Winter Reflection

Source

As I find myself at the end of winter quarter, I find myself once again faced with a reflective post on growing as a reflective blogger and teacher. I feel that yet again, I have indeed grown as a blogger, but more importantly, a reflective teacher. Although I shy away from talking about specific examples of students in my class (I feel those reflections are more suited for my own, less public, brain), I do feel that many of my posts are reflective of how I am beginning to be contemplative of what my practice is starting out as and where it can go. I feel that I have also began blogging about things that I am trying to enter in to a conversation about rather than spew rhetorical nonsense from my head.

An example that I would like to point out is my post on Reaching All Students. I think This demonstrates my desire to deepen my perspective on my practice in two ways. One -- I am always looking for insight from others into their teaching practices. And two -- I am continuing to generate more questions from that information rather than saying "oh, that post was nice." and moving on.

I feel that I am also growing as a commenter in that I am questioning more rather than, again, spewing rhetorical praise. I feel a comment that demonstrates this growth was on this post on Goal Setting. Rather than saying, "Oh goal setting is so inspiring and lovely and great job -- keep it up." I took an antagonistic approach to this bloggers' thinking. I spoke of my own personal dread of goal setting, and challenged her to think about what she would do if a student shared my sentiment and refused to participate in goal setting. I realize goal setting can be a beneficial motivator for many people, and I'm not trying to convince her or others not to use it in their classrooms; I was just trying to get some thinking started about the true use of goal setting and what about those who don't find goal setting helpful.

I think I'll keep this one short and to-the-point and finish it off here. I hope those who have been reading my posts have also seen my growth, and I hope to see you on the other side of the new quarter.

Free Education for All

Having grown up a sheltered, middle class, white girl who has done little traveling in other countries. Now, I'm going to admit now to my ignorance when it comes to third world countries and the realities of the lives of the people who live there. I'm well aware that I should already know of these realities, and it blows my mind when I see things like this post about a free school in India. This "school" is located under a bridge and lets children from the nearby slums attend and get an education for free.

Now for the questions showing my ignorance:

I commented on the actual post saying "Wow. This is amazing. It's great to see the children so eager to learn and try to make a better life from what they were given. How did this get started? Is there no other free education available? Are there other schools like this?"

I am also wondering, why is it that this is the only education that these children have access to? Does India not have any free education other than "schools" under bridges from those willing to teach them? Why can't more people realize that without education, the problems of poverty and children living in slums will repeat generation after generation? What would need to happen for more countries to realize this AND be able to do something about it?

Furthermore, these children are so involved and engaged with their education and are proactively trying to learn. It's so wrong that these children who so want to learn are being so under served, and many kids in our country only go to school because they are forced to. How can we instill this kind of need and purpose for education in our own sheltered, middle class, children?

Lesson Out of Context

Two of my cohort mates and I planned and implemented a science lesson recently to a class we had only observed for one one-hour lesson prior to teaching. It was an experience of mixed emotions and thoughts. Our lesson didn't crash-and-burn, but it also didn't go as well as it could. A lot of our issues I feel sprang from the issue that we didn't know the classroom nor the kids well enough to anticipate the nuances of our lesson delivery to these students in particular. We had little to no relationship with these students, and we had very little context for how our lesson fit with the overall unit and how the students had been learning the material. Had I known what the lesson would end up like with these particular students, I would have planned it much differently.

I'm not writing this post to complain nor am I looking to sit here and think of every single thing I could have or should have done differently. I know that in my own future classroom, I will have context for my students and my lessons. I will be able to have more wiggle room for adjustments and follow-up lessons.

But, I am also thinking about two other related things. One is the importance of getting to know your students to create a leaning environment that will work for each individual and for the class as a whole. Teaching this lesson really drove home through an actual personal experience of how much of an impact knowing your students makes.

Another important thought sprung from this experience is the thought of substitute teaching. Many teachers substitute teach every day, and I may need to substitute teach sometime in the future. In this situation, you will most likely get lesson plans given to you for the day. But what about knowing students and implementing those lessons? What about the emergency substitute situation where you are thrown in not knowing the students and without detailed lesson plans? These are things I am realizing I need to start thinking about if I am going to be a successful and wanted substitute teacher anytime in the future.

