was gone by the time I got there at 9:30. I also didn't realize that she was not in the building until the sub walked in, five minutes before the kids arrived. I figured she was at a meeting, or off in another part of the bulding taking care of something. When the sub suggested that I teach the lesson, since I probably under stood the math better then he did, I readily consented, but I didn't even get to fully read the lesson plan before it was time to start! Talk about teaching on the fly. I made up a warm-up off the top of my head, with a little input from students as to what they wanted to practice, and set about teaching the lesson on using rectangular arrays to factor. Fortunately this is something which I am pretty familiar with, so the lesson was no problem. Although I originally made the mistake of handing out the square 'chips' before I went over the worksheet, so a lot of kids lost out on the instruction because they were playing with the manipulatives. I did that differently when I taught it in the afternoon. Kids also were having a hard time interpreting the analysis questions on the back (heck, some of those questions were complicated for me!) so I am concerned that they will be unable to complete it by tomorrow. I think I did pretty well with the teaching considering the total lack of preperation. The kids like me and respect me, and follow my directions pretty well. Being at a middle school, I am clearly 'one of them' to the kids. They don't identify with me as a young person, they identify with me as an adult, although I'm sure they recognize that I am younger then Mrs. Keener. Especially some of the more 'problematic' boys seem to have taken to me. I'm not sure what it is about that. If it's the fact that I take the time to give them some appropriate attention, if it's that I laugh at their jokes (when it's the appropriate time and the jokes are good) or what. But three boys in particular who give Mrs. Keener (and their other core teacher) a lot of trouble, behave pretty well for me, though they do need reminding from time to time. Perhaps I'm just new and exciting? One particularly good lesson for today is that I need to pay more attention to time when I am teaching. I accidently spent nearly half of math on the warm-up, and the science lesson took way longer then Mrs. Keener had indicated it should have. Although when the sub taught science, in the afternoon, it took them the same amount of time it took me.

Mrs. Keener has told me, and other teachers have confirmed this, that one of my strongest traits as a pre-service teacher is my confidence. Someone asks me if I can do something, and my response is nearly always "sure, no problem". I hope that this confidence I have doesn't balloon into over-confidence though. I would hate to get in over my head.

I had one other really interesting interaction today. We were working in groups on math and one boy came up to me with two questions. He's a kid who is pretty quiet and is often sort of zoning out. His first question had to do with the requirements for a science project that is due on Wednesday. The second question totally took me by surprise. He asked, " If humans evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?" A very analytical question from a person who I hadn't given enough credit! ( Not to mention compleatly off topic, and having nothing to do with anything we were doing in class, science or otherwise). I took a second, and told him about a story I'd heard about butterflys changing their spots to match thier environment when a factory producing lots of ash was built in their habitat, while the butterflys of the same speciies that didn't live near the factory didn't develop spots. I don't remember where i heard this anecdote, but it's always stuck with me. So, I explained, perhaps the monkeys that are still monkeys didn't have something making an evolution necessary. I wish I'd come up with something better, evolution isn't something I am terribly familiar with. My knoweldge steming a little from Freshman biology, and a little from the book Sophie's World, where they touch on it from a philosophical point of view.

All in all a full day. I can't wait to see what the rest of the week has in store. We are going to 'sky camp' on Thursday to do some team building. Sounds exciting!

Sunday, September 21, 2008

My first 'lesson' and a comparison of two boys

"Don't use a shotgun when you can use a beebee gun"
-Dennis Gray, my VP on discipline. A piece of advice he was given when he was a student teacher. And sound advice I think it is, too.

