Experiment #3: Getting Through to a Difficult Student

            I don’t mean to brag, but my class this year is amazing. I was lucky enough to choose an hour that has a high percentage of higher level students. On top of that, they are a pretty quiet and hard working class. Because they are comfortable in the classroom and with each other, they have come out of their shells. But for the most part they are awesome. About a month ago they added a new student to this class. I’ll call him Jacob. I feel bad, but I kind of dreaded adding him to our class because we already had a flow going in the class. Putting that aside, of course we welcomed him to our class.

            It did not take long for his work habit to become apparent to me and my mentor teacher. He enjoys our daily ten minutes of reading at the beginning of class, but he has issues putting his book away to focus on the daily assignments. And other days, once the reading time is over, he just lays his head down and does not work. It takes poking and prodding on my part to get him to do any work. Which is hard when there are a couple other students in the room who actually try to work and need my help.

            Another issue is that he very rarely brings a writing utensil to class. So, when he sits there for ten minutes not working, his excuse is that he does not have a pencil. Why didn’t you ask for one when we started working?! Fortunately, as of last week, he at least asks for a pencil when we start working. My mentor teacher had a talk with him about the fact that I cannot just stand around and push him along in doing his work. She mentioned that I will not always be there to make sure he is doing his work.

            He has been working very well on his own this week. He has to still be asked to get his work out, but once we start working, he is usually on pace with rest of the class. And because I have been the one constantly talking with him, he feels comfortable asking me for help when he has a question. Last week he was complaining about how the books he wants to read in class is always missing when he wants to read them. So I reminded him that if he found a book he enjoyed, he could always check it from our classroom library. I am hoping that if we stimulate his enjoyment of reading in class, hopefully he will become more engaged during class. “One thing is especially clear from research on readers is that those who achieve on tests at a high level are also those who read a lot, and those who don’t spend much time reading do not do well” (Bomer, 2011, pp 81). If I can help him be interested in our class work, then he will pass the class and hopefully do well on his state testing. I know he has it in him because I saw him work today, he just needs to keep up the hard working attitude during every class. 

KATE Conference Reflection

Walking into the Marriot on Thursday was kind of intimidating as a student teacher. This conference would be full of English teachers with a lot more experience than I have. I know I will gain experience in the future, but right now I felt sort of out of place. Fortunately, checking in and sitting down for breakfast with my fellow student teachers calmed my nerves. Also, seeing many teachers I work with at North High School seemed to validate that I belonged there.

The first breakout session I attended was Mary Harrison’s, one of my fellow student teachers. She presented on how authors inspire empathy in their audience. I have seen this presentation in its infancy this summer during a class, but it was awesome to see how the other teachers in the session enjoyed recalling the themes of the book used, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. The audience of this session did not care that Mary was a student teacher; they loved her idea about having the students try to guess who the narrator of the book is. Hearing this brightened my spirit about attending this conference.

Of the two days, the session I most enjoyed attending was the Music and Language Arts session presented by two first year teachers. They presented different lessons they used with their students that incorporated music in the language arts classroom. Out of the session, I learned about defining and describing mood while listening to a song. For my unit plan, I am using Into the Woods and “The Most Dangerous Game” as reading material and I heard a teacher say that the Jaw’s Theme song these two presenters modeled would be great for “The Most Dangerous Game.” I am going to incorporate this example into my plan.

When the schedule of sessions was released, I was happy to see that among my colleagues who were presenting, many of my teachers I worked with at North were presenting and even co-presidents of the conference. From that, I knew I would not have any issues finding sessions I would like to attend. But because of that, it was hard to choose because I wanted to support all of my colleagues. It was also fun to converse with other teachers across Kansas and find out how far they traveled to attend the conference. At one time early in the day on Thursday, someone was talking to a group of us and asked what schools we worked at, and we got excited because we looked like teachers instead of student teachers.

I really enjoyed attending this conference. Attending both days was a little much, but I received a large amount of resources and ideas to take back and incorporate into my lessons. 