Research Organization

In Steve Moline’s article, “Using Graphic Organizers to Write Information Texts,” he says that when children are presented with a research and report type of task, they need to have scaffolding for how to organize the information they find in their final product. The graphic organizers he suggests are helpful, but my cooperating teacher has developed another way to help students organize data in her class research projects that seems very straightforward and helpful for students.

The students in my class have recently started a president research project where each student has one president and must find information on the president to write a report from and give a presentation. To help students stay organized, my cooperating teacher gave each student three envelopes, one for each main topic. The envelopes have a list taped to the outside with the subtopics in order of how they should appear in the final write-up. As the students research, the students are supposed to have separate, labeled index card for each of the sub topics and keep them in the corresponding envelopes. Once the students have note cards with research completed for each subtopic, they can begin writing that section of the report. They pull out their cards and synthesize the information in the order listed on the envelope. This way, the students understand what order information should be presented in and get practice ordering their notes in a logical way.

Along with the research/note organization, my teacher also has mini lessons and examples of pieces of the final project. On one day, she provided examples of a poor introduction and a good introduction. On another day, she presented examples of a poor “early life” section and a good “early life” section. She will be doing the same thing for the other main sections as well as for the conclusion.

Although my cooperating teacher doesn’t have a drawn web or other visual organizer for the students, she does provide the structure through the envelopes and examples of well-organized reports through her mini lessons. Just thought it was a great way to scaffold students’ research.

Integrating disciplines

Source

Students need to learn how to integrate subjects in their minds. Students need to make the connection between math and science to be able to succeed in chemistry. Rather than seeing math and science as two distinctly separate periods and subjects, utilizing the new and background knowledge across subjects will help them not only succeed during the school year but also remember what they learned.

I personally know that I remember new information better when I make multiple types of connections to other new things I am learning as well as things I already know. Students need to be able to make connections like these in order to tap into the full capacity of their learning and memory capabilities. However, students may or may not be able to learn to do this on their own.

Teachers need to learn how to teach the students through integration of subjects, or at least teaching students about the links between subjects. How powerful would it be to have an art teacher talk to an English class about William Holman Hunt’s painting of "The Lady of Shalott" or other similar paintings while they are reading Lord Tennyson’s ballad? How many more connections could be added by a history teacher? Understanding of the poem could be much deeper and memory of the connections would be much stronger.

What I am trying to say is that teachers should be teaching in a more collaborative and integrated way in order to teach students to make the connections between the subjects. When I was in my middle school placement for student teaching, I saw teachers teaching in exactly the same way they have always taught middle school, completely separate from other subjects. Sure they met as teams, but that was only by subject. Math with math, social studies with social studies. The thing that bothered me most about this way of teaching was the school had been built to facilitate collaboration between subjects.

There were four classrooms and a shared space that made up a pod, and each classroom in a pod was a different subject. Furthermore, most of the students had most of their classes in one pod; a student who had math in pod B usually also had history, language arts, and science in pod B. So why weren’t these teachers collaborating and trying to link their curriculums to find places where they could teach the student to utilize multiple disciplines at once? Yes, it takes a lot of time, but isn’t a school supposed to be about creating success for the students? I think if schools would open their eyes to how beneficial integration of subjects is, there would be more time allocated to collaboration between subjects as professional development.

Reaching all students

As I was monitoring my Facebook feed the other day, a friend of mine shared a blog post written by a parent about what one teacher does to monitor her students' feelings of belonging and inclusion. The mother talks about how the teacher has the students anonymously list three students who they would like to sit by the next week, and how she studies those requests to see which students are not being requested to sit by who may be lonely and may need some intervention. The author artfully threw in that this teacher had been doing this with her class (I think 4th or 5th grade) every Friday since Columbine in an attempt to prevent something similar from happening again by helping lonely students before it reaches a critical point. Although the blog post provided an impressive and insightful way of information gathering, it didn't go in to much detail about how the teacher actually goes about using the information she finds.

