Tuesday

Tuesday seems like it was forever ago thanks to the snow day we had yesterday. One thing I've been trying to do consistently is take notes either during class when students are working on their own or right after class so any observations are fresh in my mind. This has been useful in not only writing my reflections but also talking with H about how each class went. 

Period Five - English 9
First, I collected student work. The students had three things to turn in, all of which they had plenty of in class time to work on. That being said, I would estimate that I received about half to three-quarters the amount of work I should have received. And this was after students tried to hurriedly finish their assignments in class as I was collecting them. Which reminds me that I need to talk to H about the policy for this. While I'm totally fine with a rolling deadline of sorts for students, I know that SMHSNC has a specific late work policy for the freshman, and since I am part of the school, I need to make sure I am following the policy. After I started to feel like turning in their homework was taking way too much time, and H spoke to them about this, I told them that we were just going to move on, which we did.
Because this was the second day of this lesson with the freshman, I felt comfortable leading the lesson about The Poison Tree and guiding students through the poem. Between the Springboard Teacher's Edition and having H model the lesson for me with Period One, I knew which areas of the poem to focus on and how to help them make the connections that they needed to. With a small class like this, it was harder to get them talking, but that might also have been partially related to me being the one leading the lesson. We're still getting to know each other and they're trying to figure out what kind of a teacher I am, so I expect there will be some awkwardness/discomfort for a little while longer. One benefit of small class sizes, however, is that I'm able to move students onto the next activity at their own pace. This is helpful with classroom management because it keeps students from having down time to cause trouble and distract their classmates. It also means that I've got different students at different stages of the lesson plan, some finishing earlier than others. I'm going to start using any free time students have after they finish to work on vocabulary and roots. I'm thinking that using exit tickets more might also be helpful, so that the students are accountable and I'm able to see what progress they're making.

Period Six - English 10
Even though I don't have H to model what the lesson is supposed to look like, I have the Springboard teacher's edition, so I can pretty much figure out what to do with them. During this class we went through their homework, which was to deconstruct the prompt for their assessment. Springboard does a nice job of scaffolding the activities so that students are ready for the assessments. After a quick review of the elements of a prompt, students were able to start working on their essay in class. I'm always a little wary of giving students in class time like this, not because I don't want them to have the opportunity to work on their homework, but because a lot of students won't use their in class time wisely if not being constantly told what to do. Period six surprised me though. Not everyone worked the entire time, but for the most part, there was some significant progress made. Some students even managed to finish their essays in class. (I wish I could remember the last time I was able to start and finish a draft of an essay in class!) For homework they are to  finish their drafts if they hadn't done so. I am curious to see how many come to class with a completed draft.

Period Seven - English 9
Round two with the 9ers today. This class was pretty much identical to period five. Some areas I noticed in my teaching that could use improvement are my transitions and my classroom management. I don't really have any transitional strategies other than verbal cues, and so far they don't seem to be working that well for me. I'm losing a lot of class time because of this, so I need to find some ways to improve my strategies. As far as classroom management, I tend to stick to proximity and the "teacher stare" because those typically are the strategies that work best for me. I also prefer proximity because when students are working independently I am able to check in with each of them to see how they are doing. However, I don't really use proximity when I'm doing whole group instruction, so that's when I rely on the teacher stare. So far this works for the most part, but I could benefit from adding a few tricks to my bag.

Manic Monday

Today really feels like I'm a teacher. I don't know if it's because it's the first Monday I've been in a classroom, or if I'm starting to take over more responsibilities, but it's starting to feel real. And I love it. I just finished entering student grades into the gradebook for the first time.

It's been a bit of a struggle with a few students who are challenging my authority/role in the classroom, but I'm sure that by the end of the semester I'll have won most, if not all of them over. One student in particular is challenging, not necessarily behavior-wise, but more in a defiance to do any work.

Because periods one and two are the same section and end up doing the same thing each day, I observed Mrs. H during period one for part of the lesson plan, then I was able to teach that part of the lesson plan during second period without feeling like I was overwhelmed. Even though I was working on the second part of the lesson plan while Mrs. H was teaching, I was listening to her teach the poem to the students, which gave me an idea of how to teach the poem to the period two folks. After Mrs. H taught the poem to the students, I took over and taught them a little bit about catacombs and Carnival, then had them start a word sort. Period one was a bit of a dry one, but considering that, I think it went well.

