Cooperative Learning

Last week in class, we did a number of activities as an introduction to cooperative learning. It was fun, but I was struggling with how I would want to incorporate it into my classroom. I think it would be really great in classrooms with especially dynamic abilities and motivations but envisioning a classroom of high achievers, I wonder how well/how useful cooperative learning strategies are. I know that during our first activity with the squares, I felt useless. Yes, I had to move my colors and no one else could, thus making me important, but I was not quick enough to envision the squares and so I was only following orders. It was frustrating for me because I wanted to contribute my fair share but couldn't and thus felt bad for being a "useless" group member. I think knowing how to work together is really important. People need to learn how to accept the help of others and know how to ask for it as well. I think people need to know how to step back and let other people have their chance. But that second part I think is the hardest part for people. We live in a society where being number one is highly valued. It's expected that we always strive to be the best one with the best ideas and the best results. Being a fairly passive person, I will often give other people the chance to do what I could easily do myself. But in the world of school, where I constantly worry about what my peers think and what my professors will think and how that will affect peoples' perception of me (and perhaps my grades), I'm constantly worried about proving myself to be smart, a hard worker, someone who can stand on their own and is capable. But with the activity we had and the cooperative learning strategy involved, I just felt incapable and useless, like a pawn for the smarter people in the group. And so I do not know if this is a result of me not knowing how cooperative learning functions or if it is a result of a perception that cooperative learning is not always best.

At last at last, I teach at last!

Monday and Tuesday of this week mark the first days that I have had a chance to put my last four years of higher education to use! If you had told me last semester that I would have gotten through it, I would've thought you were a liar. And if you asked me prior to 10:15 on Monday if I thought I could do it, I wouldn't have been able to give you an answer without going into a full-blown panic. It has been an incredibly long academic year and there have been many moments where I have questioned why I ever thought I would be able to to teach ELA. After this week though, I finally feel as confident as I did where I first chose the major. My lessons were not by any means perfect. On Monday, we got to our exit slip twenty minutes before the class period was up. Up till that point, things had been going really well. The kids had jigsawed a chapter of the novel they're reading, we'd figured out the definitions of two new words, and we questioned whether or not someone can survive without society. As it turns out, I was pronouncing one of the vocab words wrong, but that was an easy fix. And in the end, the kids shared some of their writing and did some silent reading on the section of the book we were going to discuss the next day. I was elated that nothing major had gone wrong, not to mention the teacher told me that she could tell the kids liked me- one of the girls even wrote "you were awesome!" on her exit slip, much to my joy. I was more nervous yesterday- things could only be better or worse this time around. There were a few kids who showed up who hadn't been there the day before and as a whole, the class was much rowdier. But rowdy didn't really hurt me, in the end. We read the chapter out loud, stopping when we found "Thoreau-isms" and I couldn't help grinning every time one of the students said "Miss, stop! That was one!" Not everyone read aloud (I wasn't expecting they all would) but so many kids did, much to my surprise. And when afterwards I had the kids pass notes pretending to be HDT and Chris McCandless, they were near impossible to keep quiet, but the conversations they read out loud afterwards were priceless and showed how much they had been absorbing from their previous lessons. Afterwards when they did their constructed responses, they all wrote something, but I was sad that one girl in particular wouldn't write more than two sentences. The class was nearly over and she handed in her writing, so I didn't say anything. If I had the students for longer than two days, I might've tried to get more writing out of her but I didn't. This was my only disappointment. I know I probably shouldn't be as proud of myself as I am, but I am quite pleased. My mini-lessons in 406 were awful and my lesson plans in our special ed component were not things I was proud of, despite the effort I put in. I was beginning to believe that I had no right to be pursuing this field and I'm glad that despite the end of semester stress that I'm feeling, I don't feel like it's all for nothing.

"Don't Say That"