After I read the post, I tried to comment to try to get more information, but the site continually said it wouldn't post my comment because there was some sort of error (and now, as I try to go back to the post, the host says that page doesn't exist). So, I turn to you, my cohort and other small pocket of readers, to help me think about how to answer what I would have asked the original author.

Here is what I would have commented had I been able to:
"Wow. As a preservice teacher, I found great ideas in this post. I would be very interested in hearing what she does next with those students next. How does she arrange her room to try to make those who are outcasts more involved? How does she approach those who seem to be lonely? How does she actually go about using those lists to actually help the children in need?"

So what do you think? Once we discover which students are lonely, what can we do about it as teachers?

Project Learning Tree

Source

Yesterday my cohort had the opportunity for environmental studies professional development through a Project Learning Tree workshop. It was a great, eye-opening experience into both environmental issues and incredible ways in which to incorporate environmental sudies into all school subjects.
I think the most impactful thing I learned, however, was the "pyramid" approach to environmental education. Our instructor introduced us to the concept of creating a base for student knowledge not through fear and guilt, but through connection to and love of the environment.

So many environmental programs go for the upfront "wow" factor by showing pictures of damage world climate change has caused to the earth or showing videos of the giant trash spot in the Pacific Ocean. While these photos and videos may frighten or guilt kids in to turning off a couple lights at home or recycling when it's convenient, it's not going to get lifetime complete buy-in to saving the earth.

However, if we were to start by getting kids to love the environment through outdoor education and direct connection, they would have a reason to want to help save what they have grown to love. For example, if a student were to become interested in birds and when they arrive back to a specific area each year, that student would be more interested in making the environment around where he/she lives livable for birds. That student might move on to studying birds in other ways. If he/she then discovered that human water conservation also impacted bird or other animal populations, the student would then have a personal, deep connection and drive to conserve water. This connection would remain part of this student much more than fear and guilt would. They would have personal investment in environmental concerns.

Although I still plan on teaching middle school math once I'm done with this program, I'm looking forward to using the resource book I bought at the workshop to try to implement some environmental activities in to math lessons. Thanks for the great workshop PLT!

Pacing

During my first week back at my student teaching placement, I had the opportunity to take over teaching quite a few lessons. For some reason, I found pacing my lessons to be much more difficult than I had found in the past. I'm wondering if this is because I've learned more about teaching and all the different ways students can and should be taught. I've learned so many new strategies and techniques, and I'm trying to use them all in my teaching. However, now that I'm using all of these strategies, my lessons have become too long and the students haven't been getting enough work time. What's better: to make sure every student learns during every lesson but have decreased work time, or make sure the students get enough work time and seek out those that didn't get it during the lesson individually? It's another part of the balancing act.

Pendulum part 2

Near the end of last quarter, I wrote about my constant struggle to decide between teaching middle school math or an upper elementary classroom in Pendulum. At the time that I wrote that post, my heart pendulum had begun to swing more toward being a classroom teacher; however, I am once again beginning to swing back the other way.

In one of my classes, we are reading A Sustainable Start: A Realistic Look at the First Year of Teaching by John Spencer, and I am also reading with a group Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire by Rafe Esquith. Reading these two books side-by-side has been helping me decide what kind of teacher I want to be. Spencer has been talking about teaching sustainably in the sense of not getting burnt out as a teacher. One should teach not like a firework, flaming in brilliance for a moment, but like a campfire, burning steadily for a long time. Esquith has been giving me aspirations to be a great teacher, but he has also been giving me things that would transform my career into a firework rather than a campfire.

In the way the Spencer and Esquith books are in conversation about teaching, so too are my thoughts about who and how I want to teach. I have become worried that my wanting to be a classroom teacher is more for the firework reason than the campfire sustainability. If I were a classroom teacher, I would aspire to be Rafe Esquith doing incredible things and changing kids for the rest of their lives. I would want greatness and aspire to teach 5th graders everything they need to know about life. While aspiring to be this amazing of a teacher is just fine for some, I think I would burn out within the first couple years as suggested by Spencer.

