Sunday, March 25, 2012

One more week under the belt.

Having completed my first week of CPII was both energizing and exhausting. Between observations, being observed, one day of getting to school at 6:45 in the morning and not leaving until after open house at 7:45, a few late nights of planning along with all of the other incidentals of teaching I am exhausted. On the other hand, having one class of completely compliant and eager learners, another class full of energetic and excitable freshmen and  a 5th period class that my C.T. may be the squirreliest class he has ever had all adds up to three really cool classes.

My first observation was in my U.S. government class. While the lesson was not perfect it went really well all in all. At my old company we had a saying, if you really want to impress a customer, make a mistake and blow their mind with how well you recover. I know it sounds odd but it is true. While I did not make a mistake in my lesson, there was a portion of the lesson that was beyond some of my students. When I realized this, I made a slight change to what they were doing that allowed those students to fully access the material. I did not think much of this adjustment, it just seemed to make sense to me. However, it did not go unnoticed by my U.S. and she thought it was a great adjustment. She also really liked the use of PollEv.com as discussion generator. More importantly than that, the students love it and buy into it. The use of PollEv.com and Socrative.com have both a lot to energize the classes. I really recommend the use of them.

My challenge this week and likely for the rest of the semester will be my 5th period geography class. Oh my! To be fairly blunt, many students in this class have very little sense of what respect is. They have little respect for themselves, no respect for classmates and a few of them have an equally small amount of respect for me or my C.T. Some of these students are so defiant, you can ask them to sit down/ return to their seat and they will look you in the eye, smile and act like you did not say a word. Or tell you that they will sit down in a minute. Needless to say this is not something my C.T. or I will tolerate and we address it outside. Yet it does not change the attitude. I have taken the approach of just trying to lift them up when I have my discussions with them I am also using one of the techniques from the Cooperative Disciple approach outlined by Linda Albert. In particular, the Target-Stop-Do. In this approach, you target the student by name, tell him/her to stop "ABC" and do "XYZ". I have seen some improvement with a few students but I have a long way to go. While, I suppose I could let this particular class get me down; I see it as a great opportunity to learn how to get these students back in the groove. Not to mention, although some of these students are often disrespectful, when you talk to them one on one, you can see that they are for the most part really good kids that just need some help learning boundaries and don't need anymore negative inputs in their lives.

Monday, March 19, 2012

Yeah for the first day!

So today was my second first day student teaching. What a difference eight weeks can make. No nervousness, no sweating palms and pits!! Just me talking to some really great students. It was a great day for an introduction. Short classes today, covered some news paper articles, introduced myself and Socrative. The students loved Socrative! I explained the rationale for using it in the class. I told them it was a tool for me to use to assess the level of comprehension from the days lesson and that I will primarily use it as a formative exit assessment. I also told them it was another tool for me to use in an attempt to hold them accountable for staying engaged in the activities. All in all they really liked the idea of being able to use their phones during class and seemed to appreciate the reasons we were going to use it. I also had them fill out the student questionnaires and received some really good information to use in guiding my instructional strategies.

I also attended the schools open house tonight (long day, got there at 7am left at 7:30 tonight!) It went really well and they had more students than most people expected. I had the opportunity to talk to a number of incoming and current freshman and their families about the geography course I am teaching regarding the course structure and material. It turned out to be a well received event and I am glad I went.

