Thanks for stopping by, and joining me on this journey into teaching. Please enjoy your stay.

Friday, August 29, 2014

Onwards and Upwards and All That Jazz

                For those of you returning for another semester as we near the final stretch of our teacher preparation, I welcome you.  We’ve finished one giant step forward on the path to “Teacherhood,” and we’re about to begin taking another.  Good luck and best wishes to all of you.  For those of you who aren’t going through this experience with us, greetings as well.  Welcome to my blog, Training for Teacherhood, where I am chronicling my progression through the placement experiences associated with the teacher preparation program.  Good luck and best wishes to you too.

                This week, I moved into my final placement, the semester-long experience known as “Student Teaching.”  This is exactly what it sounds like, the experience of juggling being a student and a teacher in the ever-more familiar (and ever changing) environment that is the high school classroom.  And, so far, I am enjoying the experience.

                The biggest driving force behind this week, and everything when you think about it, is energy.  Without energy, a heart won’t beat, a computer won’t turn on, and a teacher won’t be able to effectively teach.  The physical logistics is something that no class can get you ready for.  It is one thing to read that “teaching is mentally and physically draining” (and many add emotionally as well), and another one to experience that first week of teaching firsthand.  I’m truly marching to a new drummer’s beat, and though there are the occasional stumbles, I am confident that I will eventually learn all the new steps.  That starts with a new sleep schedule, as well as more rigidly planned daily schedules. 

                I am slowly growing more comfortable with my position as something other than a short-lived classroom teacher-shade (my previous placements were valuable and interesting, but the short time that each allowed me to spend with the classes made it necessary to sacrifice and expedite things.  I needed to “get in, and get out,” as it were, but still make some kind of mark).  I am lucky enough to have a host teacher who believes in starting off more as “colleagues,” with us sharing responsibilities in the class (which I will begin to gradually pick up more of as I transition towards being the primary teacher).  As such, I have been, hopefully, seen as a “second teacher” by the students, not a “student teacher,” with all the associated baggage that stereotypically comes with that (not that there’s anything wrong with being a student teacher, mind you).  I think this will become helpful as the experience wears on.  My host teacher and I have also been conversing regularly about what is going on in classes and in my observations outside of our classes, which allows the seeds planted in my head to germinate.

                As I move forward, I will be focusing first on honing out the teaching persona that I can be fully happy and comfortable with.  Various things come up, and I think it is of paramount importance that the skin you teach in fits well enough for you to do some contorting in.  If it’s going to shred or fall off every time you move, then there needs to be some mental tailoring done.  This is something I have been talking to my host teacher about, and I will continue to work on it moving forward.

                The other thing I am getting more aware of and comfortable with are the students.  I want to build a nice rapport with them, to form that ever-important “bond” with them.  As a student teacher, I believe that this bond is, if anything, more important than normal to establish soon and with strength, as I will only have one semester with them.  I will be learning from them as they learn from me (something I see happening even when I am a teacher on my own, even if it seems more dramatic in student teaching), and I want to minimize the obstacles in the way of that happening.

                Overall, I have had an enjoyable week.  My host teacher, and the rest of the school community, from students to faculty to staff, has been warm and welcoming.  Whether at professional development, in the hallways, or in classrooms, I feel like I am a member of the school family. 


 I look forward to continuing in this semester, and I can’t wait for next week.  If I take another step in the right direction every day, then by the time this semester ends, I have confidence that I’ll be able to reach my goals, no matter how lofty they might seem on the first day of classes.

Saturday, April 26, 2014

High School Week Three - Reflections on Lessons

                For my teaching, I taught two different lessons to two different classes.  Overall, the lesson was about the creation and performance of Slam Poetry. 

