Growing as a Teacher

Regie Routman in her book Reading Essentials comments that teachers work too hard. They are always tired and don’t have enough time to do it all. When I read that I thought, “I am there right now, as a student teacher!” but that is only one of the ways I have grown as a teacher. Fortunately, I am beginning to notice some positive things as well.

I am in the transition stage of teaching now, where I am teaching two lessons each day that I am with my students. With each week I am gaining confidence and learning how to manage class behavior, which I consider to be my biggest challenge. I was thrilled when my master teacher today came up to me and said, “That was much better.” What she meant was that most of my sweet second graders were actually listening to me today rather than talking to their neighbor. It’s amazing how much more they retain when they are paying attention to the lesson, but it took some tough love on my part.

I love engaging my students in fun activities, but I have learned that the activities have to make the lesson stronger, or they need to be dropped. There just isn’t enough time to teach all the things I want to teach them, so I am learning how to prioritize. Time management is becoming as important to me as class management. I have learned how to put together a lesson plan and to have a purpose for my teaching, and part of my teaching is to tell the students what I expect them to learn. I establish specific learning objectives with both formative and summative assessments and then use the results to help me plan future lessons.

I believe that a good teacher continues to learn and grow, and I am doing this daily. I have had the opportunity to attend weekly teacher workshops at my school and have been pleasantly surprised to see that experienced teachers are learning similar things that we are being taught in our university classes. These teachers are continuing to go to workshops and classes and then are expected to share what they have learned with the others in their school. They are being good stewards of the knowledge they have been given.

I see my purpose as a teacher to take two steps forward and one step back, a step I believe to be necessary in order to review and reflect on the lessons. Learning, reviewing, reflecting, and then teaching others what I have learned is how I have been growing and how I hope to continue to grow.

Constructive Feedback

I think the best definition I found to “constructive feedback” was when I googled the term and found this definition under DirectHit.com: "Feedback or advice that can be used in a positive way to make good changes and improvements as opposed to simply criticisms." I have been reading and listening to different views on how to provide feedback to my students over this past year, but when one is on the receiving end, it puts things in a clearer context.

Going into my first lesson that would be “officially observed” made me much more nervous than I anticipated, and I wondered if it would affect the lesson. Fortunately, once I started teaching, the nerves began to dissipatate and I found myself enjoying the interaction between myself and the students. The nerves went away – at least until after I was done teaching.

Taking a deep breath, I prepared to take my medicine, knowing I would be receiving “constructive feedback,” for better or for worse. I felt very vulnerable and anxious but knew I had given it my all. Fortunately, both my field observer and master teacher were intent on encouraging my growth instead of stunting it.

They both started with positive statements to put me at ease, mentioning that I had engaged the students with both the artifacts I had brought in, as well as the different levels of questions I had used to provoke their critical thinking. They liked the shared reading I had the students participate in, with its focus on learning new vocabulary words, and the turn and talk went well preceding the group discussion. The role playing and the song my students concluded with also went over well, but (here it comes) I could have used a stronger type of closure to reinforce what they had learned throughout the lesson.

Hmmm, that wasn’t so bad after all. I didn’t feel humiliated or that I had failed. In fact, when reflecting on my lesson, I could see that they were right. Yes, my students had enjoyed my lesson but, other than their comments during our discussion time, I had no official documentation of what they had learned. Perhaps I could have included an exit slip or had them write a brief paragraph, mentioning something they learned that day and a question they still had. It could have even helped me in planning my next lesson with them. Apparently I still have several things to learn, but I am on my way, having received some great “constructive feedback.”

Teaching Styles

As a student teacher, I have been given the opportunity to observe different styles of teaching. One thing I admire about K, the teacher that I have been placed with, is the relaxed attitude she has with her class. She is a seasoned veteran of teaching, which makes me wonder if K is that way as a result of her many years of teaching or if it is her natural style. I suspect it is just her personality. She doesn’t seem to let the minor things stress her, whereas some of the other teachers do just that. She starts the day relaxed and ends the day the same way, rather than stressing about what she might have done differently and burning out after only a few years of teaching.

K does stay alert to the status of her students, however. One strategy she recently implemented was to create a “most-improved” certificate on her computer. She called two of her students to come in front of the class to receive it and announced that though both had started the school year with questionable behavior, they had improved more than any of the other students in the class and were receiving a certificate in honor of their improvement. Receiving this caused much pride in these students and turned out to be a brilliant strategy in more ways than one. It showed the students that the teacher was now seeing them as a success, and the rest of the class was also aware of the new status they had been given. They received a brand new start five months into the year, also showing the class that change was possible in her class.

