I've always wondered what it would be like to run into major scheduling conflicts in the classroom. What are we supposed to do when we unexpectedly find ourselves very short on time that we actually need in the classroom? Recently, I've ran into several instances of this in my placement and I thought I would just share them here for whomever it may interest.
Our class has a set schedule for when the students should receive vocabulary and when they will be tested on it. The students operate under this assumption and it can be problematic if the regular routine is suddenly broken. Lo and behold, several weeks ago, the routine was very much interrupted. Students were expecting, and preparing for, their vocab quiz as well as a unit test on romanticism to follow. On this particular morning, we were informed by a faculty member that they would in fact be spending the class period on career aptitude tests on the computers in the library. Now, many students had already put in much hard work studying for these assessments, and suddenly that all seemed to go to waste. There was also another problem. It was Friday. The tests had to be rescheduled to Monday, but that left two free days for teenagers to be teenagers and freely forget all of that studying that may (or, let's face it, may not) have been put into preparing. It didn't go as well as it could have, and it seemed apparent that the change in schedule was likely to blame for the downgrade in student performance.
Now, on to another little anecdote. Recently, we have been working on a persuasive essay in class. A problem arose on the last major assignment that required us to take some severe actions against plagiarism, and the students were required to work on their rough drafts only in class, turning them in each day to make sure the work was really their own. The problem arose that many students were simply much slower in the writing process than others and more class time needed to be allotted for writing. These extensions had to continue more than once. This has lead to a point where some of the material that was meant to be covered earlier has now been pushed back. While it hasn't caused any problems yet, who is to say what might happen toward the end of the semester when parts need to be rushed through in order to make sure all of the required material is covered? It's an interesting scenario to me, as I've wondered before what might need to be eliminated from lessons when there just isn't enough time to cover everything that needs to be done. My CT seems to be handling it pretty well, though I'm sure I'd be more than a little frustrated at this point.
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Sunday, October 30, 2011
KATE Conference
Let me get this out of the way right away and say that I had a really good time at the KATE conference. It was great to meet a lot of interesting teachers and people from all over the state. I had the pleasure of getting to sit with one of our keynote speakers and the president (well, I forget what the official title is for the position). They were very nice to me, and understanding of how awkward it was for me to be sitting at what basically amounted to the "VIP" table for the opening festivities.
Jay Asher’s presentation about his book Thirteen Reasons Why was definitely the highlight of the entire conference for me. Jay reminded me a lot of what I envision I would be like if I had decided to pursue writing as a career. He has a dry whit to him that just seems so familiar. I can definitely ay he spoke a lot to the real experiences of what it is to be an aspiring writer and still balance that with an average life. He certainly hadn’t let any of his success go to his head. I feel that after watching his presentation, and to a lesser extent Clare Vanderpool’s, it has inspired me to not just give up on creative writing avenues and to continue to pursue them while teaching. Both of them spoke of how hard it an be to get work accepted, which really reminded me of things Ben has told me about his own work. However, they both kept trying and eventually the avenues opened up for them, so it is never a lost cause. This is probably the most valuable information they both shared for anyone aspiring to write.
In the other presentation I attended at he conference, it was important for me to check out the presentation on preventing plagiarism in the classroom. This is important to me right now because it has been a huge issue recently in my placement. We have been forced to openly hinder students being able to work on certain assignments at home in order to prevent them from plagiarizing any of their work. What I learned was that it is important to try and design writing assignments in a way that helps prevent being able to find any way to plagiaries the content. Making the questions pertain directly to the student in a personal manner was one of the biggest listed reasons. However, it isn’t always possible to make every writing assignment relate in that manner. I still found the presentation to be really informative, I just wish it could have also included some helpful ways to both identify and respond to instance of plagiarism. It would be nice to have a plan set in place for how the situation should be dealt with and be good enough to discourage it ever being done again.