                I definitely noticed a difference between the first and second time teaching each lesson.  This was not necessarily the classes I was teaching (though each class had its own attributes to take into consideration), and more to do with the fact that I was editing each lesson furiously between each use.  I think the biggest thing I took away from this process was that I saw, firsthand, that the lesson you write down is not the lesson that will be taught, and that lesson will not be the lesson you teach the second time.  Let me explain.

                With, for example, my first lesson, I had everything broken down somewhat neatly.  I had my plan, timed out, reviewed and rehearsed.  Planned.  Then, when I went to teach it the first time, I noticed I was lagging at some points, breezing through others, repeating things, boring with things, etc.  I was compensating, modifying the lesson as I went, but it didn’t “feel” right as I was doing it. 

                So, afterwards, I talked to my host teacher, who went through the lesson with me.  We discussed first what she noticed (good and bad), and then any ideas I might have had, and any suggestions she had.  Then, I went home, went through the lesson plan with a fine-tooth comb, and edited things.

                The second day, I had a refined lesson plan, and, in my opinion, things went much better.  There was more of a constant pace, and the students got farther with the lesson.

                The same thing happened with the second lesson.  The more I taught it, the more “at home” I felt in the lesson, the better I knew how to change it, the better I think I taught it, the better I think it went.  So, m biggest take away I feel I got is to not get too attached to my lesson plans as written.  There is no such thing as a perfect lesson, so every lesson can improve.

                I also learned that I actually looked forward to improving my lessons.  I could almost see the mental wrench as it ratcheted the lesson ever and ever tighter, making the lesson better and better.   When I wrote up the first lesson for the first time, I thought it might be fun and informative, that it might help the students, and maybe get them to appreciate or like poetry.  By the time I finished teaching it the last time, I feel that with some editing and modifying to compensate for the shortcomings and time issues (one of the biggest problems for my lessons, along with a tendency to not front load so much), I could use it in a future class with success (at least, I hope so….).


                All in all, I think my time at the high school gave me the first-hand experience that I needed with “real” teaching.  I was flying solo, so I had more riding on my own shoulders (so I needed to ground myself even more than usual), and I was editing my lessons constantly.  That experience, and the idea of ever-improving, is one of the most valuable lessons I have gotten in my teacher preparation experience.  

Sunday, April 13, 2014

High School Week Two - Not Overlooking the "Humanity" in "Humanities"

                My second week at my high school placement was eye-opening.  I spent much of my first week in the school comparing it to my previous experiences, especially to my placement at the middle school level.  This week, I wanted to look at not only the overall “Feel” of the class, but at the rigor of the classes, and how my cooperating teacher was able to maintain the classroom in the state it was in.  To that end, I looked at the way the class was taught in reading and writing.

                I mentioned last week how the classes I was observing were more willing to work silently or in small groups.  In the last week, I roamed around, listening in on discussions, and assisting with writing.  But for the most part, the classes were very student-oriented, student-driven, and student-powered.  It was unlike anything I had ever seen before.  But it was paired with a great variety.  What do I mean by variety?

                Well, in the last week, students have read individually, in small groups, and out loud as a class (and often it was students’ choice).  I was told it was based on the pace that needed to be achieved, as well as the difficulty of the text (as well as the individual class that was reading it).  For example, when starting a new novel, it made sense to read as a class, so questions could be addressed, especially when it came to archaic wording and foreign concepts.

                Speaking from my own experiences, I never had this kind of freedom in high school.  If we read in class, we either read silently, or as a class.  And even then, it was usually together as a class.  We had no say, and we had no option to form reading circles and discuss things.  You were an island or a tree in a forest.  So I am really enjoying seeing something so different (and they are using novels.  Always good to see).

                It was also my first experience at units built along multiple texts (besides text book units).  An overall theme or question is chosen for each class, and then texts are chosen that reflect this.  But some units contain multiple novels.  Some are essays and poems.  Some are a mix.  But the units are more than just “myth” or “fear.”  They are serious questions like “Can fiction tell us truth?”  This means that even texts that seem to be “standard” become intriguing and “new” as part of an interesting and rigorous unit.  The classes do not read things just to read them.  They read things to learn from them, to become more critical and, dare I say it, philosophical.  Everything builds to a final answer to the unit’s essential question, but there is not really one “right answer.”  And, amazingly, some texts serve as a bridge between two units.

