Pessimism Leads To Optimism

Well, it certainly has been a while since I posted here. I feel like I lost my way a little. I see why teachers forget why they became teachers; why they forget their purpose. It’s so easy to get caught up in the standards, the plan, the grades, the tests…

When we are asked to plan a unit in Practicum, we plan it with all the excitement and creativity we have inside of us. Someday we will use this in a classroom. We will joyfully teach these fun lessons, all while reading a book, and go home at the end of the day to catch up on Netflix. It’s as if we expect time to stand still so we can fit it all in. Then came student teaching…

It’s reality, really.  The students are not always as cooperative as you thought they would be when you built your “fake class.” You thought they would embrace your fresh, new ideas, and fun lessons.  It’s like you hit a wall: they hate the book, they come to class late, and now hate you because you must enforce some punishment that is not consistent in the school. Suddenly your voice is a small squeak in a mass of booming teenage vocals. “You must find your teacher voice,” you are told. Where is it? How do I find it, when I didn’t know I lost it, or ever had it for that matter?

You begin to realize that many of those great lessons you had planned are not going to fit into the allotted time. Oh, and let’s not forget all those grades you need to add in. You didn’t factor the need for so many. Also, the class time you’re given is practically cut in half because of all the times you must stop and wait for everyone to stop talking.

I realize that I sound completely pessimistic right now and my readers may be wondering if I still want to pursue this profession. Hell yeah! Despite all of this, I still believe in what I do. I am not a quitter. I accept the challenge and will do my best to improve. Not all students are these students. I have classes that are amazing and teach me as much as I teach them. I cannot let a handful of students get to me and change my perspective.  So, I need to rework my lessons. Big deal, I couldn’t do ALL the fun ones. I will teach them, they will learn, and we will get through this together, whether they know it or not.

This weekend I attended the RI Writing Project’s Spring conference. Although the day did not reflect Spring at all, what happened inside that building was an absolute representation of Spring. It was a refreshing, renewing experience. I remembered why I teach and most importantly why I write. I remembered why I have my students write. Somewhere in these past couple of months I lost my way and forgot that we don’t write for the grade. We write to express ourselves when speaking just doesn’t do it. This is how it is for me anyway. I can’t always articulate myself into words but I can always express myself in my writing.

I have two of my three classes doing Dialectical Journals. I must say this is the best thing I ever did. One of my classes, who doesn’t speak, speaks volumes in their writing. I love to see their thoughts as they are processing a quote from the text, or their horror when something unexpected happens.  Even better, I love to see when they connect to something I taught them in class or a real world experience. This is what makes it worthwhile. This is why we write, because even if we can’t speak, our voice can still be heard.

Has Student Teaching been easy? Absolutely not, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.

I blinked and then it was December

No, really, I feel like I blinked and it's the end of the semester. Where has the time gone? There are two official weeks left. As I sit here, working on my Senior Seminar paper, I am pondering this very thought. In five months all the years of hard work will have paid off and I will be a certified high school English teacher. Whoosh...mind blown.

Now, back to the semester that seems to have blown by with my mind. It feels like just yesterday I was complaining about being torn away from the professor I prayed all summer long I would be with.  I must say, although I miss my practicum pals, the switch turned out just fine. My new professor has been just as good and truly loves on her students. When we have a need, she is there to provide a lesson for it. "We don't know grammar," we say, "Then I will teach you," she says. That's right, I can now with certainty identify the object of a preposition and the proper use of "who" and "whom." Really, I just taught my friend at work today. Very exciting moment for me.

I feel like this whole semester has taught me to adapt to change. I should probably preface this by saying, I DO NOT LIKE CHANGE. I seriously hate it. My best friend actually commented on how much change I have had to endure this semester and how maybe I am being taught to accept it, since I have never been one to do well with it. First, there was the change in professor, followed by getting partnered up with someone I didn't know - to co-teach, which I had never done, and then the changes I had to adapt to within the classroom...as I was teaching, and finally the big one, I did not get any of the schools I requested for student teaching. I will say, it really hasn't been that bad. I have learned that change can be a good thing and as a teacher I need to be able to accept it. As I already mentioned, the change in professor turned out just fine. The partner I didn't know turned out to be really cool and we taught well together. I transitioned really well with the unexpected changes in the classroom and got praised by my reviewers for how I handled it.

