Week 13

My student teaching experience is almost at a close.  It's crazy to think about how far I've come since that first day in Indonesia a while back.  I still have 2 1/2 more weeks left, and I want to make them count.  It's taken a while, but this is the first week where I've felt better about my place in the classroom.  Here and there, I'll still have days where I'm anxious about teaching my lessons and seeing my students, but it's gotten better.  Not only do my students respect my authority, but I've been able to grow my relationships with them as a teacher.

My goals for this past week were to make sure students have their books out on their desks, facilitate rather than lead the discussion, and set clear expectations.  The first day, I was able to clearly set my expectations about leaving books out on the desks, and they complied.  It was definitely much easier to see which students have been diligently doing the readings and which students haven't even purchased the book yet.  If there's something I really should work on, it's keeping my instructions consistent.  Throughout the week, I noticed that some students continued this process throughout the week, but some did not.  The students who did not are the students who are usually on their phones and generally not paying attention during class.  I could work on being more firm.  This goes along with one of the other goals that I made:  setting clear expectations.  The past few days, the routine has remained the same--taking a quiz, getting their books out, and discussing the book.  For this typical routine, all I need to do is get the class's attention, then give the instructions.  On Friday, I had a different discussion activity compared to other days we have discussions.  This was an instance where I was facilitating the discussion and letting them take the lead.  Some of my students were unclear of the instructions at times and asked me questions, but for the most part, the majority of the students understood the activity and listened to me.  Of course, these are areas where I can continue to grow as long as I am staying consistent with it.

This week was another short week as my students were taking the SAT on Tuesday.  In preparation, I had my students complete a shortened Language and Writing section of a practice SAT.  They were to complete all the questions in a timed setting, and afterwards, I went over the answers and answered any questions that they might have had.  For first period, it was a little bit rough, and many student did not have any questions afterwards.  The issue with this was that I also asked if any of them got the majority of the answers correct and only a few raised their hands.  The other two periods took advantage of this opportunity.

Also, I'm really enjoying reading all of the journal responses whenever I assign journal entries.  My students get into the prompt and are better able to connect their own lives to the novel.  This week's journal entry was "Describe the moment you first realized you were becoming an adult/ you weren't a child anymore.  Be descriptive."  I called this journal the "Adulting" journal.  Again, the responses were really thoughtful and showed me who the students truly are even if they don't always show it in class.  Here were some of the responses:

It’s weird thinking about how we’re still considered kids. I’m sixteen; I still have so much time to think about things like money problems or getting a job.  But it already feels like I’m somewhat equivalent to an adult when it comes to the responsibilities I have. My job is my school work and is considered a priority. I first realized that I was becoming an adult when my sister went away to college. I know, you’re probably wondering why something that doesn’t involve me had such an impact on my perspective. When my sister went away, I started to think about how I would soon be searching for schools, and would be looking for a job soon. At the time I was just a freshman, but because my sister left, I had to be the older (and only) sibling for my little sister. This meant becoming more of a role model; I really had to consider how my actions could affect her.

There have been times where I make mistakes, but I own up to those actions because I shouldn’t need someone looking over my shoulder the whole time telling me what to do. Having to take responsibility for my actions has made me feel less like a child because when I was little, if I was late to something it was because my mom was running late and that was my excuse.  

Even though I still feel like a child, the thing that made me feel like I am growing up the most is my journey through junior year of High School. My sister and friends had all told me that this year was going to be the hardest. On top of that, they said that this year was going to set me up for my future education. Junior year is when you take the ACT and SAT tests which are sent to colleges. Meaning these scores will determine what colleges will accept you based on how well you did. This made me mature more as a person because I knew coming into this school year I needed to try my hardest so I can get into the best college possible and receive the best education I can. 

The journal was relateable to all of my students, and for one specific student, I think it hit home in a way that I did not expect.  Before giving out the journal, I handed back the Gatsby essays to the students.  One of my students did not receive his right away, because he plagiarized one of his paragraphs from Spark Notes.  So, he asked where his paper was.  I simply replied, "We'll get that back to you later."  The student in front of him started snickering, and I think that set something off.  While the students were writing, he came up to me, tears welling in his eyes, and asked if he could take a walk.  I trusted this student and didn't want to create a scene, so I let him.  Not long after he came back to the class, he came back up to my desk looking even worse and asked to go to the bathroom.  Class went on as usual, and when he came back, he was furiously writing his journal entry.  At the end of class, he handed it to me, and I asked if he wanted to discuss his paper.  In our conversation, he was really upset and very remorseful.  I told him about what the process is concerning plagiarism, and he sounded extremely worried.  My cooperating teacher came into the room, and we discussed it all together.  In the end, we decided to let him rewrite the paper.  In thinking about the education program learning outcomes, I realized that this situation mirrors embodying Christ-like servanthood.  I didn't have to give this student grace, but I did.  No matter how many times we mess up, the Lord sees us through it, forgives us, and showers us with grace.  When he left class, I took a look at his journal entry about a moment when he first realized he was becoming an adult.  He wrote about plagiarizing his paper and how he needs to take responsibility.  Reading his journal entry scared me a little bit, but I'm glad that he had an opportunity to express how he was feeling in that moment rather than acting out impulsively.  Showing him that little bit of grace meant a lot to him, and the next day, he came in with a revised paper and a better attitude.