Overall, the conference was good and the presentations were informative. I would definitely attend again in the future and check out some different types of presentations. I was a little disappointed that some of the presentations I would have liked to see were showing at the same time as each other. Because of this, it might be nice if some presenters actually had room to give their particular presentations more than one time a day so that people could fit them into their schedule.
Jay Asher’s presentation about his book Thirteen Reasons Why was definitely the highlight of the entire conference for me. Jay reminded me a lot of what I envision I would be like if I had decided to pursue writing as a career. He has a dry whit to him that just seems so familiar. I can definitely ay he spoke a lot to the real experiences of what it is to be an aspiring writer and still balance that with an average life. He certainly hadn’t let any of his success go to his head. I feel that after watching his presentation, and to a lesser extent Clare Vanderpool’s, it has inspired me to not just give up on creative writing avenues and to continue to pursue them while teaching. Both of them spoke of how hard it an be to get work accepted, which really reminded me of things Ben has told me about his own work. However, they both kept trying and eventually the avenues opened up for them, so it is never a lost cause. This is probably the most valuable information they both shared for anyone aspiring to write.
In the other presentation I attended at he conference, it was important for me to check out the presentation on preventing plagiarism in the classroom. This is important to me right now because it has been a huge issue recently in my placement. We have been forced to openly hinder students being able to work on certain assignments at home in order to prevent them from plagiarizing any of their work. What I learned was that it is important to try and design writing assignments in a way that helps prevent being able to find any way to plagiaries the content. Making the questions pertain directly to the student in a personal manner was one of the biggest listed reasons. However, it isn’t always possible to make every writing assignment relate in that manner. I still found the presentation to be really informative, I just wish it could have also included some helpful ways to both identify and respond to instance of plagiarism. It would be nice to have a plan set in place for how the situation should be dealt with and be good enough to discourage it ever being done again.
Overall, the conference was good and the presentations were informative. I would definitely attend again in the future and check out some different types of presentations. I was a little disappointed that some of the presentations I would have liked to see were showing at the same time as each other. Because of this, it might be nice if some presenters actually had room to give their particular presentations more than one time a day so that people could fit them into their schedule.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Early Bird Catches the Woorm, but Late Riser Stays Awake
I have ran out of fingers on which to count the number of times I have seen a student fall completely asleep during a class this semester. It isn't always the same students either. It doesn't seem to matter what is being taught. Someone is going to decide that their first hour is nap time and nod off. Why is this? Is it something wrong with the curriculum? I would argue that is not the case at all.
The school I am assigned to starts very early in the morning. So early in the morning that I rarely see any of the staff who appear to be fully awake by the time classes are about to start, let alone the students, and that is the point. School should not start that early. It is detrimental to a student's learning to drag them out of bed before dawn and force them off to school in the dark. Now, I'm not just pulling out an opinion that would make me feel better about showing up in the early hours. The research is there to show us that schools who start later in the day see a surprisingly high increase in both grades and attendance. Don't believe me? Just follow the links.
http://www.parentcentral.ca/parent/education/post-secondary/article/923380--toronto-school-starts-hour-later-and-grades-improve
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6896471
Studies have shown that teenagers need their sleep, but their bodies are not wired for the earlier bedtimes of adults. They stay up at night because they aren't tired, not out of some sort of teenage rebellion, and yet we force them to school after just six hours of what should be a nine hour sleep schedule. What schools have been showing is that by starting even just an hour later than they are, they can improve the grades, and even moods of their students dramatically. So why don't we all hop on this badwagon? Sounds great right? Well, there are a few reasons.
We have a limited amount of transportation for students and it would likely cost a huge amount of money to fund all the new buses we would need if all the high schools started at the same time of day. We also have to consider that students would need to stay later if they start later and when we start cutting into time of day closer to 4 and 5pm, we start cutting into what many consider to be the time for sports and extra curriculars that would probably need to be changed drastically or cut to fit into the new schedule.
