Today I gave all my students a survey about their impressions of me as a teacher. 

I told them that my last day at Holt would be May 16th and that I was excited to be moving on to the next phase of my teaching career, but that I was sad to be leaving them. And it's true. I got pretty choked up during 3rd hour, and I've still got more than two weeks left here. 

But I gave them a survey and explained that I'd use their feedback to think of ways to be a better teacher. I promised to think about what they said as I planned lessons for future students and when I conducted class. After they knew what I'd do with their feedback, I explained the questions and asked them to be as honest and specific as possible. 

I was overwhelmed with the response. 

Almost all of my students had incredibly insightful things to point out. They had great compliments, but what surprised me was that lots of them had constructive criticism. Not a single 8th grader was disrespectful or inappropriate, though about a third of them said they couldn't think of any advice for me. The other two thirds, however, had really good suggestions that reminded me of the conversations I have with my mentor teacher and my peers at MSU. 

Overall, the lessons they enjoyed were also the lessons others couldn't stand. Two items kept coming up again and again:

Socratic Seminar: This discussion method was one my biggest projects during my time at Holt. I had the class sit in a huge circle and asked the students to lead the discussion. The students who said it was the time they learned the most said it helped encourage discussion, it was fun, and that they liked being in charge of the discussion. Students who said it was their least favorite activity said that the discussions were boring, that they didn't like talking in class, and that the conversations got too off-topic. 

Grammar Lessons: The students who enjoyed these lessons said that the year-long grammar lessons were the most challenge, when they learned the most useful information, and that they were successful because candy made it more engaging. Those that didn't like the grammar lessons said they were too repetitive, too confusing, and didn't have enough activities worked in.

Their feedback about the lessons really hit home for me the fact that different students need different types of activities. The fact that the same lessons were percieved so differently by different kids underscores the need to mix it up. If I'm going to reach all of my students, I need to continue to try different styles of activity, because I'm never going to be able to have 100% enthusiasm from every student, which means I need to give every student the opportunity to be successful by switching things up.

The last half of the evaluation asked them to describe my biggest strength as a teacher adn something I can improve on.

Let's start with what the students percieved as room for improvement. It was surprising how spot on their perceptions werew ith whqat I've been working on this year. Some said I need to be louder, and some said I need to be more efficient when helpign individual students, so that I don't spend too much time with one and leave the others hanging. One especially insightful student suggested that I clarify instructions with the whole class, becuase multiple kids probably have that question. That's something I already try to do, but I was impressed with that level of thinking.

Far and away, however, the biggest suggestion they gave me was to be more strict. It's true that it's something I need to work on. On the whole I'm much too lenient. I nkow this about myself, and I'm constantly workign otu strategies to deal with it, but the kids told me they want me to be meaner. Though, as several kids put it, "don't be too mean."

What is "too mean," though? I think I do need to hold kids accountable more consistently and give fewer warnings before I get to punishments. And Iif I'd done that straight away on day one, it would set the tone in a way that's must easier than trying to establish new norms later in the yar. This is something I'll always be working on, though, and I appreciate that my studenets were honest with me and came up with helpful advice about how I can imrpove.

In glancing through the students' ideas about my biggest strength, I saw lots of responses talking about my kindness, which is frankly what I was expecting. Looking through the surveys more closely now, though, it seems that the majority of them use the verb "helping." Students said I always made sure to help them understand things, or if someone had a problem I was right there to help. One student wrote, "I think your strength as a teacher is helping us engage and getting us focussed, in a nie way. This is exactly what I'm going for. I don't want to be a harsh disciplinarian. I want to use love adn logic to guide students through my class, in the least restrictive environment possible. That said, I know I have to work on my presence and being better about consequesnces. 

What I have now is a foundation  off of which to expand my confidence and a direction to take my teacher persona. I want to be seen as someone who helps their students. I also want to be taken seriously as an authority figure. I'm still working out exactly how to balance those two identies, but I'm confident I'll get there. And I've got loads of food for thought with all of these surveys to chew over during summer vacation.

I want to leave you with some highlights from the surveys:

1) Which activity or lesson did you learn the most from this year? Why? 
    "Socratic Seminar because we got to hear everyone's opinion."
    "I learned the most this year about argumentative writing. Last year my teacher tried to explain it adn I didn't get it and did very bad. I thank you for helping because it is an important skill I will need for high school and when i go to CMU."
    "Socratic Seminar- it was a good way to sum up our stories to each other and a great attempt at creating more communication."
    
