Looking at the Great Teaching document, I think about how I need to foster a growth mindset within my students. I realize now that I really need to get my kids focused on where they are heading and not where they are currently. I teach a gifted class so these kids really put a lot of value into their grades. I need to try to break them of that and just focus on the learning. Do you all have any advice or tips for breaking the fixed mindset and focusing on a growth mindset?
Growth mindset is hard, trust me! It is something I have been focusing on heavily with my advanced class. The thing that I have learned to do is take the heat off of grades. Make grades sit in the backseat while the true learning process is front and center. I do not give my students a lot of numerical grades on their work, but I do give them a lot of FEEDBACK. Sure, they are receiving a numerical grade, too, but by not revealing that to the student, they actually seem to read and value the feedback.
Allison I think you do an amazing job. But it is going to be a very difficult thing to break a competitive mindset. Some people are just fixated on different things, I am speaking from experience. Just make the material as in depth as possible.
I am having a similar issue with the kids in my gifted class. We started not giving them back grades and only giving them feedback, but when we do that they just keep asking us "Well what is my grade on this? Just tell me, was it good?" I think that it may take longer than 12 weeks to break the students on this habit, so I don't think that you should be concerned if you are struggling to see your efforts rewarded. You'll do a wonderful job with this once you have your own class to establish this kind of mindset on day one. The most you can do now is encourage them and continue with what you are doing.
I have a similar issue with the high achiever students in my world class. They constantly want to know how well they did on an assignment and I constantly remind them that what's most important is that we continue to expand our horizons by taking learning deeper and succeed at new challenges. I ensure them that if their performance drops below satisfactory I will have an intervention with them. Good luck on your interview that I know you're going to knock them off their feet once they see your work. Please remind me to make these postings weekly as my mind is getting frail! lol
I wonder if you could gradually take out grades? Like maybe just give them a letter grade to start, and then next would be just a pass/fail grade, and then don't give them a grade at all. I know we don't exactly have all year to work with these students, but just an idea.
One of my students wrote me a poem on the back of her vocabulary test! She really wants to be a teacher and she has shared that with me before. I always encourage her, but the poem today was simply too much:
“Roses are red, Violets are blue, When I become a teacher, I wanna be one like you!”
I do not know why I felt that this poem, of all the things that I could share with you all, felt particularly relevant to how my week has been going. I have a pretty severe case of laryngitis and the kindness that my students have shared with me only reinforces that building positive relationships with your students is key. We know that we care about our students, but it is always really cool to see our students care about us in return.
I'm sorry you have been feeling bad! That is so rewarding though, it is the little things that are so inspirational and meaningful. I'm glad to hear you have such caring students!
You have such wonderful students! And it is a credit to yourself for being such a great role model. I'm sorry that you are not feeling well and wish you a speedy recovery.
This week I learned the importance of proximity when teaching students. I learned that if a student is off task or distracted during a lesson or activity, it is a good idea to walk over to them. I don’t necessarily have to say anything, but just stepping closer to them might provoke them to do what they are supposed to or stop talking. We have discussed this in class, but now I am actually seeing it in action.There was a third grade student who was completely distracted during a video they were watching, and I walked over near his desk and he actually stopped what he was doing. Haha, crazy how that works!
It works but then there are those who push back. For example I had a student yesterday was it was just plain dangerous to get in her personal space. Just know who to approach because there are some kids I'd never approach.
I use this technique all of the time in my classes. What is really challenging is once you get multiple students who need your immediate presence in a class, so you have to figure out how to be in more than one places at once! However, I do agree with Sheika. Last semester, I had a student where I just knew bad stuff was going to go down if I monitored her like that and I thought it best not to provoke her that way, but instead to just verbally address her.
I use that technique too! It also helps to give them the "teacher look." Sometimes that's all students need to get back down to business. But I do agree with Sheika and Hillary - you have to know your students and what they would best respond too!
Today I learned that even the best students can only do so much of the same thing before being unmotivated. My students were writing the last two days and today they were doing more writing in preparation for milestones. Even the most dedicated students were asking why we had to write even more, they were already prepared. However, it turns out they weren’t because they had a ton of questions about the short answer questions and overall did not do very well. I wonder if there is a better way to prepare them other than pre-testing kind of stuff (I’m sure that there is, it’s just a matter of thinking about it).
I have a problem with keeping my students intrinsically motivated as well. My host teacher often rewards them with jolly ranchers, so now they expect them even if they haven't done anything. It's going to be a job getting them to do monotonous activities sometimes when they are learning conjugations or vocabulary that have to be committed to memory. I feel your pain.
I think the main thing here is that students should be writing a lot and writing interesting things that they care about. If they were doing a great deal of that, it wouldn't be so hard when they had to practice writing for tests. For example, if you taught students "image grammar" and got them excited about crafting sentences and playing with words, then they could even enjoy a fairly dull topic.
So yesterday the sinks in the art classroom backed up. Its mainly because of clay and glaze and paint and all the other junk students throw down the sink. So it smelled like a toilet in the classroom. With this experience I learned that as a teacher you have to be prepared to keep students on task when crazy things happen. We all know that students love to have fun with everything. So there were some who where overreacting or joking around especially with the intense stench in the class. In the end we handled it well and I think we kept everyone on task. I though this would be a good story to share today.
