Resume Building or Character Building?

Or maybe a little (lot) of both. I do love my summer job, but I'm entirely too type A sometimes. I'm totally okay with going with the flow when it comes to schedules switching around, but it bothers me when there doesn't seem to be a reason for the craziness. Also, the supply closet bothers me. I have 6 Leapfrog pads, and only one charger. Those numbers don't jive. So it looks like I'll be picking up some batteries tomorrow afternoon.

That said, I'm having a great time with the kids, and hopefully it'll be something that principals will be interested in when they read my resume. I'm also finding it really interesting to see the progression of reading levels. I'm teaching K-7 Reading, and I think this experience will be very helpful to me when I begin teaching high school English. One of the main concerns in secondary education today centers around students not being able to read on grade level. Hopefully some observation of the process from the very beginning will give me some insights that will be helpful as I begin teaching.

I also noticed that this month's book club on the English Companion ning is on Teri Lesesne's Reading Ladders, so I'll definitely be keeping an eye on those discussion boards.

A Challenge

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to present a new technology to veteran teachers at an MTT workshop. It was my first experience presenting in a professional capacity rather than as a student myself in a university or high school classroom. One of my goals as a teacher is to continue to develop professionally through attending, and hopefully one day presenting at, workshops such as the one I attended yesterday. During the course of the day, my fellow interns and I were challenged to write an article about our experiences with this technology for an educational publication. I am very excited (and nervous) about this opportunity! I want very much to become involved in the wider world of educational research, but it's also incredibly intimidating. I feel like I don't know where to start! I'm an English Ed. major, and so have had more experience with writing than most, but I'm still not quite sure how to go about writing an article like this. My questions from this post are: How did prominent figures in the field of education make their start in the area of publication? What are the editors of an educational publication looking for in the way of an article? How can I use this experience as a springboard to further my own professional development and growth?

Violence in Schools

We had a somewhat eventful day yesterday. Actually, down on my end of the building it was extremely uneventful, for which I'm incredibly grateful, but there was an incident involving a student with a gun in our school.

While it was happening, the only thing we in the classroom knew was that we were on lockdown. The principal communicated over the school PA system that the entire school was on lockdown until further notice around 8 am. Apparently, a student brought a gun to school (although no bullets were found). Another student told a teacher, and that teacher notified the appropriate people and the situation was contained and resolved quickly. We did remain on lockdown for quite a while, just in case, and we ended up keeping 1st block all the way through 3rd since testing was delayed. According to my teacher, this is the first time that our school has had an incident of this nature.

On my part, I was extremely impressed with the way faculty and administration reacted to and dealt with this potentially nightmarish situation.

My question is, how are students supposed to sit down and take a standardized test (that has a direct impact on their future) after an occurrence like this? It bothers me that so much weight is placed on standardized test scores without taking any other factors into consideration. Such as whether or not there was a gun threat at their school on the day they tested.

Graduation Exam Week

This week students at our school are taking the graduation exam, so everything’s been just a little bit weird.  They’re testing in our classroom, so we’ve been displaced to a rather drafty room at the very end of the hallway, next to the outside doors.  We have mostly seniors, so only a few still have to pass a portion of the exam.  The library has something called Teen Tech Week  for students without discipline referrals who want to go and play the Wii or Xbox while other students are testing.  The library’s funding has been consistently zeroed out for the past few years, so they sell snacks and drinks during graduation exam week in an effort to replace some of that lost funding.  Central Office employees have continued to maintain a presence in the building during testing, which is a little nerve wracking. 

So far, the only problem has been what to do with students who don’t have to test and haven’t gone to the library.  My 1st block class is currently studying Shakespeare’s Macbeth, so we’re having a Shakespeare film festival.  I love the idea of exposing them to more of Shakespeare’s work, and it’s so much more fun for them to watch the DVD’s, especially when classes are off of the regular schedule and they end up spending four hours in one class and skipping another altogether.  However, there is always the question of whether or not it’s appropriate to show full-length movies in class.  I think as long as they’re connected to actual class work, it’s great, but I’m only an intern.  :)

Professional Development

I've had the opportunity of attending several workshops and seminars this semester for the purpose of professional development. So far, they've all seemed to be interesting and productive (which contradicts everything that I've ever heard about professional development before this placement). Yesterday, I went with my cooperating teacher to a Vertical Teaming meeting. Our high school is attempting to connect with its feeder schools in order to better prepare students for each subsequent year of school and to make the transition from elementary to middle and middle to high school easier. I thought it was a dynamic meeting full of wonderful ideas, but there was one significant drawback. Only one teacher from another school came! There were three teachers from our high school, one 7th grade teacher from the middle school, and zero teachers from the elementary school. Sadly, our meeting tended more towards the horizontal rather than the vertical. It's a shame that more teachers didn't come and join the conversation, they missed out on some valuable dialogue about student progress and strategies to improve our schools.

