Sixth and Seventh Weeks (Oct 15-19, 22-26)

I'm not certain what happened to the post about the sixth week; it never seems to have made it up. I apologize to loyal readers and will attempt to reconstruct it.

Following the collection of my pre-assessment at the beginning of the week, I promptly began freaking out. The impression I had received when planning the lesson was that all the 10th graders should be familiar with the writing process to the point that they can be expected to complete it on their own. This was not at all the case, as I had discovered by our collaborative faculty meeting during a half-day on Wednesday. These meetings are truly invaluable, as it allowed me to interact with not only my mentor, but also the ESL instructor, the Sp.Ed. instructor, and a literacy-focused instructional facilitator. We were able to draw up a plan that focuses on the free time of my collaborators and highly differentiated instruction. The plan of writing a paper to prepare for a presentation went out the window when we realized that the students didn't know how to write an expository paper.

Thursday began damage control and a new plan that has me teaching the unit not until the end of the seventh week as planned, but until the end of the ninth. This has created a LOT of work, and it has been and will be challenging, though instructive, to keep up with it all. Several lesson plans were created last minute and on the spot. The senior class was turned back over to the mentor teacher a little bit earlier than I would have liked, but it seems necessary to both of us. Rather than have the papers guide the presentations, by alternating days that we work on each, they will inform each other. Hopefully. More on that later. We've been going through each step of the writing process, and each student is working at a pace that works for them and with individualized guidance. Without the ELL and SpEd instructors in the class now and again, I could never pull this off. Have I mentioned they're great? I've been getting as much library time as I can for on-spot research in between, and for presentation preparations.

Upside: Most students use the time very well, and are learning a lot about the writing process and their nations. The individualized instruction works for them. Downside: Some students who have checked out completely, and have not done work all year, do not have an entry point. No matter what I say, or my mentor says, they do not complete any work. Since each step is predicated on the last, and students are working at their own paces, the unit has passed them by. This is really only in one of the two class periods, and there is no real way that they can re-enter the learning process at this time. These students actively avoided doing any research, and so have nothing to write about. They are not invisible, I get on them everyday, but tomorrow, when we have the mobile laptop cart in the room to write rough drafts, I have to come up with something else for them to do. In the past couple days, as I have become fixed on the deadline, they have become more disruptive. I'm not entirely sure what to do about this. I've talked with their other teachers, and similar behavior has been seen in their classes as well. One student's home did not answer the phone on multiple attempts, another has no contact information listed. A couple others do complete work, but can be distracted by the more disruptive students.

I brought these concerns to my mentor, and he shares them . We'll talk more about it tomorrow, but he did encourage me to realize that this behavior does happen, that the failing grades may be a wake-up call for them, and that steps will be taken. Unfortunately, I won't be directly around to see them. At some point, he said, the student has to take on the responsibility to show effort, and my job now is to figure out what parts of this situation are a result of my own planning and actions. "Courage to change what you can, patience to live with what you can't," right?

So:
I think that the plan of modeling an investigation using China and then pushing to investigate other nations was badly chunked. As in, too big. Better to have investigated China as a class, through direct instruction and transparent research methods on my part, and investigated each group's nation as we went through each step. Show them how I researched China to teach them, have them research their own nation. Make a pre-write about China, have them make a pre-write for their own nation. Models of what to do next would have more available in student short-term memory, and by doing a day or two of instruction followed by a day or two of student investigation, I think the planning load would have been greatly lightened. I wouldn't have had to produce so much in so little time on China, and I wouldn't have had to create so much time for them to work on their own. Time that, for those who are less self-directed, has turned into deliberately unused time. I could also have adjusted better along the way, identifying scaffolding needs through increased opportunities for pre/formative assessments.

Lessons of pacing and planning that aids management can only really be gotten through practice, and that's something I have to remember. Part of the difficulty is that I already care so much about these kids, here, now, and I worry constantly about their success. My mentor teacher did chuckle at this, and reminded me that I haven't academically scarred them for life; it's only a few weeks long unit, that there's much more of the year to go, and that I'm welcome to come in and check up on them now and again. I look forward to doing so.

Fifth Week (Oct 8-11, No School Friday)

What a week in the Pac Rim class!

I graded like a madman all weekend in order to have everything ready when the students walked in Monday morning, and it was immediately apparent that they are not used to such a quick turnaround. I prefaced handing them out with explaining that I didn't feel the quiz represented what they actually knew about the subject, that I was taking responsibility for that, and what the makeup quiz options were. I handed them back, repeated the makeup quiz options, and tried to settle down the upset students. We then reviewed the entire quiz, and I was glad to see that many students took notes as we did so.

I then began an activity to create a graphic representation of the culture changes in China. Three columns, cut out descriptions of various aspects of culture in different time periods, arrows and similar language in the descriptions to communicate relationships. Some confusion on how to attack it at first, but they caught on after a bit. I attempted to create a sense of urgency by having a short amount of time allotted. For most this worked, but for some of my struggling students (and especially my LEP students, they began to disengage at first. But then, and this is HUGE, they realized (despite the fact that I had addressed it) that I made the cut out pieces front/back, English/Spanish. Suddenly a few them seemed to feel like they could do the task. Self-efficacy went up, activity went up, and I wasn't about to shut them down again by ending the activity and giving them low marks because they took a while to start. I had to explain it to them a second time once they realized they could do it, and this set them behind.

