Weekly Post #2

A pretty interesting week for me this time around.  I had to take two days off from being in the classroom to take a personal holiday so I've only been in the classroom once, and it was not a very exciting time.  The whole day I was there was dedicated to preparing the 7th grade students for their upcoming Middle School Placements or MSP's.  They watched a video and then took a practice test.  My 8th graders just read another section from the book and worked on their terms and people to get ready for their test.

All in all, pretty boring and not much happened that I could really take into my teaching.  It was a little weird to see how my cooperating teacher had to adjust his schedule to make due with the requisite video and tests that were put onto him that morning.  I appreciated seeing his flexibility and ability to change his plans to accomodate the administration.

The major conflict was obviously having to work around the MSP preparations but things were pretty easy outside of that.

As I said, it was a short week so not too much to report here.

Sociology of Classroom Discipline - Article

This was an interesting article.  Published in 1991 I feel it has become a bit outdated but it still had some interesting ways to think about the relationship between curriculum and classroom management.  In fact, the way they describe classroom management was as 'discipline' or 'order' throughout the entire article.

The author describes schools as generally having three types of teaching their curriculum and then three types of discipline that go along with them.  Traditionalists are those teachers whom we think about as pure lecturers and "ignore conflict while stressing consensus and stability" meaning they use punishment as a way of getting the students to conform to what they want. Conceptual Empiricists focus on the social interactions within a classroom.  Meaning the students and teacher work together to create a working relationship.  The last group are the reconceptualists who view the traditionalists curriculum as unfair because of social class systems are translated into a classroom and do not rely on punishments as sanctions.

It was interesting to see how the author saw classrooms twenty years ago.  When he gave is opinion on how to create rules and regulations for the classrooms, he said that teachers should use more "don't" sentences because it is more specific for the students to understand.  In direct opposition to what we believe now.

I believe he was on-point though when he claimed that schools have been adopting the management strategies for businesses by treating teachers as workers and students as products.  He made an interesting observation that although lower salaries and higher classroom sizes may be cost effective, it was not giving students the best chance at an education.  In order to combat these rising problems and lowering morale, he says to give some power back to the students by using the secondary student classroom to develop their own set of rules.  I liked this because it gets the teacher interacting with their students and then the students are engaged in their classroom; or at least are aware of the consequences if not working within the group.  This was radical thinking to him because it was in line with the 'reconceptualist' doctrine.

He went onto describe the four ways teachers can execute authority over their students.  All of which I had heard before so was not exciting news.  But he wrote about using charisma as power or personal domination as brand new ways of exerting authority in classrooms.  We talked about this with Dr. Phillips last year, and although there are 4 established ways of thinking about authority, I believe a teacher needs to be well-versed in all of them and be able to move through them without much difficulty.  Control over students can be tenuous, and we need to be able to choose which source will be the most effective in any situation.

"Dealing with students in positive ways has no limitations and offers teachers the opportunity to expand their interactions with students".  He was ahead of his time when he wrote that.

Weekly Post #1

This has been a pretty fun week.  I'm in my classroom Mondays and Fridays for the full day.  It's kind of interesting to see how the mentality of the students (and teachers) changes throughout the week.  Last Monday was their first day back from Spring break and everyone was struggling to get back into the swing of the schedule.  The students were talking quite a lot and my cooperating teacher had a difficult time getting them to focus.  He seemed a bit frazzled by the time we got to 3rd period so he asked me to step in and lead the lesson - same one that had been taught previous two periods.  It was just getting the students to read out of their book and then begin some review questions.  Fairly easy to get everything accomplished in twenty minutes so the students had about half and hour to answer their questions.  I think my highlight this week was just being able to teach a different class.  The group here was a 7th grade Washington State History class and I was able to add some anecdotes about growing up on the westside and how the weather differs from this part of the state.

Having my cooperating teacher ask me to step in was great, but I definitely see what it is like when the teacher is having to stretch a little bit to make the period fill with instruction.  The last 10 minutes of my 'lesson' were hard to get the students to focus on a larger project they should be doing because most of them had finished with their review and wanted to talk about break with their friends.

I feel like students coming back from break do not want to read straight out of their book first thing.  I think I will try to have a 'transition' lesson so the students can focus on learning again, but not have to go straight back into the grind of the normal routine. 