2) Which specific activity or lesson helped you the least?
    "The grammar workbook doesn't really help me remmeber those things for tests. Maybe if we spent mroe time learning the material."
    "Working out of the grammar workbook wasn't really consistant. We only did it every one in a while and some of it I already knew."
    "The thing that helpecxd me least was teh argumentative essay because he was constantly yelling at student to be quiet and sit down. It could be better by rearranging the seats and giving the kids that talk detentions."
  
3) What do you think my biggest strength is as a teacher? Please be as specific as possible.
    "You're caring and a great problem solver. You help kids solve their problems."
    "You always make sure students understand a lesson or ask questions to hear our opinion."
    "I think your strength as a teacher is you answer all my questions thoroughly. You make sure that your answer helped me before you leave."
    "How you take care of problems." (Rigth after he wrote this a student was talking when they were supposed to be ereading, so I calmly asked the student to step outside and I'd talk to him in a minute. The student who wrote this exclaimed, "See! That's wahat I wrote about! You're so smooth!"
    "Your biggest strength as a teacher is you know how to talk in front of the class and you give great ideas."
    "You're good at explaining the instructions and explaining lessons."
    "The lessons that you explain are very thorough and well-put. Like I completely understand the topic."
    "You're funny about it when you teacher. You're not just telling us what to do."
    "You really help us when we need it and it doesn't feel like you're just here to be here."
    
4) What could I improve in my teaching? Give two specific suggestions.
    "Be more demanding and give yourself more control."
    "Try to repeat yourself more, I feel as if my teachers that do that are better teachers."
    "Harsher individual punishments."
    "Err... Sorry in advance if I sound rude, but you kinda talk too much, sometimes you drag on or keep explaining. Try to shorten them."
    "Try to have more things students can do in a lesson."
    "When you're explaining something you start rambling and repeating stuff."
    "Be more confident when speaking to your class. Kids are monsters- if they find your weak spot is talking to crowds, then they won't care to listen to you."
    "Be more authoritative with consequences to kids that behave badly."

 

Throughout my student teaching at Holt Junior High, I’ve been very focused on my effectiveness as a teacher in terms of student engagement and comprehension. To examine these facets of my teaching more carefully, I recorded a video of myself teaching a grammar lesson about using adverb clause openers (starting with an AAAWWUUBBIS word) to create complex sentences. I asked my peers at MSU for feedback on whether or not it seemed like my students understood what I was talking about when I used technical words, whether or not I seemed to be letting students struggle enough, and how to extend this activity into other lessons throughout the year.

Earlier in the year, I gave students a Grammatically Inclined quiz, which highlight for them and for me areas of need in their grammar instruction. It showed me what the kids weren’t grasping. One of those areas was how to form complex sentences. In re-teaching this concept, I started the mini-lesson by asking students to copy down the definition and a formula for how to use the grammatical concept.

From there, I asked them if they could remember the AAAWWUUBBIS words. Many of them had trouble with that, so I asked them to copy down all of the adverb clause openers. From there, I showed them a properly formed example: “When my principal zapped me to outer space, I was surprised.”

Students were then asked to add adverb clause openers to independent clauses that were provided to them.  This part of the lesson was very encouraging to me because at first students weren’t getting it, but I got them there by the end of the lesson. They started out by giving me examples without a whole adverb phrase, just the opening word. They’d say “As I was surprised.” When I pushed, and asked them to reform that adverb phrase with a whole phrase, not just the opener, they gradually got it, and after the second example, most students in the class had the hang of it.

My peers at MSU commended my use of technical words. I was afraid that I was throwing around so many technical words that it’d go over their heads, but my peers pointed out that these were terms they’d heard before, and that I was defining for them throughout the lesson. Their responses reinforced my belief that it’s important not to dumb-down the content for students. Instead, using paraphrasing to reinforce meaning, I was able to get my students more comfortable with the technical language. This, in turn, allowed us to discuss these sentences and the grammatical form in a scholarly way.

I was also concerned that I wasn’t letting students struggle enough. I’ve come to realize that struggle in incredibly important for student growth. If everything’s easy, they’re not going to be challenged and if they aren’t challenged they’re not learning. In this lesson, I made sure to let them feel the tension by not jumping in with an answer right away, which let them struggle to figure out the answer. One of my peers from MSU recommended that I start the lesson off with more opportunities for struggle, maybe by giving them a chance to use the form before I even gave an example, which is a suggestion I loved. It’s a great idea to preface a lesson with students doing something, rather than jumping right in with the definition of the concept. Especially because this was a review lesson, it would’ve made sense to begin that way. I do think, though, that I let them struggle enough that it was a rigorous lesson without making the students feel hopeless, which is the exact note I wanted to hit.