On September 16th I had my first opportunity to lead something in front of students. It was a warm up, a logic problem. They had signs to indicate who they were, and using the given clues we were supposed to figure out who was sitting where. It went pretty well considering I barely had time to read the problem before I had to lead it in front of the class. It was pretty simple but there was lots of extra information, so I got a little confused. I mostly led discussion having everyone work together to solve the problem. I hope that was ok. I didn't think the kids would know how to tackle it without guidence. They had fun, had great suggestions (the ones who were participating). I tried to call on a variety of students, without putting anyone on the spot too much. I choose some of the quieter lower achieving students to be the models up in front of the class. they found it particularly silly when I was refering to who was 'married' to who according to the problem. It so happened that one really little guy was 'married' to a girl who was much more mature then him (and attractive as well, with heavy makeup). Everyone thought that was very funny, but it was a good natured laugh, not cruel or mocking. The biggest problem I have with the way that I led the warm up was near the end, a student didn't want to follow directions and I chose to confront him about it, and nearly entered into a power struggle, I realized what I was doing and was trying to figure out some way to divert the conversation, when Mrs. Keener chimed in with new directions. Obvilously I could have had some planning and preperation time, but I thought it went well, all things considered.

I noticed another example of the strange way that sixth graders act. There are two boys in particular that epitmize stereotypes that would typically be the brunt of teasing and bullying. One boy is very social and intelligent, but he is extremely small, his face is somewhat oddly shaped, his voice is very high pitched, and he behaves in a way that is often easy to laugh at. His handwritting is attrocious but he puts effort into compleating his assigments, and he's signed up for the football team. The second boy is overweight, socially awkward, and often smells a little bad. He is not articulate, his jokes don't always make sense, and some times what he says in general doesn't make sense. He wants to be friends with people, but is as of yet unable to make positive connections with other students, or teacher for that matter. Despite the first boy being easy to pick on, and feminine and everything the other students go out of their way to include him, be nice to him, joke with him and even protect him. Whereas the second boy is slowly being ostracized. I have yet to witness any outright teasing, bullying or anything, but it is easy to gauge the students attitudes towards him, and they are not benevolent. It seems to me the key difference between these two students are their social skills. While the first boy is limited in physical ways, he has adequate social skills to fit in, the second boy may not be as physically limited as the first, but his lack of social competancy sends his peers a message that he is not someone they want to be friends with. I don't know about either of their backgrouds, if they have 504s or IEPs, but it is particularly important that the second boy recieves some sort of help or training or something to help him to interact socially in a constructive manner.

Lessons of Interest: Freetime & Stuck

While it is very important to me not to treat middle school kids as 'children', belittling their intelligence and competence, it is easy to forget how chidlish they can be, and how different the expectations are from elementary school to middle school. Mrs. Keener has a fascinating lesson she teaches on free time. When I first heard that she was teaching a free time lesson I thought it was a little silly, but after seeing what she did, it's definitely something I will integrate into my curriculum if I ever teach sixth graders (and perhaps seventh graders too depending on the circumstances).

She led them in a discussion of options for free time, guiding their brainstorm to create a pre-existing list. First she made a list of questions a students needs to ask themselves.
-Do I have other work to do?
-How much time do I have?
-What are my choices? (based on time, teacher instruction etc.)
-What do I NEED to do?
-What do I WANT to do?

She then guided them in making a list of choices, divided into needs and wants. Choices include: do other work, read, draw, look at planner, organize your binder, play games (Rush hour, brain quest), go to the library (check out a book, take a reading counts quiz), re-do work with low scores, read the walls, look at a text book, work on freetime sheets (cross words and mazes provided by Mrs. Keener), daydream, do extra credit, use basic facts flash cards.

After covering all of this, Mrs. Keener handed out a work sheet that students would finsh at different times (typical 'read all the directions' sheet, which tells you not to fill she sheet out), and then they actually practiced what they should be doing for free time. This lesson has been reinforced more or less constantly the following few days by reminders and more opportunities for practice. I have no doubt that within a few weeks, with the possible exception of some of the more problematic student, all of them should know exactly what they should do and when they should do, and take it upon themselves to make that happen.