As I was observing this professional development meeting yesterday, I started thinking about professional development in general, and my personal professional development in particular. I love going to these meetings and seminars and hearing what other teachers have to say about their classrooms and teaching in general. I become re-energized after listening to other teachers discuss their problems and possible ways to solve them. It reminds me that every teacher is also a learner, from brand new interns like me, all the way to accomplished veteran teachers.

3-2-1

3 things I have discovered as a student teacher:

1) Yes, students WILL sleep in my class, despite how undeniably fascinating Shakespeare (and similar subject matter) is to the average teenager.
2) No matter how fascinated I am with said subject matter, they will still sleep in my class.
3) As much energy as I put into sharing this fascination with words and language with my students, they will put the same amount of energy into, you guessed it, sleeping in my class.

2 things I find interesting about sleepers:

1) It's not a passive form of resistance. They have to actively block out my voice and all action around them to slip that far into a sleep-coma. Especially when I'm standing right beside their desk.
2) They seem to be able to get through a whole REM cycle while sitting in a horribly uncomfortable desk with a binder for a pillow. Frankly, it's kind of impressive. If only I could borrow that ability for long car rides and airplane flights.

1 question I have:

How do I rip the blanket of sleep off of my classroom and actively engage students in the subject matter?


Okay, so I'm not being entirely fair or accurate. The truth is, most of my students are awake and participating during class time. However, there are always those few that truly seem to believe that the purpose of 1st block is to catch up on sleep from the night before. Take today for instance. We had just finished watching movie clips from Macbeth and were moving on to read the play aloud. Not the most scintillating activity I admit, but better than listening to a recording. As we're reading through the play and chunking text, I make it a habit to wander around the classroom a bit in order to better supervise students. As I wandered back towards the front the noise got louder, and I realized what it was. One of my students was SNORING! Once I realized what was happening, I tried to surreptitiously ease over and wake her up. I stood by her desk, tapped her desk, no response. Her groupmates noticed what was going on and whispered to her, trying to wake her up, no response. By now, most of the students in the classroom knew something was going on. I generally feel uncomfortable (as a student teacher) tapping students on the shoulder to wake them up, but I tried that too, no response. By now I was out of ideas, and I swear, the snoring was getting louder. As my cooperating teacher walked over to see what was going on, the student finally woke up. I felt so incredibly inadequate as a teacher!

So, back to my original question. How do I encourage active participation in the classroom? I want class time to be a fun and engaging learning experience for my students, but how do I get through to those students who lay their head down as soon as they sit down and simply don't respond? I've tried incorporating more strategies into my lessons, especially strategies for during reading, which I think help a lot. However, there are still a few students who go straight back to sleep as soon as they find out whether it's for a grade or not.

I want to do better. I want to provide a better learning experience for all of my kids, and I want them all to gain as much from class time as possible. Not just an extra REM cycle.

Students As Teachers

During lunch today my cooperating teacher shared some exciting news! After being approached by three students in our AP Language class, who had questions and concerns about the educational system in general and how class time is used in particular, she has extended to them (and to the rest of the class) the option of becoming responsible for a certain amount of class time. The idea is to give students the opportunity to focus class time on what and how they think that they should be learning. The topic came up after some of our students discovered that they wouldn't be receiving class credit for a hands on program that they're involved in, and that instead they will still be required to take a lecture-based class on the subject in order to receive credit. My cooperating teacher has also written a blog post about this project detailing more about the situation and the students.

I'm very excited about the opportunity this provides for student led lessons and discussions. After all, isn't one of our main goals to encourage students to take control of their learning process so that they will receive the maximum benefit of class time? I am wondering exactly how it's all going to go though. Will students take responsibility for the section of material that they'll be expected to teach? Will they take away everything from this experience that we would hope for? Like responsibility, accountability, passion for learning? Will this experiment be a success?