Of course, my belief is that if it is beneficial to the students, and we have the capability, then we should at least try. It just isn't convenient to us teachers and parents who would have to be at the school much later or pick them up from classes. Sometimes though, maybe we should sacrifice convenience for what has been proven to actually work and stop pretending like it is a students fault that he cannot seem to even stay awake at seven in the morning (I still recommend at least trying to keep them awake though, it won't do any good if he or she misses the whole lesson).
The school I am assigned to starts very early in the morning. So early in the morning that I rarely see any of the staff who appear to be fully awake by the time classes are about to start, let alone the students, and that is the point. School should not start that early. It is detrimental to a student's learning to drag them out of bed before dawn and force them off to school in the dark. Now, I'm not just pulling out an opinion that would make me feel better about showing up in the early hours. The research is there to show us that schools who start later in the day see a surprisingly high increase in both grades and attendance. Don't believe me? Just follow the links.
http://www.parentcentral.ca/parent/education/post-secondary/article/923380--toronto-school-starts-hour-later-and-grades-improve
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6896471
Studies have shown that teenagers need their sleep, but their bodies are not wired for the earlier bedtimes of adults. They stay up at night because they aren't tired, not out of some sort of teenage rebellion, and yet we force them to school after just six hours of what should be a nine hour sleep schedule. What schools have been showing is that by starting even just an hour later than they are, they can improve the grades, and even moods of their students dramatically. So why don't we all hop on this badwagon? Sounds great right? Well, there are a few reasons.
We have a limited amount of transportation for students and it would likely cost a huge amount of money to fund all the new buses we would need if all the high schools started at the same time of day. We also have to consider that students would need to stay later if they start later and when we start cutting into time of day closer to 4 and 5pm, we start cutting into what many consider to be the time for sports and extra curriculars that would probably need to be changed drastically or cut to fit into the new schedule.
Of course, my belief is that if it is beneficial to the students, and we have the capability, then we should at least try. It just isn't convenient to us teachers and parents who would have to be at the school much later or pick them up from classes. Sometimes though, maybe we should sacrifice convenience for what has been proven to actually work and stop pretending like it is a students fault that he cannot seem to even stay awake at seven in the morning (I still recommend at least trying to keep them awake though, it won't do any good if he or she misses the whole lesson).
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Stress and Consequences (Genre Reflection)
Life can be a struggle at times to succeed at what you really want to do. I find that struggling is the norm for me. I look out across the room of students before me and all that is returned are faces filled with disinterest. That is, if they bother to even look at me at all. I think to myself, I have to find a way to reach them. However, how do you reach those who do not wish to be? One, two, three, four, five. Five heads down, eyes closed, the text unopened before them, or left turned to some far previous page. I do my best to get each of them back on track as the reading continues, but only one thought is racing through my mind: This is going badly. How do I recover?
I can’t answer that question. I’m not even sure I want to. Twice already I have changed everything in an effort to connect with them. What began as active antagonism toward everything has turned into a cold indifference. I couldn’t begin to say which of these things is actually worse to endure. Should I stiffen up and soldier on, hoping they become willing to change, or should I keep changing and trying? Is it simple teenage rebellion or am I somehow lacking something that they expect of a teacher? I have no way of knowing for sure.
Tomorrow is another day. As they leave class looking like desperate prisoners who are finally being allowed to see light again, one of them at least bids me a farewell greeting. Of course, he calls me “Mr. Teacher” rather than to actually use my name, and as I recall he was asleep but not twenty minutes before. I hope he had a good rest. I’m not sure how easy I’ll be able to sleep. I’m unsure of where things are going and how I should change them to suit their needs. I probably won’t be able to sleep a wink, let alone through an entire lecture. I can always hope that with each new day a breakthrough might present itself and everything can be turned around. Until then, I have to try. It’s all I can keep doing.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Impress Me
Still working with my temp CT while I wait for my assigned CT to heal up enough to return to work. In the meanwhile, I've been getting know a lot of the students in my temp's classroom. It's an exceptionally bright class as far as I can tell, which is to be expected of AP students. I have been able to work more closely with the students on a regular basis more than I ever was in my previous placements. He doesn't mind if I move through the class and assist students when they need it or just answer a question for them when they are busy. I've also found myself being a bit of a motivator for keeping students on task when they wander off into their own conversations (an activity one particular group seems very prone to).