The other big concern I had about this lesson was how to extend it into other lessons so it isn’t something we examine and then move on from. My group had some amazing ideas that hit on something I’ve been considering lately. Instead of starting each day with an explanation of the agenda, I could give them a warm up activity first, and those could incorporate the target grammatical concepts we cover in class. This is something the whole 8th grade department has been considering, in light of the content on the EXPLORE test. It could be a good way to work in multiple targeted skills in a way that doesn’t take up too much time. Another group member suggested that I look for this structure in their work, which is something I already do. When I’m grading, I’m constantly using specific grammatical terms when I notice them in their work, which I agree is a great way to reinforce the content of these grammar lessons.

So, overall, I think I’m doing a good job in terms of engagement and letting the students struggle. However, there are always ways to improve your practice, and it’s important to me to keep things rigorous while maintaining enough support that students feel capable of achieving what I ask of them.

Over spring break, I did a lot of thinking about accommodations to lessons and the incident with Larry. I thought about how to respond in the future, and what scenarios would merit various levels of accommodation. 

So, I looked back at the grid of accommodations I found on SNIP's website. Stay with me, but I think it'll help me to break it down and look at how I have (or could have) implemented each type of accommodation they list on their grid. I'll put the words from SNIP's document in italics, anything else is my own writing.

Here we go!

1. Quantity: Adapt the number of items that the learner is expected to learn or number of activities student will complete prior to assessment for mastery.

I've used this accommodation several times during my student teaching. In fact, during the argumentative essay unit, I told a high achieving student that she should try to find three quotes that prove her point for each body paragraph instead of the two everyone else was required to do. 

On the other side of this accommodation, I told a student who struggles with reading comprehension, that if he could effectively prove his point using one piece of evidence for every body paragraph that I wouldn't mark him down, but that I'd prefer it if he pushed himself and found two quotes for each paragraph. He ended up using two, which felt great as the teacher. How often do we give kids an out and they don't take it? He's a very motivated student, though, and I'm not surprised he rose to the occasion. I think it's important that I acknowledged the difficulties he was having and gave him a choice in the matter. This seems to have taken the pressure off in a way that let him get the job done without panicking about it.

2. Time: Adapt the time allotted and allowed for learning, task completion, or testing.

I have several students that have this accommodation listed on their IEPs, so it's something I'm comfortable arranging. What I've found to be key with this accommodation is to set up an understanding with students before assignments are due that they need to approach me ahead of time (not the day it's due) and we'll work out a new due date together. This accommodation shouldn't give students a free pass to turn in work whenever they want and not be held accountable. Instead, I use it as a tool to negotiate an alternate due date, which respects individual students' needs, but also teaches them accountability and self-advocacy.

This is also something my mentor and I offer to every student during testing. If they want to finish a Book Club Assessment or a grammar quiz at a later date, they have the opportunity to do so after school or during their lunch, but they can't use class time to finish testing. This, I think, is a good balance of letting students be their best on tests, but also holding them accountable to the extent that they've got to arrange a time to make the test up.

3. Level of Support: Increase the amount of personal assistance to keep the student on task or to reinforce or prompt use of specific skills. Enhance adult-student relationship; use physical space and environmental structure.

This is something I've done all year without thinking of it as an accommodation. When students have questions, I help by re-explaining directions/expectations, prompting certain strategies, and often talking about something funny and unrelated to content for 40 seconds before redirecting their attention. 

Another examples of this accommodation is when students come in looking obviously distraught about something or sad, it's very effective to let them talk to you about it for a bit, sometimes right there or sometimes in the hall. This is a way to respect that your students are individuals with feelings, and an important part of my core beliefs as a teacher. By facilitating their emotional growth, and respecting them as people, I'm often freeing up their attention to focus on the academic tasks at hand. I'm better at accommodating lessons than I thought!

4. Input: Adapt the way instruction is delivered to the learner.

This is also an accommodation that I deliver to each student during every lesson. As a TESOL minor, I fully appreciate the value of paraphrasing directions and content vocabulary as much as possible. I also make sure to use multiple methods of delivering instruction: I say it out loud, write it on the board or project it on the elmo, and I put it on the worksheet that's in their hands. Often, I even take the step of asking a student to "translate that for 8th grade." I've found that this last step improves engagement, because it's a little funny and suddenly one of their peers is talking, rather than just me all the time.

