The End

Well, I made it. I finished student teaching. There was a point last week in which I wasn’t sure how I was going to, but I did. The first nine weeks of student teaching were all I ever dreamed of: supportive, marvelous, mentoring, excellent in every way cooperating teacher; welcoming school community; boundless feedback; stupendous, engaged kids; and so many opportunities to feel challenged, appreciated and successful. Then came placement number two. I could go on and on about all of the negative aspects of it, but I want to forget those. I have to take from this experience what I learned about schools, teachers and teaching. Mostly I learned what NOT to do in my classroom. But that is reflecting negatively again, so, I will tell you what I AM going to do in my classroom.

I will:

• Provide a reason and a guide for learning no matter how small the lesson or activity may be.
• Be consistent and respectful in my discipline strategies.
• Follow all school rules.
• Know the school building and available resources.
• Keep my personal political beliefs and activities private.
• Use my natural energy and love of learning (I know, cliché and cheesy) to engage my students in the content.
• Use only respectful language when talking about my students with other teachers or staff.
• Strive to be a role model and an open door to my students in order to form relationships instead of trying to be “cool” by using bribery or relaxed discipline.
• Use my classroom time appropriately.
• Update my lessons and units each time I use them.
• Find my voice.
• Be a mentor to others.
• Attend, be on time and participate, where appropriate, in staff and school-community events.
• Respond to emails from parents and colleagues.
• Hold high expectations for my students and myself.

I am sure the list could go on. I will keep this list and make sure I check in with it every once and awhile when I am a “real” teacher. I need to hold myself to these guidelines for myself because if I don’t, then I could become the kind of teacher I don’t want to be.

Website Resources

I have a few websites to share. They were included on the district's weekly newsletter. The first one is called Into the Book http://reading.ecb.org/student/index.html. Students can do exercises with different reading skills. The website is geared for upper elementary. The second website is called Video Ant http://ant.umn.edu/vae.php. You can annotate a movie, and the website e-mails you the final product. I tried it for a lesson I am using tomorrow. After using it, I will have to see if it works as well as I think it should.

Language Arts...

My middle school student teaching has begun and I feel like it is almost over even though I just started teaching. I have planned and taught my first two lessons. Middle school feels so much easier than elementary in the fact that I have one prep. For the elementary school, I did not have time to make a great lesson for language arts. Language arts was the last subject I added, and I didn't have the time to figure out the most successful route for the youngsters.

With middle school, I need to watch that I have a mix of opportunities for the students because they get bored if I talk to long. On Friday, I felt like I talked to whole hour, and I was sick of hearing myself speak, and the students were sitting in their chairs about to fall over. I know sometimes they will get bored and learning does not always have to be fun. I just don't like to see a sea of dull, unenthused students.

As for my lessons, I have already changed my Monday plans. I can't get to far ahead in planning because things change constantly. After teaching Friday, I saw a need for extra instruction done in a different way, so I had to modify and change things. I also had a few students that found the worksheet to easy. They were supposed to find two new words to define and write in a sentence from the novel we are reading. I had three or four students say that they knew all the words. The book is written in an easier way, but for the average eighth grader, they would be able to find new words. I changed my worksheet, so they could find a word or a piece of figurative language. I am glad I didn't make those printouts yet!

My fifth hour class is a challenge. They love to talk, and there are six or seven students that are friends. This makes for a tricky teaching experience. Mrs. R says the best thing for these classes is to keep them busy. After Fridays lesson, I see the importance of this concept. I am actually playing with the idea of changing some seats around. I know who talks a lot. Couldn't I just move some of the key players to more prime locations? Maybe I will give them a warning, and if that proves to be unsuccessful, Monday will be moving day. I'm good at splitting up and noticing trouble areas. I am going to have to think about this a little more. There is always something to ponder about.

Educational Cleaning

I listened to this incredibly interesting podcast while cleaning for Thanksgiving houseguests this weekend. My recently retired teacher mother called me and told me I needed to listen to it. I am glad I did. I feel lucky that I have chosen a career that will always be changing (or at least people will always be thinking about how it can change)-hopefully for the better.