Another thing I continue to be amazed at is K’s class management. She told me that she will sometimes allow her class to be a little nosier than other classes at times, but what amazes me is that she can quiet them down in an instant. The other teachers that I have observed either need to keep a tighter rein on their students at all times so they won’t get too noisy, or they spend a lot of time quieting them when they do get too noisy. K’s strategy is to dim the lights when she needs to get their attention, and they immediately focus their eyes on her and go quiet.

She also holds her students accountable for their own actions, teaching them to be responsible. I recently watched a different teacher pick up her students’ things after class was over and put them back in their desk. K would never have done that. She makes them pick up their own stuff, and if they don’t do it and it gets lost, they lose it. She has a similar way with the other areas with her class, such as their daily snacks. They are responsible for bringing their own snacks, and if they forget to bring them, they do without. Likewise, this extends to their homework. They are held accountable in the same way for turning in their homework. She doesn’t call their parents. She holds them responsible for doing their own work. After I was gone for two months, doing my middle-school dyad training, I came back to find that they have adapted fairly well to this strategy and more are following through in these areas.

My Introduction to Smart Boards

Today I had the opportunity to attend an introductory workshop on smart boards and their place in a school classroom. Apparently, there are several brands of these interactive boards ranging from Promethean active boards to Dell interactive whiteboards to boards that are actually called SMART boards. They appear to be an interactive computer on a large screen in the front of the classroom. Some require a stylus pen that is calibrated to work on the board while newer ones only require one’s fingers. The board we used needed the pen, though much of our work was done via computers and laptops provided and simulated what we could do on a smart board.

I was grateful for the explanation about the mechanics of the smart boards, such as what to do when (not if) one gets lost, in addition to learning about some of the tools available. We looked at the main menu, main toolbox, formatting toolbar, tools, and browsers, among other things. An interesting tool was something called handwriting recognition. One would use the pen to write something on the screen and after being selected, it would turn what was written into typed text. This might be good for someone having poor handwriting, but I know children love to see their work published, and I wonder if this might diminish the importance of their contribution.

Because I have not worked with smart boards before, I was overwhelmed by all the knowledge I was presented with. The instructors were excellent, though, balancing their teaching so as to not move too fast for novices such as me, while at the same time trying not to bore those who have had prior experience. One example was when the class was shown how to use the tickertape function which allows text to roll across the screen as slow or as fast as one might want. This was something that drew the attention of all, but was really more for fun than as a teaching tool, and I didn't feel that it was imperative that I learn that function.

After the instructors presented us with the basics, they gave us some time to play around with them, including playing with some of the many images we could choose from. I found things from geometric shapes to musical notes to animals. I had fun duplicating and rotating some penguins and discovered the images also come with audio. Those in the room were hearing everything from lions roaring to babies crying, and I even heard a sick cough simulating a negative side effect of smoking. I appreciated the advice the instructors gave, however, to be careful not to get carried away by using too many tools. A teacher should use tools that help support the learning objectives, not the other way around.

One demonstration that made the class see the advantage of using an interactive board was an activity the instructors had us do. At the beginning of the class, they showed us a clip on the screen consisting of a list of words shown one at a time. A few words were read to us, others showed only pictures and some had text, audio and a picture. We were asked to pay attention to them, but after we were shown them, they told us that we would get back to them later and went on to teach us about the white boards.

Toward the end of the class they came back to the word list and asked us to write down all that we could remember. None of us remembered very many, but I felt the most important part of the exercise was when they showed us the statistics of past results. The majority of the words that people remember are the ones that have audio, written text, and an image. Research showed that about 10% remembered information they had heard; 35% remembered information they had seen, but 65% remembered what they had both seen and heard. Learning how important it is to combine oral and visual with text was a good motivator for us to learn all we could about smart boards.

One way to collect ideas

I was babysitting last night for a couple cute preschool girls when I happened to glance up at their fireplace mantle. There they were looking down on me – a couple of handmade paper turkeys.