5. Difficulty: Adapt the skill level, problem type, or the rules on how the learner may approach the work.

I'm not very comfortable with this one. Let's use the argumentative essay as an example. How can I adapt the skill level of explaining how information supports a claim? If I ask them, instead, to explain what the quote means, but stop short of how, exactly, that supports the thesis I feel I'm doing a disservice to the learner. They won't be prepared for ninth grade if this is the case.

I suppose, in the big scheme of things, that if I start the year off by accommodating lessons in that way, I can ease them into the more rigorous expectations by the end of the year. That way they'd still be prepared, but I'd make it more attainable for them over a period of time. I could live with that, but I'll have to keep thinking about how to successfully implement this accommodation.

6. Output: Adapt how the student can respond to instruction.

This is an accommodation I saw my mentor teacher implement just the other day. The students had to turn in their Weekly Reading Responses by the end of the hour, and a student had fractured his wrist and couldn't write. She told him that he could type it up at home or explain the summary of what he'd read out loud to her after school. 

At the time I thought of this accommodation right away. It was the perfect way to accept alternate output without sacrificing any of the targeted skills. The student would still have to meet the assignment's goals, but in a different way that he was fully capable of doing. 

7. Participation: Adapt the extent to which a learner is actively involved in the task.

This is another accommodation I don't feel very comfortable with. I've used it, to an extent, during some lessons with the whole class. Instead of working individually, I'll often let students work on assignments in their table groups. I'm sure that this has lead to some students doing a larger share of the work and others taking a more passive role in accomplishing the task. When I make seating charts, I usually have at least one student at every table group who I trust to be motivated, on task, and a good leader/role model for the rest of the group to follow. 

It's possible I just haven't been paying enough attention to see how this has played out in the table groups, though. I usually offer group work during the early stages of a unit, so that students can help one another understand the basics of what we're working with. At the end of units, I don't offer as many options for less participation, because the assessments are typically based on individual work. I'll have to consider more carefully how to successfully implement this accommodation.

8. Alternate Goals: Adapt the goals or outcome expectations while using the same materials. When routinely utilized, this is only for students with moderate to severe disabilities.


This is something I've never done, but something I've seen my mentor do during our Historical Fiction Book Club. We have one student who has a hard time reading and is fiercely motivated to graduate from  high school, but other than that has little day to day motivation to succeed in school. He's frequently tardy or absent and often ignores daily work when he does come to school. We've tried to motivate him and seen some success when he does apply himself, but he often slides back into his old habits. 

During book club, my mentor made easier versions of the assignments and skipped the discussion portion of our assessment altogether.She gave him alternate due dates and an extended time period to finish his book. What we saw wasn't encouraging. I suppose this accommodation could work in theory, but what I saw with the student was even less engagement than normal plus he was isolated because the others had finished reading their book club books and he was still doing that unit. 

I would only attempt this accommodation with extreme caution, but I can see why she tried. He was incredibly resistant and nothing else we'd tried had worked thus far. But alternate assignments don't seem to be the way to go in his case.

9.Substitute Curriculum: Provide different instruction and materials to meet a learner's individual goals. When routinely utilized, this is only for students with moderate to sever disabilities.

One of my instructors at MSU talked about a time she did this with a student, and she said she's only done it once in all her years of teaching. She said the student had very low motivation, lots of difficulty with reading comprehension, and would frequently disrupt the class during reading with inappropriate comments. To get him under control, and actually on task, she had to come up with whole other lessons focused on more easily understood texts, to get him to approach the same standards the rest of the class was meeting. At the time, things were rough, but he eventually bought in and completed his alternate assignments.

The best part of the story is that, years later, he emailed her from college and thanked her for all she put up with and for not giving up on him. The extent she went to to get him to participate really struck a chord with him, he wrote, and later in high school he got it together in large part because of the extra time she took with him. 

She also warned us that emails like that are not at all common, so we shouldn't get our hopes up.

But her story was a powerful reminder of why I'm doing this in the first place. Accommodating lessons is a powerful tool a teacher can use to reach those students beyond the grasp of normal lesson plans and activities. And if you show students you care, hopefully you'll see them taking the class work more seriously in the future.