Another surprising, but really useful lesson was her 'Stuck' lesson. It was a similar format as the freetime lesson, guided brainstorm to fill out a pre-existing list. This list was designed to help students to find other options when they do not immediatly know the answer or method to solve a problem besides waving their hand in the air trying to get the teacher's attention. Her list:
1) Think about it!
2) Read the directions (again)
3) Look at an example
4) Ask a neighbor (if appropriate)
5) Ask the teacher [last resort]

She then discussed which options you can do by yourself, and whic needed other people to do things. The icing on the cake was a little roleplaying she did where she pretended to be 'Greta the Guest Teacher'. She handed a worksheet out to the kids, and pretended that she didn't know any math and didn't want to answer questions. The only way that she (or I) would concede to help anyone is if all four people at a group raised their hands, indicating that the resources of everyone had been exhausted and everyone was stumped. Only one group ended up raising their hands, and they faked it in order to 'practice'.

One interesting thing I noticed, totally unrelated to these lessons. A girl came up to me complaining that the boys always palyd rush hour during break, and complained asking why the girls could never play. That seemed odd to me. The boys playing didn't prevent any girls from playing. Many of the boys chose to go straight back to rush hour when break started, whereas most of the girls chose to do other things first. What did she expect me to do about it? Say no boys aloud? Or was she simply looking for empathy from a fellow female. I have overheard several sexist remarks so far, and not just from students. I overheard a teacher commenting on some people chatting in their class, and accused them of sounding like a bunch of girls in the hallway.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Falling into a routine

After the first few days I spent less time doing formal observations and more time falling into a role in the day to day culture of the classroom. I arrive near the end of Mrs. Keener's prep and grade papers and help brainstorm and prepare for class. I observe and answer questions, offereing help during the core period and flex. Eating lunch with Mrs. Keener and the other sixth grade teachers is always a pleasure, and then after lunch I work on my school improvement project and observe the pm group.

The school improvement project is going remarkably well and I'm having a great time working on it. Since the kids arrived Melissa and I haven't had much time to work on it together, but as of Monday this week the base for the big time line is up. We finished the small ones right when school was starting and I assume the kids are starting to use those by now. I've nearly put in my 30 hours for the SIP already and we are nearly done with the time line so it looks like the work has been well laid out. It was really fun to do the research for the dates, and a GREAT refresher of my World History. Useful I'm sure for whenever I get around to attempting the Social Studies Praxis test. Melissa and I anticipate finishing the timeline either at the end of this week or early next week, which is great because then we are done with the SIP for fall!

Some other observations and reflections I've come up with over the past week or two:

Mrs. Keener has a very specific way she wants kids to do their notes, she has them fold the paper in half and take notes in columns. I don't know if i like that much dication as to how they make their notes. On the one hand, sixth graders don't necessarily have the study skills to make organized notes themselves, but I know that I would be annoyed if I was forced to take notes in a skinny column like that. At first when I heard her say this I thought it was sort of ridiculous, but after grading a set of their warm up, and seeing their handwritting and organization skills, I think that having some level of structure for note taking is a must, columns or no columns.

I had the pleasure of observing a sub on September 11th. Mr. DelMarter is a retired teacher who was subbing for Mr. Smith (6th grade math/science). He began class sitting in a chair at the front of the room talking about himself and his family. He had the kids absolutely mezmerised! He told them about his grand kids, and their names, and then would ask how many grandkids he had, to test if they were paying attention. He's been teaching for 45 years, which is amazing.
He pulled out a tootsie roll pop while he was talking and slipped in a comment about how he gives hundreds of them out. Now the kids are really paying attention because they want to know how they can get a lollipop. As he's telling his stories he looks right at one student, and speaks as if he's telling the story only to him, occassionaly he chaged his focus. He totally impressed kids by having memorized several of their names right off the bat, and making little jokes about them. His whole lesson revolved around the tootsie roll pops. He told them they could eat them in class, if they made sure to take the paper off first. He voice is low and rich, and he speaks very slowly. He tells the kids that if they Vice Principle comes in, they have to hide the lollipops, and the signal is a single snap. Then they must stick their hands under their arms, crossing them, thus hiding the lollipop in the arm pit. They practice. He reminds them they must refrain from drooling. Two snaps means they must wave their lollipops in the air, in hopes of capturing germs from a sneeze so that they may stay home from school. Three snaps means they trade with their neighbor, four snaps means that one lucky kid passes around his sucker so that all the kids can get a taste. As he lays out these ridiculous instructions the kids giggle, but are totally engaged and consumed by watching Mr. DelMarter. I was pretty engaged myself and couldn't help but smile and enjoy the show. His style thrives on individual attention, and a superb storytelling skill. He tells about how forty years ago the neighborhood was different. I don't know how he did it, or what he did but his ability to control and engage those students was magical. They only barely got to doing any math, but he has those students undivided attention and respect. Later in the day he came into Mrs. Keeners room briefly to say hi. Mrs. Keeners kids are relativly well behaved, but she has a fairly active and somewhat chaotic classroom when direct instruction isn't going on. Lunch had just finished and kids were all over the place. Mr.DelMarter started talking and all that changed. They paid attention. They told the students how lucky they were to have Mrs. Keener and that they needed to show her proper respect. He sent Mrs. Keener out of the room and within seconds has all the students silent sitting quietly in their desks with their hands folded, and when Mrs. Keener returned they chimed "Good morning Mrs. Keener, how are you today?" And then the spell was broken as Mr. DelMarter left the room and returned the class to Mrs. Keener. As I said, I don't know how he did it, maybe it's magic ;-D

