Winter Reflection

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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.

Integrating disciplines

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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.

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!

Teaching Metaphor

Teaching is a jigsaw puzzle.

The parents, the principal, the volunteers, the superintendent, the curriculum, the other teachers, and the community; these are the exterior pieces. The ones who help frame and hold the puzzle together.

Each student is an interior piece in the puzzle with its own unique picture and shape. Each piece has its own unique interaction/fit within the puzzle that can be replace by no other piece, yet its fit may change with wear and time.

The teacher is the puzzle master, trying to figure out where each piece goes, how each piece interacts with the others, and how the pieces fit together to make a beautiful picture.

The entire picture/finished puzzle is a collaborative, functioning classroom. The pieces are interacting in their optimal capacity. Each child is learning and growing through the help of one another. The teacher can see the whole picture, see how the pieces fit together, and adjust the pieces if the picture or optimal fit needs amending or adjusting.

The puzzle is incomplete without any one of the pieces and will never be complete without a competent puzzle master.

Be Prepared

Just as the teachers of the Oklahoma tornado demonstrated, the lives of children are safely entrusted in to the hands of teachers every single day. If parents are entrusting the lives of their children to teachers, why can’t teachers be entrusted with making the decisions regarding curriculum and how they will teach? If teachers have already fully committed to making these students productive adults, why would they sabotage their own ability to teach with shotty curriculum and teaching methods? The community and nation needs to trust in the emotional connection and entrust the curriculum to the teachers just as they entrust us with the lives of the children.

How can we ensure that each teacher is prepared for this kind of responsibility? In Monday’s class, we were talking about creating a uniform, nation-wide standard for teaching certification. Rather than basing teaching performance on standardized tests after the fact, why not ensure that every teacher is fully competent and prepared to teach to a high standard before they even get to the classroom? We should funnel the money spent on standardized testing in to teacher education and enrichment. What better way to make sure teachers are up to par than actually making sure they have the tools and the education to be up to par? After they become teachers, we could have inspecting programs rather than testing; trained professionals who come into classrooms to observe and give feedback to the teacher about their ability and curriculum. Why can’t we focus on what the teacher is actually doing rather than on test scores that may of may not accurately represent what students are learning and are capable of learning? It’s time to change from unemotional paper interaction and assessment to a more appropriate, human interaction way for teachers to be held accountable and for students to be assessed.

The road is long

The road is long; particularly my road to teaching. My road has been relatively short compared to many others in my newly acquainted teaching certificate program, but I feel as though my road to teaching was longer than it needed to be. If I may begin to elaborate....

In junior high and high school, I toyed with many career options for myself, one of the forerunners being teaching. Being a math teacher seemed like a great choice for me in that I loved math, my favorite teachers were my math teachers, and I had a knack for teaching/tutoring others in the subject of math. 

So why did I go to college with my eyes set on a dual degree in architecture and construction management? 

First off, my beloved math teachers seemed to think I shouldn't go in to teaching. Not because I wouldn't have made a good teacher, but because teaching wasn't something they would have recommend to many, if anyone at all. Similarly, my mother, who is also a teacher, discouraged this career path because of the extremely poor monetary compensation of the profession.

Secondly, and somewhat connected to the first reason, was this societal notion that teaching was somehow not a high ranking or intellectual career. When I read this notion presented by William Ayers in To Teach (2010) just the other day was when I finally made the connection to this concept and how it had actually affected my career path. My math teachers didn't want me to teach because they thought it "beneath" my "skill and intelligence level" as Ayers says on page 18 of his book. Furthermore, I felt this pressure as well in my personal competitiveness with my sister who had chosen to pursue civil engineering. I wanted to show the world I was a smart, intellectual person by choosing a challenging and rewarding profession.

I reasoned that I like art as well as math, and the combination, therefore, would be architecture. Architecture would get me further in life and more praise than other careers I had 'previously considered.' 

So, after wading through prerequisites for the program, battling for admission to the architecture department, challenging myself with topics I pretended to be fully invested in, adding the intense dual degree in construction management, and avoiding the computer programs needed to succeed in the profession, I realized that the construction industry was far from what I wanted for my life.

I talked with my mother about my unhappiness and my regret for not going for teaching, and she relented saying that I should do what makes me happy; she finally gave me her explicit blessing to pursue teaching.

I finished my dual degree, researched certification programs, completed general knowledge prerequisites, was accepted to a program, and am currently in my first month of instruction.

Let's see where the road takes me now.