                And I think that is the biggest difference.  My host teacher in the high school uses her classroom to take students and mold deep-thinking, well-read adults.  And she manages to get them to even mold themselves.  Nothing is done for the sake of doing things.  It is all done for the sake of grappling with real world issues.  It is, in a way, a “socially responsible literature class.”  It is a true “humanities” class.

                And all the while, there is a mutual respect, as I mentioned last week.  The class is humanized.  It is due to the teaching style in play, and of the close bond I’ve been observing.  It is obvious to me that my host teacher has not overlooked the “humanity” in “the humanities.”


                And when you get right down to it, isn’t that what literature is?  A way to grapple with issues while entertaining?  A way to look at humanity?  And I know I’m coming to look at things more deeply because of it.

Saturday, April 5, 2014

High School Week One - Differences in the Classroom Community

                Now in a high school, I find that there is quite a difference between my new classroom community, and the one that I was in back at the middle school.  Things work differently, but it still works.  And that’s what’s really important.

                First of all, the teacher’s job is less obviously about general management, and more about instilling concepts in the minds of their students.  This is due in part to the greater maturity of the students overall, and in the expectations placed on the classroom community.  Not that there weren’t expectations placed on students and teachers at the middle school, there were many.  But in the high school, there is almost a dialogue about it.  It is not “I have to do this with my students.  Okay, let’s go.”  It is “alright students.  We need to do this by X, and this by X, because so-and-so needs the results input into the system by X, etc.”

                The classes are more student-driven overall.  Sure there were students acting things out in the middle school, but in the high school, more input needs to be generated by the students.  There can be time set aside to be more creative, and student-centered discussions are easier.  The advanced age and experience of the older students allows them to understand more complex and abstract concepts, and this means different things are discussed (love, truth, the American Dream, etc.).

                The new class I am in also seems more “networked.”  There is a class website, and a class Twitter.  There is a meme posted on the door every week or so, and assignments are handed in online.  In my middle school placement, many of the assignments were homework or classwork, done by hand, and handed in directly.  And the assignments (and each assessment) were shorter and individually lower in stake.

                The high school class is more willing to engage in “silent reading” time.  This is a big change, as the teacher does not need to constantly be pulling people back into the activity.  In the middle school, most reading was done in partners or groups, even very short works.  So to see students reading a 20+ page story on their own is a lot different.  And then they will annotate it (at least if pushed to).  The same goes for writing.  The classes will more or less silently write for periods of time.

                I believe this is because there is more of a rapport between high school students and their teachers than there is in a middle school classroom.  There was a comfortable relationship in the middle school classes, but in the high school classes, most of the students talk to my host teacher on a more “human” level.  When they first walk in, before the period begins, they might ask if she saw something on television over the weekend, etc.  It’s an environment of mutual respect between people who are more “peer-like.”  I didn’t see that in the middle school. 

                Students also seemed more willing to ask each other for help and opinions than they were to ask my host teacher or me (by and large).  Not that when I ask them they will always refuse help, but they seem unwilling to ask the questions (especially of me) in the first place.  In the middle school, before I had even been explained as a practicum student to the class, they were asking me to clarify what was happening in their text.


                Overall, I think the high school has more of an emphasis on what students can bring to the classroom.  There seems to be agreement that the students will be involved more in their education, and I think it makes them more invested.  Their opinions are valued and openly considered, and it becomes more of a conversation between teacher and students, not a one-way street.