One thing I've begun to notice about Mrs. Keener's style is that she is very relaxed and allows a lot of leeway in her classroom. There is lots of discussion in which it is acceptable to call out and make off topic comments. So far it hasn't been a problem and Mrs. Keener is excellent at reining things in when they start to get out of hand, though I don't know if I could do it so well. One concern is that I notice that when the class is having a discussion of this nature there are usually several kids who chose to check out and aren't participating, but are rather just staring off into space.

I have more I could type, but these entries don't need to be novels. Look soon for an entry on a Free Time lesson. Such a thing had never occured to me, but I think is an awesome idea for Middle School aged kids.

Day 2

I observed a fourth teacher on the second day of school. Mrs. VanMoorlehem. She teaches seventh grade math and science, although today there wasn't much curriculum and more get to know you. I only observed a small amount of her lesson, I came in when she was giving instruction. They were interviewing each other, and she was going over the interview sheet and went through each and every question on the sheet and discussed the question in detail, giving examples of what you might put. She even made a point of defining a hobby verses a pastime. Perhaps she knew that these students needed extra direction but it seemed like it was a lot more time spent on direction then needed to be. I thought it was really interesting that when she was listing examples of what people might want for a career she listed only blue collar jobs, does that reflect her perception of the school's demographic? I don't actually know what Briggs socio-economic demographic is, although I know that they don't have a large percentage of kids on free/reduced lunch. One of her practices that I did like was that she asked for confirmation from the kids that they got was she was saying, rather then assuming that they understood. She also made a point of addressing what the noices level should be. Then the kids paired up and began interviewing. She has the kids divided into groups of four, and each student has a number. She used those numbers to have different groups of kids do different things as far as preparing for the activity, one group collected text books while the other got the worksheets for the group. The time they spent interviewing was really interesting to watch the kids interactions. Who was really chatty, while others were more quiet. I overheard one (really) little girl going on about how Luke Perry was her favorite actor because he is SUCH a hottie!

Unfortunately I didn't get to see how she ended class because I had to return to Mrs. Keener's class. The sixth and seventh graders are on different schedules, so my class began before hers ended.

Monday, September 15, 2008

First Day of School x 3

I found out that I don't HAVE to do a weekly reflection for September Experience, which is why I haven't posted in two weeks.

However, I have taken copious amounts of notes, learned a ton, and be totally confirmed in my experience that education is the right field for me.

The first day of school with kids (not the day when only sixth graders came) I got to watch three (very) different teachers do the 'first day of school' thing, it was really interesting.