And, ultimately, that's what we're here for. Teaching, at it's most fundamental level, is about helping students figure things out for themselves. Accommodations can lead to that, and that's why they're important.

Throughout my experiences teaching, I've searched for ways to accommodate lessons without diluting their integrity. I firmly believe that every learner is different and my goal is to challenge all of those students simultaneously. 

This is much easier said than done. 

I have, however, found a tool that has simplified the process for me. It's a grid, which an organization called SNIP (Special Needs Inclusion Project) put out and it has helped me consider alternatives to the mainstream content I'm requiring from my class when students have difficulties meeting those goals. 

I found myself really examining these issues because, during our argumentative writing assignment, a student that we'll call "Larry" was falling behind. 

Larry typically loves being the center of attention. He's outspoken and enjoys causing a scene. I've found that by staying calm and not responding to each outcry for my attention, but holding him accountable for his actions when the eyes of his peers aren't on him, I can get him to work with me. Strategic seating placement has come in handy as well: he's much more on-task when he's not in the direct line of sight of a few students he seems especially bent on impressing. Larry is a bright student, and he's capable of great insights when he puts his mind to it, but he's also very tempted to sit idly and not be productive. His dad is a huge motivator for him, and holds high standards in terms of grades, but Larry isn't mature enough to want to meet those high standards for himself yet. He doesn't seem to take pride in his accomplishments. Like many of his peers, he's more worried about social status. 

GIven what I knew about Larry, I wasn't shocked to see that he was still working on his essay outline when the rest of the class was moving onto rough drafts. He approached me and asked if he could skip this step in the process, which wasn't an unreasonable request, given that during our last big writing assignment that's exactly what I let him do: skip the rough draft. I told him, however, that this time I was going to hold him accountable. Unlike last time, he didn't have absences to partly explain why he was slipping behind, and he'd be told as part of the whole class, and by daily individual reminders, about when each step of the process was due. 

I'm positive that this time I made the right decision. He's not a student that has been given a 504 or an IEP. I don't even think there's anything going on that's undiagnosed that could account for his slipping work ethic. I think Larry doesn't motivate himself well and isn't concerned about his grade. 

I am not positive that I did the right thing with letting him skip the rough draft on the previous assignment. The more I think about it, the more sure I am that I did him a disservice by not holding him accountable last time. I'm glad I've held him accountable this time: to the standard of what I know he's capable of. But last time, I was too worried about him getting a bad grade and having failed to motivate him as a student, that I let it slide. 

Now I know that at most I should've given him an extended time period to finish each piece of the writing process, because he was absent. This time around, since he was given the same amount of in-class time to work on the assignments as the other students but chose to slack off, I wouldn't even give him an extension. So Larry got 0/30 on his rough draft. And I know I did the right thing. 

All teachers can do is engage students in the assignments, motivate them to see the importance of doing a good job on those assignments, and hold them accountable if they come up short. 

That is, unless they've got special circumstances. And that's where I slipped up. I didn't stop and think enough about what necessitates accommodations and when to hold students to the standards as they were initially laid out.

Now, armed with SNIP's grid, I'll be better able to judge when and why and how to accommodate lessons.

The other day I finished grading the essays my students were working on in my previous post. I was pleasantly surprised! There were a few essays that showed less critical analysis than I know my students are all capable of, but for the most part they were filled with wonderful insights about how characterization contributed to a theme. That, indeed, was the most impressive part. My students were coming up with these incredibly thought-provoking ideas about what the themes of the short story were. They’re such intelligent, thoughtful young men and women and it reminds me why I’m a teacher in the first place. I love discussing these ideas with my students. I love hearing about their views of the world and how they’ve come to understand things.

How, though, did we get here? My last entry was very disappointed about the way things were going, but as I progressed with the unit I spent a lot of time working with students individually, and extended time they had in class to work on their outlines and rough drafts, and it really paid off. Giving the class time to work on this in class, while I could float around the room and spend time helping students develop their ideas, allowed them to effectively express their ideas. It was amazing.

Frustrating at times, but amazing in the end.

That’s pretty much how I’d describe teaching in general.

But to get to the specific ideas I want to reflect on today, I’m having trouble with engaging my class in the lesson. They come in excited and full of energy, but distracted. In trying to get them to focus on the content of the day’s lessons, I end up getting them to be quiet, but at the same time letting their eyes glaze over while I’m not being heard.

There are a few ways I can turn this train around. After all, I’ve been given a gift in that my students are typically excited to be in my class and have a good rapport with me and with one another. The trick here is to channel their energy into the lesson itself. There are a few ways I can do that.