No real conflicts happened last week, although I was put in charge of a 'leadership' class that had a sick teacher.  I got a Krispy Kreme donut out of it because the actual teacher had to leave on a personal issue.  All they really did was collect the recycle from the classrooms throughout the school and then sort it out.  It was pretty easy.

That was last week, this upcoming week will be a bit different for me as I won't be there Friday b/c I'm going on a long weekend.  I'm not worried about my hours as there will be plenty of time to get them all in.

Context for Learning

I am currently placed in a middle school in the Freeman school district.  My cooperating teacher is the history teacher for 7^th grade Washington State History and 8^th grade U.S. History.  He also takes care of one elective class, technology.  Each class is 55 minutes every school day.  Freeman is considered a rural school, south of Spokane on highway 27.  The teaching staff really enjoys it out there.  They get to know the families and work with each other.  There is a great sense of community when I speak with the staff and kids.  They know each other and live together and it is great to learn from them.

I am most familiar with the 5^th period, 8^th grade U.S. History because most of my time there last quarter was spent with them.  There are 33 students in the class, 20 females and 13 males.  The one English Language Learner is a newish student (first of the school year) from Ethiopia.  There are three IEP’s and four 504 plans.  I asked my teacher about recognizing gifted or advanced students, but there is not any sort of structure in place to take care of those students.

The classroom itself is not my ideal set up.  There are four rows of desks and one more perpendicular along the wall from the door to the front of the room.  Each desk seats two students and the each have their own computer to work from.  It is nice for the students because each computer has the textbooks loaded onto it.  I don’t think it is what I would prefer because the students cannot be assigned at home reading.  Most of the classes are made up of reading “down-the-line” as they go through the textbook and then work on their key terms and people from the text.

After talking to the principal, he says the lack of options for the gifted students is due to a decrease in funding.  He also says that is why there are no AVID courses.  The one option they do have is an advanced track in mathematics; this could propel the advanced students two years ahead in math.  The IEP’s are followed for the individuals who need them and each student with a 504 is given an option to modify the assignment or participate with it in smaller sizes.  My cooperating teacher admits that he hasn’t done that recently since he has a better grasp on what each student requires to be successful.

edTPA Response

Okay, so this whole TPA thing is a little baffling at first.  I mean, really, we have to write down each and every time we write a new lesson plan how many boys and girls there are in our classes?  We have to look up the state standards and know what they are?  I get it, the TPA is a great tool for us to learn about why we are teaching the lessons we teach and know how it fits into the bigger picture.  But it is really necessary, once we are in the classrooms to have to write that down 14 times a quarter?  It seems a little like busy work to me. 

That being said, I do appreciate the skillsets that the TPA is helping to hone.  It makes sure we future-teachers are thinking about ensuring our lesson plans are going to maximize the learning for every student.  The questions it asks are important to think about as we go into the future.  “WHO are the students in this class/group?” or “WHAT conditions might impact the planning and delivery?” are important things to consider.  A problem I see in how specific the whole thing is what happens when things don’t go the way we planned?  There are so many “what ifs” that could happen on any given day that having such a specific target may be unachievable.  Sean just told us the other day how his favorite part of teaching is when our conversations lead us into something more interesting than what was planned.  If the lesson leads you that way, and the students are really engaged and participating, how are we really going to assess what they learned?  We can’t grade them based on things that happened spontaneously.  The TPA can’t really account for those types of learning sessions.  The students may develop a desire to learn and know what was discussed, but our TPA’s may not have the appropriate assessment.

The TPA’s assessment questions are detailed.  Duh!  There are so many things to think about how to ensure the students are actually grasping the ideas and concepts we are trying to provide to them.  I like how it is broken down into ‘formative’ and ‘summative’ but it’s a little ridiculous that the first question under each heading is asking exactly what formative and summative assessments are. 

Overall, I think the TPA is a great learning tool.  It forces us students to think about all that teaching a lesson has.  I do look at my cooperating teacher, and see how well he does with just a little note in his calendar.  Obviously, he’s been doing for 20+ years, so he’s got the ‘routines’ down and helps out the IEP and 504 students on their own terms.  Sometimes I feel as if doing the TPA over and over and over and over again is a little excessive, but I appreciate being over-prepared than under.  I don’t actually see the practicality of it being brought into our professional lives.  We will use the skills gained doing this, and formulate our own processes of creating workable lesson plans.