First I observed Mrs. Newson. She is a seventh grade Language Arts/Social Studies teacher. She had 35 kids in her classroom, it was full to the brim. She began class by having a handwriting sheet on their desks for them to work on the moment they came in. I loved the result this produced because for the most part each student was on task and relativly quiet from the begining so she could deal with issues that came up and get a handle on who exactly was in her class. I'm assuming that hse was familiar with most of the kids, those who were not transfers or new to the area that is. I really appreciated that she made a point of telling the kids why they are working on the handwriting page. Apparantly the seventh grade teachers have all decided that all writing (at least for tte first term) will be in cursive; she went on to explain the teachers' reasoning for making that decision. I always hope to be able to explain to my students why they are doing something (at my own discretion that is, I don't want to feel as if I need to explain myself), I am the type of person who is more likely to put time in effort into something that I understand why I am doing, and I imagine that some of my students will probably be the same way. While they were working on their worksheet, Mrs. Newson chatted on about required supplies, she took attendence ( making sure she had a name for each student that they prefered to be called), and gave some background on herself: how long she'd been teaching at Briggs, her family, hobbies etc.. At first I thought this was sort of funny, to share personal information like that with the whole class, but I think, as part of her particular style, she wants to seem like a real down to earth person to her students that has strenths, faults and outside lives, just like they do, and by talking about herself a little bit she can present herself to her students as more then just 'teacher', but as an actual person. For instance, she talked about hte new commitment the school has to healthy eating and readily admitted that she was not the best person to look to as an example. Next she spent a long time covering the new schedule for the school, which the kids had a really hard time understanding, I don't know if maybe Mrs. Newson didn't really understand it herself, if the kids were still half brain-dead from summer break, or if it really is that complicated, but they were just not getting it and needed a lot of one on one help to figure out where they needed to go and when. While she was working on that with them I did notice one technique of hers that I really liked. She gave very clear and percise directions. Instead of just saying "we're moving on to blahblahblah", she would say "put away your blah, and get out your blahblah" so that the kids were less likely to get distracted by wanting to continue to work on the previous project. For the second half of the period she used a note taking style she called 'Cornell Notes' (which is basically a t-chart) to help them organize her expectations for her classroom. I really liked how she talked about how her class isn't just about learning about history, or reading books, but about learning skills that will help them to be sucessful high school and college students. She said "This is your job, just like your parents have jobs, and coming to school is my job, and your pay check is your report card". It is a great way to encourage a mind set of personal responsibility for the students. The grades are directly a result of the work that they put it. I don't know if it would connect for all students, but definintely for some of them. Another saying she had that I liked was "we aren't here to love each other, we're here to work together". Too true, not only about school but about life in general. There will always be people you don't like as much, or who bug you or frustrate you, but it's your job to play nice and get along with them as best you can.

Next I observed in Mrs. Keener (my own teacher)'s class. Her class is sixth grade math and science, and already I noticed a difference between teh sixth in seventh grade in that Mrs. Keener took a lot more time to make sure expectations and behavior norms were clear. Since the sixths graders had alreay had a lot of time to go over the schedule the day before, they didn't have to spend as much time on that. When the kids came into the room there was an 'about me' and a word search on their desk for them to get started on right away. After everyone was there and she had taken role, Mrs. Keener began to cover some of the basics, using quiet voices, what and when it is appropriate to have a snack (only nutritious snacks, and only at the begining of the period), and she also gave instruction on how to behave during passing times and break times. Most of this was her giving direct instruction to the students. She also talked about the tiger awards and other school traditions/ruels etc. One thing that I notices was she immediatly set the precedent that students do not get up and hand her work when they have finished it. They stay in their seat and wait for instruction. Reflecting back on the last two weeks, students have followed that precedent nearly to a letter. You really have to set expectations early, because I bet if students had been allowed to do that the first day, she would have had a harder time getting them to change that behavior several days later. One thing Mrs. Keener did that I would choose not to do, is when she asked for questions, she allowed students to make statements. This would bother me to no end. Something I learned helping in my mom's (K/1) classroom was that when the teacher asks if there are any questions, it is appropriate for the teacher to stop a student who wants to tell a story, or make a statement, and say "I'm sure that's a great story you have there, but we are taking questions right now, do you have a question?" I'm certainly not going to let 6th graders get away with something my mom doesn't let 6 year olds do. Mrs. Keener also made a point of introducing herself and talking about her time at Briggs, and her family a little bit (she wisely left out the part about being recently divorced). She also made a point of inquiring about those that had older siblings who had had her in the past. I'm not sure if this was simply for her own information (many of the teachers seem to put a lot of stock in the way that siblings have behaved, they expect similar behavior from younger siblings as they got from older ones. No one knows better then I that this is not necessarily the case!) or if she had a purpose for the kids in it too. She finished the math/science part of the class with going over the 'give me five' attention getting system (raise your hand and say give me five and the children do likewise, turn and look at you and stop talking). Transitioning to flex was a little awkward because it was the first day, but in flex she talked about what the class is, since many of them will never have had a flex class before, discussing proticols for lunch, and instruction on how to leave the room responsibly. I am so surprised at some of the things that sixth graders seem to need instruction on, I had forgotten how small and childlike some of them are.

