Reflections on Week 2

First and foremost, I would like to announce to the world that I have indeed survived my first week of student teaching after two failed lessons, one bomb threat, one portion of cafeteria food, and one affirmation from one student.

Sheesh.

Secondly, I have come to several realizations throughout the week, which are shared below. None of these things are particularly new or novel; most are mundane, really, but are important or perhaps operate differently in practice than they did (do?) in my inexperienced mind. Some are very broad, as most of the observations I have made thus far are big ideas that need to be reinforced frequently for me rather than small secrets to a specific success.

1. You can only prepare so much.

Or, in other words, flexibility is key, because sometimes things just go wrong, despite your (my) best efforts.

Like Wednesday, for example.

I purchased an alarm clock in order to hedge my bets against my old, crappy cell phone's alarm, fearing that it wouldn't go off for whatever reason. Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that this alarm clock would decide to switch to standard time without my permission, so when I woke up on Wednesday at 6:15, I assumed I had plenty of time to get ready.

Wrong. I was just dressed and showered when the clock read 7:40, so I left frazzled and breakfastless (and also luncless, since I didn't have time to pack that either). I arrived at around 8:20 with just five minutes until students began to arrive and start in on my complicated, but engaging (I hoped!) activity.

To help students broaden their definition of what science fiction is and what it achieves, I pilfered an activity from the internet (yes, I have already sunk to that level...I simply do not have time or energy to design elaborate lessons as I have in the past for classes!) that required students to read "Harrison Bergeron" and then work in groups to answer a set of questions...all while dealing with their randomly assigned "handicaps" (i.e. only talking in a whisper, madly gesticulating, needing to lie on the floor while working, etc.). While this is a great illustration of the issues in HB, the students just did NOT get it. They were enthusiastic about their various handicaps - a particular favorite was a version of Tourette's where they were required to say "I love English!" loudly every five minutes - but they could not answer the questions.

They just couldn't. I tried my best and explained and explained and explained and encouraged and explained til I was ready to drop, but the material was simply too difficult.

Then, in my last period class, the school, perhaps in conjunction with some giant, Cosmic joke at my inability to get done what I wanted to accomplish, went into lockdown due to a bomb threat and evacuated the school, with me locked out of the school unable to get my purse, lesson plans, and materials at the end of the day.

Which leads me to my second point...

2. My expectations were way too high.

At the beginning of the week, I was completely misjudging the students' ability levels and critical thinking skills, as evidenced by the ultimate failure of the Harrison Bergeron activity on Wednesday. Really, the questions required in the activity were more appropriate for 11th or 12th grade students, or needed plenty of explanation and scaffolding.

This isn't to say, of course, that I discovered that my students are stupid or something to that effect, but I certainly was asking too much of them. Since then, I developed a sort of three-pronged attack to assist my students in making the connections I would like them to:

1. What do you think [quote, character's action, section of dialogue, question, theory, etc.] means?
2. Why do you have that opinion of X position?
3. How does it apply to the text?

For example, I had much greater success in getting the students to think outside of the text as a standalone study material by prompting them with something like a quote (not from the text) or an issue and then allowing them to respond to it by following that loose formula. That way, they are given clear guidelines and a progression as to how to achieve the marriage between their life and the book they are reading, which is my ultimate goal.

3. Classroom management isn't as hard as I thought.

Naturally, I have a long way to go in developing my own style and I don't have all the answers, but I discovered that if I constantly reminded myself that I wanted all my students to be successful in my classroom, my methods changed. At the beginning of the week, I found myself calling students out and raising my voice more, but towards the middle of the week I began having conversations with "problem" students in the hallway while the rest of the class was engaged in another activity.

I forced the students to work through their issues with me while attempting to compromise, instead of enforcing punitive action. For example, one particular student in my Honors class simply refuses to do the work (for what reason I am still unsure, although I am planning to pay careful attention to his work in the next week or so), but after speaking with him in the hall, found that he had simply had a really bad day and was in a sour mood. We concluded that it didn't excuse his disruptive behavior and that he would make an extra effort to leave his problems at the door, even though we both agreed that that isn't an easy thing to do.

However, this method does NOT work for my last period class, which is exceptionally talkative and seems to have lower motivation overall. I can't pinpoint a single student to correct because 2/3rds of them are busy doing the exact opposite of whatever it is that I request. Although I certainly plan to have a heart-to-heart with them on Monday, I am not exactly sure how I will proceed (blog topic for next week, perhaps?). At any rate, I am pleased that I have not had to resort to disciplining students with detentions as of yet (although I am not totally in opposition with issuing detentions, I think that there are more productive ways to find compromises for student behavior before resorting to it) but I'm not discounting it entirely.