What I’ve found is that my CT has very high expectations of his students and he expects them to strive to meet these expectations at all times. Some would call his method “harsh” or “too rough,” but in my opinion it seems to be getting results. During peer grading, they are advised to be “brutally honest” in their critiques of one another in order to set a high standard that will help them later in the AP course. We are of the same mindset that going too easy on students can be very bad for them in the long run even if it achieves short term results. I’ve long held the belief that coddling students is detrimental to their academic achievement. Pushing them to their boundaries and then urging them to go even further is sometimes just what is needed. I feel that often times teachers will shoot too low to really force their students to achieve. What can one hope to accomplish when we don’t even have confidence in our students to be able to meet our expectations?
Personally, I always expect students to be able to rise up to a decent challenge and perform. I urge them to impress me with what they know and can do. Sometimes they will, but I am at least guaranteed that they will put in their best effort to try if they believe this is what is necessary to succeed. I am loathe to underestimate what a student is capable of just because they may not have been performing to standards before. There are many reason why that may be, and just assuming that a student is not capable of comprehending something is just lazy teaching. I like to set the bar high and see not only who makes it over, but who tries as hard as they can to clear it. Sometimes they might need a little boost to get up there, but I think when you implement this mode of thinking, you might be surprised at how well your students perform. Far too often I have seen teachers just give up on a group of students with certain material because they thought they weren’t ready, or would never be able to handle it. I question how they are ever to learn if no one ever tries to teach them?
What I’ve found is that my CT has very high expectations of his students and he expects them to strive to meet these expectations at all times. Some would call his method “harsh” or “too rough,” but in my opinion it seems to be getting results. During peer grading, they are advised to be “brutally honest” in their critiques of one another in order to set a high standard that will help them later in the AP course. We are of the same mindset that going too easy on students can be very bad for them in the long run even if it achieves short term results. I’ve long held the belief that coddling students is detrimental to their academic achievement. Pushing them to their boundaries and then urging them to go even further is sometimes just what is needed. I feel that often times teachers will shoot too low to really force their students to achieve. What can one hope to accomplish when we don’t even have confidence in our students to be able to meet our expectations?
Personally, I always expect students to be able to rise up to a decent challenge and perform. I urge them to impress me with what they know and can do. Sometimes they will, but I am at least guaranteed that they will put in their best effort to try if they believe this is what is necessary to succeed. I am loathe to underestimate what a student is capable of just because they may not have been performing to standards before. There are many reason why that may be, and just assuming that a student is not capable of comprehending something is just lazy teaching. I like to set the bar high and see not only who makes it over, but who tries as hard as they can to clear it. Sometimes they might need a little boost to get up there, but I think when you implement this mode of thinking, you might be surprised at how well your students perform. Far too often I have seen teachers just give up on a group of students with certain material because they thought they weren’t ready, or would never be able to handle it. I question how they are ever to learn if no one ever tries to teach them?
Friday, September 2, 2011
Getting Down With the Sickness (Not a rock song)
It is unfortunate that my assigned CT has to be out for surgery currently. I wish him the best of luck and a speedy recovery for sure. It was much odder to find that this week, my temporary replacement CT was also nowhere to be found! Two days in a row, I found myself without a teacher, substitutes instead in his place, with little explanation from anyone as to what had happened. On day three, I finally got to meet my temp CT who was looking quite the worse for wear after a bout with bronchitis. I'm glad he's feeling better and was willing to truck on even though he didn't seem to be 100%. I love his charismatic way with the class as he seems to have a very interesting way of keeping the students' attention to what he is saying.