NPR Speaking of Faith
Learning, Doing, Being: A New Science of Education
November 19
What Adele Diamond is learning about the brain challenges basic assumptions in modern education. Her work is scientifically illustrating the educational power of things like play, sports, music, memorization and reflection. What nourishes the human spirit, the whole person, it turns out, also hones our minds.

Building Relationships: Brick by Brick (or tie by tie)

Well, middleweb.com will be an awesome resource for me. There are so many resources to sift through. It will be a perfect place to go before I set off into the world of real teaching-when I will have a first week of school with my students. Going through the lists of resources on the site makes one of my recent realizations even more striking to me. Teaching successfully in middle school has a solid foundation in the early formation of relationships with your students. I guess my realization might not be recent, but it has truly played out before my eyes.

So much about middle school is your relationship with your students—a relationship that clearly starts and is outlined on the first day or days of school. By jumping into the school year after it has already started, I am a foreign element of my middle schoolers’ classroom. I cannot be trusted and I need to be checked out before they will truly be themselves around me and, most frustratingly, give me their full attention and respect in the classroom. I am only with them for six weeks—why on earth would they allow me into their lives? Because I am a motivational teacher, role model and all around sweet lady, that’s why! The hard part is showing them that.

They do their best to challenge and test me and while I can be myself with them and joke and I understand parts of their lives other adults might not, I am still struggling to engage them and motivate them to learn. This fact frustrates me and makes it harder for me to let loose and be myself-I just want them to take in the content…but I am learning and experimenting. I already supplemented the text with a PowerPoint complete with music and old time Western video clips on Monday. One student was laying his head in his arms before “Home on the Range” started playing. When it came on, I heard him say; “Are you trying to put us to sleep?” Halfway through the song, he was sitting straight up in his chair singing along-I pointed out to him that he was far from sleeping-he liked it. Funny how those tiny things can be the shining moment of your day.

I almost completely threw out my plan for Thursday and I am doing a kind of center activity about the Transcontinental Railroad. Even more so than 4th graders, I think (I know) these middle schoolers need active, engaged and hands-on lessons. No matter how awesome the textbook may be, I need to go beyond it. It is more work, but I knew from the start teaching isn’t easy and that the best teachers don’t teach by the book-no pun intended. My cooperating teacher isn’t stopping me (among the many other things she doesn’t really do…) so I am going to go for it. Even if they never remember where the golden spike was nailed in Utah in 1869 joining the east and the west railroads-I will still be working on building relationships with them.

Oh...Middle School Is Right

So far, in almost every aspect of my experience, this student teaching placement feels almost exactly the opposite of my first experience in 4th grade. I haven't felt welcomed at the school by the staff, my cooperating teacher and I don't click as well as my last one did and I often disagree with her instructional strategies, her standpoint about school politics and especially with the way she talks about the students. Finally, the students-they are barely what I expected. You are right, 8th graders seem so much like high school students. Where is the innocence of middle school that I felt? The girls seem so old and the boys so distant. I did spend one class period in a 7th grade classroom and it was more of what I expected middle school to be like. I think it might be that the 8th graders in my school are the kings and queens of the school and act like it.

Ok, so it isn't all bad. I am still in a school and I get to teach really great content-U.S. History. I love the content. The planning seems like a breeze so far. I have to teach the same thing four times a day-which means I get to practice and practice, but plan only once. I do teach a homeroom and a 6th grade Language Arts class, but it hardly feels like the work load and preparation my fourth grade classroom was. But it is already quite monotonous-especially when I have to sit and observe the lesson and not lead it. I enjoy not having to hyper-manage transition times: no hand washing guidance, no potty breaks, no breaks or recess or lunch help and they certainly are not silent in the hallways.

I know I have to keep an open mind-this is only week two. But I cried today. (Thankfully after all the students left for the day.) I taught 7th period and I have some really difficult students. There are two girls, who do not seem interested in learning-in the least-and I tried to get them to stay on task. I got a little too confrontational with them after my attempts at connecting with them failed. They were rude, didn't listen, and yelled in my face. I was trying to stay strong and consistent on my first day of teaching with them to show them that I am about learning and not social hour-and it blew up in my face. I cried because I don't know how to connect with these girls. They are the ones I feel need guidance and a role model the most, but turn away at any glimpse of adult attention or direction it seems. They want to push buttons, I want to use humor and motivation to keep students engaged and focused on the task at hand. But as my husband said-this is my free ticket to try out my ideas and strategies-and it isn't always going to work. I will keep smiling, work on keeping the students engaged and try not take negative interactions with students so harshly.