*sidenote* If your classroom smells DO NOT open windows or doors on a windy day. especially if your desk is by the window. You will spend unnecessary time picking up every paper you had on top of your desk!!.
For some reason I have students who come in frequently complaining about the smell of the room, so we light a candle (it's a private school so we can do that). But after we light this delightful smelling candle, students just come in and complain about THAT smell too!
I know exactly what you mean with them taking things out of context with situations such as these. My students complain daily about the smell of my classroom after 2nd period leaves and I remind them that we are here to make changes in democracy and not the smell of the classroom. I then remind them that I had to smell people living in confined areas with their toilets attached to their beds and that its important that we make smart decisions in life so we don't end up in similar situations. I probably shouldn't tell them of the horrors of daily life in the pen but it gets their attention and gets them settled down and ready to start class.
1. Today, I taught the fourth grade for their exploratory Spanish class. One girl immediately said “Hi, Ms. G!” when she walked in the room. It was my first time teaching elementary Spanish, so I was nervous. That made me feel a lot better. After that, I felt ready to teach the class. They were all really eager to participate, and extremely intelligent! I had a great time.
I was curious... Did you think younger students more participatory in general, or did you just have an awesome class? It occurred to me while I was reading that the energy of youth would be an excellent source to tap into in order to get them excited about learning. I've been having trouble getting my high schoolers to be engaged.
This is adorable! I love that kids are so energetic and willing to participate! Sometimes I wish that some of my classes had that same willingness, but I would fear the energy level would come with it and I wouldn't be able to handle it! I'm happy you did well and it's awesome how one students immediate participation helped make you feel better and boost your confidence!
My first block class was wonderful today. We had several high-energy activities to help them practice using figurative language and imagery, and they handled it perfectly. They were energetic and participatory when they needed to be, ready to put themselves on the line and performing to their upmost ability. But when we transitioned to other activities that needed quiet and concentration they were able to smoothly change their mindsets. They quickly became respectful of their other classmates and quieted, helping others when it was needed. My fourth block on the other hand, had the exact same activities as I filmed them for the edTPA, and didn’t respond quite the same way. I was quite surprised to see how loud and uncontrollable they became, even when the time had come for individual work when I asked them for quiet. It was a stark reminder that the best laid plans of mice and men can go awry. It was toward the end of this period that my host teacher informed me that I found my “teacher voice”—not loud or shouting, but still commanding the force necessary to shut down the less than ideal behaviors. It came as a shock to me, for I was under the false impression that I had a commanding voice in the classroom already.
Yay for finding your teacher voice! That's something that I'm still working on. I also thought that I had a commanding voice in the classroom already, until my third period last Friday showed me otherwise. Being a warm-demander is harder than I thought. But that's really awesome that you've got it figured out! Maybe you could give me some tips sometime.
Camille, I can totally imagine you walking over to do this and that makes my heart absolutely smile. You're a hoot! Proximity control really does wonders in the classroom. I'm glad you're experimenting with it.
I think that it's time for me to zone into some practical advice that my host teacher had for me this week: not to take school work home with, take time to rest, nip behavioral problems in the bud before they flower, and to continually invest in art supplies and my students. My host teacher and I collaborated on a lot of lesson plans for the week, as I taught one class and she the other two. Our teaching styles favored each other, in that I was able to learn from the Traditional style of teaching and saw some positive to having students solely focus on completing a performance task. The students were practicing their mastery of technique and skills with art materials. My teaching style tends to lean towards students having a foundation in art history and providing a context for why they are doing a particular project or performance task. Students seem to enjoy having freedom of choice with both teaching styles. I see more passion and skill come out during their drawing and coloring exercises, and hope to see a major change in technique when I teach them painting and weaving next week.
Glad you are able to learn a lot from your host teacher! Learning the history of art is important, but try to make it engaging! I remember the days I hated my art class the most was when he lectured or made us copy terms/definitions out of the book!
Yes, I can see how art history could be the worst part of an art class. And I show YouTube videos and have students discuss how they feel about a particular artist's approach or concept. This week has been good because I got to see where students were with actually knowing the Elements and Principles of Design, and had them draw pictures illustrating specific words. Later, I had them work together on describing the terms in their own words, and then I gave them the academic definitions through a YouTube video.
I am going to sum up my week in one entry. This was a rough week all around, i mean there was a lot of drama this week. I am so tired and I pray that this is not the way I feel in my career. I am the type of person who never gets sick, nor do I have health issues. However, this semester is pulling too much out of me. I literally go to placement at 7:30-3:15, then work from 3:30-9. I do not get home until 10 daily. I am not functioning to the best of my abilities. I have a cold, my throat is swollen, and I have headaches constantly. I need to go to the doctor but when? I think my new question lately has been, when?
This week there were two fights, one in my class, an explosive, out of control student, and bed bugs, someone stole my host teacher’s jump drive (with all her school work on it), and a surgery of a parent, and a sick child. I am writing this just to get it off my chest because I feel like I am being pulled in too my directions. But I think of all the change that can be made in the classroom if I just keep going. I know that this is almost over, actually 90 days, which is about 12 weeks.
I am alarmed by the number of fights, and violence I see at BHS. There are at least 2 fights, or attempted fights per week! I just think about how some of our youth will start their adult lives with strikes against them because of the environment of their school. I am seriously afraid to see what this community will be like in 10 years of the education here, continues in this manner.