Student teaching threw me for a spin. I must say ever since last semester I have had my heart set on Central Falls. I had such a great experience there. I also enjoyed my time at North Providence. What I have realized through this is that I am happy in places I am comfortable. I do not like the unknown, but so far this semester change has been a good thing. I spoke with my cooperating teacher last night and she sounds wonderful. I am slightly intimidated by some of the class sizes, more so because I am so bad with names, but it will be okay...even if we have to name tent for a month. I am more excited about the material I get to teach. I love dystopian fiction and I love non-western lit. Well, I get the best of both worlds! I get to teach Things Fall Apart and 1984. I am beyond excited to whip out one of my dystopian lessons I taught at Central Falls last semester and also to use a lesson I learned about at the NEATE conference.

Things are looking up and I am now a well-adjusted accepter of change. Well friends, I must return to the Seminar paper. This was a good diversion to gather my thoughts. Ah, yes, writing is so therapeutic. Each day my class will begin with a writing prompt. I will create lovers of writing.

I am a teacher.

Disappointment and Hope

Today I started my observations in a middle school classroom. I have a middle schooler and I have often wondered what his classroom may look like. Would it be a younger version of my high school classes? Would it be more like elementary school? Would it be complete chaos? Well based on today's experience it may be a little bit of all of these things. I'm not really sure I can put into words how I feel about my first observation.

I would be lying if I didn't say I was disappointed. I guess at the heart of this deep, heart wrenching, disappointment is the fact that I was witnessing my biggest fear...teaching out of a book. No creativity, no activities, just a teacher proposing questions from a "teacher's edition" textbook. Students copying things off a white board to study for a test, which will also come from a book. "There's no time to make my own tests." "There's too may students." These are but a few of the comments I have heard since I met my cooperating teacher last week. I am not trying to be judgmental here. I understand that she may be struggling with over-sized classes and lack of time, but really, is there no room for some creativity within this curriculum? I saw many kids who were excited to answer questions, but I saw just as many yawning alongside me.

I guess I hoped that even if I worked in a school that required me to follow a curriculum with a text book that I would find some way out of it. At least find a way to make it more fun. Interestingly enough, we just encountered a case study situation like this in one of our texts for Practicum. A teacher was required to follow a strict curriculum and she wanted to introduce more diverse texts. The school required her to teach these specific authors. The question was what does she do now. My answer was: this is my worst fear. My professor suggested incorporating the texts the teacher wanted to use with the required ones. Look at the differences, make it relevant to students. Makes sense. But that was high school...

We'll see what the next three weeks holds for me. This is only day one and I will remain optimistic that I will find more positives than negatives in the days to come. In the meantime, I ponder (one of the vocabulary words on the whiteboard today) what I will teach these students in week three, and how I will make it engaging and fun to learn out of a textbook. Challenge accepted!

The Heart of a Procrastinator

Hi, my name is Michele and I'm a procrastinator. No, really, I am the worst procrastinator, I am pretty sure if you look up the definition of "procrastinator," my picture would be there. Myy friend said something to me yesterday that made me reflect on my problem.  I was telling her that despite my best efforts, I chose to clean the house Thursday night rather than write my paper. She said, "you'll get it done, you work best under pressure." Now let me preface my response by saying, she truly understands me because we are kindred spirits where this is concerned, so she totally gets where I am. I thought about her statement and realized that she was right, I do my best work under pressure, and despite my determination this semester to become a reformed procrastinator, I can't seem to do it. What does this have to do with my journey, you ask?

Well, I wonder how this will affect me as a teacher. Real question. Will this help or hurt me? I know I have the ability to get a rather large amount of work done in a short amount of time, but will I be able to? I have my concerns. Will I be building all my units for the year the week before school starts or will I be so excited that I will start at the beginning of the summer? Will I even be able to start at the beginning of the summer? See, although I am a procrastinator, I think ahead way too much. For example, this paper I have been putting off...I think about it constantly. I ponder ideas, thoughts, and quotes I may use. Perhaps this is why procrastination works well for me, because although I am not physically completing the task, I put a lot of thought into it.

