Reflection

I would first like to apologize for not writing in a month. It has been full of portfolios, teaching my unit, and trying to find the time to sleep. Now that finals week has arrived I have finished working in my placement, finished three portfolios (Classroom Management Plan, Professional Portfolio (content), Professional Portfolio (education)), finished many philosophy papers, and finally caught up on sleep. This week I am working and tying up loose ends. Those loose ends would include a research paper for a geology class I have been taking this semester, an exit interview with my content seminar professors, and moving back home for the summer, and of course reflecting upon the semester. The remainder of this entry will be a reflection of this blog and the semester.

As I look back on all my entries this semester I see myself focusing on time management, engaging and challenging activities, and how I conduct myself in the classroom, along with some evaluation back in January. These are all areas that I am continuing to work on but I think have shown improvement.

I think I have grown the most in how I conduct myself within the classroom. As I look back to some of my earlier posts I notice that I was focusing on hiding my fear, now I realize that my professors were right about how perhaps they can “smell fear” but they appreciate and respect courage even more. Another teacher also commented on the same entry about non-verbal messages we send our students. I plan to continue to work on developing good and trusting relationships with my students so those non-verbal messages are more positive than negative.

Another area I feel I have grown well in is time management. It is still a great struggle for me but I have learned to over plan and look for more cues from the students. During instruction I am getting the students more involved (which also helps build engagement) so I can formatively assess how they are doing with the content. This is one strategy I have found to help with time management. As I gather data about their current understanding of the content (the formative assessment in the form of class discussion) I am able to redirect our time toward things they need it for rather than lingering on something that is not needed at the moment. Something I am currently playing with is anchor activities. These are things like a tic-tac-toe, or menu assignments that we learned about during a seminar for all teacher assistants. These are activities that students are able to work on when they have completed the work for that day and focus on that unit’s material. The examples we saw were for English and Social Studies, so I am trying to re-work them to fit within a Mathematics or Earth Science course. This would help me ensure that the students always have something to do that continues to build their understanding of the content and prepare them for the unit assessment.

I think I am the most wishy-washy when it comes to challenging and engaging activities. I feel like I am either asking them to take too much of a leap or allowing them to spend too much time where they’re at. I also feel like I get on an “activity” kick where many of the lessons one week are group work and get the students moving around and engaged more while other weeks they are mostly taking notes or practicing skills for upcoming sections. I would like to learn how to find a balance as well as give the students ownership of the material so no matter what we are doing they are engaged.

I believe evaluation is my weakest area. I did not receive much guidance from my CT this semester while preparing my unit project so I tired to follow the format she typically uses, only with including more multiple intelligence options. As a result I don’t feel I assessed all of the learning objectives for the unit well enough. Although, when I was looking over their common assessment tests they seemed to all understand the material well. I think much of my problem derives from my desire to get away from traditional assessments (multiple choice, true/false tests). I think for next semester I will go back to traditional assessments and learn how to create ones that will effectively assess the student’s abilities rather than just their knowledge of the content. Then I will move on to creating projects. As one of my seminar professors would say, “You need to be making subtle shifts” and I feel in this area I tried to take a leap.

As I reflect upon this semester and all of the time spent working for my students I realize all the work that has been accomplished and can now see a teacher in the making.

Real Teaching and New Ideas

This week was the first week of my unit and the only word that comes to mind is wow. I will be teaching two classes of sixth grade geometry for four weeks (one down three to go) and seventh grade geometry for six days (two down four to go). Up to this point in the semester, I have only been teaching two or three lessons a week for two classes. The rest of my time had been spent grading, entering grades into the online grade book, taking attendance, making copies, helping students during classwork time, and planning, and I thought that was busy! Now I have three classes and two preps. I know that sounds like a breeze to many teachers out there, but I am sure you can remember when you were going through a teacher certification program and the steep learning curve.

Something I have been implementing in my sixth grade classes are what we call “word notes” or “box notes”. 

Example:	Non-Example:
Connection:	Definition:

                 

I first saw a similar format in an education class and instantly thought of my unit. Geometry is full of new vocabulary and it takes work to keep it all straight no matter who you are. Throughout a lesson I will introduce new words and either give my students an example and non-example and ask them to create a definition, or I provide them with the definition and they come up with an example and non-example. Then as a class we find places where this knowledge can be applied and used. They all have responded surprisingly well to this new system. Many of the comments focus on how easy it is to read and follow, how easy it is to keep track of and find when doing homework, they even like coming up with their own definitions and examples! I think they are beginning to feel a sense of ownership of the material. This was not my original intent but it definitely makes me want to try it again next year with more than just geometry or even math! In my spare time (which isn’t much) I am playing with various layouts of this same system to be able to apply in Earth Science.