Period two felt like it went much smoother, even though it was a bit more challenging because some of the students in the class know how to push buttons, and they like to do it as much as possible. It's certainly a multi-ability level class, and because of that, Mrs. H and I did things a little differently than with period one. I felt totally comfortable teaching the poem to the students, so I did that, then I had them do the next two activities. Because of their different ability levels, some students finished the activities sooner than others, so instead of teaching the entire class about the catacombs we just pushed them along onto the next section as they finished. This was a little chaotic, because we had students constantly asking for help, not on task, etc., but I think it's important to experience the classroom this way, especially since I'm interested in customized learning. While this isn't exactly a model of customized learning, it's a model of differentiation in regards to pacing. It also gives me more opportunities to work with individual students, and since I'm still getting to know them, I find this incredibly helpful. The students aren't all fans of it, but I think they'll get used to it. And as I learn their work ethic and ability levels better, I'll be able to leave them alone more instead of constantly pacing and checking in with each individual student several times.

Seniors today were...challenging. I got a lot of resistance from most of the seniors I worked with, some were more frustrated with actually having to do work than they were frustrated with me, but a few of the seniors actually shut down when I tried to help them. This is the area I struggle with the most right now, knowing how to handle each situation. And every student is different, so there's a different answer each time. Sometimes there isn't an answer at all. When a student shuts down on me, my instincts are to keep pushing them, but I know that won't work, so I tend to just walk away and not go back to check on them, but I'm afraid that if I don't go back to check on them, they're going to feel as though I don't care about them/I'm ignoring them, when that really isn't the case. Again, I think that as I get to know them, things will improve, but it's still a transition period so I need to just be patient!

Days Two and Three Recap

Day two was my first day with two sections of English 9ers, and a section of seniors. Like the day before, we went around the room in each class and had students introduce themselves to me, and I introduced myself to them. I was surprised by the number of students who were reluctant about this. But one of the things Mrs. H is working on, with all of her students, is making them pro-social individuals who can communicate effectively in society.

Even though this was my first day with this group of students, I felt much more comfortable jumping in and helping students with the different activities for the day. The students also seemed more accepting of my help, I think partly because some of them had seen me around school the day before, and some of their friends had probably told them about me.

Thursday was a Green day, this is what the schedule looked like:

Period 1: English 9
We started with introductions, then we did a DDHW (Due Diligence Homework Check), basically making sure the students attempted the homework and worked on it up until they got stuck and had questions. Before Mrs. H went around the room to check homework, she got them started on the next activity, which was making writing goals for semester 2. The students had a lot of questions about how to do this, what they needed to do, etc., so I went around the room and helped the students with this and answered any questions they had. After the students finished making their goals for the semester, they made posters for Unit 2 in their curriculum. The requirements were on the board and explained everything they needed to do, but they still struggled with understanding what was being asked of them. Mrs. H was fielding questions about it left and right, and trying to create an example poster for them, so after I finished putting the vocab they needed on the word wall, I made an example poster that we put at the front of the room. The period was over by then, so this class wasn't able to benefit from it, but we used it with the following classes.

Period 2: English 9
This class had the same agenda as period 1, but because it was a smaller class size, it was not quite as chaotic as period 1. They had the model poster to look at, and that helped them a lot. I spent more of the class helping individual students, answering questions and directing them more. Being able to work one on one with them in this setting helped me to learn most of their names faster, but that was partially due to the smaller class size.

Connections:
This was one of the dedicated days for reading. It was a little like pulling teeth, getting the students to read for twenty minutes, but by the end almost all of them were reading quietly. I particularly enjoyed this time because even the teachers are supposed to be reading, so it gave me a chance to read during school. I started Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson.

Period 3: Prep/Study Hall
I had never seen a class set up this way, but the way the schedule works, students have study in one classroom, then after lunch finish study hall in another classroom. We have prep for the first half of the period, then study hall for the second half.

Period 4: English 12
Mrs. H's senior English class is more of an individualized class. Some of the seniors are working on pre-professional skills, such as resumes, and some of the students are participating in a modified lit circle. I worked with three students on their resumes, specifically the skills section. I would have liked to work with the lit circle students some, but I will do that next class.