Oh... Middle School

How does middle school compare to elementary school for you?

I really liked my elementary students. Now being in eighth grade I feel like I am in a high school class. My cooperating teacher seems really good, so I am excited to be under someone with so much passion and expertise. My cooperating teacher is around my age. She has taught for seven years, and I am her first student teacher. She is really active in school initiatives. She is finishing up her master's degree. She leads a book group on grading authentically once a month, and the eigth grade team is pioleting a new grading system that bases everything on 5 points instead of letter grades.

She is on the NUA committee, which is a group of people who learn new teaching stratigies. Then eventually they teach these stratigies to the rest of the teachers. Does your district utilize the strategies from NUA? I learned many of them in my first placement. I even bought the book the teachers recommended because I liked to stratigies so much. Both the middle school and the elementary school talked about these new stratigies often.

As for the students, I am still trying to learn their names. I have a hard time with names, so it might take me until my fulltime teaching weeks to have all their names reserved to memory.

When I started this placement, the students were finishing up a poetry unit. As a result, the last few days have been spent in the computer lab. They were given time to write an analysis on a poem. I am excited to start teaching again. Sometimes it is hard to sit back and watch.

How are things in the social studies world?

From Cassie Clearence

Rose's last paragraph "the most effective teachers will realize their thinking will transform" can sum up all of Joanna and Rose's other ideas in the fewest words. Effective teachers need to be prepared, organized, lead balanced lives, know the content area, be sensitive, and hold a sense of humor. When I wrote my effective teacher essay the three characteristics I focused on were excellent classroom management, superior lesson plans, and a kind demeanor. I feel both Rose and Joanna's posts gave more tangible examples of what an effective teacher looks like then I provided in my essay. This shows the experience they are earning through the hard work of student teaching!

Humor

It is great that you should mention humor as one of the five traits an effective teacher needs to succeed. I completely agree. This is in fact one of the things I wrote in my Effective Teacher Essay. I believe that students respond best to something they can relate to and care about and if a student can be engaged immediately, the enthusiasm will last throughout the class. I am so glad that you are enjoying your time as a student teacher. It makes me look forward to my turn.

Sorrel Kaspszak

Effective Teachers...

My first student teaching placement is in a 4th grade classroom at a close to idyllic grade school. The students come from many different places, most are at grade level in math and reading, the parents are greatly involved in their children’s schooling, the community supports the school and the staff is strong and active. My classroom is made up of 17 boys and 10 girls-it gets truly wild sometimes. I am working towards my masters in education through the Weekend College program. I will be licensed for elementary education with a middle school social studies specialty. My experiences thus far in my own 4th grade classroom have helped me to realize that 4th, 5th, or 6th grade, with my own classroom, might be perfect for me. We will see.

I can use five words to describe what an effective teacher is. They are: sensitive, humorous, organized, level-headed and resilient. An effective teacher will live out all of these traits during every day of teaching. These traits are also necessary for an effective teacher to keep going and stay strong and focused on educating and empowering students.

An effective teacher is sensitive to student feelings. This sensitivity involves being discrete when having personal conversations with the student—whether they are positive or negative, being aware of non-verbal signals from your students about frustrations or woes and being cognizant of the types of reactions you have to student responses or questions. An effective teacher is also sensitive to the needs of colleagues and parents, but only to a point that can be maintained—your students should always be your biggest focus.

An effective teacher is humorous. Having a sense of humor in the classroom lightens the mood when it needs lightening, helps you to establish connections with your students and can help you to refocus on your day if it has taken a sour turn. Laughter and giggles might not always be appropriate in your classroom, but they are necessary to keep the classroom climate positive.

Organization is an effective teacher’s strongest asset. Not only is organization necessary to keep your lessons, your day, your classroom and your students on track, but part of your responsibilities as a teacher are to be organized for other people. Specialists and coaches need to know who to pull for enrichment or re-teaching, which means you need to be on top of your assessments and recording them. Parents or siblings might need to take homework or work that is not yet done to sick students. This involves knowing what each of your students has yet to finish, and what they need in order to finish that task. If you team teach or team plan with other teachers, they expect you to be organized and ready to plan and pull your own weight in planning, copying and getting supplies ready.

