Valentine's Day Post

It’s been quite a while since I’ve updated this blog, and in that time a lot has happened. I hope to be able to describe my experiences as accurately as possible, without time corroding my memories too much. During these past two weeks have seen my lowest of lows and highest of highs, and I still love what I do enough to wake up every morning and go to school, so I think I have hit the jackpot with my degree/career choice.

Monday, February 1st

Because the FCAT Writes Upon Request (WUR) is coming up in one week, Radcliffe and I have decided to quit doing what we’re doing and start focusing on writing skills—a crash course to help them to do well on the WUR. But today was the last day in the mini-unit I planned (concerning comparing and contrasting), so I led the classes quickly through the culminating aspect of that unit. Both first and second period finished the posters with enough time to spare. Fourth/fifth period got most of the assignment finished, but had to be cut short because every Monday, Wednesday and Friday we go to the computer lab so they can work on a (very archaic and non-helpful) program called Readers Workshop. Sixth period decided again today to continue testing my classroom management skills with their relentless talking and off-task behavior and didn’t get anything done. Instead, I assigned what we didn’t complete in class as homework. They groaned, I smiled. Soon they will learn. Or maybe I will. I swear, by the time my internship is over, I will have an arsenal of strategies to keep classes in check. I knew that going to Fairview would challenge my classroom management strategies, but I was unprepared with how hard it might be. I mistake I will never make again. Never, ever, take middle school children for granted.

Tuesday, February 2nd

One week until WUR. Even though they have heard this date countless times, the students are still surprised when I tell them that they will be participating in WUR in one week. Today we worked on elaborating simple sentences into descriptive sentences. However, due to an extreme interest in participating (we used the Promethean board today), none of the classes ever got past the bell work—which is okay, considering they did an unbelievably good job with their elaboration. The trick is getting this skill to stick, and not letting it be a one day deal. We’ll see how much they remember when they do more writing tomorrow. There weren’t too many problems today, but I did notice a large number of students not participating because only one student could be at the board at a time, and it is impossible for every student to be up there in one class period. I will have to remedy this when we use the Promethean board in the future. Constant harassment and conditioning will eventually get all of the students to start on their Bell Ringer immediately upon entering the classroom, but for now, many students are too busy socializing to notice the assignment on the board.

Wednesday, February 3rd

Today we continued what we were doing yesterday in class—elaboration. The students are getting it, but are reluctant to keep on doing it in class. They’re not stupid, they’re lazy. They are so incredibly reluctant to write in class that they’d rather risk a lower score on the WUR. They’re too complacent with their abilities that it’s almost sad. One of the most difficult things as a teacher is instilling a sense of desire for learning and betterment in students. I’m working on it. Fourth period today acted out—Radcliffe was running errands, so she wasn’t there for the beginning of class. Despite exhausting my bag of classroom management tricks, fourth period wouldn’t quiet down, and I was not able to read my daily portion of Touching Spirit Bear. When we got back from lunch, Radcliffe and I decided to rearrange the room so that the students were no longer sitting in groups of 3-4 at a table, and were now sitting at tables for two arranged in rows and columns. They didn’t take too well to the new set-up, but it’s a necessary change—until they behave and follow my instructions. The rest of the students were reluctant to change, but did so without too many cross words. A common theme in my internship will be how I react to the giant hurdle of classroom management issues. It’s entirely different than what I thought I learned in class, but this is the only way to learn. Effectiveness will come with time. No one is a classroom management professional overnight. Except maybe Mr. Cassels.

Thursday, February 4th

Last night I met with Katie, Jennifer and Mr. Shapiro for a monthly internship jab session at Applebee’s. There we discussed a lot of different ideas, strategies and stories. One of the topics that came up was how to deal with death in the classroom (not a student dying, per se, but death in general, as something we all deal with). Since I want to implement my letters for Haiti unit soon, I decided to start with an empathetic elaboration writing dealing with loss—eventually, I want to tie this in with the loss hundreds of thousands Haitian people felt after the earthquake. Some of the students wrote about death, but some of them found it a very difficult topic to write about, so I told them they could write about a loss (friends or family moving away, etc.). The students did a wonderful job elaborating on their loved ones without being prompted to do so by me, but I asked them to give me more. I asked the students to have the reader experience the same feelings that they did at the time of the loss through their words. This seemed to have had an effect on them, as all of the classes gave me semi-detailed paragraphs. The hitch in the lesson came when I called on people to share their writing. Again, there simply wasn’t enough time to allow all of them to share, so there were some hurt feelings. Because of the mature content we were working with, the attitude of the class was more somber and mature. For the first time in a while they were relatively well behaved. If you treat them like adults, they will act like adults. For the most part.