Genre Reflection 1

Dear Ms. LaFever,

            Can you believe it has been five years since I was last in your class?! I can’t. Sometimes I miss high school because it was simple; all I had to do is show up to my classes and do the work. I remember how you used to interrupt my easy daily routine by challenging me in your class. I could not just come to your class and breeze by each semester; you always made us think about everything we did and talked about. You are the main reason why I decided I wanted to become a teacher. I want to become just like you: challenge my students and teach them valuable lessons (not just the state standards) while still respecting them and treating them like adults instead of just pesky juniors and seniors. And if we ever had any problems or just needed someone to talk to, you were always there for us. And what was great was that you not only listened to us, but always had great advice or resources to give us to help.

            I did not go into this thinking it would be easy; I knew it would be challenging. When I first entered college, I thought I wanted to major in just English. Boy, am I glad I changed my mind. Yes, I love reading literature and books and whatever else, but I am not the best at analyzing it or writing big papers. I love listening to others analyze and discuss a text, but I cannot contribute. And who is to say I would get a job after graduation?! But with English education, I can take what I know and have learned about literature, grammar, and any other skills having to do with reading and writing and share them with students. I can put all of my schooling into helping others learn, improve their lives, and prepare them for adulthood.

            I wish you were still here so I could tell you about me teaching my first mini unit. I have a great class; they are well behaved and actually do not mind being in class. Of course there are a couple who need more attention and work put into them, but they are still great kids (I started the semester out with 30 kids, but now I am down to about 25. Thank goodness!) I taught my first class yesterday. Yes, I taught the whole 45 minute class! As you would probably guess, my voice was not loud enough. You know that because I was never much of a talker and never developed a loud, annoying voice! But that is what I am working on today: talking louder so my whole class can hear me and follow along. I also need to slow down. I know this is an issue that I have to work on. I am just scared that I will not be able to get everything in in a day that I want. But I have to remember that if I rush, yes I might get covered what I need to, but how much of it will the students understand and remember? Not much. So I need to slow down and take my time and not rush the students, and give them enough time to absorb what I am saying.

            Yesterday I had my first issue; it was not that big of a deal, but it was a problem during my lesson. I was pairing students up to partner read and one boy did not like the partner I choose for him so he would not get out of his chair and move over and sit beside her. Thankfully, my mentor teacher was there to help me. We could not get him to move so they both read by themselves. If my mentor teacher was the one teaching, he might have still put up a fight, but he probably would have moved eventually. It’s hard to start teaching when the students are used to you being a teacher aid-type person in the classroom, not the one giving direct instructions. To insure he receives the same reading experience as the other students, next time they pair up, he will not be put with that girl.

            I really miss you and I hope everything is going great up in heaven. Just so you know, you have tons of students down here missing you. Just imagine all those juniors and seniors at Kapaun who have not gotten to be taught by you. They are really missing out!

Sincerely,

Megan Rodriguez

Experiment #2: Individual Reading

My next experiment is to figure out a way to promote individual reading within the classroom. How can I use my mentor teacher’s class library to promote individual? For this week, we read in the Bomer text about how to enhance student’s reading outside of school’s required text. And that has always been the ultimate question among English teachers. At my placement, the school has, in the past, started a reading incentive program to encourage students to read outside of school. In past years, they have not promoted it that well. This year is different; they have changed the name to “The Millionaires Club” and their slogan is “Who wants to be a millionaire?!” To become a millionaire, students must read 25 books during the year and that adds up to approximately reading 1,000,000 words. At the beginning of the year, they brought in a radio d.j. from the radio station 93.9 and last week the owners of Jimmie’s Diner came and donated $5,000 to give away as prizes. So they are emphasizing independent reading more this year.

            In my Mentor teacher’s classroom, she has two full bookcases of books for her students to use during bell work and to check out and take with them. Some students take advantage of the reading time every day and are reading lots of books, but others dread having to read for a set number of minutes each day. But how are we supposed to expose them to reading for fun if we do not give them time where we can almost “force” them to attempt to read? According to Bomer, “…those who have access to books they would like to read are the ones who read a lot, and they are the ones who do well on tests and other measures of reading success. Moreover, when teachers devote class time to reading, students are more likely to read outside class as well because they get interested in their book” (Bomer 2011 pp. 81). But the question is how do we get the others who do not enjoy reading interested in reading when they are given the chance to read?