I need to move around the room more. This will keep students on their toes and unsure of where I’m going next.

I can subtly tap a student’s desk when I see that they’re not paying attention.

I need to work in more interaction, whether that looks like choral responses, asking the class more questions throughout the direction-giving phase of my lesson, ask a student to paraphrase what I’ve just said, or have them explain something to the person sitting next to them.

I also need to be more aware of my physical presence in the room. I need to radiate confidence.

This is all easier said than done, though. But as I progress through my intern year I can see myself getting more comfortable in front of a classroom, and also being more comfortable in terms of what I’m juggling in my mind. While I’m talking about the content of the lesson I’ll scan the room to check for understanding, make sure my voice is loud and clear enough, grab a pencil for a student, and remind someone to pay attention using only my eyes. I’m not saying this is a perfect science at this point, but I’m starting to feel these things coming together. And as time goes by and I become more comfortable with these things, I’ll have more energy to devote to changing my lesson on the spot.

That’s the true next step as I develop my skills of capturing and maintaining student engagement. I need to be able to notice what’s not going well while I’m teaching and tweak things as needed to get them back on track and focused on the task at hand.

Today that didn’t go so well. It wasn’t a disaster, but the students were excited and energetic when they came in to the class and once I got them quieted down to listen to my instructions for the day’s task they tuned out. What I should have done, instead of hushing them (which never works anyway) was made a joke and then redirected their attention in an exciting way. That way, they would’ve kept the energy, but focused on the lesson. If I can keep things moving and keep my presence exciting and interesting while I’m explaining how the day’s lesson will go, they’ll stay with me and stay excited.

One of the best parts about student teaching is that you have an
experienced mentor teaching in front of you all the time. You get to see how he or (in my case) she does things differently than you do. Today, this was very enlightening. 

Let me explain.

 In my English Language Arts class for eighth graders, we’ve been
spending lots of time developing outlines for their characterization essays, which are focusing on how character development impacts/reveals theme in Virginia Euwer Wolff’s “The Un-numbing of Cory Willhouse.” In order to thoroughly scaffold the process, we’ve been walking our students through an outline. Our outline focuses on things like thesis (which got its own mini-lesson), topic sentences, introducing quotes, transition sentences, and a reader request sentence at the end of the conclusion paragraph. As we go through this outline, we’ve explained to students what each part of an essay should do, given them examples of how one might do it, and then asked them to work on that part individually. After all that we’ll ask for volunteers to read their examples aloud, so students get to hear how one another are drafting their outlines.

Yesterday, these outlines were due at the end of the hour, so that today we could start moving on to the drafting phase of the writing process. In each of my mentor’s classes everyone turned in their outlines except for roughly five in each period. 

In my class 15 turned their outlines in, but 12 weren’t done yet. 

Obviously, I’m upset.

I’ve been wracking my brain, trying to think of what I did differently than her. We developed a means for teaching this outline, and spent roughly the same amount of time each day working with each targeted skill. Both she and I used the same process for explaining the skills, emphasizing the same rationales behind each piece of the essay. The only difference I can see is that she’s got better management. 
 
My biggest struggle at this point in my teaching career (eight weeks into my internship) is managing their focus. I’m still so focused on myself and how I’m acting in front of the class and what I’m saying to them,that I don’t always check to make sure that a) they’re all on the same page as me, b) they’re not talking/distracted, and c) their faces don’t look confused.

 I’ve been moving on to explaining the next targeted skill when they’re not fully with me. And if they’re talking to each other while I’m explaining to the rest of the class how to write a topic sentence, then they’re not going to be able to write an effective topic sentence. From there it just gets worse, because if they’re still worried about their topic sentences, then they can’t focus on introducing their quote and they’re even further behind.

This isn’t something I’m proud of, and I’m determined not to be stuck on this skill for much longer because this is such an important component of teaching. Of what use am I if students don’t understand what I’m explaining to them? Leading students to an understanding of new topics is what teaching is. 

My first step toward correcting this problem is to refocus myself on checking for understanding. I need to make sure they’re quiet, focused, and ready to move on before I move on without them.

 And I don’t want to sell myself short. I’m very confident in my ability to generate engaging lessons, my capacity for developing meaningful relationships with the students, and in my knowledge of my content area. I just need to improve in my confidence in myself when I’m standing in front of a class, which will in turn free up my mental energy for the vital job of checking for understanding.