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Lesson Reflection

The lesson that was observed was the second part of a two-part lesson on Macbeth, World War I, and popular views on war.  Day one had focused on World War I, anti-war attitudes, and the way World War I was the war responsible for the beginnings of the shift from the “it is honorable and great to die for king and country” mindset to the “war is wrong” mindset.  Day two, the lesson observed, focused on modern and World War I era pro- (not war, but definitely pro-soldier, and glossing over the aspects of war) opinions, as well as pro-war sentiment in Macbeth, and pulling on the two different views.

I think, by the end of the lesson, students were able to meet the learning objectives, but I will not be certain until we review and grade the assignments they are finishing for homework.  We will be picking them up next week, and so we will know then.  The first objective we had, that they could react to their opening “Do Now” activity seems to have been relatively successful.  To be honest, I haven’t had a chance to sit down and read through them all in detail, but a quick glance seemed to show that they did it with some understanding of the topic.

Time was a factor.  We managed to get done everything we wanted to get done, and in the time we wanted to get it done, but that was only due to practice and previous lessons.  We never really “ran out of time,” but we definitely felt the crunch more than once.  I suppose there is an inevitable squeeze when you have to cover something, and you can’t pick up the next day.  There are better ways I might want to use my time in the future,  more ways to equalize the time spent with students so a handful don’t monopolize question or discussion time.

Both my partner and I managed to keep everyone on task (mostly) for most of the class, but as the class went on, I think we could have been a little more forceful in pulling everyone back in (without resorting to pulling everyone back individually, which ate into that time mentioned above).  The classroom management was not only different between groups, but between individual days, and I think we learned first-hand the ephemeral quality of the classroom.  You never really know what is going to be waiting for you behind the door when you open it each morning.

I feel strongly that the lesson was engaging.  Students kept asking questions to gain more details on what we were discussing, and many were willing to share their opinions and reactions, as well as ask and answer questions.  I think part one had been more engaging, as in that class, there were hardly anything off-topic happening, but the one observed still seemed to pull them in.  They seemed to enjoy using different mediums to address something, and after the first day, we were asked by one student (with their friends listening in) whether we would be teaching again the next day.  When we said yes, they expressed their excitement. So, overall, I think the lesson was engaging.


I learned that you need to have eyes in the back of your head, the clairvoyance of the Oracle of Delphi, and the willingness to pull rank of a general.  But I also learned that these skills are something that I will work on.  I learned that students really seem to like being read to, and that they appreciate it if you talk frankly to them.  I might still get tripped up every once in a while (I’m not perfect, after all) but I think I learned a lot just by being in the room, and I really enjoyed the opportunity.

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

2014 Rhode Island Writing Project Spring Conference

The 2014 Rhode Island Writing Project Spring Conference, the second such conference I have attended, was very interesting and enlightening.

                The keynote speaker did an excellent job discussing narrative and its place in the standards.  He presented narrative as the basic method of communicating information, whether scientific data (what is scientific data besides the story of a “process”) or historical information.  Humans naturally communicate things in the narrative form. 

                So, when standards emerge that separate writing into “Narrative,” “Informational,” and “Argumentative,” there is an inherent problem, because all of these are based on narrative.  When you are presenting information, or making an argument, you do so by having a beginning, a middle, and an end, telling the story of your information or argument.  Therefore, this artificial division of writing categories is inherently incorrect, and possibly even damaging. 

                And this goes into another point he raised, that even though the Common Core Standards place an emphasis on high level thinking and questioning, he feels that the standards themselves work only if no one places them under scrutiny.  For example, he stated that there is no hard evidence that reading more difficult texts will make students “better,” and yet the Common Core is based around that idea.  In short, he believes that concepts and information should be shared in the form of a “dramatic” story (if I am understanding him correctly.  Take the best parts of what you can find, and do what you need to do.  The standards can’t dictate how you approach texts, and how you present them.