Oh Sheika, I feel for you!! You NEED to make time for yourself to just relax. I know it is hard with all that you have going on, and I know how completely exhausted I am without having to work after placement every day. I can't imagine how you are even doing it!
As for BHS, I can see how all of that would be physically and mentally exhausting. I don't want you to get discouraged about teaching though. Not all schools/communities are like that, so try to not worry about your teaching career being like it. Also, I KNOW you are making a difference in those kids lives, so let that give you the energy to keep pushing through! You can do this!
Maybe it would be good to talk to other teachers at your school, who have been teaching there for a good number of years, about how to deal with all the stressors that you have been going through this week. They know exactly what the students are like, how many fights they break up on a weekly basis, and how to prevent some from starting. Some of them might have had to work more than one job when they started out, too. As veterans, I'm sure they would have strategies and advice for how to take care of yourself.
I've been having headaches on a regular basis too, I hope you take time to see a doctor soon. You can't perform your best in the classroom if you don't feel well. Part of it might be your sleep patterns and staying hydrated.
The first year will be very hard on you physically. Even though you are young and healthy, it just takes a while for a body to adjust to the demands of teaching, both physical and emotional. But then at a certain point you hit your stride and the physical part becomes easier. It may take longer for the emotional part!
Looking at the “What Great Teaching Looks Like” document, I realize that instead of giving my students tailored feedback, I’ve been saying “good job” or “look at how smart you are” way too often. I definitely need to work on being more specific with my feedback. It’s hard to do on the spot, especially when we've been so used to hearing/saying those things.
I have the same issue - I love praising the kids because I'm so proud of them on the inside. It's hard to stop yourself from doing that, even though we know that it's not productive. I think what I find the easiest response to offer is further questioning. Maybe get them to go deeper. You can also ask if students have something to add to the comment to keep the discussion going. I think doing that implies that their comment was meaningful and contributed to the conversation in a substantial way. And if all else fails, being more specific with praise is a good back-up. Instead of saying "good job" you can say "I like your line of thinking" or "That's a great way to look at..." Things of that nature.
Today my host teacher was called into a meeting at the beginning of 6th period and didn’t make it back until the end of 7th period. Although it doesn’t necessarily seem beautiful, it was! This was the first time I’ve been left completely alone for a prolonged period of time with the students. I wasn’t fully prepared to take over simply because I hadn’t planned or anticipated BUT I felt so successful at the end of the period. I had already seen my teacher perform the lesson in her first class and helped during the next English so I did know the lesson, it was just nerve racking to not have her to turn to in order to ask questions or further explain. A lot of my students even told me that I did a good job in explaining things. I know I forgot some things but I feel very proud of myself!
Glad you got that experience! I'm also glad you felt competent and confident to do what you needed to do! Next time even if you feel like you don't have it all together, fake it till you make it!
It was especially meaningful to have my 5th period kids journal and to read them. I really got to hear an insight into my students’ minds about something many of them don’t think about. My students wrote journals about how they would feel if they were targeted based on their beliefs, race, religion, or origin of birth. One of my student’s wrote: “I would be upset but I would feel bad for them because they have nothing better to do than to belittle someone…” I had many more things written that were amazing, but this one stood out.
That's really awesome! I like how that student is able to see that it's not their fault if someone targets them; it's the fault of the person who does the targeting. I agree with you that getting to see inside your students' minds is an amazing, and often quite beautiful, experience. The more you hear from them, the more interesting they become as people.
Today was the start of my EdTPA lesson plans. Today was not quite as entertaining as the plans I have set aside for Wednesday and Thursday, but it is very necessary. The students have briefly looked at paired texts, but the questions that they answered were just basic reading comprehension. I was very confused on the “paired” part besides the fact that we gave them two separate articles. None of the questions asked them to look at both texts; all the questions were basic reading comprehension for single text. I wanted to change that. Since we are focusing on comparing and contrasting, I decided that that would be my aim. I had students answer some of the ReadWorks questions that come with the text, since it is inspired by the Milestones test, but the main thing that I had them do was create a Venn diagram to compare and contrast the texts and then write a paragraph about the similarities of the two texts. I chose two that had a similar topic, visiting Africa. This was really important and it showed me a lot about where the students stand on reading comprehension and who was ready for the analysis required to compare and contrast texts, but the kids were very bored by it. It gave me a lot of critical information, prepared them for the style of the Milestones, and got them critically thinking about texts for more than just a summary, but an analysis. How do I make this more appealing to students? I minimized the questions that they had to answer because I know that they absolutely hate these, but I want to try harder to get them engaged. I wish I had technology so that I could create a multimedia experience that can help students be placed in the environments of the text. I have no technology available in the room except 5 laptops that have had their sound cards taken out. It has made this very hard for me because I am very reliant on technology, especially for teaching kids of this generation who need the fast pace and relatability, as well as who need to be technologically literate. It disappoints me that there are such great resources I could be using to teach these kids and I cannot take advantage of them.
You don't have a main computer that you can project from? I have a projector in my trunk you can borrow and good bluetooth speakers are pretty cheap ($15-30). If you don't have Internet there, you could download things onto your laptop at home.
Another important thing will be to choose articles that they will love. That would go a long way to building motivation. Maybe different students could choose different pairs of articles depending on their interests.