Yesterdays discussion was hard but important. Though I kept silent throughout, I was thinking a lot. To be honest, I was quite emotionally drained after but still, I was glad for it. Now, I'm gonna ramble a bit so try to follow along. I have a lot of faith that by the time I am a more adult-y adult, my generation will have helped move society forward- to be more open, more accepting, less judgmental. I have been fielding racist complaints at my summer job since I was 17 and been fighting hard against them since, particularly ever since that first summer when I was told, "trust me, after a couple years here you'll be racist, too." It has always made me mad and sad to see this but I have no plans to ever give in. It has been obvious to me more than a few times during this semester that these sentiments are pervasive throughout. I don't think it's intentional, nor to I think it is right to attack people for their mistakes. Attacking only makes people defensive and nothing good will come from it. There are many tricky terrains we must tread not just as people but as teachers, as well. In a personal example, I am someone who sometimes mixes up with "people first" language. Not because I think that someone's conditions define them but because that is the language I have been used to hearing throughout my life. But also as an English major, I understand that it's not meaning that affects us, so much as connotation. Words that might have once been acceptable are used negatively and thus the negative connotation follows. Words acceptable in one time might not be in others, or in other places. We talked a lot about culture last class and whether it is right or wrong to assume that everyone shares the same culture. This gets to be a very awkward subject when we talk about the people of a race other than our own, but I think maybe I can make it a little easier. I spent five months studying in Ireland last year. This was a fabulous experience and I am doing everything in my power to go back as soon as possible. But even though I was in an English-speaking country, there were more than a few situations where cultures clashed. For example, in Ireland to call someone a "spaz" is as bad as saying "retarded". I did not know this- how could I when spaz is a word that is often used affectionately here in America, equivalent to calling someone hyper? But one time when I said it, I was sharply reprimanded by an Irish boy who said "don't say that." I couldn't tell if he was being serious or not and it was a really uncomfortable situation. Later I asked my Irish roommates if the boys were being serious and they explained to me the connotation in Ireland. I was careful not to use the word again, but I wish the boys had understood that I wasn't saying it to be rude, I just didn't know. Additionally, I often struggled with being known as "The American." In my small dance classes, most never learned my name, just asked "is the American here today?"Or, even better, once a kid said, "You're American? Well, I'll forgive ya." It was embarrassing and confusing to know people had an idea of what to expect from me because of the idea they had from what they thought about my country and so I would never want to do that to a student. I want to be aware of where my students are from, and what that might mean, but not ever assume they know something or are something or act a certain way because. I came away from this class with three things: connotation, situation, and most of all, to never ever asssume. I want to see my student as people- multi-faceted people who have been built up a definition of themselves by all sorts of things. Maybe they are a person who's black, or a woman, or a man, or has dyslexia, or has a hard time at home, or is a great student, or who's brother died from cancer, or who has a father in the military, or a mother in jail. They could be any or all of these things, and to know these things will help us understand. But first, and always first, they are people. They are teenagers. They are students.

Observations

Doing my observations, I was reminded by how much I love learning. Sometimes I forget because I'm not necessarily someone who loves school, but watching the 11th graders in the classroom I've been invited into has been a great reminder. I chose the classroom I'm in because not only is it well-organized, the kids seem engaged, even when they're just quietly writing. One thing I've noticed is that there's lots of calling kids at random in this classroom and aside from keeping kids on their toes, in case they might drift off, I think it does something to support the kids in their value. The students are valued in so many quiet ways in this classroom- in that they always start learning their vocab words by giving a guess and they aren't ever told that they're wrong but instead their logic is identified in a "I see why you thought that because a, b, c right?" Giving kids the chance to hazard guesses not only creates a safe, curious environment, but teaches kids how to give educated guesses. These kids are definitely learning in this class and even though they are not my students (at least not until next week for a couple days!) I wanted to applaud when one student used the vocabulary word from earlier in the week, when one girl decoded the meaning of "privy" by saying it sounded like "private", and when two boys discussed their reading in excitement. Knowing things you didn't know before can be so exciting and seeing the zest in these kids is so reassuring.

Co-Teaching and Lesson Plans

I am terrified of lesson plans. There, I said it. I know I shouldn't be, as I've done them in my 406 and in the special ed component, but I am. Absolutely terrified. I think part of my problem, in 406 at least, was that I couldn't wrap my mind around a mini-lesson. Consistently I thought too big and wasn't sure how to pare my lessons down into short, sweet, and informative snippets. But now having watch Bob, Kim, and Buddy, I feel like (maybe) I get it. To have the privilege to watch them bounce ideas off each other was an awesome one but the part that was most useful to me was when Buddy pulled them back and said something to the effect of "but yeah, what's the goal?" I realized then that lesson planning is sort of like writing a good essay where at the beginning and end of every paragraph you can relate it back to the thesis because every paragraph is doing its job to most effectively get across your statement. Even if I have to literally write out HOW DOES THIS RELATE? at every point of my lesson planning so that I remember to periodically look back and change things if I must, I will do it. Whereas in the past I felt like I was floundering in my lesson planning because it was just so much to do, I feel like I have a solid base to stand on. Most of my classmates probably came to this realization a long time ago, but it was really perspective changing for me. I think having such a solid goal in mind is really the difference between being prepared, as in having a lesson plan, and being prepared to go down every possible avenue it takes for students to reach the goal of my lesson plan.

