WEEEEEEEEEK 8!

Unfortunately, due to strep throat, I only in the classroom for one day this week... And all they were doing was working on packets and watching Canterbury Tales videos. So I will try to make this as interesting as humanly possible, but not promises.

This class seems to work best when they are watching or listening to something while doing another activity like a worksheet. While that is not a style of teaching I am really fond of, it clearly works better for some groups rather than others. It is also the only time they seem to quiet down.

But! While visiting the drama classroom, I was able to help out the drama teacher a little bit. I recored a voice over for her spring production and also recorded a new welcome message to play before performances for her. They were still using the same one I made when I did my play senior year 4 years ago! So, it was kinda fun to be able to update it and keep my presence in the department alive. I'm hoping to help out while I am student teaching as well, since I will be there all the time anyway.

Oh, what I forgot to post about last week! There is a very good chance that I will be able to student teach in the journalism class at Freeman! During my time I would be overseeing two issues of the paper (February and March). So, that is pretty exciting. I have been sitting in on this class occasionally this spring to get a feel for it. Its pretty laid back, but they do have hard deadlines that they are required to meet. It seems like it would be a pretty easy class to teach as the student editors have a lot of the power, but it does become more reliant on the teacher as the publication date closes in with final checks on articles and, the most time consuming, reviewing and editing the layout of paper to ensure it will all print properly and look clean.

A struggle this week was my sickness. I fell behind in a lot of things. I was supposed to teach two lessons that I couldn't be present for. It was pretty terrible.

Weekly Blog Post 7!! Woooooo hooooooooooooooo!

This week I had another amazing opportunity that I pounced on when I was offered it! The journalism class was going on a field trip to KHQ and to The Spokesman Review. Not only did I get to learn a lot about both types of journalism needed for these different mediums, I also had my first opportunity to be a chaperone for a field trip. AND, it opened up an opportunity for me next year during my student teaching at Freeman, which is all really exciting.

So the highlight of my week was obviously the field trip. At The Spokesman we got a tour of the old part of the building, that is still all original from the early 1900's, we walked through the writers offices, and sat in on an afternoon editors meeting where they figured out the main articles they are working on for the following days paper. They also took us to the top of the building where there was an outdoor patio for employees to take breaks or write at if they chose. It was all pretty cool.

KHQ was also very interesting to see journalism from a different point of view. They are telling stories too, but with words and images rather than writing. We noted immediately that both the paper and news go about gathering stories much the same way, just their output method is obviously different.

Something I learned this week in the classroom is that as the school year gets closer to ending, the students get more troublesome. And I have heard this said many times before, and also been the student in these situations, but I have been seeing it first time from a different perspective. Even students who are normally fine are starting to check out. And honestly, at times it seems like the teachers are in the same boat. Watching movies and just generally becoming a little more lax as the year comes to a close.

I hope to be able to keep students attention a little better. Though I'm not sure how I would really do that, besides try and be a fun and dynamic teacher. Hopefully this is a skill I will learn with time if I continue to strive for it.

Weekly Blog Post 6

This week I had the opportunity to do something that I really enjoyed and that I think was super beneficial for my teaching carrer: I basically had an entire class all to myself for an entire period! My cooperating teacher went home sick for the day so I was left to my own devices with the class. And while all that was planned was a simple Jeopardy game to review for a test, it was great being the actual leader in the classroom. Everything seems to feel extremely fake and simulated... probably because it is. But this experience felt real for the first time. The person assigned to watch the class after she left came in and out intermittently during the period while I conducted the class. It flet great and I think it seemed to go pretty well. They were listening to me and responding when asked.

This is the first time that I have been really left alone with the students and it definitely made a difference. It was interesting to see how quickly their full attention turned to me, rather than to my cooperating teacher through me. Anyway, it was just a good experience for me that I am extremely grateful for this quarter.

This week I also spent some time in the other english classroom. Always interesting to see the differences in classroom arrangement and teaching style. And with that, again, I find myself seeing teachers respond to students in two extremes: either over reacting about something I would perceive as a small problem or not reacting at all to something that I would see as larger problem. After discussing this with my cooperating teacher, I do believe a lot of it has to do with being with the students every day versus me only being here two or three times a week. It's still odd to see.

I also watched one of these teachers argue with a student again, which always makes me cringe. It doesn't seem affective to me. And it almost seems like students keep doing it to get a rise out of the teacher. I just keep thinking, "Do not engage!"

Something I learned about teaching this week is that giving students respect will illicit respect in return. I even had a short conversation with a student about this. He had mentioned that he was going to be good for the period when I asked him how he was going to do today (he's generally a really loud student). He said not to worry about anything because he respected me more than he respected the cooperating teacher. While I told him he needed to respect her simply because she is the teacher, it still seemed like a compliment. He said he could tell that I respected students, so it was easy to respect me back. Interesting to think about.

Weekly Blog Post: Week 5

The highlight of my past week was getting to go around to a few different classrooms and observe them instead of my cooperating teachers classroom. She was doing mostly quizzes and videos last Friday so I took it as an opportunity to look into some teaching and classroom management styles of other teachers. 

I had my first interactions with a freshman and sophomore English class. The freshman sent most of the time doing individual seat work with a little instruction at the beginning of the period on a new concept.  This is clearly a routine that they are used to by this time of the year as it was mostly quite and productive (or at least seemed that way) for the period. While the classroom routine is likely the largest factor in the management of this class, students sitting in their seats the entire period does not fall in line with a method of teaching I plan to use. Seat work can be beneficial  and I believe the concepts they were trying to learn are well suited to that, but asking a freshman to sit for an entire hour with little to no interaction is comparable to torture. 

The sophomore class was a lot more interesting and engaging. Students were working on a final project for The Odyssey in which they had to create a board game that included trivia elements about the story and followed Odysseus' travels though the story. The students started their planning phases and some started creating elements of their game by the end of the period. I had the opportunity to walk around to every group and discuss with them the layout and design of their game boards and how they planned on incorporating the trivia elements. It was a good experience in seeing how the students worked together. The groups maintained their working for most of the period, though a few groups started to get distracted and linger near the end. Two groups combined and were clearly just conversing about nothing related to the project. While it went on a for a little while, the teacher eventually brought it to their attention that she was aware they were not working. Her tactics were not quite what I would have done to disband the group, but she did effectively do so. 

The major issue that I keep seeing as a recurring problem (especially when it comes to the seniors) is keeping them engaged this late in the year. With the seniors, I almost feel as if it is a lost cause. They only have one month of high school left in their lives. At this point, they have calculated how low their grades and go and still pass. I struggle with letting them get away with that. But... I'm at a loss for what to do. As most of the teachers I see are just accepting this as a fact of life. 

I have said it before and I will say it again: group work! Not where other students are necessarily dependent upon others for their grades, but so there is interaction between students in the classroom. Sitting quietly, alone, and in a desk is something I want to try and avoid as often as possible. 

There is one student in particular that just does not like class. He always complains. Even when we watched a video. I don't know what to do about it, but I'm thinking about just asking him what he would like to do. And possibly trying to get a lesson going around that. Just so that he might open up more and realize that I am listening and trying to help.