Day 3
Day three was a repeat of day two, with different sections of freshmen. These classes do better working independently compared to the sections from the day before.

The sophomore class had a non-party party, with chicken curry, basmati rice, and naan, then they started working on deconstructing a prompt. One of the things I like about Springboard so far is that it teaches different strategies to students, such as breaking down a prompt. I was actually able to take over part of this section of the lesson plan because the Springboard teacher's edition provides the teacher with different steps to take with the students. Mrs. H has been really good with allowing me to take over parts of the class like this, almost as though she is scaffolding my instruction too.

Definitely ready for the weekend. I've got some student work to grade (yay!), but most importantly I'm going to relax and get rested up for next week.

Philosophy of Education

A Personal Philosophy of Education

As a person, I am eclectic. My taste in food, music, movies, and other personal interests range from one extreme to the other. It is a challenge to box me up into one particular category, and this is no different when it comes to education. As an educator, my teaching philosophy is all over the board. I do not identify entirely with any one philosophy, but rather draw on all of them to create my own personal philosophy. There are five defined philosophies that I find myself using to build my own: perennialism, idealism, pragmatism, existentialism, and humanism. Before discussing each of the individual philosophies, it might be helpful to first define philosophy. Philosophy is the set of beliefs and values that comprise the way an individual thinks about the world; it is a search for meaning and understanding, as well as an analysis of the concepts that define an individual’s personal values and beliefs. Each of the philosophies describes a different set of core beliefs, including beliefs relevant to education. There is not one particular philosophy that can be said to be the right philosophy for education. Rather, each one has merit to be used in the school or classroom in some way or another. 

The perennialist philosophy is also known as the essentialist philosophy. Supporters of perennialism believe that there is a core set of knowledge that all students must know in order to be successful. Within this core set, perennialists want students to know certain things by the end of each grade. For example, if students study the Civil War in seventh grade, they are expected to know key facts about the war, and if they are not able to prove that they have learned those facts by the end of the year, they are not able to move on to the next grade level. That student must then repeat the seventh grade until he or she is able to demonstrate all of the knowledge required of students in the seventh grade. In the lower grades, primarily up to third grade, this might work as well in practice as theory, but as students grow and mature, they become aware of the reasons for students repeating a grade (or grades), and a social stigma becomes attached to repeating a grade. The social stigma then can impact the student staying back, and very rarely is it positive. Repeating a grade can cause a student to become disengaged, even more than before; sometimes a second chance at the content is not the solution for a student; and can stunt personal growth, as well as social growth. A perhaps outdated but popular author of the perennialist philosophy is E.D. Hirsch, Jr., who wrote Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. In this book, Hirsch argues that the then-current education system is depriving students of valuable, even vital, knowledge--basic knowledge which would allow them to function in society. To accompany his argument, Hirsch includes a list of the 5,000 things that “every American needs to know,” a list ranging from important dates and people to common sayings and places. While this list is not comprehensive, it is a suggestion of the content that Hirsch believes Americans need in order to be able to communicate with one another, no matter the person’s background. 

Personally, I agree with little of the perennialist, or essentialist, philosophy. I do feel that students should have a common set of core knowledge, but I do not think that the list Hirsch created is the magic core. I do not think 5,000 is the magic number and that once students know all 5,000 items on the list that they will suddenly become engaged students who enjoy learning. If schools want to use a core list like Hirsch’s, I believe they need to be willing to change every few years, to keep it current and relevant, so that it reflects the current society. I do not believe that students are empty receptacles for teachers to fill with knowledge. They may begin school as empty receptacles, but it is not the teacher’s role to fill them up. As Will Richardson, former public school educator says, “Education will only truly be transformed when we stop trying to jam content into our kids’ heads and start allowing them to explore and learn in contexts that feed their desire to keep learning” (Richardson 2012). I want my students to be able to explore content, find what they are interested, and create habits of lifelong learning. With society evolving at increasing speeds, a core list of things to be taught will become outdated just as quickly as it is created, generating an archaic curriculum that will not engage students because they will not see the relevancy to their lives. For this reason, I believe that perennialism should not be the entire foundation of an educational philosophy, but rather a building block that works with parts of the other philosophies to forge a stronger foundation. 