An advantage of having this procedure in place is that it makes planning much easier. When we need to cover new material, I already know how I am going to do it and my students expect it. It also naturally creates class discussion about the material. But my favorite part is when the quite, shy, or lower achieving students volunteer to provide a definition or example. I don’t know why but during notes they seem much more comfortable sharing their ideas with the class. I am so glad I found this now. I am sure it will be a strong and lasting stepping-stone helping me become the teacher I want to be.

"even keel"

Late Monday night, I am finishing some homework before getting ready for bed and the phone rings. On the other line, I hear my CT asking her son to go into the other room and I am nervous about what this call could mean. Her daughter was still sick and she was just letting me know that she would not be there the next day, Tuesday. At first, I thought it would be no problem because I taught most of last week and that day. Well, I forgot that my students think it’s a free day whenever my CT isn’t there, and I was left with the task of doing a review for 4 classes (two math and two science).

First hour is always talkative but that day it was worse. The entire class was being disrespectful, speaking out of turn, and over all off task. None of the usual classroom management strategies was working and I was almost at my wits end. Thankfully, classes are only 49 minutes, although, that same group of kids came back in second hour for science. My CT left a DVD movie about water pollution for the students to watch and then a practice test to work on. This was a disaster too. The DVD player was not letting me skip through the scenes so I could get to the right video and I was so afraid I was about to lose all control. Thankfully they held it together long enough for us to get a new DVD player that allowed us to watch the video. After that class, I felt so defeated. I knew that I could not take those feelings into third hour but it was so hard. I feel first and second hour took all the energy I had. I am so thankful that third and fourth hours were less talkative and we already had the DVD problem fixed. However, at lunch I just wanted to cry because I felt like I had failed. When I expressed my feeling of defeat to the sub, he said that he did not notice anything and thought that class had gone well.

Looking back on this experience, I see how important it is to have, as my professor calls it, and “even keel”. Even when everything seems to be falling apart I need to my outward appearance as if I am in control and able to roll with the flow.

My CT has a sub again for tomorrow. It will be my second day teaching my unit so I feel a little more confident with the plan for two hours. However, my CT allowed me to rearrange their desks and place them into groups. I desired to do this so class time would not be lost by having them move into groups for activities but it is harder to keep them from talking. I am going to try to remember the lesson from last week try to maintain that “even keel”.

6th graders + percents = frustration

Friday, I took on the challenge of teaching sixth graders how to solve percent problems (For example, what percent of 60 is 40?) via two methods, proportions and equations. I collaborated with my CT and we came up with a well thought out lesson that we both thought would only take one class period. It so happens that this day I was also being observed from my content seminar professor. For each observation, we fill out an action plan where we ask our professor to focus on one aspect of our lesson. This time I asked him to focus on my time management throughout the lesson. That morning as I arrived at school I was running everything through my mind one more time to make sure I had not forgotten anything. Unfortunately, the one thing that occurred was one of the only things I could not have foreseen with my lack of experience. The students just did not understand the material. I thought I was doing great! I was modeling good notes, color-coding each example, I was thinking aloud like a mathematician for my students, but by about half way through the lesson, they just shut down. Therefore, it is safe to assume that I did not complete my original lesson. I actually only got through a quarter of it. That was first hour.

Third hour I rearranged my entire lesson by first making it into a two-day lesson. I began with the same warm-up, which were a few carefully selected questions from their homework assigned the day before. Then I began in a similar way to first hour but at a much slower pace. Throughout the entire lesson I modeled good notes and thinking like a mathematician. I began with just how to set up a proportion. After a few examples of that, I moved on to how to solve a proportion, and that was the whole lesson. They seemed a little more receptive to the material than first hour was, but they were still frustrated.