After lunch I observed Mr. Ray (incidently the older brother of a friend of mine, small world). He had the same students that Mrs. Keener had had earlier in the day. He teaches Language Arts/Social Studies. Mrs. Newson and Mrs. Keener had relativly similar styles, were fairly close in age, and seem pretty similar perosnality-wise as well. Mr. Ray is a huge contrast. First of all he is only in his early thirties and has been teaching for 10 or fewer years. Secondly when I and the students entered the classroom The White Stripes were playing over the stereo. His classroom is decorated with superheroes (mostly Batman and Spider Man) and Star Wars paraphanelia. He has instructions for the kids up on the overhead. "Find your seat- Make a list of things you can learn about 6th grade and Mr. Ray by looking around the room". This was particularly clever because in addition to his superhero and other more personal stuff, he also had room expectations, lit and social studies posters and other things of actual school importance. They spent some time discussing that and then he took roll call. He then gave a 'tour of the room'. He was carrying around this yard stick and smacking things on the bulleten boards, pointing out where different things would be posted, where in the room was off limits, what different things were used for etc. He seems like an easy going jokester type of guy, but I was also impressed with how he chose to deal with a disruptive student. "Do you want to take this outside to discuss it because you are disrupting my class right now". Totally calm in his tone of voice, he cleanly passed the responsibility and choice to the student, therby avoiding any potential confrontation in front of the class (risking humiliation of the student) or power struggle (risking humiliation of the teacher). And the kid said no, and stopped disrupting. He went over his expectations which were pretty typical, but one thing he said, which is something I have wanted to embed in my expectations when I have my own classroom is "show cooperation and respect for all; no competition, everyone can get As". Personally I was a huge fan of his subtle references to the Prime Directeve and other culture things.. not that many of the students necessarily picked up on it. I also really liked that he maintains a classroom library where students can check out books. I don't know if that is a Briggs thing, or something he does, but I think that is awesome. He also broke his yard stick over his head, which I think was a schtick to get the kids attention. I think it worked, though I'm not sure how I feel about it. It's kind of a gimick, but maybe sixth graders go for that sort of gimmick. I guess maybe I'm into being a bit more genuine? The last thing, which I also liked and think could totally be applied to math was an info card, he has them write abit about the summer reading experiences, what do they like to read etc. and finally had them answer they question "why read?" Which is deceptivly deep and philosophical should a student decide to take it in that direction.

So as I said an enlightening, contrasting and exhausting first day. I think this is an exhausting enough blog as well, so I will pick up with the second day of school and the rest of the week later.

Friday, August 29, 2008

Week One Reflection

So this week was certainly a bit of a roller coaster. I started out the week feeling really excited about going to my school and starting to meet the staff, however registration was definitely a tedious task. (Although talking with the other staff, the organization was much more efficient then it has been in years past). I admit it left me feeling a bit discouraged and very disoriented.

Tuesday was also really draining. It was the district wide in-service day, and although I did enjoy the superintendent's speech, it was also really long. To follow sitting and listening to an hour and a half long speech, with sitting and listening to four hours of presentations and classes was a bit much for me, and I struggled to keep my eyes open after lunch. As much as I like and learn from direct lecture instruction, perhaps even I have a limit on how much of that I can take. My mom (a K/1 teacher) told me that in-service days are notorious for being boring though, so I didn't loose hope.