If a teacher is to take all of the surprises and unexpected events that happen each day in school in stride, they must be level-headed. No day is ever the same in school. An effective teacher is ready for everyday to bring something new and does not let unpredictable events send the day off-track. Your students and your classroom depend on you to be ready for anything.

An effective teacher is resilient. This characteristic in a teacher is not only important for their students and their classroom, but also for the teacher themselves. If you are having a bad day or something goes horribly wrong, you need to be able to bounce back from it. You have to have a shell that you can rebuild so that you still seem strong for your students—but this shell needs to break sometimes. You can’t hold your feelings in all of the time, or you will burn out. An effective teacher can keep going and keep going strong, but they also know when to give themselves a much deserved and needed break. This resilience will also help you to focus on your future in teaching. Staying strong and in touch with your own needs will give you the strength needed to grow as a teacher.

Characteristics of an Effective Teacher?

My student teaching experience is in collaboration with a fourth grade classroom in a prominent suburban district. The class I work with has twenty-six students. Three of the students qualify for special education services and seven students receive extra instruction from the gifted and talented teacher. As for my experiences, they vary quite a bit. I have worked in a middle school as a special education paraprofessional, and I have worked in a preschool as an assistant. This is my second degree, and I completed most of my education classes through the weekend program.

An effective teacher needs to be willing to ask questions constantly. These questions could consist of the following: What were the effective and ineffective parts of my lesson? What should I do different next time? How well did the students learn the information? Why did the majority of the class not do well on that test? These questions help to access the effectiveness of my teaching. An effective teacher also recognizes that each class is very different. What might work one year won't the next. To stay effective, teachers need to constantly assess their own teaching methods in relation to the students they have in their classrooms.

Effective teachers need to know the content. A teacher could know all the methods in the world, but if they don't know the content, they are useless. Teachers become more familiar with the content the more they work with the material, which is part of the reason teaching gets easier with more experience. Because teachers need to know the content, it is important for them to continue to take professional development classes to expand their skills.

The best teachers learn to balance their lives with teaching and personal activities. Teaching is a career that could take over your life and create the hazard of burnout. Effective teachers learn to use their time while they are at school. They understand that some work needs to go home, but they can't work all day and night. Effective teachers enjoy activities outside of their professional careers.

After looking over my comments, I know my idea characteristics of effective teaching have changed since starting school. These ideas will constantly change depending on the circumstances. The most effective teachers realize that their thinking will transform. Therefore, effective teachers need open minds to look at new ideas from all angles, and I see that my ideas have started to transform. This is only one transformation with many more to come

Any questions?

I think of questioning as the connecting force during instruction. You can ask questions to begin a lesson, to transition a lesson from section to section and to either initiate closure of the lesson or preview lesson content for next time. Specifically, questioning serves at least three purposes during instruction. Using wait-time during questioning or prompting for further input can increase engagement of students who aren’t always the first to raise their hands to respond. Questioning can be used to check understanding. If I use a word during instruction or a word comes up in the content, I can use questioning to check for prior knowledge, but also to make sure the students are on the same page in order to advance the lesson. Finally, questioning can be used as a tool to think more critically about an activity, topic or discussion. I can use questions in my classroom to extend my lesson by feeding off of student comments.

This fall, I have discovered the usefulness in questioning while helping students to figure something out. We have done several poetic activities to begin the year and as fourth graders, they often struggle with what to write-especially if it is about them or their lives. We recently did a project in which they wrote about idioms their family uses and had to do a four line poem with at least two rhyming verses to complete the activity. Some students had such a difficult time with it. I started asking questions to them to give them ideas when I realized that is how I started writing my own idiom rhyme. What does this idiom really mean? How do you feel when someone says this? What do you do when someone says this? When they would hit on a word that was easy to rhyme with, I would then prompt them for words that rhyme with it, etc. So, questioning has helped me to be successful in guiding rather than telling my students.