I’ll get there, but it’s been a sobering realization.

Last week I tried to focus my attention on the seemingly everyday routines that a teacher sets up in a classroom that are actually deliberate choices in terms of classroom management and teaching philosophy. On this first day of the second week of school I spent a lot of time thinking about how those routines are enforced. My mentor teacher did several things that really surprised and interested me. 

Several times during one class period she needed to remind students of class routines, especially those routines which deal with speaking out of turn and respecting the speaker. What struck me about how she dealt with these instances was that she never seemed anything but delighted at the thought of having to repeatedly ask the kids to pay attention.  She told me, much as I’d imagined, that she believes it’s important never to let the kids see your feathers get ruffled. She told me that while she truly didn’t seem at all aggravated she was annoyed on the inside, but that if you show your irritation it can lead to a power struggle: if the kids know they can get under your skin it’ll escalate.

Taking the advice even further, my mentor recommended that if particular kids require you to remind them of classroom routines over and over she prefers not to embarrass them in front of the class, but ask them to see you after class and give them an option. When kids have options, they see that you are treating them with respect and dignity and you’re letting them take ownership of their behavior. Further, as Jim Fay and David Funk advocate in their book Teaching With Love and Logic, “when we give choices, they must be legitimate and equally acceptable to [the students] and ourselves,” (338).  For example, with a chatty student that isn’t responding to less severe teacher moves, the teacher can talk to them after class and say “Listen. Your talking has become disruptive so I’ll give you the option to have one more chance to get it together in your current seat or I can assign you a new one where you won’t be as tempted to disrupt class.” Then, if the student fails again it’s important to follow through with the consequences. But this way the student gets one more chance to prove to you and will be more willing to follow your request to move seats because they know you respected them enough to give them one last chance.

Another teacher move my mentor made repeatedly today was utilizing the phrase “Eyes on me, please,” and smiling. At Holt Junior High there has been a huge focus on “active listening” and part of that philosophy require tracking the speaker, so the students are used to the concept that part of being a good listener means looking at whoever has the floor. This was a diplomatic way for my mentor to reel back in their attention when it started to drift while she administered directions or lectured about class content. It achieved the desired result of capturing their attention without coming off as irritated, hostile, or frustrated.  

When I’m teaching I plan to have a similar method of utilizing teacher moves. I don’t want to come off as angry or hostile to my students. I don’t want to rule my class with an iron fist. This would be counterproductive for a variety of reasons. I don’t have an angry, aggressive personality and my students would see right through me. I want my students to feel safe and respected. I want them to do the work of our class because they see the importance of what we’re doing, not because they’re afraid I’ll yell at them if they step out of line. And I want my classroom management to seem effortless because once you let the students see you sweat, you lose their respect and, likely, their attention.

This week I began my year as a student teacher at Holt Junior High. There was so much build up to this moment, but it felt very natural. I still have a lot to work on, to be sure, but I felt very comfortable in front of the students. I’m teaching 8th grade, and the kids are incredible so far. Sometimes they’ll push you and want to test your limits, but they’re utterly charming. (At least they have been for this first week.)

Since it was the first week of school, lots of what went on day to day was focused on establishing routines for the classroom. I wanted to make sure I didn’t just take these deliberate moves my mentor teacher made for granted, so I tried to focus part of my attention on why she organized things the way she did. Three things stood out to me:

1)   Her policy with electronics was very laid back. The school in general has a very strict no electronics policy, which (in my opinion) sets teachers up for success. If there’s a strong force against cell phones and iPods in the community of the school it’s easier to let small things slide in class, and focus on bigger discipline concerns. Her policy is that if a student is texting and blatantly disregarding the lesson, she’ll confiscate and send it to the office, per the school policy. If, however, their cell phone goes off and it seems to be an accident she’ll let it slide and asks that they promptly silence the phone. This is exactly how I’d like to handle it, especially given that students at this school have to share lockers and their belongings often get stolen from their lockers, so it doesn’t make sense for them to keep their valuables in their lockers and you can’t reasonably expect students today to leave phones at home. Why fight a losing battle when, with a little leniency, you and your students can work on more important issues? 

