frustrated

So on 10-29-12

I was astonished and finally hit with reality and ALMOST wanted to run away from this profession.  Not because of the lower level behavior problem students, or because it is not yet my classroom.  But because the superintendent.  My teacher co-teaches with another student and they work hard with the students in their classroom.  They do not believe in detention because they believe it causes resentment and makes it more difficult to create a learning experience.  We were ready House on Mango Street and the superintendent and principal walked in, through class, which students became off task.  I was writing on the board and in a personal email to my teacher, the superintendent said that I had misspelled a word and how it was frustrating for him.  He said that I had no space between A and lot, in which I did.  I typed it in word, it automatically spaces if not given a space, and pops up red if re-edited.  I do not understand why I received a hit simply because my teachers did.  He also said that the students were rowdy, but these are behavior students, they were quietly reading along, asking questions, this was normal classroom behavior.  He also said that they were not engaged, but if we are reading a book, how engaged can they really get, while reading...?  My teachers were both so upset about the review that affects them, that neither will teach behavior students next year.  Is this the solution to knock teachers, who try and are stressed out but still come in everyday ready to teach?  WHY is our system so broken?  The only other solution the school seems to have is suspend them----NOT the solution.  When they are suspended they are not allowed to make up any work, AGAIN the WRONG answer!!!!!!!!!
This profession sucks, but I love the students

Pictures from Classroom

These are a couple of pictures of what my co-ops classroom looks like. We began doing this formative assessment of what the class understood and annotated from the story "The Lottery and A Worn Path." Each story took about 2-3 days to cover. The reason was because after they annotated as a class on these chart papers that each had a literary term, the following day they had an oral class quiz. The questions to this quiz came from the answers on the chart and more critical thinking questions that they may have skipped over. 

Day two of this lesson, the students set up the desks in a straight line and ahead of it on the white board my co-op put the oral quiz chart. The chart is comparing each class result from this oral quiz. The point of this quiz is that the class works together in coming up with good well develop answers to questions that we facilitate from the short story and their answers in order to help them think deeper. 

On an average day our desks are set up in a circle. My favorite class in which I taught a lot, was always  set up like this because we discussed and analyze Frankenstein the last free days I was there. Overall my classroom was very student centered, open discussion and very safe, that students for the most part felt they could be open with their own opinions and share. I loved that. 

These are two other bloc students who carpool with me. They are both social studies ed. 

Central York Middle School Reflection

It wasn't what I had planned or imagined. The last day of field placement made me learn to be flexible.

My Monday night was spent working on a Prezi on inference. My Co-op teacher informed me that the kids would be learning inference next, and that I could do an introduction lesson on it Wednesday. I had never created a Prezi, so I chose a template and went from there. I must say, it is actually fun making one. It always looked complicated and time consuming to me. After I finished my Prezi, I showed it off to my brother, who is currently a student teacher. He was impressed and pointed out one slide that was just common sense. He said it made it sound like I'm teaching to kindergarten students. 

Wednesday came and I was up early to bake cupcakes for my team teachers. In the middle of filling up the trays, I noticed that I had forgotten to put water in the mix! No wonder I couldn't fill up all 24 holes. I rush to buy another box of cake mix. And candy for the kids! Round two. Same thing, but this time I forgot to add the oil. 30 minutes left till I have to go and I still need to put the trays in the oven. Somehow I managed to make it to school on time. With oil-less cupcakes all decorated in orange and black to show panther pride.

Tuesday, I learned that I wouldn't be teaching inference. I would be reading Marley and Me instead.

Wednesday, in addition to reading and reviewing theme, another 7th grade English teacher suggested I do sentence starters with the class to help them identify their own theme in their writing. When she first told me of this idea, I was confused how it would exactly tie in with the stage the students are at now with their writing. "And what do you mean by sentence starters?" 

Basically, in the four classes I taught, the students looked at me with confusion all over their faces. It was difficult for me to clarify, because I was still unsure of what the teacher wanted me to do with the sentence starters. On top of that, I learned that some students already had a theme in their writing, while others did not. To this day, I don't know what exactly I was supposed to do or if I did what the teacher meant. She made me feel better though, after explaining my confusion to her by saying, "It's not you... it's them." Right, I knew that the students were having a tough time overall with theme. But the fact that the kids had no idea what they were doing or why-- was on me.

During the last period of the day, I looked through all the students' responses and made a sour face. I read responses of all sorts. Some got it, but the majority had weird, unrelated answers. But again, I can't really blame them. Although my Co-op told the class it would be graded, after seeing my reaction, she told me I could just toss them in the trash. "I don't have the time."

As I left the school, I said goodbyes to my team teachers. They wished me luck. I never got the chance to say goodbye to the students. I walked to my car with the bag of unopened candy. 

So melancholy!! On a brighter note, my Co-op gave me a wonderful experience. Her enthusiasm and wit definitely help with engaging her students. She commented on my final evaluation that I am ready for student teaching and that I will be an asset to the teacher. So, there's that too. 