Thursday, March 8, 2012

Mistakes happen, it is how you respond to them that can make the difference

As you may or may not know, I am a teacher credentialing candidate about to start my last round of student teaching at Cal. State University San Marcos and as part of our program we are required to make weekly observations of other teachers. This week one of the things that caught my attention occurred at the beginning of a class when a student was reporting on a newspaper article that he read. This particular student is a Latino and although I don't know if he is an EL he does have a particularly strong Spanish accent. The article he was reporting on was about the opening of a new bridge allowing easier access to one of the other local high schools. This student used the word bridge a time or two, when he said it his accent made is sound vaguely like he said fridge. The teacher said, "They opened a fridge?" I am not sure if he was being condescending, I don't think so, but I could tell it had an instant affect on the student. His entire demeanor changed. His expression changed, his voice lowered a bit and he looked down for a moment. the teacher seemed a little uneasy as most of the students remarked about whether the student sounded like he said fridge or bridge, Which seemed to make the young man even more uncomfortable. My heart broke for this young man. He was dong his best and made some strong points about the article, and yet they were lost in the shuffle because of the comments about his pronunciation of a word. The thing about it is that I am sure that at some point, in what I hope is a long career in the education world, I will inadvertently  say something that is going to embarrass or otherwise make a student feel uncomfortable. The odds are simply stacked against anyone that works with students for a long period of time that they will either say something to embarrass or upset a student. There a few important things to remember though. The first thing is to apologize for the action, whatever it may have been. Secondly, do not repeat the offense, learn from the mistake and apply what you learn so you don't put another student in the same place.

Monday, March 5, 2012

Methods Class Goodness

Tonight in our methods class we spent a good amount of time watching YouTube. Yeah, I know us social science nerds have it easy! We looked at a number of videos that have been done about world history. The is a group of history teachers that have taken a bunch of popular songs that any, or at least a great deal of our students would recognize, if not know word for word and turned them into songs about historical events or periods. The lyrics are catchy and some of them are really actually content heavy. I think they will be a great tool in the class as a way to get students motivated and show them that history can be fun.

Here is the link to see a list of the videos:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=history+teachers&oq=history+teachers&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=&gs_sm=3&gs_upl=2074l5649l0l6665l16l16l0l7l7l0l108l579l8.1l9l0

Getting "out there"...

So here I am some six weeks into trying to establish myself in "outer space" and while I am not sure I have been very successful yet, I am certainly feeling more comfortable about it. I have had a few "discussions" on Twitter with others on topics ranging from technology to curriculum to songs to use in the classroom. While I have not had any ground breaking discoveries, most great discoveries are made as a result of many small steps being taken to put that person in the position to make that great discovery. I feel that I am making some head way, I have a few non-CSUSM followers and not the weird ones that just pop up as followers. I have always been comfortable leaving comments, however, now I am more active because I am more aware of the benefit that it serves both the original poster in the form of feedback and the "simple hey someone read this" and myself in that it forces me to digest the information a little more, and then process it to the degree to hopefully post a coherent well thought out response. So I will keep on chipping away and eventually carve out a small place in the world of the PLN.

Post TPA Weekend

For all you out there that know what a TPA is I just finished #3 last Friday. For those that don't know, it is a series of 4 state assessments that teacher credential candidates need to pass to get their credential. Not sure how many hours I spent on it, but it was easily 20+. I think I am pretty deliberate (read as slow) when it comes to these things. It should be about a week before I get my grade back. I am pretty confident I will pass, we will see. Anyway, between the TPA, school stuff and my shoulder issues I have not had much time to just play with my family and get and have fun. So essentially that is all I did this weekend.

Saturday morning I met up with Chris, a classmate of mine, and he myself and my son went for a ride around lake Hodges. I could not believe how crowded it was! Place was packed out because Trek had a demo day going on. The weather was awesome and we really had a pretty good ride. Nothing to exciting, except the old guy that came around a corner out of control and ran into me and Aaron causing us a small crash. But we were all ok, although I was a little irritated at him for hitting us. As crowded as it was he should not have been riding so fast and out of control. After the ride, my son and I went to a friends house and spent a few hours working on pine cars for his pine car derby which is next Saturday. We really had a fun time shaping and painting, we still have some work left on it but so far so good!

Sunday was great. I went to church with my family and the message was really strong and the kids had fun in their classes too, which is important for us. They have fun and they away come away learning something. We left church and went to Santa Rosa Plateau and all rode bikes for few hours. Aaron and Hanna did great! Aaron rode his BMX bike and Hanna went over some pretty rough stuff on the tag-a-long, she can barely touch the pedals when they are in the down position so she bounces around a lot and just holds on for life. She was laughing and singing the whole way! After the ride we came home played some games and did some on the pine cars, still did not finish! All in all it was a great weekend... Now I am two days behind in my school work!