I just wish I could have seen more of it this week before coming down with something myself. I'm glad to report it wasn't anything as serious as bronchitis and I'm feeling much better now, but this morning I could have sworn I had made a head on collision with a truck while riding a bicycle. I can't wait to get back to class and work with the interesting people I've met at my assigned school. I'm already enjoying myself, and so far everyone has been friendly and insightful, ready to offer any kind of aid they can.
The experience has given me some time to think about the preparations a teacher must make for the inevitability of being sick. There's going to come a time when you are going to wake up in the morning and feeling like an elephant just fell on you. At these times, when all else fails, it is time to call in sick. This is when your burden suddenly falls to a substitute teacher and the difficulty of their job is going to be almost entirely dependent on how well you have prepared things for them. Whether that means, keeping an easy lesson plan folder for them in a clearly marked space, or providing alternative activities, they need to know what should be taught to your class in your absence. More importantly, procedures need to be gone over with the students for how they should treat substitutes, and what should be done with assignments that are due on the day that you are not present. My replacement CT had to go over some of these things with his students on the day of his return, as they had not all assumed that their assignments still needed to be turned in when he wasn't there (they did).
I also had a chance to speak extensively with the substitute who filled in on the second day. He was very amicable in sharing about his experiences at several of the area schools here an what he thinks make for good and bad substitute experiences. His number one tip was that students who have a good foundation of how they should proceed through the day whether or not the teacher is present are the best to substitute for. It makes the job a great deal smoother on everyone involved. On the other hand, sometimes students take the day as a vacation day and there just isn't any solution the substitute can provide. In those times, he said he has to leave a note to the teacher explaining how their students reacted, which can often lead to some diciplinary repercussions.
Overall, it seems I managed to learn quite a bit from what seemed to be a hindrance at first, so I guess that is something to be grateful for.
I just wish I could have seen more of it this week before coming down with something myself. I'm glad to report it wasn't anything as serious as bronchitis and I'm feeling much better now, but this morning I could have sworn I had made a head on collision with a truck while riding a bicycle. I can't wait to get back to class and work with the interesting people I've met at my assigned school. I'm already enjoying myself, and so far everyone has been friendly and insightful, ready to offer any kind of aid they can.
The experience has given me some time to think about the preparations a teacher must make for the inevitability of being sick. There's going to come a time when you are going to wake up in the morning and feeling like an elephant just fell on you. At these times, when all else fails, it is time to call in sick. This is when your burden suddenly falls to a substitute teacher and the difficulty of their job is going to be almost entirely dependent on how well you have prepared things for them. Whether that means, keeping an easy lesson plan folder for them in a clearly marked space, or providing alternative activities, they need to know what should be taught to your class in your absence. More importantly, procedures need to be gone over with the students for how they should treat substitutes, and what should be done with assignments that are due on the day that you are not present. My replacement CT had to go over some of these things with his students on the day of his return, as they had not all assumed that their assignments still needed to be turned in when he wasn't there (they did).
I also had a chance to speak extensively with the substitute who filled in on the second day. He was very amicable in sharing about his experiences at several of the area schools here an what he thinks make for good and bad substitute experiences. His number one tip was that students who have a good foundation of how they should proceed through the day whether or not the teacher is present are the best to substitute for. It makes the job a great deal smoother on everyone involved. On the other hand, sometimes students take the day as a vacation day and there just isn't any solution the substitute can provide. In those times, he said he has to leave a note to the teacher explaining how their students reacted, which can often lead to some diciplinary repercussions.
Overall, it seems I managed to learn quite a bit from what seemed to be a hindrance at first, so I guess that is something to be grateful for.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Bit of an odd start
It's been a crazy week. I'm really excited about my placement still and looking forward to the rest of the semester. I have to work with a different teacher for a few weeks because my CT has gone out on medical leave for a little while. However, this has presented me with the opportunity to work with the department chair which is actually really cool. Making a good impression here can be really good for me and so far everyone has been nice and personable. Here's looking up.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
It begins
And so it came about in those days that he did look down upon this blog post and said, "Let there be blog." And it was so.
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