After speaking with several people about my disappointment and asking for advice, I was given the suggestion to have them work in groups today. So today I broke them up into groups of four, gave each group a transparency, a marker, and a question. They were then given fifteen minutes to as a group solve the problem using both proportions, and equations. In addition, for the first five minutes they were not allowed to ask myself or my CT for help. I told them that this was to encourage them to use their resources (notes, textbook, and group members). It worked wonderfully for both classes! Each class had enough students to have six groups and out of both classes, only two groups asked for help. Then each group went to the front of the room to share their work with the class. The only mistake that was made (in both classes) was improper division for the question, what percent of 6 is 18? They set the problem up correctly for both methods, however they still switched their division when they solved the problem. That was a great teachable moment for the rest of the class! They did not seem too excited about having over 100% but after some explanation and questioning, they seemed to grasp the concept.

To conclude the lesson today each class received the homework that I originally intended to assign on Friday minus about half of the problems because we did not get to that type of problem. No one seemed terribly excited about homework, even it if was only ten questions. However, after many began working on it and they realized they could use the method they preferred it was not such a bad assignment after all.

Looking back on these two days, I learned one very important thing. I cannot let myself become frustrated when my students become frustrated with the material. After much reflection, I realized that I was more frustrated with the lesson because I knew I could have done a better job at conveying the concept. In addition, something my CT said on Friday just before I left was, “sometimes they learn better from each other than from us.” This really struck me because as I look back on my math education I realize that the material I know the best I learned by working with other students and minimal guidance from teachers/professors. After reflecting on today's’ classes, I see that is what needed to be done. I think refusing to help for the first five minutes pushed them to become resourceful and give the problems some serious thought. I even heard some debates between students about how to set up the problems with some AMAZING reasoning! After seeing these amazing results, this is something that I hope to incorporate into my classroom on a more regular basis.

Snow Day + The Teaching Gap = New Ideas

Today was another snow day, the fourth one this semester. The good thing about it was that I was able to get a lot of homework done before my Geology Seminar class this evening. During class today, we had mock interviews with a professor in the department. During the interview, the topic of enthusiasm came up. The professor I interviewed with is a hydrologist, not a science educator, and was excited to hear about my enthusiasm for the profession. After my answer, he asked, “How will you keep that enthusiasm through decades of teaching?” That is a GREAT question and I do not have an answer for it. Right now, my passion and enthusiasm for teaching comes from the desire to help students and in researching more effective ways to teach mathematics and science. I could see his question as a possible interview question, so I plan to ask my CT and other teachers and professors for their thoughts in an attempt to formulate my own.

This week I also read chapter three of The Teaching Gap by Stigler and Hiebert. This chapter gave a picture of a typical lesson in each country (Germany, Japan, and the U.S.). Two main differences I noticed were (1) the role of the teacher, and (2) the level of mathematics taught. In Germany, the teacher is a demonstrator and keeper of the knowledge. Class time is spent reviewing work from previous day and demonstrating proofs of important, higher level theorems. In Japan, the teacher is a guide and helps the students discover the knowledge in a structured environment. To do this they spend a lot of time on a few difficult problems and multiple methods for solving them are discussed. In the U.S., the teacher is a dictionary and reference book who plows through many easy problems and continuously moves through material at a superficial level. I think if we raise the bar and spend more time on a few difficult problems and guide our students through the thinking processes involved (a mix between Germany’s and Japan’s methods) our students will be better equipped to tackle the easy problems found on standardized tests. Not that I believe standardized tests is the way to asses student knowledge and comprehension, but it is currently the way the state and federal government analyze our students performance. This week I am beginning to plan lessons for the geometry lesson I will be teaching starting in two weeks and I plan to find a way to guide my students to higher level thinking strategies and engage in the content at a deeper level.  

