Week 6

What a week! I was supposed to be observed on Friday, when my school had a 2-hour delay. However, my whole county was shut down and I tried to get to school, but couldn't make it there.

It was a pretty good week again--my kids were pretty good and we covered a decent amount of material. They can be pretty unresponsive in class when I ask if anyone has questions, and a lot of times they won't raise their hands, but then they all have questions after class. On Monday I collected an assignment from them, then asked if anyone had any questions at all about the material we covered last week. I went over some key terms and topics, then presented them with a pop quiz (or, as I call it, "Unexpected Assessment.") Questions on the pop quiz were word-for-word from their poetry packet or examples they were supposed to copy into their packets, or I said things word-for-word right before the quiz. (For example, before the quiz, I said, "Can anyone remind me what a couplet is?" and took their answers, then restated "A couplet is TWO LINES.") It was amazing how many kids failed or got things like the "couplet" question wrong. That set up a nice talk on Tuesday about following directions and paying attention in class. Thursday we had a heart-to-heart about their behavior in class. A lot of the kids are starting side conversations in class, and I reminded them that their behavior doesn't change because their teacher has changed.

The "best" (sarcasm!) part of the week was hearing from my co-op that a student (W) is intentionally trying to get me off track in class and trying to annoy me by chatting with his neighbors. Another student (T) told a teacher on my team (Mr. H) that W was doing this, and Mr. H told my co-op, and my co-op told me. That will give me a chance to address that on Monday with this student.

Week 5, Observation 1

This was a great week for me. I finally had the chance to spend a whole week teaching my material, and I really enjoyed it. On Tuesday my students reviewed vocabulary for poetry elements and sound techniques. Then they practiced working with identifying those elements and techniques in "The Bells," and they had a chance to become experts on one stanza and teach what they found to their classmates in small groups. Wednesday, the students had a quiz from my co-op's old unit, and after that we reviewed "The Bells" as a class before I introduced an assignment due on Monday and a feedback form I call "Dear Mrs. Becker." This is a form where students can check one of three options (I like, I don't like, or I'm confused) and give me an idea of something I am doing well, something that is not effective for them as learners, or something they still don't quite get. I started this because I couldn't tell by looking out at them whether they understood concepts like onomatopoeia, etc.
I also had to pass back projects on Wednesday, so it was basically a day to review.
On Thursday we talked about rhyme scheme. I had all the students create poetry journals a week ago, and we write in them most days, or they'll have an entry for homework. Thursdays entry was to find as many rhyming words as they could for the words eyes, you, time, sea, and hot. Then we spent the class talking about rhyme scheme, the difference between near and exact (perfect/imperfect) rhyme, and internal rhyme. We also found examples of alliteration in our example poem. They then worked with partners to label the rhyme scheme in a new poem, which we reviewed as a class.

Friday was observation day, and I was freaking out during homeroom, first period, second period (my first class of the day), and third period (which was a team meeting that went over its time slot and prevented me from cleaning up after my first class and prepping for my second. In class we started with a journal while listening to salsa music, which I played since our lesson was about "spicing up" our writing. The lesson was about word choice and how to use the thesaurus on a computer, since that is how they write/type most of their papers for class. We watched a Friends clip, where Joey was using a thesaurus to write a letter to Monica and Chandler's adoption agency. (The clip is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DW1lxwsK5_Q). I had to fast-forward from second 38 to second 48 because Joey makes a comment about porn, so to avoid suspicion from the students I paused after the first part, then fast-forwarded, then used the thesaurus to make my journal entry better with help from the students, and then played the rest of the clip, from :48 to the end. No one asked why I skipped ahead or anything, so I felt better.

I got some positive feedback from both my co-op and Dr. Mortimore this week. I got positive feedback about my use of multi-media in the classroom, as well as my poetry packet and my rapport with my students. I really appreciate the comments about the rapport because that is what I was most worried about when I came into this classroom. My co-op also likes my lesson plan format and the fact that I used a Friends clip. I think he also likes my poetry journal idea, as well as my "Dear Mrs. Becker" card.

I am looking forward to the upcoming week as my students begin writing more poetry. I will also be demonstrating my authority as I rearrange the seating chart for one class to cut back on chatter and talk to another student after class about his annoying behavior in class.

Overall, this is a great experience and I really don't want to leave this placement! I truly think 8th grade is where I'm meant to be!