As I was commenting on how cute they were to the girls, it occurred to me. I could use those turkeys! Not those exact turkeys, mind you, but the idea that they presented to me. Here were two different crafts I had never seen before that represented different skill levels. I could use them in different grades or as different choices in one grade. Looking at them, I could determine what needed to be done to remake them, but how would I remember all of the details without taking them home? I could write a detailed description of them – or I could take a picture. I only have a basic cell phone. It’s not a smart phone and doesn’t have many megapixels, but it does take pictures! I now have in my craft file two new crafts that I can pull out for my future elementary school class.

Writing Purposes

I feel as if I am learning two somewhat opposing ways to teach writing. One is to teach writing for a specific purpose in a specific way. The other is to teach writing for the reward of writing itself, a somewhat cathartic experience. Our class is reading two very different books about these views. One is by Regie Routman called Writing Essentials. The other, by Anne Lamott, is Bird by Bird. Now, I think one can tell by the titles themselves which one is conventional and which one is not. I admit, I tend to be a conservative and go more with the conventional text, such as teaching the actual skills of writing, but I have bitten my tongue and resolved to find some gems of worth in the other, and I think I have found some.

Lamott is admittedly a bit crude for my taste, but I do agree with her that good writing should be “about telling the truth” (p. 3). Sometimes I think she could use a bit more reserve in her descriptive powers, but I have to admit agreeing with her about her characters. Sometimes it is best to not save them but let them suffer the consequences. Her story about a “frazzled, defeated wife of an alcoholic man who kept passing out on the front lawn in the middle of one night,” was one such example. The wife kept dragging him in each morning before dawn to avoid the neighbor’s view until finally an old black woman from the South advised her saying, “Honey? Leave him lay where Jesus flang him” (p. 46). That was inspirational.

Voting Day

Tuesday is voting day. I was one of 11,000 King County residents informed that my ballot was inadvertently not mailed on October 19th. As I was reading the assigned chapter in Walter C. Parker’s, Social Studies in Elementary Education this week, entitled “Democratic Citizenship Education,” my missing ballot came to mind. I began to see the connection. Children must be taught about civic responsibility, or they won’t know what they are missing. This includes teaching students about deliberation, what it means to vote responsibly, but another factor that Parker introduced was getting students to care.

I liked the way one teacher took care of this. Tarry Lindquist started her school year off by having her students brainstorm all the ways they could make their classroom a “terrible place, a place where no one would want to come, a place where we could guarantee no learning would occur,” (p. 85). Following their description, she then asked them how they would feel having to be in that kind of classroom all year. Her students couldn’t wait to reverse their list to create the opposite of that classroom.

Parker addressed voting, stating that elementary teachers should take every opportunity to involve their students in the voting process, including deliberation (p. 95). It continues to boggle my mind when I think that women, like myself, only received the right to vote less than one hundred years ago. I remember as an 18-year-old being so excited that I was part of the first group of 18-year-olds that were eligible to vote for the U.S. presidency. It made me feel so grown-up and excited to be given the privilege to vote.

Unfortunately, today I often see more apathy than enthusiasm, regarding the right to vote, than I did back in 1972 when I first voted. Parker brings out that a crisis often is the catalyst that diffuses apathy. In 1972, it was the Vietnam War. This last week my mini-crisis was realizing that if I did not receive my ballot, I was not sure if I would be able to vote. Needless to say, my family received our ballots a few days ago, but what if the error hadn’t been found, or what if it was intentional and never corrected? We teachers have the great opportunity to encourage democracy when we continue to make civic responsibility one subject we will always include.

Making Research Happen

There were six of us, and we signed up to research and present how teachers would use a resource guide to teach a third grade Social Studies lesson. Each group chose a different ethnic group to research. My group chose Hispanic Americans, but where would we start? Isn’t that often the hardest task, just beginning? One of our group members suggested opening up a Google Plus Circle so we could communicate with each other during the week, so we did. We did something! Now we could bounce our ideas off of each other in an open forum from anywhere at any time. We next checked out the third grade standards and found that in third grade, students learn that a community is made up of people from different cultures. That would be our focus – Hispanic American culture.

Our next task was to understand what a resource guide was. As we began, we realized that this was harder than we first thought. Does calling a resource guide make it one? What about sites that resemble a resource guide but are not called resource guides? We decided that calling a site a resource guide does not make it one. Our professor suggested a definition that made the most sense to me. It is a one-stop shop. A resource guide might contain primary documents that have been scanned, as well as secondary documents trying to explain those primary documents. There would definitely be links to other websites, and you might also find pdfs, pictures, graphs, maps, speeches, lesson plans, films, music, or even virtual field trips. The Internet has once again made an impact as it offers almost instant information at the touch of one's fingertips.