Friday, February 5th

In an attempt to get the students acclimated to the WUR testing environment, I had them write for the entire period today. In order to keep them from tearing my head off, I allowed them to work with a partner and write a paired essay. My instructions were to have an essay where I would not be able to distinguish to separate voices, for the students to combine ideas and work collaboratively to create a seamless essay. I may have received only one out of the fifty or so I collected. But it’s okay. The students are showing elaboration and well thought out planning—it seems as though my strategy is working. Grading these, and writing comments on them, however, is a definite chore. The students did really well today with the assignment. There wasn’t too much talking, and they were on task for the entire period. I separated the students based on ability—I paired a low writer with a high writer so that they could share ideas and strategies. This was met with some resistance, but I held my ground and the students eventually resolved their differences and just worked.

Monday, February 8th

Over the weekend I read a magazine and found out this interesting football type game to play with students. In honor of the Super Bowl, I decided that I would enact this lesson today, as it encourages sentence elaboration and all of the stuff we have been talking about all week. Plus, it might stick with them as they do their WUR tomorrow. The game works like this: Separate the students into two teams, and decide which team goes first via a coin toss. While on offense, a team can gain yardage by elaborating on a simple sentence (on the Promethean board and MS Word)—transitions get 10 yards, elaboration, 10 yards and adjectives 5 yards. A team plays defense by trying to do the same thing before the offense does. The game requires everyone in the class to be writing what they see on the board and adding their own elaborations. Whichever team raises their hands first will get the opportunity to drive down the field. The game was mildly popular with all the classes, but got easier to implement and play as the day went on. First period didn’t like it too much, but then again, I wasn’t exactly sure how to set it up yet. I feel that I could use this type of game again down the road and get better results. Each class took a three word sentence and elaborated it into a 75 word paragraph. I was very impressed.

Tuesday, February 9th

WUR day. The prompt was bogus. The students are supposed to be writing expository prompts, but this prompt asked for a narrative. Just because the word “explain” is in the prompt doesn’t mean that the prompt is conducive for an expository essay. Nevertheless, according to Ms. Radcliffe, the students wrote a lot more than they ever have before, so that is good. What their grades are still remains to be seen. Sometime in the coming weeks we will be evaluating them. The rest of the day was a break from academics. We had a “Fun Tuesday” for fourth period through 7th period (first and second period was WUR time). The highlight of today was decimating four of my sixth period girls in Scrabble.

Wednesday, February 10th—Friday, February 12th

Since first and second period yesterday was WUR time, we allowed them to have “Fun Wednesday.” The lowlight of my day was losing to one of my sixth graders in checkers. I will have to practice. The other periods got back on track with an FCAT themed lesson, since FCAT is in 4 weeks. I plan on having the students write down one prefix, one suffix and one root word each day until FCAT so that they are able understand and decipher some of the vocabulary questions on the FCAT. The rest of the lesson consists of FCAT test taking strategies and looking at what the questions are REALLY asking. We will be focusing more on this for the weeks to come.

Being in front of the classroom is only one part of the internship. It is incredible the amount of work teachers have to do, from planning to grading to cleaning. This week I was also able to call home to students and their families and get parents involved in trying to make my classroom a learning zone, not a socialization zone. Despite some classroom management setbacks, I’d say the internship is going about as well as it could be going. If I was doing everything right I wouldn’t be learning anything, so I’m grateful for my mistakes and learning experiences.

Monday is a teacher work day, so I’m heading up to Montford Middle School for professional development on the Promethean board. Should be exciting.

Your liberal, yet independent idiot,

-T