                The first panel I went to was called “Poetry Speed Dating,” and it was basically an interactive presentation where audience members got to try out an activity.  In the activity, groups circulate around templates/forms of different poems, and tried out each one for eight minutes.  Then they tried out the next one.  The activity, based on something used at a Summer Writing Camp previously, was a way to introduce students to various poetry structures, and give them freedom about which one to continue to work on/hand in/read aloud, and yet still get them to try out poetry.  It softened the entrance into poetry, while still challenging students to try new things.  In the end, participants were given a print out of the short presentation about the activity, and then were given all of the templates passed around, along with a few extra ones.

                The second panel I attended was about using Shakespeare plays in elementary and middle school classrooms.  The presentation painted a picture of a unit, and was based on the idea that Shakespeare’s ideas and stories are the most important thing.  Interesting was that at no point in the modeled unit did students read a complete and unabridged version of a Shakespeare play (as a requirement.  There was an option), but instead, the idea was for students to approach Shakespeare and his plays to extract the stories, characters, morals, and the “essentials,” so that future work with Shakespeare would be even easier.

                It was also based on the idea that to fully understand Shakespeare’s plays, you must understand Shakespeare and his environment.  So the unit was an interesting blend of history and literature, of picture books and Shakespearean texts.  It was a very interesting idea, and it fell into line with what is happening in the Middle School classroom I am currently working with.


                All in all, I really enjoyed the conference, and I look forward to attending another one.

Monday, March 10, 2014

Week Two Reflection

                The second week of our placement in a middle school classroom was just as eventful as the first.  My partner and I were able to see them continue with the same unit, and forge ahead in the completion of their difficult (though they still seem relatively at ease with it) text.

                But this week, it was more the variations that struck me, both in students and teachers.  Let me explain.

                See, due to the way the classes we are observing are structured, my partner and I get to see several different teaching styles at play during our visits, simply because there are several different teachers working with the classes taught by our cooperating teacher.  We have had the pleasure to semi-regularly observe three teachers (each one multiple times), including a teacher who is working with English Language Learners. 

                And, to me, the experience that had the most impact this week (and so will be the focus of this reflection) was in this ELL classroom.  I was asked to assist by sitting with a number of boys, and my partner was sitting with another group of students in a different part of the classroom.  One of the boys in my group was really struggling with the activity (which had to do with a poetry lesson, and asked them to identify uses of simile, metaphor, and personification in a series of sentences).

                Now, I do not have good Spanish skills.  I know a few words (by sheer coincidence, I happened to know the Spanish translations of quite a few of the words used in the assignment, but not many), but how do you go about “hack translating” a poetry assignment?  But there was a bilingual student in the same group, and between the two of us (me using my few words, and he translating the rest), we were able to work it out.  But the most interesting thing was that they were helping each other with the assignment, and that the bilingual student was not only acting as a translator, but was listening to me, learning it, and then teaching it to his friend, who then talked to him about it.  It was like a mini teacher community.

                It was difficult, but rewarding.  He answered the last couple by himself (and got them correct).  There’s just something about having a student turn to you and say “I understand.”

                I think I know why this teacher asked me to sit there.  In a previous lesson, she had sat me among another group, but it was this group where I took a more active role, simplifying the sentences by eliminating clauses that didn’t have to do with the simile/metaphor/personification in the sentence (for example, using a sentence I just made up, if it read “from the night sky, the moon cast its gaze through my window,” I would tell him to focus on the part after the comma), and doing some other things.

                I was given some semi-free reign to hold a mini-lesson with this group, to move at a different pace than the rest of the class.  And she encouraged them to work with me, even at one point telling them to listen to either one of us.  It was very welcoming, and it made me a “teacher” in their eyes.


                And from her point of view, I suppose it allowed her to give her students the individualized attention they need, and to differentiate the lesson even more.  With two more people in the classroom, she could trust us to regulate the lesson for our groups while she taught to the entire class.  It was a lot different from the other classes we have observed, and I’m glad we did so.  Speaking for myself, I know I learned a lot.