I would love to hear anyone's thoughts on this, please feel free to comment. :)

Observation #2

I had my second observation of the semester last Wednesday. I was so pleased and excited that it went so well. My supervisor came during 3rd block, and it just went really well from start to finish. I have AP Language 3rd block, and the students are extremely engaged and invested in the class. It's such a joy to teach them, and I feel that whenever you put special care into planning a relevant and interesting lesson for them, you're paid back in spades with their interest and involvement. My cooperating teacher helps me so much when it comes to planning lessons, and helped me put together a wonderful lesson on narration for my observation. I really liked the way it incorporated media and technology to teach the concept of narration. There is an episode of the tv series How I Met Your Mother that showcases many of the different aspects of narration that we've been studying, for example, flashbacks, flashforwards, in media res, freeze frames, etc. The Episode How I Met Everybody Else is a way to "show" students the different conventions of narration.
I thought that my first observation was just... ok. So I was especially pleased that this one flowed along without any hiccups. It's not that the first observation went badly, but I very much want to improve on something each time. My only problem during the first observation were some minor classroom management issues, i.e. talking. I've had to consciously work on projecting my voice and having a more commanding presence in the classroom. With 37 students in 1st block, I realized that some students honestly just couldn't hear my tiny voice at the back of the classroom, especially when their classmates are talking. My placement is in Advanced 12 English, Advanced Placement Literature, and Advanced Placement Language, so generally the only classroom management issues we have are based around too much talking when they're not supposed to. I definitely realize that my classroom management issues aren't really of the same magnitude as those other student teachers might be dealing with, so in one way I'm grateful for the opportunity to practice pedagogy without serious classroom management concerns, but on the other I'm concerned that I'll be ill-equipped to handle those same concerns when I'm a first year teacher. I'm hoping that I'll have the opportunity to observe some different classes in the coming months. Maybe that will give me some insights.

Brand New Day

Every day is a new day. This is the most important thing that I have learned about teaching so far. Every day, usually during 4th block prep, I think back over the day. I think about what went wrong and what went right, and often, I'll have a conversation with my cooperating teacher about it. After I've considered each possible mistake (actually, I prefer "opportunity for improvement") I make the conscious decision to let it all go, so that I can start fresh tomorrow. Every morning I walk into the classroom and tell myself that I get to start with a clean slate that day, and so do my students. It's only fair. We all have our bad days, but what I love about my high school students is that, by and large, they're willing to let every day be a new day.

Ning!!!

My cooperating teacher introduced me to a wonderful new technology find! This semester she started using a ning (replacing the wiki) for her online platform. It's basically a social network that lends itself extremely well to online communities. It's incredibly easy to use and set up. I was so in love that I decided to create one for all of the English interns, so that we could stay in touch this semester. Last semester we all loved posting on the discussion boards as part of our methods class, so I'm hoping that this can become a replacement that we'll be able to build on.
I've also created a ning for interns who are involved with MTT (Master Teachers of Technology) at my school. I was lucky to be able to attend an MTT meeting with my cooperating teacher. At each meeting, the group of teachers is able to observe the use of new technology in a classroom, as well as discuss and experiment with technologies that they hope to soon implement in their own classrooms. At the conclusion of the meeting, the other interns and I volunteered to plan and implement the next observed lesson, so we are now in the process of planning that project. The ning has been an extremely valuable resource since face to face meetings are in short supply.

Internship Placement

I wrote this post for my personal blog a few weeks ago, I thought I would post it so that I could document my internship from the very beginning.

I've been so blessed in my placement this semester! My cooperating teacher is wonderful and supportive, and I know I'll have the opportunity to learn so much from her. I'm about two weeks in to my internship, and I can already tell that I'll love teaching as a career. It's been a change, making the switch back from college to high school, but it's worked out pretty well. The first day I observed each of the classes, and introduced myself, and the second day I jumped in and started doing the starter activity with each class. After that, my teacher let me start doing the literary devices for 2nd block and the rhetorical devices for 3rd block. I taught my first full day last Thursday! It was a pretty easy day, 1st block had a test and 3rd block had a timed writing essay, but I did have the chance to read and discuss Act 4 of Macbeth with 2nd block. It was an interesting experience. It's such a change to go from participating in college level classes to teaching high school level classes. I love it though. :)

My cooperating teacher set up an area in the classroom just for me, and it made me feel so welcome as I was meeting everybody for the first time. I was so nervous and anxious to get started off on the right foot!

Becoming a Teacher of English

This blog marks the continuation of my lifelong love affair with literature and language, and the beginning of my career as a teacher of English. As a student teacher, I have learned more in a single day in the classroom than I ever did in any education class in college. I'm somewhere around my fifth week of student teaching now, and while I've been chronicling my experiences and reflections in a personal journal along the way, I feel that it is time for me to look beyond the horizon and join the world-wide conversation with other individuals interested in genuine, meaningful professional development.