This blog post is a form of procrastination. I should be reading right now, maybe even writing my paper, but as I thought about all I had to do, I decided to blog about my problem. Blogging helps me get my thoughts in order. It has truly been the best form of writing for me and maybe will even help me with this paper I need to write.

And so,  I will end here and try to get back to my endless amounts of reading. The paper will be done by tomorrow night, I assure you. I look forward to feedback on this. I am honestly curious as to what others think, especially teachers.

A New Semester Begins...

So, it's the first semester of my Senior year. I am in awe that I have made it this far. Sometimes, I want to pinch myself to make sure it's real. Although it's only been a few months, I feel like it's been forever since I've been talking about my hopes and fears for my future classroom. I filled my summer with reading all the books I wanted to read but didn't have time to and certainly never got through my list.

The semester started out with poetry. POETRY. I am an English major and I don't like poetry. GASP! There I've said it. This week, after we had to actually write a poem, the first chapter of our reading was about poetry. Imagine my delight. Something changed in me though. Last semester I rekindled my love for writing, as I cut off the scar tissue past teachers had left on my ability to write, this semester I believe I will reunite with poetry. See, I used to love poetry when I was in high school. I wasn't always a hater, but then there were those teachers/professors/authors who taught me poetry was hard, and a mystery, and had one right way to be interpreted. Well that was it. What I loved about poetry was that I could read it and allow it to make me feel, how it made me feel. I could pick out what resonated in me. Instead, I found myself trying to get into the author's, or my teacher's, head and see what they were thinking so I could write an interpretation and get an "A." I rebelled against poetry and decided it wasn't what I thought it was, so we broke up.

In the reading this week, Lois Christensen uses poetry in her classroom to build classroom community, get her students to express themselves, and their views on the world. As I read through her strategies and samples of her students poems, I remembered what I once loved about poetry. Christensen allows her students the opportunity to build connections with each other and the world around them through their poems. She scaffolds the writing process for them so that they can confidently come up with a great piece. She starts with asking them to look at a sample poem, then pick out some themes. How is the poem set up/grouped? Look for repetition, lists. Then she asks the students to make their own lists, memories, feelings. From there students put together a poem using a similar format as their model. This is what our Professor did with us this week, and even better, she did it with us.

If there is one thing I have learned in the education program, it's how to model. My professors have been amazing with that and I have seen how beneficial it has been for me as a learner. I appreciate the fact that she too became vulnerable as she read her poem out loud to all of us. Let's face it, poetry, any poetry, is personal and can be tough to share. Christensen did the same with her classes and although I have not physically seen her classes, I can see from her students work that they were comfortable and they had a strong sense of community.

And so, I am starting the semester already rekindling a lost love. I am excited for what this semester will bring. I am pretty sure I'll be teaching one of these poems this semester and I will somehow remind students of the freedom writing, in any form, can bring.

Cooperative Learning and Group Work

So, there is apparently this misconception that Cooperative Learning and Group Work are the same. This is not the case. Our class on Tuesday was devoted to the concept of Cooperative Learning. I really enjoyed this class because we not only learned the concept but we were able to experience Cooperative Learning and it's benefits. I learn by doing, so for me this was a perfect class.

Initially, I was nervous about the squares project because we did something similar in 406 with triangles and our group didn't get very far. I think what helped this time around was the fact that we had roles, so everyone had a job, and Dr. Horowitz gave us a couple of examples in the beginning. I would venture to say that what we did in 406 was group work. 

Common problems with group work that could be solved by using cooperative learning. Group work often tends to shift to a dynamic where one or two people do most of the work, either by choice or default. Using Cooperative Learning ensures that all students are involved in the learning process. Group work does not foster an environment where students can build on social skills. Some students may end up in groups either with all or none of their friends. This could lead to segregation in classes. I liked that Cooperative Learning had a method for everything. Group work seems to be, "let's just get together with whoever we're sitting with and work on this..." Cooperative Learning is thoughtful an deliberate.