I would like to improve my responses to student questioning. When I use questioning to extend a lesson, my students can sometimes get taken off track or deeper than I expect and I often find myself in territory I can’t always respond to confidently. I need to improve my reactions to questions I don’t know the answer to without disappointing my students. In addition, I find questioning difficult when my students are tired and I need it to work in order to properly introduce a lesson and only two or three of the same people are raising their hands to answer the question. I need to think about rephrasing my questions on my toes or working to engage my students more with my questions. I am also not a fan of cold-calling on students to get other responses, but I will do it to bring some of my students back to reality-especially in math when the answer is simple.

It was my first day teaching full-time today. What was I so worried about? Nothing horrible happened. It was just a normal, unpredictable day at school. The one thing I forget to think about while planning my days is that I do have time to think. When my students are working independently, I can work too. They still know I am available to answer their questions, but I can take the time to tidy-up my desk or the room and to get myself organized for the next subject or hook up my computer to the projector. I can also take the time to simply sit down and watch the kids work and take a good chug of water. Even if it is only a minute or even 30 seconds, it is so utterly satisfying. The kids are working away, I feel confident and prepared and every once and a while, one of them will glance up at me and I can smile at them. And man, does it feel good when they smile back!

Questions

Questions used during instruction have many purposes. The main reason for using them is to engage students. We need higher-level questions to keep the higher-level thinkers interested. I could use more of these questions throughout my lessons. Sometimes I feel like the higher students get bored. In addition to engaging, questions can be used to connect material to their prior knowledge. I use these types of questions when we start a new reading. Along with the two previous examples, questions are used to check for student understanding. After we have talked about a topic, it is beneficial to see if the class as a whole understands the material. Maybe I didn't do a great job covering a topic, so we need to review the concepts again.

My questioning skills are not great yet, but I taught a social studies lesson about scale and legend that had some good questioning components. At the beginning, I presented maps of the world before Columbus's voyage to the new world. I asked inquiry questions about why the people thought the world was flat in the 1400s, and I asked the students to talk about the differences between the maps. The students seemed interested, and I was getting a lot of the answers to the questions from the students. My main job was to direct the conversation to the topic of scale towards the end. By looking at the maps from Columbus's time, the students could see how much land was undiscovered. It gave them a real reason for creating maps with accurate scale. Then they connected the concept of scale to their lives. They could see that an error in scale could mean a trip taking double or triple the amount of time when traveling. This lesson had a real purpose for them.

I know I need to work on developing a variety of questions in my lessons, but my main obstacle is the time it takes to write out these questions. I find that I use the questions provided by the teacher materials much more than creating my own questions. I should create a goal to force myself to focus on this aspect. For each lesson I create, I need five questions of different thinking levels. This might be a time consuming goal for myself, but it will benefit the students learning and understanding.

To move on to a new subject, I have a moral dilemma, and I would like your opinions. I have a fourth grade student who qualifies for special education in reading. His fall test scores in mathematics were the lowest in the class. Last year he struggled in math, so the special education teacher tested him to qualify for services in mathematics. He did not score low enough, so a decision was made to have him repeat the second grade math curriculum in the third grade classroom. Now he is in forth grade and needs the third grade mathematics curriculum taught to him. My dilemma is that he has a paraprofessional to help with organizational issues during mathematics. She is not there to teach him new material, but I don't have time to teach the fourth grade curriculum and pull him aside to teach him the third grade curriculum. What do I do so that he is not taught by the paraprofessional all year? I have an obligation to teach all the students in the room. Some days the class only get five minutes of work time and that is not enough time to teach a new concept to a struggling student. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Mid-Week Hilarity

Yesterday, I had the class to myself for the afternoon. Nancy wants me and the students to get used to her not being there. I told her earlier in the day I wanted to start trying to play music while the kids worked. She showed me a CD that she had gotten in the mail from Stepping Stone Theater and said I could try it if I wanted to.

While the kids were working quietly on their hexagram designs in Math, I prefaced the music by saying a) this is a test to see if they can handle listening to music and still focus on their work and b) that I had no idea what was on the CD so we were just going to find out.

I pushed play and we heard some happy sounding theatrical music to start. Then there were a few strange sounds and the first line was: "Oh, it's good to be a goat!" We all proceeded to get the giggles - even me.

