It's Friday morning July 25th and Deaton, the once door-slamming, music blasting residence hall has been restored to the vacant space in which we received it. Time has never felt so acceleratd as it does now. The past two months were marked by extremes-extreme joy, extreme dissapointment, monumental improvement, devestating regression-it was thrilling and terrifying, invigorating and exasperating, but always, always, exhilerating. To wake up each day with the conviction that the only thing I'm certain of is that really, nothing is for certain, to take some kind of obscure comfort in the fact that there is no room for expectations, presumptions, or any other type of projection because and can and (most likely) will be overturned-has been trying, humbling, invigorating, and actually everything I needed it to be.
Abstract descriptions aside, Summer Training was everything I expected it to be and more.
I don't want to say this to the point of exhustion, lest it becomes a platitude, but I consider it the utomost privilege to have worked with some of the most motivated, capable, talented, and comitted individuals toward the most worthwhile mission that is much more than showing up with time and energy to "make a difference," but identifying with the root of the circumstances, emphasizing, and becoming one with the community we serve..
To be continued-
After watching another fifty minutes of myself teach, I feel contrite.
"Why?" is the first thought that assails any former belief in my lesson's effectiveness. The next thought is, "How am I going to actualize this mental commitment to abandon all tendencies, blatant or subtle, that prevent solid, indisputable, and measurable LEARNING?"
Learning needs to be (and always should have been) the ends and the means of each lesson. This may sound like the most trite of all platitudes, but my noticeable hesitancy and anything short of an unwavering execution stem from a lack of confidence (in my lesson's potential effectivenesss) that there is no room for.
This particular lesson had so much potential. The supplemental material included Maya Angelou's "I still rise," and "Phenomenal Woman" (which I did not give justice to) and lyrics by Lauryn Hill and Queen Latifah. How could this lesson have been anything short of provactive, enagaging, and necessarily effective? For the following reasons:
Even before beginning this lesson, I didn't fully believe (or expect) the objective, "analyze the relationship between multiple genres and identify use of figurative language" to be accomplished in the same 50 minutes that I would introduce and review SATP concepts, present and discuss the previous day's homework, and present a mini-biographical lesson on Maya Angelou's life (within the lesson)! I wish I could say this was the first time I attempted a block (100 minute) lesson in 50 minutes, but it most certainly is not. If the (colloquial) definition of insanity is to repeat the same actions while expecting a different result-I may have been temporarily insane. Temporary, because, after watching 50 minutes of tiptoing around, rather than seizing to the core of my lesson, I am plagued with a visual that will not go away until my students do meet objectives and my team teacher will unreservedly be able to affirm the lesson's effectiveness.
My lessons ineffectiveness may be traced more specifically to the following:
A bellringer (posted work that students begin upon entering the classroom for the first 5 minutes and in this case SATP practice questions) that turned into a lesson itself.
- This bellringer actually cost me 20 minutes of instructional time so that instead of smoothly transitioning into the biographical information that would focus the relevancy of that days' content, we defined unfamiliar vocabulary that came up in the practice test. Although this is entirely necessary and imperative as most of the class will be taking the high-stakes SATP this coming school year-out of context it detracted, rather than facilitated the learning that should have taken place and the objective that should have been met. As is, more than half of my lesson covered objectives that were not intended for this class period.
- Because I did not stick to the lesson plan at hand, my verbal instruction reflected the wavering indecisiveness of my improvisation and my students did notice (as did everyone else.) After watching my lesson, I'm even confused with the instructions I gave.
Until now, I didn't quite realize how precious (and fleeting) instructional time is. Every minute has the potential to either spark a fire that prompts learning or ignite a flame of mass confusion...
If there is one aspect of my teaching instruction or disposition that most detracts from the learning environment (and needs to be corrected immediately) it is student engagement.
Every single student should be actively engaged, yet all to often I miss opportunites for ‘teachable moments’ by sacrificing wait time (in the interest of “moving on”) which is entirely contradictory. This tendency to sacrifice 'wait time' is obscurely, but actually related to poor time management. Furthermore, I have a tendancy to ‘lecture’ rather than prompt their own thinking.