When we chose group roles, I volunteered to focus on finding appropriate EALRS and ideas for lesson plans. It turned out finding enough information was not a problem. Resource guides are filled with them. The problem seemed to be to limit the information and filter out the wealth of information one finds. I chose to focus on Jose Alamillo’s resource guide. Alamillo was born in Mexico but is currently the Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Chicano/a Studies Program at California State University Channel Islands. He’s also an author and researcher of Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans.

With Halloween approaching, I thought a focus on holidays might be appropriate and looked for two in particular, Cinco de Mayo and El Día de los Muertos. I was not disappointed. Not only did I find examples of celebrations, I also found commentaries on the commercialization of the holidays and an interdisciplinary lesson plan about El Día de los Muertos, including studying the bones of the human skeleton to go along with the art of skull etchings made famous by Jose Guadalupe Posada.

My research helped me to see more clearly how one culture can influence other cultures. Civics EALR 1.1.1 informs us that students need to learn how communities benefit when including people from diverse cultures. How do they learn? It might begin with talk. When teachers talk about what we value, students notice. As students see teachers valuing students’ different skills and strengths, students begin to appreciate them as well. Our little group demonstrated this as we chose different roles to do our research. One person explained who Hispanic Americans were and where they came from. Another explained different things that resource guides offer. Another showed examples of different kinds of resource guides, and yet another talked about the pros and cons. Our group worked together using our different strengths and skills, and it became a better presentation.

Utilizing each others’ strengths not only lightens the load, but the whole group benefits. The Bible compares this arrangement to being members of a body and asks us to consider what would happen if we all wanted to do the same thing. What if everyone wanted to be an ear or an eye, for example? We wouldn’t accomplish much; would we? We need all the parts working together to be a whole body (I Corinthians 12:14-20). Communities work the same way. We are a stronger community if we accept what we have to offer each other and work together. That became the focus of our presentation on Hispanic American culture.

Beginning to teach

I did it! I taught my first lesson in a junior high school. I admit I was quite nervous planning it, but ironically I kept hearing the song “Courageous” on the radio leading up to the experience, and the lyrics were becoming a mantra of sorts for me. Pastor John Hall and Matthew West wrote, “We were made to be courageous. We were made to lead the way. We could be the generation that finally breaks the chains.” Music has always been the modem that inspires me, and it was working.

My assignment was to choose an appropriate book to read as an interactive read-aloud to the eighth grade English class that I am currently working in as an intern. After talking with the teacher, I learned that they were going to be entering a unit on ethics, and he suggested I pick a short story that would be about a contemporary issue involving an ethical choice teens sometimes have to make. It wasn’t easy to find a short story like that, I found out. I checked the libraries and the Internet, but it began to look as if I would not be able to find an appropriate short story in time. I finally found it, though, and the way I found it seemed as providential to me as the song “Courageous” was.

I was driving home and saw a sign advertising a garage sale that was giving all of its profits toward pancreatic cancer research. Having lost my mother to pancreatic cancer, I couldn’t resist stopping. Sure enough, while there I found a large collection of books, one of which was Taste Berries for Teens. Somehow, I knew that this was the book I was looking for and bought it. Inside I found the story “Party On!” by 15-year-old Susan Hinkle, and it was just what I had been looking for.

Meanwhile, I knew that this was the last week my local movie theater was showing the movie the song “Courageous” was based on, so I decided to further prepare myself and went to see the movie. Sure enough, I found it even more inspiring than the song alone and knew I was ready. I wrote my lesson plan, organized some questions, and waited.

The class seemed to listen and respond well to both the story and my discussion questions, but I still had some doubts until I saw their papers. I had decided to give them a post-writing exercise as an informal assessment, asking them to respond to the question if they would be able to be like Susan, the main character in the story, and stand up to their friends if their friends were trying to get them to do something that they knew was wrong. To more accurately gauge them as a class, I asked them to not put their names on their papers, telling them it would not be graded. I just wanted to know what their responses were. I am a firm believer that it helps a person’s resolve to follow through with an action if they take the time to determine what that action will be ahead of time, like the “stop, drop, and roll” fire-safety technique. I hoped this would lead to similar positive results.