It was a nice, lighthearted experience to have after three weeks of a lot of discipline and behavior discussions with them. We had a discussion as they cleaned up their Math work about a music in the classroom plan. Some students had suggestions and I told them that if they could handle the music I bring in on Thursday, then we can have a Music Planning Meeting during Morning Meeting on Monday. Who gets to bring it, what's appropriate, volume, etc. We will see how it goes. But remember, it's good to be a goat.

The World at Your Fingertips

The hardest part about utilizing the many online resources available to educators is finding the best ones. Usually, if you do a Google search for an educational topic, your results are ad-laden commercially based sites that aren’t even close to “cool,” or they are so full of information, it is hard to know where to begin.

The National Geographic site is one of those it which it is hard to know where to begin. The key feature to exploring the National Geographic site is to know what your topic is. When you know your topic, the site seems to do the connecting of resources for you by connecting topics to its many interactive resources, photo galleries, blogs, etc. A good starting place for educators on the National Geographic sites is called Xpeditions. The Xpeditions site has lesson plans, activities and maps for topics ranging from oceans, droughts and presidential birth places. They are organized by grade level as well. My favorite most recent discovery on the National Geographic site is called The Infinite Photograph . It starts with one photograph, but when it is clicked on, becomes an infinite mosaic of other photographs. If you double-click on a photograph, you can find out the information about it. The Infinite Photograph would be a great filler or rainy-day recess activity. It may also work on a Smart Board and the students could then choose which part of the photograph to close in on.

The coolest sites always seem to be found by someone else in my experience. I write them down whenever I can in a file I call Ideas Galore. I have two favorites that aren’t necessarily the most educational, but can fill in holes in your classroom or in your day.

The first site I love is called Wordle. According to the Wordle site, “Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide.” A toy, yes, a toy. Click on ‘Create your own,’ ‘paste in a bunch of text’ and click go. I used this tool to create an addition to the Class Covenant sheet that we all signed at the beginning of the year. I highlighted words that we wanted to have present in our classroom such as listen, kind, respect, etc. Once you click go, you can even edit the font, positioning and the color scheme on your own.

The second site is for pure entertainment. I saw it used as a reward for good behavior in a 5th grade classroom. It is called Will It Blend. Silly things are put into a blender and then we wait to see what happens. Great for a room of 17 boys I imagine.

Social Studies was added!

I experienced my first field trip with the fourth graders. We went to a local park that employed naturalists. The naturalists divided the group into three smaller groups, and we went through team building activities and survival skills. The highlight for the students was when they got to build a fire, and they were even allowed to light the match. We had great weather even through it was suppose to rain, and the students really worked together throughout the day.

In the classroom, the highlight would have been teaching social studies. Since social studies only happens once or twice a week. I really tried to find interesting activities for the students to help with the engagement of the subject. We did a kinesthetic activity to start, and the students loved getting out of their seats. I want to sneak in more geography throughout the day, so my read aloud are going to include some information about other areas of the world. If we don't have time during the day for social studies, we are going to make time by being interdisciplinary.

Now I would like to share, some websites that I think are useful to have as resources.

The website that I use on a daily basis is Super Kids (http://www.superkids.com/aweb/tools/words/middle/ ). This website has a section with a word of the day for fourth through eighth graders. It tells the viewers the definition, gives an example sentence, and synonyms of the word. I print and display this word daily, and during morning meeting, we talk about the word with examples. This is one way to help them build their vocabulary.

In the area of math, I like to give them challenge problems to get the students thinking. Many times these problems comes right from their textbook, but in the future, I plan to use the website Figure This! (http://www.figurethis.org) At this website, you can find math challenge problems that can be displayed on the Smartboard. They even give hints and a page description with a few solutions. Some of the more advanced students may appreciate the challenge.

The other website that I have used is called Braingle. This website has many different brainteasers to get the students thinking in a problem solving manner. These activities are good when the students arrive in the morning, and they need an activity to keep themselves busy. These activities would also be good when the students have a few minutes between subjects.