1. Fourth period is a bit of an outlier on most days because, thanks to dismissal policy, it’s a little shorter than the other classes. Today I was going over gerunds and participles again, using that worksheet I mentioned above. I had several students come up to the SMART Board and label the sentences as they had originally done on their paper so the class could see what they thought. What I noticed is that, while they are able to identify objects of prepositions, gerunds, and participles when they’re on their own, they can’t translate that into a more complex sentence where it’s not specified what specifically they’re looking for. The sentence labeling requires them to take all of their grammar knowledge – not just what we’ve been covering for the past two weeks – and apply it bit by bit. I won’t say the worksheet was a failure, because that’s not what the purpose of it was. I wanted to get a feel for where the class stood as a whole, and now I see that their application of what they’ve been learning is still lacking. It got better as we went through the sentences. Most of them have a thought process that’s going on when they label certain parts of the sentences, so I at least know that they’re thinking and have some kind of grasp on the rules and questions they need to be asking. Still, this is a seriously frustrating concept to be teaching them, and I question what the purpose is in furiously insisting that they be able to label these things when I doubt that they will ever need to know what a gerund or participle is beyond middle school.
Kayleigh, teaching the parts of a sentence is extremely frustrating if your students have not been able to differentiate them. However, I feel as if you have been trying to help your students apply what little bit or much they know throughout the week. This may take time and feel exhausting, but the more scaffolding, visuals, and practice that students have with labeling the parts of a sentence will help them when they get to high school and college. Yes, students will need to know what a gerund or participle is beyond middle school. These are fundamentals that one should know after middle school, and I think that having students link their funds of knowledge to the labeling process will help them the most. Keep it up, I'm sure that other English teachers get frustrated teaching the parts of speech as well.
In the English pedagogy class I get so frustrated because I want to teach you everything right now! I know that's not possible. But soon we will get to a discussion of grammar, and you will find that you are correct - students do not remember much of anything they learn from grammar exercises. They may remember it for a brief while, but they can't apply it to their own writing and it doesn't last long. Research shows that most grammar exercises are a complete waste of time.
• I didn’t learn anything about myself this week other than I’m not sure how or if I’ll ever get this teaching thing down to mastery. I love learning but being a facilitator of instruction has many elements that I’m not sure if I’m delivering in the most effective manner. I am told that I’m doing well by my observers but I don’t feel as though my craft needs a lot more machinery.
I think a big part of being a teacher is also knowing that you will always be a learner. When I look at my host teacher teach, I'm like wow! its so effortless. I have to remind myself that he has been teaching 30 years though.If you are concerned whether your students are actually learning or even understanding what you are teaching them, try doing frequent checks for understanding while you are teaching. You will immediately know if they are paying attention, confused or if they are right with you ;)
Have confidence in yourself Kourtney! It may feel like you're not doing well to you, but those kids don't know if you're right or wrong. They're going to believe what you tell them (even if you're wrong--which I'm sure you're not). You know more than you think you do! You're just starting, no one is supposed to be perfect.
I'm guessing by now you are all realizing how outrageously complicated it is to teach really well. Sometimes I find it hard to imagine a more complex career choice. Sometimes I long for a job that is simple and straight forward, but I know if I really had a job like that I'd be bored in a week. At least you aren't bored, right? Just keep plugging along and striving to get .005% better every day. It will add up.
On Tuesday,my host teacher was absent for the entire day, she had a sub but left me in charge. We have a special ed co-teacher but I pretty much was left primarily in charge. I was nervous about having the entire day to myself but it went well. The students did not try and act different because their teacher was not there. Even though I was nervous about it, I am glad I was able to experience it because I feel like I need all of the practice I can get with being in control. The students did what they were suppose to be doing and nothing horrible or out of the ordinary happened. However, by the time 7th period came I was done. 6th and 7th periods are our worst ones. Both classes are full of kids with behavior problems. So after having to deal with 6th alone, I had the special ed teacher take over 7th. I do not know what it is about those last two classes but they are our most difficult ones, everyday.
An entire class had to join my class for two blocks. The students worked independently during this time. Regular class instruction could not go on as normal because my class was preparing to take an assessment that the additional class had already taken. It was a bit challenging but all students were able to complete their assessments by the end of the day. Today allowed me to see just how flexible I am going to have to be.
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Looking at the Great Teaching document, I think about how I need to foster a growth mindset within my students. I realize now that I really need to get my kids focused on where they are heading and not where they are currently. I teach a gifted class so these kids really put a lot of value into their grades. I need to try to break them of that and just focus on the learning. Do you all have any advice or tips for breaking the fixed mindset and focusing on a growth mindset?
ReplyDeleteAlso, I posted early because I have my first job interview tomorrow in Atlanta and didn't know if I would have time to post before 6pm tomorrow! :)
DeleteGrowth mindset is hard, trust me! It is something I have been focusing on heavily with my advanced class. The thing that I have learned to do is take the heat off of grades. Make grades sit in the backseat while the true learning process is front and center. I do not give my students a lot of numerical grades on their work, but I do give them a lot of FEEDBACK. Sure, they are receiving a numerical grade, too, but by not revealing that to the student, they actually seem to read and value the feedback.
DeleteAllison I think you do an amazing job. But it is going to be a very difficult thing to break a competitive mindset. Some people are just fixated on different things, I am speaking from experience. Just make the material as in depth as possible.