If I were to go the route of being a middle school teacher, I think I would be more likely to create a sustainable career for myself yet still aspire to great things later. I can still be a great teacher without changing the world in my first year. I will be able to teach the subject I love, math, without trying to force myself to teach subjects I am not as comfortable with. Don't get me wrong, I am not swinging back toward teaching middle school math simply because it would be easier. I am swinging back toward teaching a subject I love, toward a sustainable start to my career, and the ability to be a great teacher without forcing myself to be what I'm not.

Starting a bit behind

It has been amazingly difficult for me to get back into the swing of things this quarter. Taking a full two week break from everything not on my personal want agenda made it almost impossible to light a fire under my butt to follow other agendas. I'm finally getting to the point where I can't ignore my school assignments and deadlines anymore if I want to be successful this quarter.

Having seen what this long break did to me this year, I'm wondering what long breaks will do to me once I have my own classroom. The breaks feel needed, but do the long breaks actually cause more stress on the tail end than what is relieved during the break? I think that many short breaks may be better for stress in this way than extra long breaks. I'm wondering how the school year could be altered to still have a couple longer breaks but still maintain connection to school and fluidity of productivity. Year-round school is starting to sound like a good idea to me, but how could it be seen as beneficial to all?

Growing a blogger

 I feel that this quarter I have made great strides in becoming a real blogger. Rather than hemming and hawing about the most perfect topic to blog, I have been learning to just sit down and write about what's on my mind or what most recently caught my eye. If it ends up being a topic no one is interested in, no big deal. I get to think through my thoughts on "paper" and then talk about something else in my next post. I don't think any one post in particular can show my growth as a blogger because my style seems to grow and change with every post, and I think I still have a ways to go before I can consider myself a top-notch blogger with great ideas that everyone should read.


One resource that has particular launched great part of my growth as a blogger was the mathtwitterblogosphere introduced as a class resource. I've started following many of the math teachers' blogs, and I'm learning quite a bit about successful math classrooms as well as effective blogging.

I've also learned this quarter that shorter is generally better in terms of blog posts. Looking at other people's posts has made me realize that unless it's about a topic I am really interested in, it better be short and to the point. If not, I just most on to the next post to spend my time more wisely.

In regards to commenting on other people's blogs, I feel I've also grown in that aspect as well. I've started actually remembering that it should be a conversation rather than monologues on the same topic. I've started asking questions rather than only stating my opinion, and I've started commenting on things that I may know nothing about and am simply curious about. By trying to interact through a blog, I feel my posts and comments have been somewhat more interesting (or at least I hope so.)

I commented on this blog post a while ago, and was excited to have a thoughtful reply to my comment and questions. It was also interesting to hear her further thoughts about the building and her different perspective on what the building was about. In this post, I felt that there was a great dialogue between all the commenters and the original author. I feel like all of us contributed to each others learning and thinking in a way that wouldn't have been possible not that long ago. Finally, I hope that my comment on this post helped the author go from only seeing trying to reteach in the same manor as insanity to thinking more deeply of ways in which we can still reteach students but structure it in different ways.

I can see that I still have a ways to go in my blogging growth, but at least I can see some improvement from my past posts. Maybe I'll reach a point where I don't have to ask myself this question when I have a post idea...

Taken from this blog about "why to blog"

Pendulum

Many people ask me where I want to end up as a teacher and what grade I want to teach. Prior to starting my teaching certificate program, I would have said with confidence that it would be middle school math. However, I'm finding it more and more difficult to say with surety that this is where I will truly end up. Don't get me wrong; I am loving my intern placement at the middle school level. I only teach the subject that I'm most passionate about, I get to work with students who are starting to be able to have real conversations with an adult yet still have child-like wonder and silliness at times, and it seems to have more structure and control than the elementary environment. However, I am coming to discover things about my 5th grade placement that I have surprisingly come to love and want for my furtue career.