- Bottom Line: A student-centered lesson is not about me, I need guide rather than dictate!
Although I appreciate all of the criticism I’ve received thus far- being observed each day by the same experienced teacher has been the most, immediately, effective. By observing my presentation every single day, Ms. Young has genuinely fulfilled her role as a ‘TEAM coach’ or mentor by not only addressing the flaws in my planning and instructional practices, but working with me to brainstorm step-by-step how to correct that which was preventing my lesson from being as effective as it should (and needed) to be. Above all else, I appreciate my TEAM teacher’s consistency. Whether formally or informally evaluated, Ms. Young remained equally vigilant of which of the criticisms I addressed, moved toward, or entirely neglected. Of these criticisms, the three that are most indicative of my teaching inadequacies and improvements are:
1) Objectives: My entire lesson’s effectiveness depends on clear and concise word choice, first and foremost, in the objective.
2) Voice: Spoken word choice: Just as my objectives need to be absolutely clear, so do my verbal instructions. Moreover, I need to be extremely conscientious of local dialects, never assuming that we share the same vocabulary!
3) Time Management: This is directly predicated in an inadequately organized lesson plan (that attempts overly ambitious ideals and only “hopes to meet the objective”) and revealed in my execution.
I can't decide whether its fitting or ironic that my last time teaching English IV at HSSS was videotaped. Its probably neither...
This assignment has afforded me the opportunity to not only see, but identify, and painstakingly experience what exactly my peers, evaluators, supervisors, and students have endured the past couple of weeks. And no matter how many times these very criticisms were pointed out, written out, verbalized and reiterated (to the point of exhaustion) it took 50 grueling minutes of listening to the sound of my wavering voice, frantic pacing,and dangerously expressive facial expressions to understand the frustration ( x 10) that my fellow teachers have endured.
What NEEDS to change ASAP:
VOICE:
- The rising, falling and trailing off tendencies of my speech suggest anything but the decisive authoritativeness that my voice needs to command.
- Pausing mid-sentence not only impedes the verbal instruction at hand, it further comes off as unsure, entirely incompetent, or both.
BODY LANGUAGE(FACIAL EXPRESSIONS):
So what if I did get all of 3 hours of sleep the night before? That's certainly not my students' fault and it should in no way interfere with their instruction. Besides doing everything in my power to prevent that from happening again, at the very least I must present literary and oranizational devices as if they are the greatest thing since (insert clich'e). This isn't far from the truth anyway.
- Instead, I was noticeably monotone and merely going through the motions. This is bad. How can I expect my students to be positively engaged when there is no central, positive energy to draw from?
MOVEMENT:
On the one hand I did cover "all four walls" both in independent and guided practice but on the detracting other-my clicking shoes and frantic pacing was entirely distracting and not at all facilitating.
- Until personally viewing this, I actually thought my movement suggested a vigilant and thorough informal assessment...but no, apparently not.
INTERACTION WITH STUDENTS:
- I met the minimum on this: "Teacher interacts with most students, but other students are neglected".. and that precarious "but other students are neglected" qualifies whatever points I did earn in this category.
- Especially in the context of this lesson, (a review) every single student should have been actively engaged, (not merely when they had the extrinsic motivation of winning a homework pass.)
- Even when my students did volunteer answers, I either interrupted them when they stumbled, muttered, paused (or all of the following) or tried to "paraphrase" their entirely wrong answer to fit the one I was looking for...
- I now understand that "wait time" is imperative not only when waiting for a hand to go up, but moreover, when the student does answer, reconsiders their answer, and answers again.
- This tendency to sacrifice 'wait time' is obscurely, but actually related to poor time management. All too often, as in this case- it was 25 minutes into class and independent practice had not even been introduced and so I non-sensically rushed through the single most important part of instruction: (informal) assessment.
INSTRUCTION
- I talk at the students, rather than prompt their own thinking.
- There is no place for lecturing. To ensure a 50 minute student-centered lesson, I need to be talking 10 minutes-max.
- I now know, that I need to shut up.