Chapters 9 and 10

Sometimes when I think about all the negative press that comes with public education these days- much of it from teachers themselves- I get discouraged. From the outside it looks like a bleak profession where first a teacher’s passion is crushed via the powers that be (the Common Core, No Child Left Behind, and the like) and subsequently their students’. Part of the reason I want to be a teacher is because most of my education has been made up by me dreading school because it felt boring and futile, often stressful and difficult, and like my teachers couldn’t care less that I felt that way. The other part of the reason I want to be a teacher is that I adored those teachers that made me want to come to school because they were vibrant proponents for their subjects, made me curious and eager to learn more, and in the end made me feel smarter and better off as a person for having had them as a teacher. I mention all this because while I was reading chapter 9 about book clubs in the classroom, I felt myself getting excited about being a teacher all over again because these are the type of projects that are meant to get students excited. The chapter ends with “after doing Book Clubs, do you think young people will want to read more books? We think they will.” And while I think this is incredibly important- and I no doubt want to at least get my future students to think, “hey maybe reading can be kinda cool”, I think the chapter is modest in the ways Book Clubs can help students as people. On page 204, it is suggested that teachers and students compile a list of social skills that should be remembered during book clubs (the idea is revisited on 213 where it is suggested these skills be used to develop a class criteria). A huge part of high school is meant to teach students the people skills they need to be “good” members of society. Personal responsibility, respect for others, and self-respect are all part of the suggested grading criteria. If students are making sure that they abide by these “rules”, reading should come naturally as they can only be responsible if they do the work assigned and can only give their classmates proper respect if they pull their own weight. If students are graded in this manner, no one can really be a “bad” or a “good” reader, there are only readers. Chapter 10, I have to admit, was a bit of a bummer after all my engagement in chapter 9. I agree that creating a “big idea” to shape lessons, particually cross-content big ideas, will help students to think more deeply and cause students to draw the connections that create understanding. In a way, “big ideas” are a way of teaching theory to students as you are asking them to look through a lens. This is a pretty interesting idea to me, but I wonder how often it occurs in schools. It seems to be a big undertaking for teachers to all work together, particularly when high schools tend to have different tracks and students may be in an honors track for some classes but a more standard track for others. It is a nice ideal but I don’t know how well it would work. That being said, I was also a little wary on the suggested grading technique for the Book Club. I really liked it but I don’t know how well it would fly with the administration. Schools want to see how technically “good” their students are and I don’t think that the assessments suggested can really do that.

I heart Daniels and Zemelman

I feel like I say this every week, but in case I haven’t gotten my feelings across, I’ll say it again: I love our text book. You may or may not understand how great and unusual this is. Textbooks are usually long and boring and difficult to understand, a good read for when I’m trying to fall asleep at night. But Subjects Matter is so fabulous, I’ve already decided that I will not try and sell it back at the end of the end of the semester (something I usually do, even if I really like the books, just because the money is something I need) because of how useful I think it will be as I begin to teach my own lessons. Chapter 5, with all it’s pre,during, and post reading activities is heavily dog-earred at the moment. I love that the authors don’t just tell you what to do but also explicitly how. For example, in the brainstorming activities it is suggested that occasionally students should be given a few moments to jot down their ideas before sharing so that “passive or unconfident kids” have something to say (104). Even things that might seem sort of obvious are stated, such as in the think-aloud strategy, where teachers are reminded to shift their voice when moving from the reading to their thoughts so students are able to separate the two. The authors leave no worry unspoken, even going so far as to present potential problems (or non-problems) and how teachers can address them, be it that students are unable to keep quiet (just remind them that they’ll be able to speak aloud at the end) or end up arguing (perhaps a lesson on valuing other’s opinions), as they may in the “written conversation” strategy, which was one of my favorites and I hope to be able to use someday. Chapter 7 on creating community in the classroom was wonderful as well. This past weekend at the writing conference, I attended a panel that asked us to write “teacher manifestos” and one part that I wrote was that I want my classroom to strive for community, not competition. Competition isn’t bad; but too much of it can drive even the most confident student down or the most humble student to have an unappealing ego. The first page of the chapter says it all for me: “good teachers know instinctively that the work of teachers runs even deeper than that [than teaching kids to read more or better]. We need to make the classroom a community, a place where students feel safe to take the risks involved in learning, where they see it connected with their lives, and where they help and learn from one another instead of working only as isolated individuals” (167). Two classes ago, it was suggested that I was dismissing content for saying that I feel that the more important thing is creating happy and empowered students. What I was saying, in different words, was precisely that of the authors. Students who are confident and happy won’t be so scared to try and learn difficult things, to share what they know with others, and will appreciate those around them for what they can offer. I love English and I love reading and I love vocabulary, puns, and Latin roots. I want dearly for everyone to have read some Steinbeck and some Shakespeare (who I’m not even a huge fan of) and John Kerouac because I see value in them and because having a working knowledge of them because certain authors are referenced so frequently, either explicitly or inexplicitly, and knowing them will make the work that references them will gain deeper meaning. There are many things that I value more than school (gasp). I will always love my family, friends, dance, and adventure more. It just is that way. But I still love, love, love reading. Because I feel this way, I am 100 percent aware and okay with the fact that sometimes, simply people won’t like the authors I teach. Not everyone will like To Kill a Mockingbird nor will everyone have had the chance or desire to read it. But I know that these people have other things to offer- maybe they’re fantastic at math or an excellent mediator, a hilarious comedian, a moving lyricist, or a compassionate friend. When community is valued over competition, knowing who is the valedictorian in the class isn’t valued over the star football player or the quiet art student. Being well-rounded makes for an interesting world and that is why students should be taking Brit Lit and Algebra or American History, regardless of whether they like it or not. But knowing every single grammar rule and reading as many classics as possible is most definitely not the end all be all of human existence.