DeleteFirst and foremost, good luck in your interview!
DeleteI am having a similar issue with the kids in my gifted class. We started not giving them back grades and only giving them feedback, but when we do that they just keep asking us "Well what is my grade on this? Just tell me, was it good?" I think that it may take longer than 12 weeks to break the students on this habit, so I don't think that you should be concerned if you are struggling to see your efforts rewarded. You'll do a wonderful job with this once you have your own class to establish this kind of mindset on day one. The most you can do now is encourage them and continue with what you are doing.
I have a similar issue with the high achiever students in my world class. They constantly want to know how well they did on an assignment and I constantly remind them that what's most important is that we continue to expand our horizons by taking learning deeper and succeed at new challenges. I ensure them that if their performance drops below satisfactory I will have an intervention with them. Good luck on your interview that I know you're going to knock them off their feet once they see your work. Please remind me to make these postings weekly as my mind is getting frail! lol
DeleteI wonder if you could gradually take out grades? Like maybe just give them a letter grade to start, and then next would be just a pass/fail grade, and then don't give them a grade at all. I know we don't exactly have all year to work with these students, but just an idea.
DeleteOne of my students wrote me a poem on the back of her vocabulary test! She really wants to be a teacher and she has shared that with me before. I always encourage her, but the poem today was simply too much:
ReplyDelete“Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
When I become a teacher,
I wanna be one like you!”
I do not know why I felt that this poem, of all the things that I could share with you all, felt particularly relevant to how my week has been going. I have a pretty severe case of laryngitis and the kindness that my students have shared with me only reinforces that building positive relationships with your students is key. We know that we care about our students, but it is always really cool to see our students care about us in return.
That's so sweet!!! It's clear to see that you are having an impact on these kids. Awesome! Keep up the good work, Hannah!
DeleteI'm sorry you have been feeling bad! That is so rewarding though, it is the little things that are so inspirational and meaningful. I'm glad to hear you have such caring students!
DeleteYou have such wonderful students! And it is a credit to yourself for being such a great role model.
DeleteI'm sorry that you are not feeling well and wish you a speedy recovery.
Hannah I read this earlier today and thought it was really sweet. The poem was too cute.
DeleteThat is so sweet! It is definitely very rewarding when our students show us how they care about us =)
DeleteThis week I learned the importance of proximity when teaching students. I learned that if a student is off task or distracted during a lesson or activity, it is a good idea to walk over to them. I don’t necessarily have to say anything, but just stepping closer to them might provoke them to do what they are supposed to or stop talking. We have discussed this in class, but now I am actually seeing it in action.There was a third grade student who was completely distracted during a video they were watching, and I walked over near his desk and he actually stopped what he was doing. Haha, crazy how that works!
ReplyDeleteYes it so crazy how it works. I do it all the time!
DeleteYeah, I should have been doing it all along!
DeleteIt works but then there are those who push back. For example I had a student yesterday was it was just plain dangerous to get in her personal space. Just know who to approach because there are some kids I'd never approach.
DeleteI use this technique all of the time in my classes. What is really challenging is once you get multiple students who need your immediate presence in a class, so you have to figure out how to be in more than one places at once!
DeleteHowever, I do agree with Sheika. Last semester, I had a student where I just knew bad stuff was going to go down if I monitored her like that and I thought it best not to provoke her that way, but instead to just verbally address her.
I use that technique too! It also helps to give them the "teacher look." Sometimes that's all students need to get back down to business. But I do agree with Sheika and Hillary - you have to know your students and what they would best respond too!
DeleteToday I learned that even the best students can only do so much of the same thing before being unmotivated. My students were writing the last two days and today they were doing more writing in preparation for milestones. Even the most dedicated students were asking why we had to write even more, they were already prepared. However, it turns out they weren’t because they had a ton of questions about the short answer questions and overall did not do very well. I wonder if there is a better way to prepare them other than pre-testing kind of stuff (I’m sure that there is, it’s just a matter of thinking about it).
ReplyDeleteI have a problem with keeping my students intrinsically motivated as well. My host teacher often rewards them with jolly ranchers, so now they expect them even if they haven't done anything. It's going to be a job getting them to do monotonous activities sometimes when they are learning conjugations or vocabulary that have to be committed to memory. I feel your pain.
DeleteI think the main thing here is that students should be writing a lot and writing interesting things that they care about. If they were doing a great deal of that, it wouldn't be so hard when they had to practice writing for tests. For example, if you taught students "image grammar" and got them excited about crafting sentences and playing with words, then they could even enjoy a fairly dull topic.
DeleteSo yesterday the sinks in the art classroom backed up. Its mainly because of clay and glaze and paint and all the other junk students throw down the sink. So it smelled like a toilet in the classroom. With this experience I learned that as a teacher you have to be prepared to keep students on task when crazy things happen. We all know that students love to have fun with everything. So there were some who where overreacting or joking around especially with the intense stench in the class. In the end we handled it well and I think we kept everyone on task. I though this would be a good story to share today.
ReplyDelete*sidenote*
DeleteIf your classroom smells DO NOT open windows or doors on a windy day. especially if your desk is by the window. You will spend unnecessary time picking up every paper you had on top of your desk!!.
For some reason I have students who come in frequently complaining about the smell of the room, so we light a candle (it's a private school so we can do that). But after we light this delightful smelling candle, students just come in and complain about THAT smell too!