I have found that even though I originally picked middle school because I wanted to be able to have "real" conversations with my students, 5th graders are fully capable of having these kinds of conversations. In fact, they bring more to these conversations because they are just learning how to be a part of them and have not become jaded in the slightest by reality. They bring the element of fresh imagination to spice up conversations.

Other things that are starting to change my mind are the teaching of multiple subjects, being able to bring more fun into the classroom, having (slightly) more flexibility with curriculum, having deeper connections with your students because there are fewer of them, and having a connection with the students' parents. All of these things have begun the more drastic swinging of my mental pendulum toward upper elementary teaching, and I'm not sure where my preference will end up. Being only halfway through my program, there is a lot that could change my mind, and I could end up truly anywhere.

Practice Makes Perfect

As I get farther into my practice of student teaching, I am continually surprised by how much more difficult teaching is than it looks. Every Wednesday and Thursday I watch my teacher teach math to 7th and 9th graders, and I think, "I could do that, easy. I just have to do what he does, easy." During the last couple weeks, I've started taking over parts of lessons and have found out that it is not easy to emulate his lessons. I forget to say things I had planned on saying, I forget to show specific ways of solving problems, I forget to wait for the kids to be quiet before I start talking, I forget the students names (well, there are 150 names to learn), and sometimes I forget how to solve the word problems by the method I'm supposed to teach (oops). Although it is starting to get easier as I get more comfortable teaching, I'm realizing that it's going to be a less easy process than I was expecting...I guess that's why I get to have 6 more months of practice!

Mix It Up

This week at my student teaching placement the middle school was having spirit week, and they had a special day called "mix it up" day. This day has many elements meant to "mix it up" including having the kids sit with someone they don't know at lunch and the teachers change up what and how they teach for the day. My cooperating teacher, who is a 7th and 9th grade math teacher, did an intense, moving lesson on being understanding of others and bullying. 

He began by talking about the human tendency to react with emotions to stressful situations and other people who are emotional. He said that it can be very difficult to react rationally and calmly, especially when your brain is still developing, but it's an important skill to learn how to be calm in stressful situations.

He next had an activity where he read a statement about a type of stressful situation like "if you have ever lost a parent, sibling, or immediate family member" and had students stand if the statement pertained to them. It was eye opening to me and the students to see how many students had experienced serious life stresses in their young lives. One of his points in doing that exercise was to have the students realize that everyone has stress in their lives, that we need to be aware of that when interacting with others, and that we should always make a point of being considerate of others. He followed the activity by reading his own experience with being bullied in middle school.

Next came the climax of the lesson in showing two emotional videos. I was surprised by the teacher's choice to show a video talking about kids who had committed suicide due to having been so severely bullied. I don't know if I would have been brave enough to even think about showing something like that to middle school students, but it ended up being an appropriately powerful message for the kids to handle especially because he followed up that video with the music video of Josh Groban's "You Are Loved."

Unfortunately, the class didn't have enough time to have a reflection immediately following the lesson, and they had to do their reflection in class the next day. I feel that the students really needed a reflection immediately following the lesson because it was so intense, and if I ever did a lesson like this I would make use that the would be enough time to decompress before sending them off for the rest of the school day.

What do you think of the lesson? What would you add or take out, or would you even want to do a lesson like this at school?

Read Aloud on Negative Numbers

When I was given the assignment to read a book aloud to my middle school math class, I was lost as to what I should read. After getting the suggestion from my cooperating teach to find a book about negative numbers to read to the 7th graders, I searched around the internet and found this book, Less Than Zero, by Stuart J. Murphy.

Less Than Zero is a book in a series of books by Murphy relating mathematical concepts in story form. This particular book has the following succinct summary on the back cover:

Perry the Penguin needs 9 clams to buy an ice scooter—but he’s not very good at saving. As Perry earns, spends, finds, loses, and borrows clams, a simple line graph demonstrates the concept of negative numbers.

To add to the summary, Perry has ‘less than zero’ clams for a part of the story because he borrows clams to buy things besides his ice scooter. In the end, Perry gets enough clams to buy his ice scooter by getting a loan of 4 clams from a neighbor that he will pay off by working shoveling snow, so he ends the story with a debt of negative 4 clams/hours of work.
 