 2)   When my mentor teacher went over her late work policy, she announced to the class that it was negotiable where big assignments are concerned. At first I was astonished! How could she? That’s like asking for them to dilly-dally and then argue with you later about how they should be able to turn in late work! Her rationale for this classroom routine was that she’d prefer that an unmotivated student have the option to put in the work and complete the assignment rather than giving up and moving on, because late work wouldn’t be accepted. I can see her argument. I agree with her in that it’s much more important for students to do the intellectual work targeted by the assignments than learn the consequences of missing a deadline. I believe, though, that it’d be more effective if you didn’t tell that to students on the first day.  Let’s say Catie is missing a few large assignments and is failing my course. Rather than tell all the students on day one that I’ll negotiate terms, I would talk to her privately and tell her I’ll make an exception. This way more students will be motivated to meet deadlines the first time around and I can teach more of them the value of meeting a deadline.

3)   A third routine by which I was surprised was my mentor teacher’s policy of assigning very little homework. I’ve always believed that homework is a valuable way to cover more material and teach more skills with increasing amounts of in-class testing taking up more and more instructional time each month. Her rationale, though, made a lot of sense to me. She argued that mastering the skills taught in a class like math demand repetitive practice at home, while the skills English targets build on one another and drilling at home won’t help. I can see her point, to an extent. I do think the skills in English are more easily mastered in the classroom through discussion and activities that are monitored, but certainly students can gain increased mastery by practicing at home. Conventions of grammar, for example, could easily be practiced at home if students were assigned to generate their own examples and non-examples of specific forms.

This is just a sampling of what I’ve learned about my own beliefs around teaching during my first three days and Holt Jr. High. It’s impossible to put it all into words with the amount of sleep I haven’t gotten this week. But I do want to add one closing thought before I prepare for the coming week’s activities. My goal for next week is to figure out solid strategies for regaining students attention after they discuss something in small groups. I’m not sure how I'll face this as of yet, but this is something I’ve struggled with in my three days as the lead teacher of fourth hour. Currently, my plan is to raise my voice (without yelling) and ask them to finish the sentence they’re currently in the middle of. If there are stragglers I’ll ask them to come back to me by name. I could also tell them how long I’d like them to discuss with a partner ahead of time, and then as the time goes on announce when there’s one minute left. Also, I’ve got to remember that it’s important not to compete with them for attention and to only move on with instruction when I have their attention. If I compete with them, they’ll see that they can out talk me and I’ll lost their respect. Ultimately, I think a large part of this problem will be solved as I further develop my “teacher persona,” but until then I’m going to keep trying different tactics until I find out what works for me.

The other day at my ESL placement I saw something amazing. Ten ELLs got incredibly engaged with the lesson, felt a strong desire to win, and went out on a limb to express their knowledge: all while celebrating one another's accomplishments with the English language. 

And it all started with Irregular Verb Jeopardy. 

My mentor teacher does this activity several times throughout the year and has down it for a few years running now. But it's extremely simple. All she does is divide the students into teams and in each round a representative from each team goes to the front for a shot at answering five questions. Then, when the questions are selected form the PowerPoint presentation, she had each slide formatted so the target verb is in parenthesis at the top of the slide and below is a sentence in the past tense with a blank left for the verb. So, for example, the verb might be "swing" with the sentence "The couple (has/have) _________ for a very long time." The first student to buzz in and read the entire sentence aloud with the correct form of the verb "swing" wins a point for his or her team! 

This is exactly the kind of teaching I want to do for several reasons:

1) The English language is the clear focus of the lesson.

2) It's fun. Some students were literally jumping up and down in their excitement.

3) It's challenging. Students have to remember what they know about the English language to come up with the correct form. But nobody wants to let their team down, so they try their hardest: motivation at it's finest.

4) It helps foster a sense of classroom community. One ELL is pretty new to the school system: he's only been around for two months. But when he got the right word the entire class erupted in applause. I'm sure he went home feeling great that day.

5) It reflects careful planning on the part of the teacher, but the bulk of the intellectual work is still on the students themselves. She's not giving them the answers. 
 
Clearly, this was an inspiring lesson to observe. While it was all happening I felt a real sense of hope for what I might someday create and use in my own classroom. And I know it won't always go this well. It certainly doesn't in the classrooms I'm observing. But it was great to know that it can happen. And when it does happen, it's amazing. 

Just as a side note, my mentor teacher had this great buzzer system, called the Eggspert. It runs about $50 depending on where you look, but it's well worth the investment. From what I've seen, kids thrive on competition and this device really takes away from the difficulties of saying who buzzed in first, etc. It helps make the game fun and fair. And I promise, I'm not a paid sponsor of this device. Just an unsolicited advocate.