Week 4

Well, this was an interesting week. We had a delay on Monday and Friday, and no school Wednesday and Thursday. On Tuesday and Friday my co-op was out, so I had a sub. I've worked with three substitutes now in the past two weeks, and they are very interesting people. They know that the class is mine and I'm in charge with lesson plans and instruction, but they still feel the need to take over the teacher's desk and displace me to the back of the room. How am I supposed to have quick access to my stuff if it's in the back of the room? Oh well. I also find that sometimes the subs like to take over some aspects to try to help, but it irritates me a little because I can't really "manage" the class by myself if a sub is getting in there, too.

Overall, it was a pretty good week. Students finished taking a test on Monday, and I did poetry instruction to 3 classes on Tuesday while the 2 afternoon classes went and read children's books to 3rd graders at the next-door elementary school. Friday I did poetry for everyone, and I'm glad we had a delay because I realized I did not have enough material planned for a full class period with my second lesson. That works nicely for the afternoon classes, because I can get through that lesson and try to work in the 3rd lesson to get them caught up.

I feel like I am connecting with the kids better. They know from last Friday's dress-down day that I'm a Colts fan, so on Monday there was a lot of Super Bowl talk and Colts-bashing. Then I did an activity where they had to pull pieces of paper out of a hat, so I used my Colts hat for the activity. The kids had lots of comments about that, and it allowed for some less stressful time on an odd Friday afternoon. Also, when I was doing my intro to the poetry unit, I was able to tell the students about myself, and that helped them see me as a real person and not just a teacher.

I'm looking forward to next week's 4-day-week and diving deeper into poetry with some creative activities.

Week 3

Oh goodness. This was quite an interesting week. My co-op was out taking care of his 2-year-old on Thursday, so I was in charge of all 5 classes for the first time. It wasn't too tricky, because I was passing back a quiz and doing a review game with them. I had introduced myself to 2 more classes on Monday, so it was my first time with the last two on Thursday. Things had been going well with my 3 classes throughout the week, but Thursday I wanted to scream. Students had questions about the quiz, and I knew when I was grading them that some of the questions weren't worded well. My co-op took the quiz from another teacher's materials, and it was a T/F quiz with 20 questions worth 3 points each (which seems high to me, but oh-well). So we decided to give everyone 3 extra points because one question was really vague, and a few more were very confusing. One kid in the last class of the day (after I'd been dealing with arguments with 8th graders all day) kept arguing with me about the answers. He thought he should have gotten credit for more questions and that the answers my co-op and I had were wrong and he was right. I decided to take a question from another student, and I was talking with the other student when I hear student A tell his friend, "I could argue this all day long." At that point I looked at the class and said, "Listen. I gave everyone in here 3 free points. You all go the benefit of the doubt, whether you got #10 wrong or not. If you want to argue and tell me that I was wrong, I will take the three points back for the whole class." That got them quiet pretty fast.

In retrospect, maybe that wasn't a good thing to say, but I wanted to remind them that we helped them out a little. I didn't make the test, but I still got a 60/60 when I made the key (which I checked against the actual key that my co-op had). I reminded them that close reading was key and that they couldn't count on class discussions to make up for not doing their homework.

The best part of the day was seeing the sub (an older man, who I believe was a retired computer isntructor) sitting in the back of the room reading a book.

Overall, it wasn't too bad of a week. Taking over more classes was interesting, and having the whole day on Thursday to be in charge is good preparation for this upcoming week when I take over all the classes.

I do have one question for all of you: Have you had any conflicts or disagreements with your co-ops about grading? My co-op gave the kids a bunch of assignments to complete, and I am grading the newest one by myself. It's a notebook project, and in the first part of the assignment they had to include 10 facts about Mark Twain that they learned in class and 5 facts that they discovered on their own. I don't mind doing the grading, but he is taking off 10 points (the assignment is worth 89) if they didn't label the 5 facts about Mark Twain they found themselves. The grading sheet and project description don't say anything about needing to label them, and my co-op said that if students fight it, they can get 5 of those 10 points back, but they need to see me next week and initiate a meeting. Does this seem unfair or off to anyone else for a bunch of 8th grade students?

Anyway, that's basically it for now. I am excited to start my poetry unit on Monday (or Tuesday or Wednesday... who knows after an unplanned early dismissal yesterday screwed up the schedule). More updates after that.

Parents...