Wednesday morning was a slow start for me, however the activities of the morning totally turned my attitude around. We broke into groups and played different team building games in order to break the ice and get ourselves thinking 'outside the box' and cooperatively. The activities included a tinker-toy building contest, land skiis, jump roping, crossing a 'raging river' with only 5 stones, and (my favorite) a Frisbee throwing contest. My team didn't place very well, but it was a lot of fun, and made me feel much more included and welcome then I would have otherwise. I got to spend time with the other teachers in a situation where we were all on equal footing, we were all 'just people'.

I am fortunate enough to have been given a task for my School Improvement Project already. Melissa ( a fellow UO student teacher) and I are working for the 7th grade social studies team creating a time line project for them to make in the second week of classes. Time allowing we will also create a time line to put on the bulletin board, and 'foldables' for each unit they will cover. It's a type of project that is right up my alley, as well as a good review of my world history. I'm excited to create something that can potentially be used for years to come at this school.

The new schedule that Briggs is launching seems really innovative, but it also produces a lot of new challenges. When the staff was going over it, it was really interesting for those of us not a direct part of the staff to sit back and watch the tension and aggression move through the faculty. There are definitely some people who are not comfortable or happy about the changes. However, they all seem really committed to the idea of the new schedule as a whole, even if the kinks haven't been worked out yet, so on top of the negative and confused feelings was a joviality and optimism that they would be able to persevere (and prove all the naysayers wrong). There is a really great feeling of team and cooperation in this staff! They are also really relaxed and joke and tease a lot (mostly in a nice and fun way).

Today was particularly exciting because I finally got assigned my cooperating teacher, Lisa Keener. I got to know her, and spent some time helping her organize. I'm really excited about working with her because they are piloting a new book and new curriculum, which is something that student teachers don't normally get to do. She also seems really fun, and I think we'll mesh together well. I previously thought I was going to be with a teacher who was also the athletic director, and he seemed like a great guy, but I think I'll have more in common with Lisa. Already, just by going through her old curriculum and re-organizing it to match up with the new book, I am getting ideas for my own lessons.

I am very excited to start working with the kids this next week and see how things go.

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Welcome to Briggs Middle School

I am beginning my first Practicum experience, at Briggs Middle School. It is a feeder school for Thurston High, in Springfield, although it's located very centrally in Springfield. So far this seems like a fantastic place to work. The superintendent, Nancy Golden, seems really innovative and forward thinking. The other teachers love her, she received a standing ovation upon entering the stage, as well as one after her (hour and a half long) speech. She really seems all about the kids, and is as negative about new standardized testing requirements as any self-respecting teacher. She also seems to really support the arts as part of education.

My principal also seems pretty awesome, Brooke Wagner. She is also all about trying new stuff, and getting new ideas. In fact, Briggs is spearheading an experimental bell schedule (all on their lonesome) that allows each teacher 90 minutes of prep time every day. Half of it is spent working with their teams, which are divided up by grade level and focus, to make sure that everyone is working together and on the same page about students, curriculum and school wide events. The other half is personal prep time in the classroom.

I still don't know for sure who my cooperating teacher will be, although everyone seems to think I'll be with Brandon Parks. Nothing has been made specific yet, so we student teachers (there are four of us at Briggs) are able to observe a wide variety of people, and start on our School Improvement Project.

Laura Scruggs, who is one of my favorite people I've met (she complimented my purple hair), has a project for three of us to work on for our SIPs. It is developing a foldable time line with dates from every unit that the 7th grade World History class will cover. And then, if we finish that, creating examples of foldable projects for each individual unit, to use as examples and grading keys.

As you can see, there is a lot going on for me, right now, I just have Briggs to worry about. By the end of the month, I'll add classes: Behavior Management, Methods of teaching Social Studies, and Methods of Teaching Math.

Monday, July 7, 2008

A New Begining

Blog for class? An opportunity to publish more thoughtful writing then the dribble I usually post perhaps.

A potential tool for my eventual class?

Will anyone actually read or find this?

So many questions.

I'm not sure what I would use a blog for in a math class. I can see how useful it would be in a social studies, or language arts class. Any ideas interwebs?