Reflections on Week 8

After a whirlwind trip across the four corners of the state to visit family and celebrate Thanksgiving, it's finally time to settle back into routine.

As for this past week, the reflection may be a tad short since the week was shorter and went by so quickly. However, I still have several observations, some that revisit familiar themes and some that are new. New stuff first!

1. For simplicity's sake.

On Wednesday, I committed a heinous crime that would make every professor in the English Education department roll in their future graves: I showed a movie in class to eat up some time.

Ghastly, I know. However, I decided that it was the best compromise possible, given the situation. With term papers due on Wednesday, I knew that the class would fall roughly into thirds:

1/3 of students will have papers printed, stapled, and ready to go at the beginning of class.

1/3 of students will need time to log onto computers, print, and staple final drafts.

1/3 of students will need the entire class period to finish their papers, print, and staple.

So! What to do? Many of the students who needed to print or needed the class time to work do not have computers at home, and therefore taking it as a late grade on Monday seems unfair. But I couldn't start a grammar unit leaving 2/3rds of the class behind, and I certainly don't trust the rest of them to catch up on their own, so it left me with few options. Here were my options:

1. Begin grammar lesson with the 1/3 of class ready to do so. Result: 1/3 of class receives grammar lesson, forgets it over break. 2/3 of class does not complete reading and homework to catch up to 1/3 of class and is behind at the outset of the unit.

2. Hold class in the computer lab to allow the 2/3rds of the class to finish up their papers. However, this punishes the students who were prepared by making them do homework (which no one had right before break) and then have to deal with them distracting the kids who need to work.

3. Have a movie day and begin grammar lesson the following Monday. All students start together and don't miss a period of instruction; no one is responsible for teaching themselves (especially since I have found from experience that this doesn't work too well).

Granted, I could have had the students who watched the movie (right across the hall from the computer lab - I drifted back and forth frequently to make guard against shenanigans) do some sort of analytical work for extra credit, but I was already up to my eyeballs in grading and didn't need anything extra at the moment.

Yes, it was a selfish decision, and no, my students' educational experiences were not at the top of my priority list. However, I am willing to admit it and I would guess that there are lots of people with similar experiences and motives. I am not Super Teacher yet; I haven't worked out all of the kinks with timing and due dates, so I resorted to a sweepingly rejected activity.

In all honesty, I wish I would have had the students who were watching the movie do something more productive, but realistically speaking, watching the movie was the best option I had at the time.

2. Discipline Issues

Things finally seem to be shaping up in terms of discipline, although I still have many moments where I feel as if I'm not in control. The students finally seem to be taking me seriously; it's just taken eight weeks to do it! Although I still have individual students who consistently give me trouble and a few that surprise me occasionally, the climate in the classroom is finally changing in my favor.

I think it largely has to do with the students finally getting comfortable with me as a teacher and as a person that they must deal with on a daily basis. I no longer feel as though the students are trying to get to me just to test the limits. Since they haven't been able to make me cry in class thus far, I think they are finally easing off the "let's make Mrs. Johnson miserable for making us work" game.

Naturally, I have some exceptions to the rule - like the two boys that arbitrarily changed term paper topics the day it was due and then complained that they hadn't had enough time to finish the paper - but by and large it's less painful day to day.

So there you have it. A short reflection for a short week.

Reflections on Week 7

On good things and bad things.

So! To begin, this week was much better than the past few weeks, thank heavens. Had it not improved, I might have lost my mind. The "bad stuff" has been so stressful and so...frequent...that it had begun to feel like a nearly physical weight. I would come back from school no earlier than 6 p.m., grade and plan, and then collapse into bed hating myself knowing I'd have to do it all over.

This may seem exaggerated, but it's truly the way I've been feeling. I toss and turn at night, stressing at what I can do differently to reach more students more effectively; I lose sleep knowing that most of my classes actively dislike me; I feel sick every morning knowing that half my classes are going to continually disrespect me to my face and, on top of it, not learn a stinkin' thing.

So. My frustration may have reached a maximum level, so for the sake of me completing my student teaching I am glad that I didn't push it any farther this week. However, the "bad" that happened this week made me come to a certain realization (perhaps that I already knew, in a way). Here it is:

1. My general students use that label as a crutch.

I think a vast amount of the differences I see between my Honors students and my General students comes from this tiny sentence. I have been consistently amazed/overwhelmed/frustrated by the motivation and effort that the H students display while the experience with my G's are the complete opposite. My H students work hard and are motivated to do the work I ask of them.