So we continued the task the next day, and they became even more involved, although it was taking them a bit longer to complete. The second part of the task was to explain the chart, either verbally or in writing, so the quicker workers had something to do while others finished up. Most people were done when i wanted to move on, but those who weren't came up and asked if they could take it home to finish it. Which means they WANTED to finish it! Success!

We moved on with a little textbook reading on Chinese communism (I felt dirty doing it, but they needed a break from constructivism for a bit, and they actually seemed happy to be using a textbook for once) and a question at the end of the section. Some didn't have time to finish it, so I told them we'd pick it up tomorrow.

The next day (Wednesday) I passed out a letter I wrote that mocks a Communist recruitment essay. It pretends to be from a student group, and I actually fooled some students to the point that they thought it was real. I let them in on the joke, and we reflected in journals on what communism would look like if it was implemented in a school. As I let them go back to the textbook reading, as they wanted to know more (look at that!) in order to answer the journal question, and some went back to doing the charts, I realized that there seemed to be a work ethic developing. Some students were coming up with their charts in hand, others wanted to retake the quiz, etc. I called the class to attention, and, despite my fears that it would turn into a social hour, I announced that the whole period would be used to complete work assignments. I put the assignments I wanted done up on the board, and said that I was available for grade conferences, quiz make ups, help on the work we were doing, etc, but everyone had the period to work on what they needed to do.

I have not seen such engagement since the first day of school. It kept me rushing all over the place, getting materials for students, helping students, giving conferences, encouraging students worried about their grades and making plans on how they can improve it, on and on. The hour and a half flew by and felt like three hours all at the same time. My students who were previously completely disengaged were now coming up and asking what they could do to make up work that they 'missed' while they were in the classroom. It's as if they suddenly felt that if they had all this time, they could catch up, they could do it, and they would.

Thursday we watched a short piece of a film, wrapped up Communism, and started talking about the research project they'll be starting next week. More requests for make up work. I've logged everything that each student is missing and I'm making 'make up work' folders for each one this weekend, which will double as student research folders to keep in the room when they start their projects next week. Time will tell, but I think I've managed to turn a degrading situation into a high expectation work environment. Last week I was down, this week I'm totally jacked, and it feels great.

Fourth Week (Oct 2 - Oct 5)

This week I took over the classroom. Seating charts and the new format came with mixed classroom management results; one class is doing better at keeping attention, but in the other some students have begun disengaging more than ever. I didn't realize to what extent until an activity I had considered to be setting them up for inevitable success failed.

We did primary documents for a few days, and actually studying them seemed to go really well. Students at different language levels were helping each other, kids were mostly on task, reporting out went well too. But, the guided note sheets, which I was proud of creating, thinking it would make everything more accessible, and which I based the quiz on, seem to not have been completed to satisfaction. No worries, I thought, I'll go over it entirely in class. Quiz was the next day.

Either my assessment was bad, or they just didn't have the knowledge like I thought they did. Friday afternoon grading was depressing, and it took some doing to get past it and start thinking about what to do next. So next week will begin with a reteaching, and an alternative assessment. And we'll go onward and upward from there.

Third Week (Sept 24-28) Plus One (Oct 1)

The third week of my student teaching experience went very well, I thought. I led a lesson on Tuesday in which I introduced the concepts of Imperialism and Isolationism through Legos. We did some vocabulary work as a class, and read a story from their textbook to become more familiar with Chinese traditional culture. I've continued to foster relationships with the students.

In my section that is almost half ELL, I may be receiving some support. An ELL teacher on our faculty team has had a period open up that coincides with every other day of that class. Hopefully, she'll be helping me out there, and I look forward to her advice in designing lessons that are accessible to all my students.

Today I took over the Pacific Rim classes. I opened with a discussion on classroom expectations and attempted to democratically construct the expectations of the course. In one section, the discussion seemed to come off fairly flawlessly. We worked from a fairly rowdy "our regular teacher isn't here" attitude into one of respect and courtesy. We achieved everything we wanted to, and I even was able to give them a closing journal question.

In the second Pacific Rim period, the same activity and discussion went terribly. The students gave similar expectations as the first class, but it was clear they weren't internalizing them. They would tell me, "yes, it's important that we respect each other and hear each other," and then immediately go back to their disruptive side conversations. The discussion stalled several times, and while I think they must have seen how disappointed and frustrated I was, I hope they also noticed that I never stopped treating them with respect and that I never raised my voice in anger. To some degree, I'm going to consider that a success.

The classroom is now organized in tables of four to six students, and I have a seating chart arranged. Hopefully this will help alleviate some of the classroom management problems we've been having with distractability and side conversation. It's going to be difficult having my most challenging section at the end of everyday, since it's all I can think about on the way home. Still, I'm hopeful and ready to take the challenge on. More to come!