Plagiarism is an issue that gets even worse when one enters high school.  The way that my school handles it is a lot different than how other schools handle it.  I believe that this school is pretty lenient about the issue.  First of all, this school does not have turnitin.com which is a site to collect papers and compare it to others to catch any kind of plagiarism.  Because we do not have this software, it makes it difficult for teachers to identity plagiarism that was not taken from online.  At my school, the penalty for plagiarism is not necessarily a 0, although at this age, the students know exactly what they are doing when they are plagiarizing.  The penalty typically is that the student rewrites the paper for partial credit which still gives them a bit of grace.  I'm still trying to figure out where I stand on this issue, because I thought that my personal philosophy was to give an automatic 0, but after my conversation with this student and seeing how immensely upset he was, I was genuinely concerned for him and was more willing to offer him grace.  Whereas, there is still one more student that I need to talk to about plagiarism, but it was very clear that he did not put effort into his paper at all.  He triple spaced his paper, put in more spaces between paragraphs, plagiarized an entire paragraph, and used the same introduction and conclusion.  For me, this is pure laziness and is hard for me to look past, but I was instructed to not give any grade until discussing the matter with him.  I believe that with plagiarism, it's important to give students the benefit of the doubt, but at this age, it must be taken very seriously since the students know better.

Not my class, but the idea of the poster is reminiscent of what my class used.

Finally, on Friday, I had one more activity for my juniors before the final week of The Catcher in the Rye called Carouselling.  In this activity, posters are laid around the room with a quote from the novel in front.  After the students are split up into groups, they are to analyze the quote and write as much as they can about it on the poster.  When 5 minutes have passed (or the students are finished writing), I tell the students to rotate to the next quote and contribute to the poster.  I selected four significant quotes from the chapters they had to read for that night.  The purpose for this activity was to give my students a chance to exercise their minds and analyze the quotes in small, pre-selected groups.  Teaching this lesson got progressively better throughout the day.  At the beginning, some students were giving surface level analyses or not even trying.  But, as the day went on, the analyses were looking more relevant, meaningful, and original.  IPTS Performance Standard 4K states that the competent teacher "uses strategies to create a smoothly functioning learning community in which students assume responsibility for themselves and one another, participate in decision-making, work collaboratively and independently, use appropriate technology, and engage in purposeful learning activities."  Usually, I am the one doing most of the speaking in class, but this activity allowed them to work together and take responsibility for their own learning.  The students enjoyed having a chance to get out of their seats and doing something other than sitting and listening.  Additionally, I think that Carouselling is a great formative assessment, because you can see exactly what the groups wrote.  The only downside is if groups don't work well together (i.e., one student does all of the work).  Through this activity, it was easier for me to catch and talk to students that really were not engaging with the lesson.  Overall, it was successful.  I need to include more lessons similar to this wh+ere they are the ones discussing rather than myself. 

On my blogs, I talk a lot about my junior classes, but not too much about my senior class.  Within the past two weeks, one of my most difficult students got sent to night school, because he kept getting in trouble with other teachers and other students.  When teaching lessons in this class, it's difficult to get through any of my lesson plans, because he keeps making a scene, annoying everyone, and yelling across the room.  There is much more that happens, but these are a few so that you get the idea.  Since he's been gone this week, the class is still pretty crazy, but we've been able to get through much more in class so that I can finally teach The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini to my seniors.

Overall, it was a great week, and now, there's only one more week of my direct teaching and the rest of my time there will be watching final presentations.  I'm interested to see how these next couple of weeks will go.

Goals:

1. Use new strategies for discussion.

2. Finish The Catcher in the Rye.

Classroom Confidential

In my opinion, being a lifelong learner is very important, because as a teacher, you do not want to get comfortable.  Being comfortable enables more mistakes and losing that passion of learning.  We're teachers.  We don't have all the answers although we may be the experts in the classroom.  After graduating, I intend to attend professional development and go for my Master's Degree.  I've been thinking about it a lot, and I want to pursue getting certification to be a Reading Specialist as well.  Yet, I'm so new to all of this, and I'm still trying to figure it all out.  While reading this chapter, I was encouraged by the amount of insight for new teachers such as talking to other teachers (PLCs), look at education journals and catalogues, and taking advantage of professional development days.  Being in student teaching, I feel like I have learned so much from my cooperating teacher and other teachers as I prepare for this next step in my life.  As a teacher, there's still much more to learn.  In the words of Alexander Hamilton, "There's a million things I haven't done, but just you wait."