My General students are like anti-matter; not only do they not do the work, they will actively try anything to make time in class as unproductive as possible. (This corresponds to their attitudes as well.)

For example, while my Honors kids have almost all A's and B's, roughly 3/4 of all of my General classes are failing.

I have approached several different individuals to discuss the issue, and I get advice like this:

"Make sure they have time in class to do work."

"Do they know how they're being evaluated?"

"Don't give them too much work outside of class."

"Structure the class time very specifically so that students are on task."

This, of course, is frustrating when I have given one homework assignment in the six weeks I have taken over the classroom. I remind them nearly every day that I grade them (daily, for participation) based on their work ethic and attentiveness. I rarely give outside work, unless they are unable to complete something in class. I give them self assessments daily where they are required to write down a goal for the day to work towards, and their participation points will correspond to the effort towards that goal.

Even after following this advice, I still see stupid stuff like this:

Last Friday, I gave the Generals an assignment as they wrapped up their research for their term papers. They were required to write down their topic, thesis statement, three sources, and a quote from each source that they would include in their paper. This assignment was a quick, small point value "check" to ensure that students were on-track.

Because none of them finished on Friday, I extended the deadline to Monday...where roughly half of my students turned in the assignment.

Or, like yesterday...when I passed out the assignment sheet initially, in large, bold letters it said when the rough draft of the paper was due. On Monday, I wrote it on the board in giant letters and reiterated every day that their rough drafts were due on Friday.

Yesterday rolls around and roughly half of every General class is unable to complete the peer review because they don't have enough of the rough draft. My favorite excuse?

"We didn't have enough time in the lab to do this stuff!"

...after they had been in the lab for two weeks.

Sigh. The problem is, these students must be responsible for their own behavior. I simply cannot be sitting next to every student at every computer to ensure that the work is getting done. I would need precisely 23 more of me in order to do that.

What baffles me most is the students' complete lack of honesty when they look at their grades; none are willing to admit that they are failing because they don't read, don't study, don't use class time wisely, and don't take activities seriously. Somehow, it's all my fault. And while I'm willing to accept responsibility, to a degree, this is getting so ridiculous that I am almost beyond caring (and while I realize that that is a very harsh statement, that is really how I feel sometimes).

On top of it, midterm grades just came out this week and, apparently, confused the living daylights out of my atomically-failing students. One girl, a petite, tiny-voiced thing who is never on task came up to me in the hall and squeaked:

"Why am I faiiiiling this class??"

"Well, how did you do on your test?"

"Bad I guess."

"Did you turn in the homework that went with the novel?"

"Well...no."

"How are you doing on participation?" (Here, the girl becomes indignant.)

"Well I'm here every day!!"

There is this unspoken consensus that simply being in class equates to them passing, or that they are not responsible for their own behaviors. These kids are so incredibly embroiled in a school culture that allows them to read short stories with half their brain turned on, immediately take a quiz over it to assess low-level comprehension, and throw it out forever. Now, since I'm asking them to do "real" work and to be accountable for their actions, they act horrified.

What the heck am I supposed to do about that?

2. Having fun...for once.

I thought I'd document an actual, real-life success story with my teaching (since those are apparently few and far between). I know that designing activities is one of my stronger points, but this activity was just too good not to share:

My Honors classes' papers are due on Monday, and I left the Works Cited page formatting until the students had gathered all their sources. So on Thursday, I developed an activity to get them involved in creating a Works Cited page without boring them to tears or requiring me to need to know how to cite everything under the sun (I don't...when I need to know how to do something, I look it up).

On Thursday, I brought a bunch of random print sources from home; a couple collections of essays, a book of poetry, some fiction, some non-fiction, a magazine, etc. In the classroom, I had already brought in my MLA Handbook and printed off several copies from the Purdue OWL website. Here were the instructions:

1. Split up into groups (3-4 students/group).

2. When released, run up to the board and grab a book/magazine/etc. (the idea of physical competition in the classroom excites them to no end).

3. Write down on sentence from that specific text.

4. Using that sentence, correctly do a parenthetical citation.

5. After that, create the works cited reference for your source (using the MLA Handbook or style guides around the room).