This book has two possible messages to talk about with students. One message is about negative numbers and what negative numbers mean when applied to amounts of money. The other message is telling students that if they borrow more money than they have, then they will be negative in how much money they have. Furthermore, the second message also puts being negative money as something unfavorable and should be avoided.

Although I read it with middle school students, it could be used with almost any age to introduce negative number concepts, graphing practice, or just as a story about saving money. My students thoroughly enjoyed it, and I hope you find a use for it with your students. 

Wading through it all

This blog was set up as a course assignment, and I have blogged as assigned periodically over the last 6 months. My posts have felt like they came very naturally as a response to something I read or experienced, yet this week seems like I have nothing useful to contribute to the great blogosphere.

I feel like there is so much information out there and being constantly added to (I actually got stuck in all of it for a few hours trying to come up with something to blog about) that I don't feel like I should always contribute to all that noise. Although I do find endless awesome sites and ideas on the internet, it can take a while to get there. Wading through all that information can be time consuming, tiring, and stressful. My technology class has been introducing great tools for finding information and sorting/filing great information, but even using all of those tools can get overwhelming at times.

My teacher says of twitter that there is just too much information out there for you to keep track of; you just need to dip your bucket into the river every once in a while to see what you can get.

Within the last couple months, I have applied this concept to my entire internet usage. I have discovered a great way to make me a happier person and reduce my stress level over finding information by stepping away from my computer much more often. A rule I have for myself is if I find myself browsing things for more than a half hour that don't help me complete an assignment for school or specifically help me do something that I'm learning to do, I need to get off the computer and do a physical activity or hobby. It has actually helped my mood and outlook on my life, and I have started doing things that make me happy rather than just looking at websites that I will probably forget about the next day.

And speaking of which, I have spent far too long on the computer today, so I shall say goodnight to the internet for tonight...well, maybe at least for a couple hours...

Comfortable classrooms

When I had my class on the middle school learner last spring, we talked a great deal about how classroom environments could be made more comfortable for the students and match their physical needs better. Most of what we talked about we're great ideas, but I feel that ideas like tables students could stand at and squishy balls to play with are rarely implemented. It probably doesn't come to fruition due mainly money and partly simple follow through. However, I observed a class today that through the generously of a PTA grant had exercise balls available for students to sit on instead of chairs. Although it wasn't necessarily apparent whether they aided in attention over the 40 minutes I was observing, I was so thrilled to see the students getting their wiggles out during class in a generally non disruptive way. Great use of grant money in my opinion.

Math Manipulatives in Algebra

I just started observing a junior high class and was pleasantly surprised when the teacher pulled out Manipulatives to help the students visualize balancing algebraic expressions. I had never seen or experienced their use in learning algebra, and it gave me wonderful new ideas of how to use them in my future teaching.

The Manipulatives are used to represent the x terms and the integers and differentiate positive and negative terms. In this way students need to follow logical rules of keeping the equation balanced by literally taking away or adding the same thing to both sides. The long bars represent 1x and each small square represents 1. Furthermore, both bars and squares are positive when green/yellow, and negative when red. I think it's a quite brilliant way of physically representing a potentially abstract concept for learners. I definitely plans on utilizing this type of manipulative strategy in my future classrooms.

Below is an example of an equation being represented by the manipulatives. 3x-5 is represented by 3 green bars and 5 red squares while x-3 is represented by 1 green bar and 3 yellow squares. To solve for x, students would first remove a green bar from both sides and rewrite the equation to be 2x-5=3 with the visual matching. They would next add five yellow tiles to each side which would cancel out the red squares on the one side while adding with 3 to be 8 on the other side. The equation would then be written as 2x=8. The final move of the Manipulatives would be to divide the positive eight squares evenly with the two remaining green bars(x's). This would mean there would be 4 squares per bar, meaning x=4. I wish I had pictures for each step, but I don't at the moment. I'll try to update when I get a chance to take pictures of other examples.