I knew I had accomplished my purpose when I read their papers. They showed that not only did they seem to grasp what it means to be an ethical person, but their comments made me feel like I had made a difference in their lives as well. The majority read something like these two: “Yes, because friends are people that stand up for you and that means you have to stand up for them and help them if they make the wrong choices,” and “I would be able to. My friends would listen to my ideas, and they wouldn’t be my friends if they didn’t.” Yes, there were a couple who said they would still go to the party, even when knowing their parents would not approve, but by far the majority felt they would make the ethical choice to do the right thing. Regardless of their choice, I knew the class had listened to my lesson about ethics, and I believe that is all a teacher can do, to be courageous, to lead the way.

Is Blogging Life Changing?

Google wanted to know. Can learning how to blog change 12-year-old Makeal’s life, or anyone’s life for that matter? I wonder the same question for myself. Why do I blog? Will blogging have lasting ramifications for me or those who read my blogs?

Makeal, a 12-year-old boy living in E. Oakland, was part of a study to determine if learning how to blog can have an impact on low-income kids. He and his class were given the opportunity to be bussed weekly to the Google office in San Francisco to be taught how to blog. Did it make a difference in his life? Makeal says it did. For one, he got to pick his own topics, which excited him from the start. He chose his favorite past-time, skateboarding, but it was just one of the subjects he actually blogged about. It turned out blogging made Makeal realize he had thoughts about other things he’d like to share as well. Gaining confidence as he went, he began to share those other thoughts too.

Blogging did seem to have lasting ramifications for Makeal. He comes to school more regularly now and is recognizing he is learning useful skills, like the blogging, to open up new possibilities for his future. Currently, he can see himself as an architect, a skateboarder, video-game designer, or a firefighter. I love the way he doesn’t limit himself. He knows he could be any of those, because Google has already begun to teach him about succeeding in life.

Blogging may not be the cure-all, but it can open our lives to new possibilities, as Makeal is demonstrating. I will continue my blogging but can’t help but wonder, after seeing what Google did for Makeal, can Google help me too?

The Learning Gap

Autumn quarter has arrived and with it more opportunities for me to blog. In my tech class, we were asked to respond to a couple of videos showing the effect of technology on learning. The first one, The Machine is Us/ing Us showed a recent evolution of written communication. Beginning with stationary written text, it went on to become digital text with the invention of the computer, text able to be moved around within a document. The Internet then brought more changes, such as additional opportunities for movement with the invention of hyperlinks, interactive web sites, and blogs such as this one.

This progression reminds me of how excited I was years ago when I first noticed a shift in technology that affected me. I went from having a manual typewriter where I had to physically push the arm back to the left side when I reached the right margin of the page, to being able to push a button and see it done automatically. It was a huge advancement at the time. When the computer came, and all I had to do was continue typing for it to begin the next line, it was revolutionary. Technology has advanced quite a bit since then, and I feel that one advantage to becoming a teacher is the opportunity to continue to learn about new technology and move on with the times. I liked the video’s conclusion that technology now links people, not just information, but what about the people who are not computer savvy?

The second video, Sugatamitra: The Child Driven Education was fascinating to see in that it brought the focus back from the machine to the people, when it showed the power of children’s minds to learn how to operate a computer without having a teacher to teach them. This seemed to me to be an example of critical thinking in action. The children took creative risks and were able to master how to do things I have never even attempted to do. It made me realize a disadvantage I continue to live under. I wait for people to teach me technology. Why do I do that? I remember a teacher telling me in one of my first computer classes not to be afraid of the computer, that I wouldn’t break it. That is the way many of us digital immigrants (those who have not grown up using computers from childhood) have acted, and some of us continue to do so. I am working to overcome that fear, but it remains a struggle.

William Ayers brings up a related problem in his book, To Teach: the journey of a teacher. He calls it “working the gap” and describes it as a more difficult but necessary way. I have begun working as an intern in a public school and I am beginning to see the gap he describes. There are “too many kids, not enough time, too few resources,” etc. (pp. 137-138). But, we teachers can’t give up and take the easy path. If the children in the Sugatamitra video had ignored the computers that were left with them, and never put forth the energy and initiative required to learn about them, they would have remained ignorant and missed out on the joy of learning new things. I want to be the kind of teacher who doesn’t settle for passivity. I want to challenge my kids as Sugata Mitra did when he enticed the children by placing a computer in their midst. Whether there are English language learners, children having special needs, or even just those wanting to learn, I want to create an environment in my class that will nurture all their needs. Can it be done? Just as the written text has evolved, I hope my teaching will do the same.