6. Once you have finished, one person goes up to the board and copies it all down.

7. Be the first person to have the parenthetical citation and the WC citation done correctly.

It's amazing what kids will do when an activity is prefaced with the phrase: "The winning team gets candy." Of course, the entire class got candy for participating, albeit 75% off Halloween candy (what they don't know won't hurt them).

And, honest to gosh, most of their works cited pages look great!

Reflections on Week 6

A-ha! An actual productive reflection that focuses on a specific behavior that has been problematic for me that I can actually begin to address! Praise be. It's about time.

It has been extremely frustrating for me to feel as though I have done everything I can do in the classroom, only to feel nothing but failure - especially as many of my students are struggling in terms of grades. Even though I know there are things that I can be working on, I only have one set of eyeballs and they are squarely planted in my own head, face front, so it successfully keeps me from noticing my own behavioral patterns that could be revised most of the time.

Today, though, by sheer, dumb luck, I finally found something I can actually practically work on in the coming weeks. In my last hour class, Mr. "Smith" arbitrarily decided to stay in the classroom before I took the kids down to the library to work on their research papers. I instructed them to write down their topic, their argument (thesis statement), and three quotes and respective sources so that they can prepare to begin writing next week. A conversation ensued like this:

Me: It would be a good idea to use exact quotations to avoid plagiarism, instead of paraphrasing and taking the risk.

Student: What if you buy a paper online?

Me: Don't even think that that is an option.

Student: Well, if we paid for it...

Me: ...then it is still someone else's work with YOUR name on it, which will result in complete failure of this assignment.

Student: But if we PAY for it, it's ours-

Mr. "Smith": Stop arguing.

End of discussion. Because of this adorable little exchange, I have made the very productive realization that I often enable stupid, time-wasting dialogues like this one in the classroom, when I could just neutralize the situation with a quick "that's not an acceptable option" and move on. Such a simple problem that I could have been corrected if I had only realized it weeks ago.

I think some of the issue stems from a lack of established respect from Mr. "Smith" in the transition to me as a student teacher, but a larger part of it probably comes from my desire to legitimize student opinions and to validate their concerns, but that is only productive if it comes from a desire to learn. Regardless, now I know and I can be conscious of it in the weeks to come.

The other main thing I took away from this week is maybe a little unfortunate, but a bit of reality check. I am definitely starting to personally feel the grind of student teaching and it is taking its toll. I find myself getting more and more short with my students and less and less patient. It's not that I find myself being totally bitter and angry when I'm in the classroom, but I feel as if I'm approaching a boiling point. Example:

(Students are in the lab working on research.)

Me: Hey, what are you working on?

Student: Oh, nothing...we're just talking about how weird gay people are.

Me: Really? Why do you say that?

Student: Because it's just disgusting. I mean, why would you be that way?

Me: I don't know...why are you the way you are? Does everyone have to be just like you, think just like you, and live just like you do?

Student: Mrs. J, it's just gross. How is that not gross?

Me: (inside my head, very, very loudly) Why do you have to be such an incredible bigot? Do you realize that you are the reason that people commit suicide or suffer from depression...because people like you make people who are "different" feel subhuman?! You are the reason that everyone on the planet thinks Americans are jerks.

Me: (out loud) *sigh* Thankfully, you are not doing your research paper on gay rights, so for now it's not an issue. Get back to work, please and thank you.

I had a brief discussion with another teacher about it, and I was reassured that I am not the only one to feel this way. While I don't have any strong political or religious leanings, it's still SO frustrating for me to see the kids simply taking anything they see as fact without evaluating the information. As the teacher mentioned, a lot of it can be chalked up to youthful ignorance, but it is still so maddening to be unable to "do" anything about it.

Or, even more maddening, to feel as though you can't even address those subjects for fear of offending someone or having angry parents beating down your door.

So, I guess that is something that probably won't change regardless of my students or where I teach, but it's still irritating.

No updates yet on the positive reinforcement thing. I keep forgetting to write letters home to parents. I'll keep everyone posted.

Reflections on Week 5

Apparently, my entire student teaching experience has revolved around my adventures in classroom management and discipline. Of course, this blog would make it seem as though I'm a one-trick pony or a broken record that's stuck on "detentions", but the fact of the matter is that discipline and my classroom management style are the most challenging aspects of student teaching for me, so I'll run with it. (By contrast, I feel as though I'm relatively successful at designing activities, moderating discussion, etc.) For this particular episode, I'd like to concentrate on a few specific instances that happened in the last week.