We had a nice talk about parents at our team meeting last week, and we talked about how one girl's mom is going over the teachers' heads to the administration because she thinks teachers are telling the student she may not leave their study halls, etc, to take her instrument lessons.

The idea of parents going over teachers' heads really annoys me. Follow the "chain of command" and voice your complaints to the appropriate venue.

This reminded me of something from Ad Lit: I call it the "Anne Frank Issue." Read this article for more!

Week 2

This was quite an interesting week. My co-op teaches 5 classes a day, all of 8th grade English. His 2 afternoon classes are accelerated. His first 2 classes of the day are regular, and his third class is the one with all the learning support/IEP kids. For some reason, I think that is my favorite class.

On Tuesday, since class A was a day behind the other 4 classes because of a test last week, my co-op instructed class A and gave the other 4 classes an in-class work day to get caught up on assignments, papers, and projects. At the end of class he did a vocab exercise with them, but he had me be in charge of classes B, C, and E for 20 minutes at the end to oversee their work, answer questions, and lead that activity. It went really well, and I took over class B full-time on Wednesday. (I pick up C and E on MONDAY!)

The students are reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer right now, and they are getting into the discussions. Some of them aren't reading, which is pretty obvious, but my class B kids seem to be really into the discussions. In fact, my second day with them (Thursday), something AMAZING happened--- EVERY STUDENT in the class participated in the discussion. Normally it's the same 5 or 6 students, and there are 2 students who NEVER raise their hands. Thursday and Friday, though, they both had their hands up more than anyone else. I was pleased, and my co-op says that the one student (Student "A") raised his hand more for me in one class than he has for my CO in the whole school year. Another student always looks really upset, but he was smiling this week in class. I appreciate things like that, and as he was leaving class on Friday I said "Have a good weekend, Damien." He smiled and headed out. I think that knowing the students' names is really valuable to me. They are impressed and it shows them that this "newbie" cares enough to learn who they are.

The craziest thing that happened all week is that a girl cried for me. My co-op and I graded papers that only his accelerated classes wrote, and many students ended up with 30 or fewer points on the 45 point assignment. I told them I would answer any questions they might have (which meant explaining to kids that they needed to include more detail), and one girl came up to me to ask what she did wrong. I explained that we needed more detail, and even gave her specific examples of what she could have written. I also said she could have spoken to us if she was confused about the assignment before she turned it in. Then I looked up and she is shaking and has tears in her eyes. I felt so bad, but there wasn't really anything I could do. She said she has never failed anything in her life (even though she really got a 67% on the assignment) and was just upset. I told her that in my poetry unit there would be opportunity for extra credit, so she nodded and left to go to a different teacher's room. (This was during study hall). I couldn't believe it. My co-op said he saw what was happening and was close to giving her an A to get her to stop crying. I was a little disappointed by that, but then he said he wasn't going to change anyone's score because they could have chosen to write about a different work.

It was a pretty crazy week, and I also had a classroom management issue too, when we were playing a review game about the reading that was due for class that day, and a few of the boys were calling out asking "Do we get the point?" etc. My co-op said I should have demanded authority, and that I only "suggested" authority. That is helpful feedback for me as I try to determine my classroom management style and continue to try to develop a good rapport with the students.

Week 1

This has been an interesting week! I'm updating early because after school tomorrow I am hopping on a bus and joining 150 7th and 8th graders on a retreat in Maryland. I just can't get away from middle schoolers!

In the first week Good Hope, I have done a lot of observations. The students are in the middle of reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, so my co-op is continuing the teaching of that. I will take over in early February with the poetry unit. Next week I will take over teaching one of the five classes, but I will use my co-op's lesson plans since he wants them to all have the same instruction.

This is a good time for me to familiarize myself with the students and learn their names with the help of the seating charts. I am also getting ideas based on what they like to talk about in the discussion. They are surprisingly willing to talk about their personal experiences, and many students have talked about parents' divorce (through well-developed discussion questions prepared by my co-op to help the novel relate to the students' lives) and other sensitive topics, but are less willing to address the material itself.

I was concerned and nervous at first, but I enjoy the other teachers on my team and was able to talk with some of the students this week and begin establishing rapport!

In the next week I have to finish all of my lesson plans for the poetry unit and finish assembling a packet, so it will be a hectic week until I can get everything done, but after that I can just fine-tune the plans!

That's it for now, but I'll be back with more next week!