Similar to the perennialist philosophy is idealism, which focuses on teaching students through lectures and discussion rather than passive listening. However, learning is still curriculum centered, specifically a core set of standards that students must know. In addition to the core standards, idealists support the teaching of absolute truths. An idealist’s curriculum would include much of the Canon, history lessons that focus on places and dates rather than issues, and math would be taught lecture style with no hands on applications for students. Idealists believe in learning for the sake of learning, but students are not actively engaged with the content.  Today’s students “are growing up in a sea of information 24/7, and schools must be helping them formulate questions, encouraging them to dig deep, to prepare them for a world which values the ability to formulate questions and then find answers to those questions,” (John Merrow 2012). In this quotation by Merrow, he includes a piece of idealism: “schools must be helping [students] formulate questions.” With the lecture and discussion style of teaching, schools are teaching students to ask questions, but the schools then leave students with questions that have yet to be answered. There is no freedom for students to seek out the answers to their questions during school. In an idealist’s classroom, students with questions irrelevant to the exact content they are studying, the students are expected to find their own answers, outside of class time. For some students, that time is spent taking care of family, working on homework for school, working, or playing sports. Students often have little time to continue their studies above and beyond the required curriculum outside of school because of their other responsibilities. The aspects of idealism that I do agree with are the lecture and discussion methodologies. I am not in favor of long, teacher-led lectures, but I do think that short, ten minute lectures can be useful teaching methods, as well as short discussions. Students need a variety of ways to handle content, and a combination that involves either lecture or discussion can be helpful for some students, depending on their learning preferences. 

Pragmatism, also known as experimentalism, is a philosophy that tends to focus more on the learning styles and preferences of students and less on the curriculum. As the root word of experimentalism suggests, experimentation is the center of learning. Students are taught more life skills and real world content rather than a list of core knowledge. The role of students is to be active participants, while the educators are responsible for teaching methods related to reasoning and observations--skills that will teach students how to learn, not what to learn. By teaching students the scientific method (problem solving) and inductive reasoning, teachers are showing students how to be lifelong learners. The knowledge pragmatists value is practical and the skills are applicable to society. They are teaching students to be valuable members of society. A school developed around the pragmatist philosophy would allow students to take electives in a large variety of subjects. This lets students take classes that they are interested, which helps them to engage in learning, rather than being passive receptacles. Schools would also emphasize projects over tests, where students are able to show what they have learned instead of telling. 

Of the five philosophies, I find that pragmatism is one I mostly agree with. I believe hands-on learning is important for students, as well as experimentation. Sometimes trial-and-error is the best way for students to learn. They might become frustrated with every failure, but when they finally understand the content, they will be proud of themselves, and not because they memorized the facts. Students will be able to apply what they have learned to real world situations, and that makes them better citizens--not knowing a list of important nouns. While it is difficult to escape the test, I do believe there are other ways of having students demonstrate mastery of the content. If a test is required, either by the school or the government, then the student should also have the opportunity to demonstrate his or her learning through a project or some other means, perhaps even before the test is administered. Giving students a chance to practice displaying mastery of the content prepares them for taking the test in a method that they are comfortable with, which increases the chances that they will do well on the test. 

While perennialism is on one end of the philosophy spectrum, existentialism is on the opposite. Where perennialists believe in rigid, structured curriculum, existentialists believe in freedom of choice in regards to learning. An excellent example of this philosophy is the Summerhill school, founded by A.S Neill in 1921. At Summerhill, students are responsible for their own learning. Students between the ages of 5 and 18 have complete control over their learning and the school. If students do not want to learn a particular subject, are too tired to learn one day, or simply do not feel like it, there is no one to tell them otherwise. They are also responsible for creating the school’s government system. The teachers are there to encourage and facilitate learning, but only when the students show an interest. The structure of the school, or rather lack thereof, is meant to develop independence and responsibility in the students, but there is no way to measure whether this is happening or not. 