Episode 1: Throwing a glass of water to a drowning man.

On Monday, I decided that it was time to stage an intervention for my 2nd hour class. To refresh your memory, this class is a class of 22 boys, several of which are back for the second time. Needless to say, the kids had expressed no interest whatsoever is reading our novel - especially outside of class, although that would have given me a significant amount more leeway in creating activities - so eventually I consented to have them read aloud during class. However, this is painfully slow and difficult to execute, as some readers are faster than others and many students simply hate reading aloud.

Did I mention this is a NOVEL that we just finished? A novel.

So. The stage is set: a classroom full of kids that are convinced or in the processed of being convinced that they hate school and hate English, a book that interests no one, and a teacher that has fought tooth and nail for every ounce of respect she can get (from the few kids that seem willing to give it at all). Over the course of the past several weeks, the climate of the classroom has become more and more volatile, and I have felt almost helpless to stop it.

Of course, with just a glance at last weeks post, you can see that I had finally hit a wall.

I had tried every trick up my sleeve - I reiterated my expectations and requirements nearly every day; I spoke with students individually and either praised them or expressed concern (depending on the situation); I assigned detentions; I raised my voice when the volume began to get out of hand. Nothing was working.

After being completely degraded and insulted by a particular student (in front of the entire class) in this class on Friday, I was done. I have been sick with a cold that refuses to go away for two weeks; I have been consistently short on sleep - especially with late rehearsals for the play; I had no more patience.

Drastic measures were in order. So I called in the Dean of Students.

After Mr. "Scarypants" addressed the students as a whole and, essentially, threatened them within an inch of their misbehavin' lives, the whole atmosphere has changed. The students began to take things a bit more seriously and are more motivated to work in class. The group of boys who like to stir up trouble and distract the rest of the class (the ones who consistently undo every bit of work I do to create an atmosphere where learning can happen as I do it) have been momentarily quieted, and I can go about my business. Of trying to actually teach them something instead of walking away exasperated every day.

Although the choice was an effective one (at least in the short term), I do seriously regret that it had to come to that. I wish that I had been able to find a strategy that would have corrected the problem without outside help, but it was a very rational decision and a situation that I felt was beyond my control. A professor who I respect very much put it this way: "You don't make students behave. Students behave for you." So, I feel that if the cards were stacked against me and the initial respect wasn't there, I didn't have much recourse. So, yes, I certainly feel that the students have been artificially motivated to do well in my class, but it may simply be a challenge specific to student teachers, as they are all well aware that my presence in the classroom is temporary.

Now, I feel that I've been given a new start, literally and figuratively, as we begin a new unit tomorrow.

A small caveat: I do feel that things might have been different for this class had it been "my" class, where I would have been given the freedom to select the text for the unit. Granted, I realize that there is no magic text that automatically engages students and makes them excited to come to English class, but the combination of the classroom disdain for school (magnified and exploded by the very vocal "problem" students in the class...not helpful) and the totally uninteresting novel was a recipe for disaster. Crisis narrowly averted.

Episode 2: When Life Hands you Lemmings, Make Lemmings Wade

Ok, so I have a weakness for the comic strip "Pearls Before Swine"...or just silly puns. Regardless, it applies to a certain incident that happened in my 7th hour class this past Wednesday, where I issued a dozen detentions in a single class period.

Yes, a dozen.

And yes, that title is intentional.

For whatever reason, this particular class seems to have no self control whatsoever. They are LOUD. So loud. Really, like a bunch of lemmings. They have no problem obeying my instructions...if they can hear it over the conversation they are having with their neighbor. I mentioned in an earlier post the difficulty of having a class where the majority of the students are acting up, and this is a perfect example.

On Wednesday, the cold was in full force and I had nearly lost my voice by the end of the day (although I hadn't been straining myself overmuch). I told the class that I wouldn't tolerate excessive volume that day since I couldn't shout over them to get their attention; I gave them their instructions, and informed them that a class-wide warning was in effect and that any student who was found talking would be given a lunch detention. In the time it took to walk around the room, 3/4ths of the class was engaged in very unproductive discussion. So, I called out a dozen names and that was that.

Apparently, Mr. "Scarypants" was not very pleased with me for all the paperwork I was having him do, so he took it upon himself - without my knowledge - to call in all 12 of the students together to have a little chit-chat.

And, yes, things have been much better since then, thank you for asking.

Tune in next week for more exciting detention-giving tales.