DeleteI know exactly what you mean with them taking things out of context with situations such as these. My students complain daily about the smell of my classroom after 2nd period leaves and I remind them that we are here to make changes in democracy and not the smell of the classroom. I then remind them that I had to smell people living in confined areas with their toilets attached to their beds and that its important that we make smart decisions in life so we don't end up in similar situations. I probably shouldn't tell them of the horrors of daily life in the pen but it gets their attention and gets them settled down and ready to start class.
DeleteStrange happening!
Delete1. Today, I taught the fourth grade for their exploratory Spanish class. One girl immediately said “Hi, Ms. G!” when she walked in the room. It was my first time teaching elementary Spanish, so I was nervous. That made me feel a lot better. After that, I felt ready to teach the class. They were all really eager to participate, and extremely intelligent! I had a great time.
ReplyDeleteThat is so cute! I love how welcoming and excited the elementary students are. Do you like working with them?
DeleteI was curious... Did you think younger students more participatory in general, or did you just have an awesome class? It occurred to me while I was reading that the energy of youth would be an excellent source to tap into in order to get them excited about learning. I've been having trouble getting my high schoolers to be engaged.
DeleteThis is adorable! I love that kids are so energetic and willing to participate! Sometimes I wish that some of my classes had that same willingness, but I would fear the energy level would come with it and I wouldn't be able to handle it! I'm happy you did well and it's awesome how one students immediate participation helped make you feel better and boost your confidence!
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ReplyDeleteMy first block class was wonderful today. We had several high-energy activities to help them practice using figurative language and imagery, and they handled it perfectly. They were energetic and participatory when they needed to be, ready to put themselves on the line and performing to their upmost ability. But when we transitioned to other activities that needed quiet and concentration they were able to smoothly change their mindsets. They quickly became respectful of their other classmates and quieted, helping others when it was needed. My fourth block on the other hand, had the exact same activities as I filmed them for the edTPA, and didn’t respond quite the same way. I was quite surprised to see how loud and uncontrollable they became, even when the time had come for individual work when I asked them for quiet. It was a stark reminder that the best laid plans of mice and men can go awry. It was toward the end of this period that my host teacher informed me that I found my “teacher voice”—not loud or shouting, but still commanding the force necessary to shut down the less than ideal behaviors. It came as a shock to me, for I was under the false impression that I had a commanding voice in the classroom already.
ReplyDeleteYay for finding your teacher voice! That's something that I'm still working on. I also thought that I had a commanding voice in the classroom already, until my third period last Friday showed me otherwise. Being a warm-demander is harder than I thought. But that's really awesome that you've got it figured out! Maybe you could give me some tips sometime.
DeleteThat first block is so large and crammed in - you've really got to stay on top of them. I can see where a teacher voice would be absolutely necessary.
DeleteCamille, I can totally imagine you walking over to do this and that makes my heart absolutely smile. You're a hoot! Proximity control really does wonders in the classroom. I'm glad you're experimenting with it.
ReplyDeleteI think that it's time for me to zone into some practical advice that my host teacher had for me this week: not to take school work home with, take time to rest, nip behavioral problems in the bud before they flower, and to continually invest in art supplies and my students. My host teacher and I collaborated on a lot of lesson plans for the week, as I taught one class and she the other two. Our teaching styles favored each other, in that I was able to learn from the Traditional style of teaching and saw some positive to having students solely focus on completing a performance task. The students were practicing their mastery of technique and skills with art materials. My teaching style tends to lean towards students having a foundation in art history and providing a context for why they are doing a particular project or performance task. Students seem to enjoy having freedom of choice with both teaching styles. I see more passion and skill come out during their drawing and coloring exercises, and hope to see a major change in technique when I teach them painting and weaving next week.
ReplyDeleteGlad you are able to learn a lot from your host teacher! Learning the history of art is important, but try to make it engaging! I remember the days I hated my art class the most was when he lectured or made us copy terms/definitions out of the book!
DeleteYes, I can see how art history could be the worst part of an art class. And I show YouTube videos and have students discuss how they feel about a particular artist's approach or concept. This week has been good because I got to see where students were with actually knowing the Elements and Principles of Design, and had them draw pictures illustrating specific words. Later, I had them work together on describing the terms in their own words, and then I gave them the academic definitions through a YouTube video.
DeleteI am going to sum up my week in one entry. This was a rough week all around, i mean there was a lot of drama this week. I am so tired and I pray that this is not the way I feel in my career. I am the type of person who never gets sick, nor do I have health issues. However, this semester is pulling too much out of me. I literally go to placement at 7:30-3:15, then work from 3:30-9. I do not get home until 10 daily. I am not functioning to the best of my abilities. I have a cold, my throat is swollen, and I have headaches constantly. I need to go to the doctor but when? I think my new question lately has been, when?
ReplyDeleteThis week there were two fights, one in my class, an explosive, out of control student, and bed bugs, someone stole my host teacher’s jump drive (with all her school work on it), and a surgery of a parent, and a sick child. I am writing this just to get it off my chest because I feel like I am being pulled in too my directions. But I think of all the change that can be made in the classroom if I just keep going. I know that this is almost over, actually 90 days, which is about 12 weeks.