Thoughts from Cedar Crest

I cannot believe the field experience is already over. It is bittersweet. I will miss my cooperating teacher and the students but I also know that by it being over I am a step closer to student teaching. I enjoyed working with my mentor because he was a realistic teacher. I felt like I was getting and inside look into the daily life of a teacher. I saw how he planned his days and how he moved from one day to the next. My mentor was very flexible and always changing. He never really had a set lesson each day. He made things up as he went but he was always thinking and had appropriate resources to use. He has been teaching for about 15 years so he has a great selection of materials to use. That is one thing that scares me as a prospective teacher. I wonder how I will accumulate materials to use in my classroom. After constructing my lessons plans I have realized the internet is  great resource. It is beneficial that other teachers are willing to share their own ideas and lessons. My mentor encouraged me to ask questions.
I asked him a lot of questions about assessment. He often did reading comprehension quizzes which were a type of formative assessment. If students were to read a text outside of class, they would often have a small quiz in class the next day. He explained that this helped with accountability and also determining which students can individually comprehend a text. I liked the small quizzes because they were quick and effective.

Central Middle School Reflection

Last week was spent with more teaching. Since my team has two English teachers who work together to cover the same material, I was able to teach four classes right after each other. This has helped me to become more comfortable with the class, as I became less rigid after each class.

Entrance/exit slips from four classes.

On Thursday, I reviewed theme and read another chapter of Marely and Me. I asked the class to listen carefully in order to identify themes in the chapter. I then presented the class with an entrance/exit slip on theme. To leave the class, they had to complete the questions: What did you learn about theme? What themes did you find in the chapter? List four and give evidence. As I looked through their responses, the majority of the students across all classes did a fair job. The part where students messed up was in forgetting to site any evidence for their second question. In once class, no one had sited evidence, which makes me wonder if I forgot to mention it in that class. For their entrance slip, the students had to answer: List six themes you are interested in. Why is theme important? All students did much better on these questions. In all, this assessment told me what the students understood or did not understand. For example, one student answered, "Theme teaches you stuff." This obviously tells me that the student didn't understand theme very well. Or maybe he didn't know how to word it better. I wanted to reward the students who followed all directions and completed all questions fully. So, I bought apple scented scratch-n-sniff stickers saying well done, nice work, and wow! Maybe stickers are a little childish for middle school kids, but it's something.

As I was marking up these exit/entrance slips, I found it interesting how the levels of the students are so extreme. I feel like there's such a difference between the brightest student and the not-so-bright student. My co-op noted that some students are just not yet there in their development of critical thinking.

Also on Thursday, as I was walking back to class, I saw the next door student teacher talking in the hallway with a student. The student was crying. As I passed by, I could pick up that the student was upset about something scary or violent happened. The student teacher was trying to console her by telling her a similar story. This was the second time I saw a student cry at school. Both times the crying students were girls. It makes me question what my response would be as a teacher. And if I would be prepared for that first time something like this happens.

Just some thoughts on last week …

Last week (Hopefully everyone came through it okay) was a good example of how quickly a “week in the life of a teacher” can change. The school where I am assigned, Cedar Crest High School, was closed on Monday and Tuesday because of the hurricane. Friday was an in-service day. Therefore, my co-op teacher had his students in his classroom Wednesday and Thursday—except for those who attended a field trip on Thursday, which eliminated most of the students in two of his classes that day. Adding to all of this the semester was supposed to have ended on Friday. The administration changed it to this Monday.

My co-op, along with two other teachers I have had the opportunity to observe during my field service experience, had plans for unit reviews and tests—one teacher had a final paper due for her students. Amazingly—or should I say they had no choice , because the marking period was closing in, ready or not—they all three managed to get in their reviews and get in the summative assessment for their students for the period end on Monday.

In order to do this they all made some type of adjustment. After all, it wasn’t just a typical week where they could just keep rolling through their lesson plans cutting an activity here or there. This was crunch time. This was the end of the marking period time. In the eyes of their students they did so without skipping a beat and without putting  any added pressure on their students; in discussing it with me they revealed that for them they’ve learned to overcome the pressures of this type of situation and roll with it.

 

Just Something I Thought to Share

I had a very interesting experience in the faculty room (not the one for eating. This was like a prep room). During lunch, I was making my mac and cheese in the prep room like I normally did, looking at all the books on the book shelf as I waited for the microwave to bing. While doing so, one of the English teachers came in and commented on how organized the room was getting. As I was agreeing, she pointed to a stack of Emma books on the table near us. She told me they were hers and that she never used them. 

At that moment, another English teacher came in to use the microwave. She joined in on the conversation. The first teacher told me about an older English department head they used to have who told them they had to get through at least one book a quarter. She exclaimed it was impossible to do with the type of schedule the school had and all the unexpected changes that were always being made. As she was leaving, she made a comment about changing to a bloc schedule, and the way she said it made it sound like a horrible idea. The other teacher rolled her eyes and told me that she liked bloc scheduling. I admitted that I was a little biased because I went to a high school that had blocs instead of periods, so I was used to it. However, I mentioned that I could deal with either. she also told me that she was able to get through at least a book a quarter, even with her general students. Apparently, she's on her second book with them already. She left to go to the bathroom, and I left with my food. 

It was just a very weird but interesting encounter.