There you have it. Believe it or not, this is the appended version of week one...stay tuned for more!

Reflections on Week One

All in all, I would consider the week to have been productive, successful, and pleasant. I am really looking forward to taking over tomorrow and feel prepared (for the most part) to take over tomorrow. The students have clearly been getting antsy with the current material and are probably ready and eager to start something new.

At the beginning of the week, my goals for the week were to interact with the students more, meet more of the faculty, continue planning, and to take a more active role in front of the classroom so that the students can know (at least a little bit) what to expect from me. Although the week certainly wasn't devoid of its frustrations and challenges, all of those goals have been met in some way or another.

I was definitely more involved with the students this week than I have been in my previous visits, which has, of course, led me to think that this may be one of the biggest difficulties that I have to work with in the next few weeks. Figuring out the line between professionalism, accessibility, and my own personality is proving to me no easy task. Of course, I don't want to be to casual and buddy-buddy with the kids, but I also want to be friendly. Also, in general, I'm not a very upbeat or bubbly person, so joking with students without seeming cruel is a challenge.

This ties in to my discipline strategy as well; for Mr. "Smith", his discipline strategy is very rigid and focused on student behavior (i.e. each student should behave because they ought to) and disciplining flagrantly disruptive behavior, where I am much more concerned with the overall learning environment and student participation (i.e. behavior problems affect the group and therefore it is the benefit of the group that any individual should "behave").

For example, I chose to quietly reprimand a student, "Kara", during the very rambunctious last period class. I was following Mr. Smith's lesson for the day and the students were reading a short story aloud and then taking a quiz. I sat behind Mr. Smith's desk (as he always does) and followed along. Each time I looked up from the book, Kara, in the second row, was looking directly at me, or at another student, or at the ceiling, or...you get the idea. I finally had it, after she had been poking a male student in the back for a couple minutes and being a distraction in general, and hissed at her to "stop flirting!". I got the reaction I wanted and she followed along from then on out, but I have to wonder if I could have handled it differently or better.

I also had the chance to meet several more faculty members this week, and opportunity that I jumped on with gusto. I have been working with the fall play and, because of this interaction, am now on a first-name basis with the two faculty members in charge (*puts on sunglasses*...yeaaaahh!). I'm very excited to have more individuals that I can commiserate with (if nothing else) and also to bond with, share experiences with, and to speak with for second opinions. I hope that I can continue building these relationships, as I can already see that they will be key to me maintaining my sanity through the next ten weeks.

Even though I've been planning for the past several weeks, and heavily in the last week, I am still feeling kind of panicked and unprepared. Logically, I know that part of this is because I am young, new, and inexperienced, but it is also a result of my interactions with Mr. Smith. I haven't had the opportunity to review any lesson plans that he has used for the two novels I'll be teaching...because he doesn't have anything to show me. He has a well-worn way of doing things, and therefore has no need to put anything on paper. However, that has sent me into a blind panic since I have to do everything from scratch: the novels themselves, activities, and auxiliary materials. Coupled with the fact that I had worked on a unit plan for the term paper I'll be teaching, only to run into scheduling errors with the lab and have to re-do everything, I'm left feeling pretty freaked out. However, that is a very real-world issue that teachers must deal with from time to time, so I suppose at some point I'll look back on it as a learning experience and appreciate it.

Lastly, I was able to take a more active role in the classroom this week than before. Since I'll be picking up the entire class load the first week, I'll admit that I wasn't chomping at the bit to start a week early. I took the general classes on Thursday and was pleased, overall, with how things went. I think the students are happy to have seen me do something aside from chat with them from time to time and I had a very positive experience with one class that was a good ego boost for me: my 6th hour class only has seven students due to a weird scheduling glitch, and I was thrilled at how well the students behaved and saw that they were engaged and interested as they read the short story and their quiz scores reflected it. I stopped on occasion to ask questions and made the students reflect and asked questions, and it payed off - their class average was 112%! The last period, which I mentioned before, was more of a handful but certainly not a complete failure (I think their average was a 90-95%). Because of the teaching experience, I have a better idea of how I will tailor my lesson and my delivery to classes tomorrow.

My apologies if this post seemed a bit sterile; I should certainly think that my content will be a little more dramatic in the coming weeks!