I am alarmed by the number of fights, and violence I see at BHS. There are at least 2 fights, or attempted fights per week! I just think about how some of our youth will start their adult lives with strikes against them because of the environment of their school. I am seriously afraid to see what this community will be like in 10 years of the education here, continues in this manner.
Oh Sheika, I feel for you!! You NEED to make time for yourself to just relax. I know it is hard with all that you have going on, and I know how completely exhausted I am without having to work after placement every day. I can't imagine how you are even doing it!
DeleteAs for BHS, I can see how all of that would be physically and mentally exhausting. I don't want you to get discouraged about teaching though. Not all schools/communities are like that, so try to not worry about your teaching career being like it. Also, I KNOW you are making a difference in those kids lives, so let that give you the energy to keep pushing through! You can do this!
Katherine, I love teaching and look to the differences for comfort. Thank you for your words.
DeleteMaybe it would be good to talk to other teachers at your school, who have been teaching there for a good number of years, about how to deal with all the stressors that you have been going through this week. They know exactly what the students are like, how many fights they break up on a weekly basis, and how to prevent some from starting. Some of them might have had to work more than one job when they started out, too. As veterans, I'm sure they would have strategies and advice for how to take care of yourself.
DeleteI've been having headaches on a regular basis too, I hope you take time to see a doctor soon. You can't perform your best in the classroom if you don't feel well. Part of it might be your sleep patterns and staying hydrated.
The first year will be very hard on you physically. Even though you are young and healthy, it just takes a while for a body to adjust to the demands of teaching, both physical and emotional. But then at a certain point you hit your stride and the physical part becomes easier. It may take longer for the emotional part!
DeleteLooking at the “What Great Teaching Looks Like” document, I realize that instead of giving my students tailored feedback, I’ve been saying “good job” or “look at how smart you are” way too often. I definitely need to work on being more specific with my feedback. It’s hard to do on the spot, especially when we've been so used to hearing/saying those things.
ReplyDeleteI have the same issue - I love praising the kids because I'm so proud of them on the inside. It's hard to stop yourself from doing that, even though we know that it's not productive. I think what I find the easiest response to offer is further questioning. Maybe get them to go deeper. You can also ask if students have something to add to the comment to keep the discussion going. I think doing that implies that their comment was meaningful and contributed to the conversation in a substantial way. And if all else fails, being more specific with praise is a good back-up. Instead of saying "good job" you can say "I like your line of thinking" or "That's a great way to look at..." Things of that nature.
DeleteToday my host teacher was called into a meeting at the beginning of 6th period and didn’t make it back until the end of 7th period. Although it doesn’t necessarily seem beautiful, it was! This was the first time I’ve been left completely alone for a prolonged period of time with the students. I wasn’t fully prepared to take over simply because I hadn’t planned or anticipated BUT I felt so successful at the end of the period. I had already seen my teacher perform the lesson in her first class and helped during the next English so I did know the lesson, it was just nerve racking to not have her to turn to in order to ask questions or further explain. A lot of my students even told me that I did a good job in explaining things. I know I forgot some things but I feel very proud of myself!
ReplyDeleteGlad you got that experience! I'm also glad you felt competent and confident to do what you needed to do! Next time even if you feel like you don't have it all together, fake it till you make it!
DeleteThat's awesome!! So proud of you! It is scary when your host teacher leaves, but it helps build your confidence SO much!! Congrats, sassy lackey!
DeleteI had an entire day to myself. I was nervous also but it went really well, so I know what you mean!
DeleteIt was especially meaningful to have my 5th period kids journal and to read them. I really got to hear an insight into my students’ minds about something many of them don’t think about. My students wrote journals about how they would feel if they were targeted based on their beliefs, race, religion, or origin of birth. One of my student’s wrote: “I would be upset but I would feel bad for them because they have nothing better to do than to belittle someone…” I had many more things written that were amazing, but this one stood out.
ReplyDeleteThat's really awesome! I like how that student is able to see that it's not their fault if someone targets them; it's the fault of the person who does the targeting. I agree with you that getting to see inside your students' minds is an amazing, and often quite beautiful, experience. The more you hear from them, the more interesting they become as people.
DeleteToday was the start of my EdTPA lesson plans. Today was not quite as entertaining as the plans I have set aside for Wednesday and Thursday, but it is very necessary. The students have briefly looked at paired texts, but the questions that they answered were just basic reading comprehension. I was very confused on the “paired” part besides the fact that we gave them two separate articles. None of the questions asked them to look at both texts; all the questions were basic reading comprehension for single text. I wanted to change that. Since we are focusing on comparing and contrasting, I decided that that would be my aim. I had students answer some of the ReadWorks questions that come with the text, since it is inspired by the Milestones test, but the main thing that I had them do was create a Venn diagram to compare and contrast the texts and then write a paragraph about the similarities of the two texts. I chose two that had a similar topic, visiting Africa. This was really important and it showed me a lot about where the students stand on reading comprehension and who was ready for the analysis required to compare and contrast texts, but the kids were very bored by it. It gave me a lot of critical information, prepared them for the style of the Milestones, and got them critically thinking about texts for more than just a summary, but an analysis. How do I make this more appealing to students? I minimized the questions that they had to answer because I know that they absolutely hate these, but I want to try harder to get them engaged. I wish I had technology so that I could create a multimedia experience that can help students be placed in the environments of the text. I have no technology available in the room except 5 laptops that have had their sound cards taken out. It has made this very hard for me because I am very reliant on technology, especially for teaching kids of this generation who need the fast pace and relatability, as well as who need to be technologically literate. It disappoints me that there are such great resources I could be using to teach these kids and I cannot take advantage of them.