The Teaching Gap

Last week I had my first observation from my College of Education (COE) supervisor. Overall, it went well. The students were participating and it appeared that 95% of them were engaged at any given time. Then, later this week I read the prologue and the first two chapters of The Teaching Gap by Stigler and Hiebert. In it, they discuss data collected from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). In the past, this study has simply been a test that the students take so we can compare the educational system of multiple countries. However, this time they videotaped a representative sample of eight grade mathematics teachers in Germany, Japan, and the United States. In it they found that not only do our students perform at different levels but teachers use very different methods of teaching. This came as a shock to me because I hear of many different teaching methods (teacher-centered, learner-centered, discovery learning, traditional, etc.) but when I speak with people who put these into practice or observe them it all sounds like the same basic thing. The teacher has the knowledge, they convey that knowledge using their particular method, and then traditional instruction follows. So even those who claim they put discovery learning into practice they only do that maybe once a week, it is not at the heart of their teaching style. This book is so intriguing to me now because I greatly dislike the “traditional” or lecture method of teaching. The sad thing is that seems to be the method all teachers I observe seem to fall back on. I was not fond of it as a student and I dislike it even more as a teacher. It is boring! I can even see how almost painful it is for some of my students to pay attention. For the past two or three years, while progressing through the Mathematics Education program, many of my professors encourage us to use non-traditional methods but they do not tell us what they look like or what they even are. I would love to break away from the “boring math teacher” mold but how. I spoke with some wise professors at the start of this semester and shared with them some anxiety and fears I have for my journey to becoming a teacher. One of the greatest frustrations I have is becoming an effective teacher and doing things other than the traditional teaching method. Their advice for me was to take things in baby steps. It is ok if I do not know what I want my teaching to look like yet, instead I can identify things I do not want to be as a teacher and this will help me find a method I am comfortable with. They also told me that as a good teacher I will never stop learning and growing and sometimes in the growth process I will be wrong and make mistakes but that is OK. What matters is how I handle those mistakes and what lessons I take away from them.  I have only made it through the second chapter so I do not know what these other teaching methods are but I hope to find a jumping off point in my pursuit in breaking the mold. I am very excited to find out and will definitely share what I find.

Three Lessons on Instruction from week Four

Due to “Blizzard 2011” we had two snow days last week. I had taught on Tuesday and expected to spend the remainder of last week planning for my lesson this week Tuesday (tomorrow) because I am being observed for the first time. However, due to the snow days I lost motivation; I do have a very clean house though and caught up on sleep. Then on Friday my CT went to a tennis conference so we had a sub. Well, actually only 5^th hour had a sub, hours one through four had me. I was rather nervous before first hour but didn’t have time to think about it. Before I knew it the sub was there and kids were entering the building and trickling into the room. There are three very important things I learned that day:

1. By law, it is not required for substitutes to be informed of IEPs and what type of impairments special education students might have.   
2.   Kids really can’t smell fear as long as you hide it behind a smile and good classroom management.
3.   Time is not fixed. Just because it takes your students all class to get half way through an assignment one class doesn’t mean they won’t go through three the next day.

I am thankful that I started building a relationship with my EI students early in the semester because if not I probably would have had a substitute with a stab wound or bruises (physically or emotionally). During this incident I also learned that teachers have their own 6^th sense. Before anything really happened I knew something was wrong and was able to get to the student, shoo away the sub and talk the student through his anger. What upset me most about this situation wasn’t the substitutes initial behavior, but when she came to me during lunch (right after the incident) she asks in a snotty voice, “what’s his problem?” I simply explained his situation and continued eating. But even now I can’t understand how she could ever ask that! How can she assume it’s all “his problem” and in no part her fault?

Moving on, I found that the question “Can I have your attention please?” while making eye contact with a few students followed by watching the clock is quite effective. In just one class period, the students went from taking 20 seconds to give me their attention to almost 10 seconds. I was so excited! I found that it’s easier to get their attention when other students are asking people to be quiet instead of me doing all of the work. This is one technique I plan on using the rest of this semester and see how consistent the results are.

We have finally arrived at time. After having 90 minute periods in high school I never thought 59 minute periods would be enough. However, Friday I learned that its quite easy to have 15-20 minutes extra! I felt very disorganized and like I failed the students in some way because of this. With the extra time many students played with the puzzles my CT has in the room while others worked on homework from other classes or doodled and talked to friends. I even went around to check that they had completed the assignment fully and correctly. They had. I didn’t come up with any additional material or activities because they had a very hard time with this lesson on Tuesday (the last class before our snow days). Maybe something finally clicked during those two days. Who knows; but now I know how important it is to plan my time better so the students get the most out of the lesson. This is one of the many things I will be focusing on this semester.

This brings us to today. A Monday right after a short week. I fully expected everyone to be either lethargic or bouncing off the walls. I had neither! Surprisingly 90% of the class was engaged and actively taking notes during the lesson. I was so excited. Maybe it was because we were working with the coordinate plane and they had the chance to use graph paper. After Friday today was a breeze. I think this is because the students and myself were relieved to have my CT back. My goal for tomorrow is to remember the classroom management I learned on Friday because I know the content is there. My second goal is to management my time wisely. Thankfully, my CT will finish this lesson on Wednesday.  I can’t wait to see how the rest of this week goes.