I was also glad that Dr. Horwitz didn't fluff it over by just telling us how useful Cooperative Learning can be; she also made sure to let us know how much work went into preparing to run a lesson in this way. I think the good thing as we go further in our professional careers will be that we build these lessons and can hang on to them. Our handy, dandy toolbox, right?

There are so many benefits to Cooperative Learning that I struggle to list them all, yet I was able to find this image. It does a nice job of mentioning so many of the positives of Cooperative Learning.

Observation

Alas, I get around to posting my classroom observation. I spent a day in Mrs. G.'s purple room observing her classes.  I quickly realized what a great teacher she is and that she has built an excellent rapport with her students. I was really happy that I was able to do these observations because I was able to make a more informed opinion of my cooperating teacher and the students in CFHS. I was also able to view a technique that I was fairly inexperienced with, which I now see as useful for my future classroom.

For the purpose of this blog I am going to talk about my experience observing Mrs. G.'s 12th Grade AP English class. On the day of my observation the students were doing socratic seminars using the book they were just finishing, The Stranger.  Now, let me say that I have never actually taken part in a socratic seminar. I had a brief tutorial of what they were in 406 and witnessed a poorly executed one in an observation at another school last semester, but that is the extent of my interaction with socratic seminars. I will say that if I never had known anything about them, I would have learned a lot from watching these students. I was truly impressed by the way they all arranged their desks in a large circle around a smaller circle of students. Each student in the larger circle had a student within the smaller circle that they were to be focused on to offer constructive criticism once the seminar ended. As the seminar began, each student introduced themselves to one another and began to discuss what topic they would be using for the purpose of their seminar. Once they came to an agreement they began as one student posed the initial question. They bounced ideas off of one another and backed up their claims by citing evidence from the text. They respectfully agreed or disagreed, again using textual evidence. At one point, I glanced at the board and realized that one of their objectives for this class was aligned with the CCSS to cite textual evidence. Objective achieved. These kids did a great job and I learned a little something about the symbolism of light and dark in The Stranger. Once the students were finished, the outer circle offered constructive criticism. They did a nice job of using, what Professor Kraus would call, the complement sandwich. I picked up on a few things in my observation that I would have praised or critiqued that they brought up to various students in the seminar. It was good. I was impressed.

So what does this mean for me? Well, the purpose of being able to observe these classes is to take away something for my future endeavors as an educator. One of my professors may refer to this as "the golden nugget." First, these students helped to dispel the myth that CF students are not as engaged or motivated learners as other students. While I have been here for three months now and seen this already, I needed to throw that out there just one more time. What I witnessed in this observation, I've seen college students struggle doing. Mrs. G. also gets much deserved credit for this because as she said, it takes a lot of time and effort to get them to this point. She holds her students to high standards and knows that they are able to achieve them. Perhaps this is one golden nugget - see the potential in ALL my students, do not make preconceived notions. I realize you may be saying, well this is an AP class. Yes, I've heard that as I've told this story to people. My response is this, Mrs. G. is also working towards getting her inclusion class to do Socratic Seminars. The work that her inclusion class does is similar to her AP class, they are just behind. So, her inclusion class is just starting The Stranger, as her AP class is finishing it. Potential for ALL.

Second: I realized how useful Socratic Seminars can be. As I said, I haven't had much experience with them, but I loved watching the students engage with the text. It was a useful Summative Assessment. It was refreshing to see students engage in a small group about a piece of literature. The conversation flowed so smoothly. I am glad Mrs. G. told me how much work went into getting them to this point. I'm sure there was quite a bit of scaffolding over the course of the year to bring them here, but so worth it. These students are leaving with a tool for their college tool box. Even if they never use a Socratic Seminar in college, they have a great grasp on engaging with the text and each other. I know my thoughts flow best when I'm able to talk them out and bounce ideas off of my peers and this method totally allows for that.

I found this video of a teacher incorporating Socratic Seminars in her 9th grade class. It's a great example of how Socratic Seminars work, and how Common Core is related to them.

https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/bring-socratic-seminars-to-the-classroom