ReplyDeleteYou don't have a main computer that you can project from? I have a projector in my trunk you can borrow and good bluetooth speakers are pretty cheap ($15-30). If you don't have Internet there, you could download things onto your laptop at home.
DeleteAnother important thing will be to choose articles that they will love. That would go a long way to building motivation. Maybe different students could choose different pairs of articles depending on their interests.
1. Fourth period is a bit of an outlier on most days because, thanks to dismissal policy, it’s a little shorter than the other classes. Today I was going over gerunds and participles again, using that worksheet I mentioned above. I had several students come up to the SMART Board and label the sentences as they had originally done on their paper so the class could see what they thought. What I noticed is that, while they are able to identify objects of prepositions, gerunds, and participles when they’re on their own, they can’t translate that into a more complex sentence where it’s not specified what specifically they’re looking for. The sentence labeling requires them to take all of their grammar knowledge – not just what we’ve been covering for the past two weeks – and apply it bit by bit. I won’t say the worksheet was a failure, because that’s not what the purpose of it was. I wanted to get a feel for where the class stood as a whole, and now I see that their application of what they’ve been learning is still lacking. It got better as we went through the sentences. Most of them have a thought process that’s going on when they label certain parts of the sentences, so I at least know that they’re thinking and have some kind of grasp on the rules and questions they need to be asking. Still, this is a seriously frustrating concept to be teaching them, and I question what the purpose is in furiously insisting that they be able to label these things when I doubt that they will ever need to know what a gerund or participle is beyond middle school.
ReplyDeleteKayleigh, teaching the parts of a sentence is extremely frustrating if your students have not been able to differentiate them. However, I feel as if you have been trying to help your students apply what little bit or much they know throughout the week. This may take time and feel exhausting, but the more scaffolding, visuals, and practice that students have with labeling the parts of a sentence will help them when they get to high school and college. Yes, students will need to know what a gerund or participle is beyond middle school. These are fundamentals that one should know after middle school, and I think that having students link their funds of knowledge to the labeling process will help them the most.
DeleteKeep it up, I'm sure that other English teachers get frustrated teaching the parts of speech as well.
In the English pedagogy class I get so frustrated because I want to teach you everything right now! I know that's not possible. But soon we will get to a discussion of grammar, and you will find that you are correct - students do not remember much of anything they learn from grammar exercises. They may remember it for a brief while, but they can't apply it to their own writing and it doesn't last long. Research shows that most grammar exercises are a complete waste of time.
Delete• I didn’t learn anything about myself this week other than I’m not sure how or if I’ll ever get this teaching thing down to mastery. I love learning but being a facilitator of instruction has many elements that I’m not sure if I’m delivering in the most effective manner. I am told that I’m doing well by my observers but I don’t feel as though my craft needs a lot more machinery.
ReplyDeleteYou will get teaching down to mastery. Practice makes perfect and I am sure you are doing fine.
DeleteI think a big part of being a teacher is also knowing that you will always be a learner. When I look at my host teacher teach, I'm like wow! its so effortless. I have to remind myself that he has been teaching 30 years though.If you are concerned whether your students are actually learning or even understanding what you are teaching them, try doing frequent checks for understanding while you are teaching. You will immediately know if they are paying attention, confused or if they are right with you ;)
DeleteHave confidence in yourself Kourtney! It may feel like you're not doing well to you, but those kids don't know if you're right or wrong. They're going to believe what you tell them (even if you're wrong--which I'm sure you're not). You know more than you think you do! You're just starting, no one is supposed to be perfect.
DeleteI'm guessing by now you are all realizing how outrageously complicated it is to teach really well. Sometimes I find it hard to imagine a more complex career choice. Sometimes I long for a job that is simple and straight forward, but I know if I really had a job like that I'd be bored in a week. At least you aren't bored, right? Just keep plugging along and striving to get .005% better every day. It will add up.
DeleteOn Tuesday,my host teacher was absent for the entire day, she had a sub but left me in charge. We have a special ed co-teacher but I pretty much was left primarily in charge. I was nervous about having the entire day to myself but it went well. The students did not try and act different because their teacher was not there. Even though I was nervous about it, I am glad I was able to experience it because I feel like I need all of the practice I can get with being in control. The students did what they were suppose to be doing and nothing horrible or out of the ordinary happened. However, by the time 7th period came I was done. 6th and 7th periods are our worst ones. Both classes are full of kids with behavior problems. So after having to deal with 6th alone, I had the special ed teacher take over 7th. I do not know what it is about those last two classes but they are our most difficult ones, everyday.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad the kids didn't act differently. That usually does not happen. 7 periods is a long day. You are ready to go home and so are they.
DeleteThis is one of the reasons I prefer block scheduling!
DeleteAn entire class had to join my class for two blocks. The students worked independently during this time. Regular class instruction could not go on as normal because my class was preparing to take an assessment that the additional class had already taken. It was a bit challenging but all students were able to complete their assessments by the end of the day. Today allowed me to see just how flexible I am going to have to be.
ReplyDeleteI am endlessly amazed at how often unexpected events interfere with teaching. Ugh!!
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