While I agree with this in theory, I feel as though the practice is poorly executed. In a school of 95 students, of all ages, there are not enough teachers. If you want students to be able to learn what they want, when they want, you need to provide more teachers to facilitate learning. I also think the school might be more effective if it were divided into two sections based on age, one for children ages 5-12, and one for children ages 13-18. Children in these two age groups are in different stages developmentally, and while the school can function with students of all ages, I think the younger students look to the older students as role models, when that might not be the best scenario for them. I also think that there should be some set curriculum that students are required to master. It does not need to be extensive, but it should include the basics of reading, writing, math, and some communication skills. I do like that students are able to study what they want. If a student is interested in snowboarding and wants to learn all there is about snowboarding, then as a teacher, I would take advantage of that student’s interest and find ways to use snowboarding to engage him in all of the subject areas. The student can read about snowboarding, research the history of snowboarding, learn business related to snowboarding, calculate angles and trajectories in math, etc. If snowboarding, or anything other hobby, can be used to engage a student, then we should use it as a vehicle for teaching valuable skills to students. Who knows, maybe even the student will actually enjoy learning. John Seely Brown says that “...learning should be viewed in terms of an environment--combined with the rich resources provided by the digital information network--where the context in which learning happens, the boundaries that define it, and the students, teachers, and information within it all coexist and shape each other in a mutually reinforcing way” (Seely Brown 2011). 

Each of the previously mentioned philosophies centers around learning or curriculum. Humanism, however, focuses more on the student and helping the student to attain certain needs. Mike Rose, author of Lives on the Boundary, has a philosophy that leans heavily toward humanism. He believes that every student, even those who have failed time and time again has ability and potential to learn; it just needs to be discovered. In his book, Rose shares his journey through school and into his work as a tutor, where eventually he starts teaching a course at a Veteran’s Program that served veteran’s of the armed forces. The stories that Rose shares are poignant, and truly show how Rose treats each student as an individual. Rose does not care what history or background his students bring to his class, he is just as willing to work with each and every one of them, for as long as it takes, to help them master the content. To engage his students, Rose finds ways of connecting the novel, play, short story, poem, etc., with the student’s lives. Teachers today complain that it is too difficult to connect everything to the real world for students, but Rose found a way to do it for his students, and he had students from a diverse background, students of all ages, students who were driving upwards of an hour to get to class. If Rose can connect Australian myths and the big bang theory to the lives of military veterans, we can connect Hamlet to our students’ lives. 

Humanists also focus on helping students to become self-actualized. Boiled down, this means fulfilling one’s individual potential. In order to become self-actualized, one must first meet the needs of the lower tiers of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: physiological, safety and security, love and belonging, and self-esteem. Once all of these needs have been met, a student is able to fully reach his or her potential. While the philosophy focuses on the goal of self-actualization, humanist teachers connect learning to the students’ environment; make the learning relevant; and show students how the curriculum applies to themselves, the community, and the world. The instructional methods for a classroom based on the humanist philosophy would focus on group work and would allow students to spend one-on-one time working with the teacher. The curriculum would include topics such as would be found in a perennialist curriculum, but there would also be an emphasis on the needs of the students, which could be taught in units that focus on real world issues.

Ann Camacho, English teacher for 20 years, recently said,

“Educators must give assignments that engage students; curiosity and imagination instead of those that hold little authenticity and are simply to satisfy answers to a test; when they do, students will rise. They will lean into the issues in the world if given a chance, and it is inspiring to see that, when given an opportunity to voice their opinions and share experiences, they can do just that. In this kind of atmosphere, compliancy gives way to engagement and it is here where students find their own voices, where they uncover the seeds of their own stories and where they discover themselves.” (Camacho 2012)

Camacho does an excellent job synthesizing what I believe are some of the essential ideals and concepts for a classroom of the 21st century. She understands that students need to see the relevancy in what they are learning in order for them to reach their potential, which ties back to the humanist philosophy and Maslow’s theory on self-actualization. As George Cuoros says, “learning should be continuous, connected and meaningful” (Cuoros 2012). As a future educator, I believe one of the most important roles of the teacher is to take the content, whatever it may be, and find ways to connect it to the learner. In a recent blog post on education by Grant Wiggins,“...the point of learning is not just to know things but to be a different person--more mature, more wise, more self-disciplined, more effective, and more productive in the broadest sense. Knowledge is an indicator of educational success, not the aim. . . If a primary goal of education is high-level performance in the world going forward, how can marching through old knowledge out of context optimally prepare us to perform?” (Wiggins 2012). The common thread between Camacho, Cuoros, and Wiggins is that they all believe in teaching the student how to learn, by providing him with the skills necessary to be an effective citizen, which is done by making the content relevant to students in an engaging way that makes them lifelong learners.