CLASSOOM MANAGEMENT:
- Although the prospect of winning homework passes appeased any overt displays of sarcasm, apathy, or resistance- compliance was not where it should have been because I failed to demand that it be.
- Instead of silently placing a writing assignment (consequence) on the offending student's desk and continuing with instruction, I interrupted the lesson to explain why (ie. invite debate). Even if an explanation were necessary, it needs to be decisively declared not apologetically mumbled...
So this is where I'm at. It's not where I need to be. Since mirrors do not lie, I'm about to go shamelessly rehearse Monday's lesson in front of the mirror.
More than a platitude or cliche, "Experience is the best teacher," according to Gary Rubinstein in Reluctant Disciplinarian. I love that he immediately relates to the reader by debunking commonly preconceived notions of what will not prepare us for taking command of the classroom as a prelude to what will.
Taking education courses, observing good teachers, and even student teaching will not prepare us for classroom management. I'm glad to be affirmed in my conviction that the "fluff" of my educational psychology class -(Pavlov's classical conditioning, Skinner's operant conditioning, schedules of reinforcement, behaviorist, cognitivist, and humanist theoriess) have their place within the ivy towers of academia, not in the 1/2 second you have to execute a behavior mangament decision.
As far as observing good teachers, I have had the privilege of observing and being observed by several. Yet however effective and accomplished, however much I want to emulate them (and be them) -I'm not and will never be. I appreciate that Rubinstein's text is all-encompassing, speaking to each and every hypothetical and actual class room mangament problem that my limited teaching experience has availed me thus far.
For instance, "real teachers are direct and to the point." According to Rubinstein a real teacher says "shut up" to themselves. That's Great. More often than not, to the dismay of my students and exasperated observers-I spend over half of a 50 minute period talking at them as if their life-long knowledge of the different types of situational, dramatic, and verbal irony depended on my very words. Thinking of teaching in terms of service, I believed that the more I talked, demonsrated, and poured myself out, the more I would be giving my students. But since when is service about giving? Moreover, when has learning ever been about receiving? It is much more about earning.
If "experience is the best teacher" both for me and my students, my classroom mangament practices will greatly benefit from more student-centered lessons as they seek, interogate, create, and claim ownership of the education that they deserve not through entitelment but through focused commitment, obligance to principles, and the conviction that education is a privilege that they must seize.
-must be directly attributed to my second-year cohorts, mentors, and entirely excellent second year teachers.
I could not have asked for a more dynamic, committed, and personally invested group of teachers to both learn from and teach with. Each of their teaching styles were distinctly unique, yet equally engaging. I consider myself incredibly privileged to have been instructed, encouraged, and most of all criticized by them every day for the past month.
1) Pacing back and forth nervously does not equal "touching all 4 corners of the room": Since my most obvious teaching challenges lie in class room management, I've received a copious amount of instruction in that area. Besides projecting my voice, correcting my posture, exhibiting a much more stern and commanding teaching persona, my second-year teachers' observation that my tendency to "get stuck lecturing in the front of the room" is not resolved by nervous pacing, back and forth. However obvious this may seem, I was not aware that my fast, pacing back and forth suggests nervous energy and inhabits rather than facilitates class room learning.
2) Don't depend on the school's technology: This is simple and straightforward, but severely understated. As one of my amazing second year teachers put it, "Not having all copies, transparencies, everything* made before entering school is never going to fly when you have 100 + students during the school year or ever." To help combat my constant overstepping of this rule( and excuses)- she generously opened up her entire printer/copier system to me to make as many copies, all the time, any time. Amazing. ; )
3) Commanding rather than asking! Of all the advice I received-I feel the most constructive has been those suggestions regarding observational mannerisms that may appear to be obvious, but that I would have otherwise remained ignorant of. Questions such as "Will someone raise their hand/ pass this out/ share with the class/ ect..." are basically, invitations to be shut down and/or ignored that need to be replaced with the imperative, "Raise you hand, Pass this out, ect..."