At this point, these are the only websites I use on a regular basis. I might have other resources towards the end of student teaching. Right now, I am managing and teaching morning meeting, math, and social studies, so my resources are related to those subjects. Social studies was only taught once last week so there is not an abundance of resources in that area. Next week I will be exploring Matter and Energy with the students, so I move on to one more subject.

Transitions, transitions

During my second week of student teaching, I didn’t take official lessons. Instead, I took nearly all of the daily transition periods. Yikes. I assumed responsibility for Morning Meeting, Homework Planner and clean-up time, all hallway walking and continued to do Read Aloud. Our class (16 boys and 11 girls) has been having a hard time with transitions both in and out of the classroom. There seems to be constant chatter and a lack of listening in many cases. You can say “Voices off please, we’re in the hallway” and heads will turn and stop talking for a second and immediately go back to what they were saying before. The angels really came out of their shells during week two.

Together with Mrs. H, we drilled our behavior and transition expectations into the students’ brains. Mrs. H. reminded them, while together and seated on the floor in front of her, that they are fourth graders now and they have more responsibilities than they did in third grade. She gave them the task of deciding what behavior they needed to work on the most during transitions and to work on it.

I drew on Mrs. H’s talk with the students for the rest of the week. Before a transition time, I would remind the students that they are to be working on a behavior and our exact expectations of them. My first successful transition change was to and from Morning Meeting. The students all bring their chairs into a circle and it can be complete and sometimes dangerous chaos. I call two tables at a time when they are ready and remind them that I should only hear the noise of the chairs and there should be no chairs on heads. Returning to their desks is the same. I also say to them that they should be able to arrange all of the chairs in a circle without talking, but that they need to pay attention to those around them.

The Morning Meeting is one example of how attentive and consistent you have to be with your behavior expectations for your students. They do listen. They do want to behave-I just know it. As a teacher, we need to give specific instructions for each movement of the day. We also have to remind our students how important listening is. I stressed the need for the class to listen to their peers and the teachers by playing the telephone game in Morning Meeting on Thursday. If they don’t listen carefully, the whole game changes and it can be ruined.

I think our students were truly acting more respectfully by Friday. Or they were simply worn out from the first full week of school. I learned many approaches to respectfully remind the students what our expectations are of them. I also know that I need to find my voice. Mrs. H said it often gets lost over the hubbub. I don’t want to yell, but I need to be heard. I guess that is one more trait that comes with experience.

I will proudly add one thing. There was a substitute filling in for Mrs. H on Tuesday and I knew all about what the class was doing. She told Mrs. H at the end of the day that I was “pretty much in control.” I felt less pressure and more confidence without my cooperating teacher in the room. I told her this and added that I think it is because I know she is watching me and will give me feedback. She agreed and added that it took her many years to adjust to teaching confidently with other adults in the room. She told me that when my supervisor visits, she is planning on leaving the room-I don’t need two adults watching me so closely.

Tomorrow I begin teaching Math in addition to all of the other pieces I am doing. (Concave and convex polygons to be exact.) This means that I will be in control of the students and the classroom from when I pick them up in the lunchroom until I walk them to their last hour specialist class and then a few to the bus at the end of the day. I think this might be easier because Mrs. H and I don’t have to transition back and forth between one another. It will be more realistic for me and I will have to completely plan my supplies and flow from one thing to the next. I am ready.

Is that convex or concave?

In my first week of student teaching, I started teaching mathematics. The first unit was geometry, and my first lesson introduced them to polygons and the difference between convex and concave polygons. I looked over the teacher’s manual and made some changes. In my math methods class, I remembered using many tools to help learn about geometry ideas. I substituted Geoboards for making polygon shapes. The book had the students using straws that were placed together by twist ties.

I started the lesson with math problem review on white boards. Then they completed a short quiz on the information from the day before. After this, we always correct the homework, which takes a good 20 minutes. Once we finally started talking about the new information, I taught the students in a large group, but we only had enough Geoboards to work in pairs. I had them make a convex polygon, and they would hold up the boards for me to see. Then we did the same thing with concave polygons. I felt I was rushing through the lesson because I wanted enough time for them to work on homework. We had changed the schedule that day from 75 minutes of math to 60, and I had plans for 75 minutes.