            According to Bomer, the goal is to have students read and either while they read or after they read, go back and analyze what they read. That is how they are to get knowledge out of what they read. And a great way of individually analyzing what a student is independently reading is, “during this reading time, the teacher confers…reading conferences are powerful opportunities to expand the thinking that students are able to do…” (Bomer, 2011, pp. 82). I can see how I can integrate these reading conferences into the daily routine at my placement. My goal would be to choose two or three students a day to conference with. I would choose students who I know have been consistently reading the same book and would be able to answer my questions. And then the goal for the future would be to build up the importance of these conferences to encourage other students to read the same book each day.

            I really want to try this in my placement. If the students are really enjoying a book enough to continue and finish reading it, I personally think they would love to talk about it with someone who would be interested in hearing what they say. 

Experiment Number 1: Sentence Starters

Each school year comes with its own set of challenges. And even more, each individual class has in its own issues. A teacher, a professional seasoned with many years of experience, will encounter different challenges every year whether it concerns students or colleagues. This semester, my Mentor Teacher and I are working on a new technique to get our students to learn to write in complete sentences. When the students are answering and writing down questions from the board, we give the students a sentence starter to get them started in the right direction when answering. For example, if the question is ‘What is the name of Johnny’s friend?’, the sentence starter we provide is ‘Johnny’s friend’s name is…’ We have been in school for almost three weeks so we are still in the experimental stage, so the students are getting used to having to answer in complete sentences. We still remind them about the sentence starts every day and some are having a hard time remembering to look on the board for the starters.

          

  A question I have been wondering is whether they will take this skill they are learning in our classroom and use it in their other classes. How do we insure they do beyond mentioning that this skill can be used in their other classes? We could talk to the other teachers, like the history and science teachers, to see if they are teaching that same skill. But I would personally feel wrong about telling another teacher what to do in their classroom. It is one thing to get advice when a colleague is asking for some or looking for new ideas, but it’s another when a colleague tells you what to do.

           

  When these sentence starters are used, we are conducting a whole class discussion on a story we just read. The students are asked the question and write their answers using the starters and answer individually. Once everyone has something written down, we ask the class what the answer is. In Building Adolescent Literacy in Today’s English Classrooms, Bomer points out that whole class discussion is very popular in the classroom. This structure is not the best when it comes to developing good writers and readers. “Whole class teaching is the location for demonstrations of and mentoring into things writers and readers do that students have not yet had enough access” (Bomer,2011, pp. 12). Whole class discussions should not be the structured used every day.

            When we first started using these sentence starters, the students asked why they had to use them. It kind of concerned us because these are 7^th graders so does that mean they were not learning to write complete sentences last year? I am not sure how far elementary teachers go in teaching writing, but I would think it would make sense to emphasize complete sentence writing from the very beginning when they are learning to write. I hope that is what happens. 

Goals for 2015

Each semester has its own set of challenges and issues. First semester, Core 1, was going into a school with no experience of what to expect. Core 2, we had some experience, but going into another new school. This semester's challenge is to create our own Unit Plan. That is just giving me anxiety thinking about it. To kill this anxiety, I am setting some goals for myself.

1. Use my time wisely. Ms. Rodriguez, get off of Netflix and go to bed!!! You need your beauty sleep.

2. Plan ahead. That is usually not an issue for me. The issue is that I make plans, but usually never follow through with these plans. Something else always becomes more important.

3. Communicate! I have problems with communicating what I need. I like to get frustrated with people who aren't reading my mind and don't do what I want. 

Setting these goals for myself will insure I survive not only this semester and next, but make my first year of teaching next year a less stressful and more enjoyable.


UPDATE: 

Ms. Liebst gave me a great idea for another goal I would like to set for myself.

4. Experiment with Lesson Planning. For me, trying new things are scary. But this is my experimental year; messing up is okay and expected. I should use this year to find my groove and try new things when I have the support of my Mentor Teacher so she can help me work through the kinks.