Today, our Integration Plan team went to Sequoia Elementary School and presented our project to a mixed class of incoming 5th and 6th graders. My expectations going into this project where unknown. I was not sure what to really expect. We were going to be presenting a lesson to a group of incoming middle school students who are on summer vacation. The engagement of the students was what I was worried about. Will the students be engaged in something school related when they are not currently in school?
To my surprise, the students did very well. There area couple of factors that played into this. I think we did a good job making the information relevant to the students before we started the lesson. There were only 11 kids in the classroom. Smaller settings makes it easier for teachers to monitor which leads to better behavior from the students. There were 7 teachers in the room at the time when we were doing our lesson. All of these factors played a roll in their engagement of the lesson. I do believe the students liked the lesson because the conversations that they were having were about the lesson at hand. There was little to no conversation about how they did not wanted to do this or about anything else that was not related to the task at hand. Overall, my experience with this was a great one. It was nice to develop something in the classroom then actually be able to try it out in the field on an actual class of students.
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Today in class, we broke into teams and we had to create a new innovative school to pitch to the rest of the class. This was a very fun activity to do for a couple of reasons. The first being that I look forward to becoming an administrative leader one day and it gave me a good idea of the different possibilities I can bring to the table to creating new innovative environments for student learning to occur. It got me thinking about how I would like for my school to look. I took away many ideas I can implement into my own classroom next fall. I learned that the structure of the class and how things are set up are just as important as what we are teaching the kids (maybe not as important, but you get what I am saying).
Another reason I liked this activity is because if I wanted to create a charter school, I would have an idea of what I would want it to look like. I do not plan on opening one anytime soon or even at all. I do have the tools to go through the process if I would like. I took a class earlier on in the year and our group project was about charter schools. My section was to figure out how to create one and it is actually not as hard as what most people think. In additoon, I enjoyed this as I was able to collaborate with my fellow classmates on a big picture idea. Collaborating with adults can be a little hard and intimidating for some. This was good for me to go through as it gave me more practice in working with adults in these types of situations. When I become an administrator, these are qualities I need to have if I want to become an effective leader. After a week in my first Master's course, I have come to realize that my thought process is on the right track. Every time that I teach, I always try to relate the material to something that will benefit my class in the near or distant future. With this class, it has gotten me to focus more on finding out why the students need to learn this with will help me tremendously in relating material to the classroom. Finding out why students need to learn will make things in the classroom run more seamlessly. If the students are buying what you are teaching them, they will be more productive. With this, classroom management will be easier to maintain and the students will be learning. Isn't that why everyone got into teaching in the first place? Teaching students something and making a difference in their lives. We make this difference by making subject material relevant to their lives and give them something that can help them in the near future.
In addition to relating the material to the students, this is not effective unless you present it to the students with a great delivery of the lesson with compassion. If you do not believe in what you are doing for the students, then it is something that you should probably not be doing. Students are smart and how you react towards the lesson will be the same way that the class will react to it. If you present the material with some energy while making it relevant, you will have a better time in reaching the majority of the students in the class if not the whole class itself. Defining and Measuring College and Career Readiness: A Validation Framework
I was tasked to locate an article about college and career readiness. I wanted to know more about how students would be prepared for this and I came across this article. I thought this was a good place to start because we can get our students ready for their careers and college, but what type of validation is their for them to determine whether or not they are actually ready to start their careers or if they are ready for college. The article states that there is no real validation assessment to determine this. We do have standardized tests given to each student at the end of each year, but this just gives educators and administration an idea of their knowledge of certain subjects, rather then stating if they are prepared for their careers or college. With these test scores that are actually given to the students, this data is more for the schools and for focus on future performances. Students do not really do anything with the results and the results that are mailed to the families do not really explain the results and what they can do with these results to help their child. If the whole point of high school is to get them ready for college and for their careers, there has to be a better way to validate this information, rather then basing it off of their standardized test scores. As a teacher, I need to start realizing this and make sure that I am teaching my students how to act properly in these types of settings. Being a middle school teacher, I think this is something that should be done, so when they get to high school, they should know how to act in the classroom and further their validation of becoming career and college ready. Shadow Day:
Today was my very first shadow day. This is something that I have been wanting to do for a while, so I was glad to hear that I was able to get a chance to do so. I visited Sequoia Elementary school. School was not in session, but they did have a summer program going on. I was placed with the 5-th and 6th grade group. When I entered the classroom, I was told to pick a student. Looking around, it looks like they were doing some type of project and I chose this kid named Felix. He looked very interested in what was going on, so I wanted to shadow him. The students were creating an egg drop device. There were 4 students in his group and Felix was the only one really trying to figure this out, so I jumped right in to help out as well. I starting asking the students if this is something that they enjoy and they didn't really seem to care. I asked them if they would be rather doing book work and they responding quickly with a resounding NO! This only lasted about 10 minutes as the groups were changing. I followed Felix into another room where they will be doing some writing activity. He walked straight to the back of the room and looked eager to get his friends to sit by him. All of a sudden, I was surrounded by Felix and 6 of his friends at one of the tables. They passed out an adjective ad lib worksheet and my table was not engaged at all. There were a handful to say the least. Felix was one of the only ones to get started right away. The rest of the table did not take it seriously. They were talking to each other and when they did work on the assignment, they were too busy worried about how funny it was or what words they could use to make it funny without getting into trouble. They all thought it was funny to say that the ghost was "high". I knew what they meant, but when the teacher came around, they tried to play it off as the ghost being high in the sky. They looked at me and I told them that I knew what they were talking about and they smiled. They continued to make a lot of noise and playing the drums with their pencils. I asked them why they were not paying attention and they said that they were bored and they didn't want to do this. I can understand a little bit being summer and all. I kept my mouth shut for most of the time, that is until I got hit in the face with a ninja star. I started to lecture the table about how their behavior was rude and unacceptable. I told the kid that threw the star that I was going to tell his mom. I made him a deal to be good the rest of the time and I would not. He was the best kid for the rest of the day. This student also had a huge bag of chips with him that he ket going back to. I was curious to see where he got the whole bag of chips from and if his parents cared that he had them. He told me that he took them from his brothers room and that their parents really don't care about what they eat for breakfast. Overall, this was a very good experience for me and this showed me that I need to engage my students so it does not lead to this type of behavior. Today, I have learned the importance on how to view education. When I first started teaching, I treated teaching the same way as I saw my own teachers doing it years before. I was quick to notice that times have changed. As teachers, we need to be adaptable with the times. With this, we also need to be adapting the curriculum with the times as well. This is how education first started, yet we still seem to be under the impression that every student has to take the same classes and it has become somewhat of a competition on which school can do this the best (results provided by standardized testing). We as teachers need to be innovative in our ways of teaching individuals and work with their strengths to make them feel comfortable at school. When a student feels comfortable, they are more willing to open themselves up to their upmost potential.
It is also important for myself to figure out the "why" I am teaching. I know what I am teaching, but I need to figure out the why. I know why I teach, it is to hopefully change the future for students in a positive way and to receive a paycheck in the process. I need to focus more on the "why" in what I am actually teaching the class. if I have a lesson, I need to be more admit about explaining why rather then giving out the assignment and saying the why is because it is a standard and you will be tested on this at the end of the year. |