The second year teachers both inside and outside my classroom have invested countless hours reviewing the content/structure of my lesson plans for fluidity, role-playing, and most of all, demanding that I excert more confidence and an authoritative presence, without which, even the most impecable lesson will fall apart. Their patience with me has been exhaustive, steadfast, and to that end- humbling. From here on in, my focus is set on actualizing their advice both spoken and unspoken, and doing whatever it takes to be the teacher they expect and (demand) that I be.
Neither the hours, the energy, creativity (or lack of) that go into lesson planning may ever fully anticipate the actual unfolding of the lesson itself. Although questioning remains the most obvious and immediate way to engage and assess my students' learning it has admittedly, created, rather than resolved questions. Opening up the floor for discussion has been an integral part of my own learning experience. I now consider it an art that I have not yet mastered. As long as my questions do not meet the perfect balance of specific, yet all-encompassing- there is no telling what one of my 17 year old boys will say in response to a seemingly benign, open-ended question. However irrelevant these answers are, they need to be received and often times (but now always) validated.
By making the concious effort to wait out the entire, (entirely akward) 3-5 minutes of silence, recieve, reflect, and redirect the students' answer back to the lesson at hand, transitioning from discussion to demonstration should be much smoother.
More than the questioning, however, listening and moreover, deciphering the mumbled words that my students offer as answers- has been a challenge. Although lingering congestion from a cold may contribute to slightly, impaired hearing-even my most concentrated lip-reading efforts must be followed up wth a (perceivably) condescening, "Please repeate that," or "I know what you have to say is important and the entire class needs to hear it."
This past week I attempted to replace this student-teacher dialectic with a student-student dialogue with the "Concept Tests" questioning technique in which I instructed students to write down their answers to an analytical question on an index card, confer, and defend their answers to their neighbors. This will be an effective questioning technique when my classroom managment improves drastically...
Can't wait to try again on Monday when we identify and interpret the importance of irony as a literary device!
Delta Autumn opens with an overview of the history and educational trends that continue to inform the current socioeconomic, educational, and otherwise social trends in the delta to offer everyone committed to education in the delta (or resolving educational disparity in its entirety) a precedent for understanding where the state has been, where it is at, and where it needs to be. While the history of the Legal Segregation Era, Brown vs. Board of Education, "White Flight," the Mississippi Education Reform Act, and other legal aspects of MS public school history certainly equip me with a thorough understanding of past and present Mississippi educational trends-Chapter IV's focus on "Parental Involvement and Mentoring" is immediately relevant.
To this end, I appreciate the the apparent, but not immediately obvious (to a first-year) forewarning about parent-teacher-school tensions including, a general lack of information, inextricable nature of education and community politics, the parents' own, disconcerting experiences with education, and overall distrust. To me, this is sobering as "school" in my own experience, has never implied "distrust."
The authors immediately emphasize parent-teacher communication as a critical, yet severely underestimated means to alleviate these tensions. Although "parent nights" and in and out of classroom meetings are invaluable in their direct attempts to open up the lines of communication realize that only after meeting my students and moving to Jackson will I even begin to accurately discern the appropriateness of this strategy.
Although statistics prevent me from believing anything other than the crude reality that the vast majority of my students in Jackson will come from less than ideal living situations, Chapter IV legitimizes my belief that more often than not, whomever claims the role of parent/guardian to the student, genuinely does care about the student's wellbeing and education. The fact that academic success (or lack of) is often, directly attributed to parental involvement does not need to imply further apathy and helplessness (on the teachers' end) but should rather invite new initiative and urge parents to join their students' side.
Regarding specific teaching practices the importance of modeling both written and spoken Standard English grammar has never been so apparent. Although it's common knowledge that people do (unfortunately) judge a person the moment they open their mouth- I always considered this more an issues of choosing to oblige social etiquette, naively believing that of course we all know how to speak properly, but sometimes we just choose not to. Since for many of our students, the classroom will be the only place they hear Standard English spoken and quite possibly, the only place they see it in print. I could not have been more wrong....
As I convert the authors' experience, the wisdom it imparted, and my personal resoluteness into action- Standard English will be the only English my students hear, speak, and write (at least for 100 minutes in a certain English lit class in Jackson, MS.)