Since I was moving to quickly through the information, I cut things out, and I didn't go over the information as thoroughly as I could have. The students ended up having 15 minutes to do their homework, and the advanced students that finished didn't have anything to help occupy their time. I learned quickly that the students needed something to do when they finish their work.

The next day as the students entered the room they were given a quiz to see what they remembered from the day before. We didn't have time for math on this day because the schedule was full of other activities, so I brought the quizzes home to assess how they did on the new material. There was a question asking the students to circle the convex polygons, and there were six shapes to choose from. As I correct the quizzes, I found out that only two students understood the material. This was shocking because I thought I did a fairly good job. The comment I remember from my cooperating teaching is that the noise level got high at the end of the period. Of course it got high, the students were done with their work and had nothing to do besides talk with a neighbor.

I am glad I quizzed the students because I took that information and recreated the lesson for the next day. I took a large block of time to draw polygon shapes, and talk about the characteristics of a polygon. Then I drew shapes of convex and concave polygons. At the end, I had the students tell me the answers to the quiz questions. I felt like after the review they actually started to understand the concept.

Every new teacher has surprises when teaching new information for the first time. I was so stressed out about the time that I did an injustice when teaching the material. Sometimes a lesson may have to spew over to the next day, and that is ok. This last week I spent a lot of time reading over the student reference book, so I understand the material well enough to teach it. I was always decent with math, but until now, I couldn't tell you the definition of a polygon, quadrangle, or a parallelogram. Maybe I should have these terms filed away in my brain, but I don't. I am surprised at the amount of information I need to learn to be a successful teacher. After teaching lessons, Ms. R and myself go over the good things and the areas that could improve. My word choice and verbiage are always an area that needs some work. Ms. R has taught for many years, so she knows these terms like she knows her daughter's name. Is it common for new teachers to learn some or a lot of the information before they teach the ideas for the first time? I know if I ever teach a geometry unit again, I will know more of the content.

After teaching for a week, I am making adjustments to the way I prepare for the next week. I am implementing a daily schedule of when I spend time writing lesson plans, preparing for the day, and correcting papers. I also have mandatory personal time in the evening. I have been doing work constantly, and I will not be able to keep up at this pace unless I take some time to myself. As a professional teacher, I will have to find that healthy mix as well, so I better learn to pace myself now. I am also going to adjust my lesson plans, so I can find a way to spend less time creating them yet still have them be effective. As teachers we are always learning, which is probably why so many people love this career. Let's learn on!

Week One

The fourth grade classroom I am working in was a lot of exhausting fun during the first week. My cooperating teacher and I have a lot of workplace standards and goals in common; getting stuff done effectively and efficiently, not forgetting to laugh often and being completely prepared for everything. Because Mrs. H is so prepared and organized in her classroom and her instruction I have gotten many ideas from her. I have tried to write as many of them down as I can! She has already relinquished some small duties to me (read aloud and a few hallway walks). This coming week I will take on Morning Meeting, continue with the daily read aloud, direct homework planner time and lead all of the hallway discipline direction. Having both of us in the classroom thus far has been beneficial for us both. We have had the chance to get to know the students a little more closely than we might have otherwise and we have ample bathroom breaks—a complete bonus!

The students in our classroom cover most of the bases as far as student diversity is concerned. We have 16 boys and 11 girls. We have one student that needs a lot of support—apparently a special education referral is in the works. We have three students that will receive ELL support once a day. The students come from all kinds of homes and family structures. Several of the students are children of university professors and at least one is the daughter of missionaries. All of the students have something intriguing about them, whether it is their taste in music, their hobbies or simply the way they sit attentively in their desks. It seems, so far, to be a well-behaved, active and bright group of students.

The parental presence and support in the school community is very evident even after only a week. Only five of the students didn’t come to the back-to-school open house and many of the parents walk their children to their classroom each morning. Each day our students get their homework planner initialed by either me or Mrs. H and must show us a parent or older sibling’s signature the next day. Homework packets are sent home each week with a letter to the parents and families letting them know what can be expected the coming week. The parental involvement thus far seems to be all positive. It will be interesting to see if the level of involvement of any particular parents becomes overwhelming to the teachers.

Mrs. H does a lot of team planning with the other fourth grade teacher, Mrs. B. Their relationship is strong and almost unexpected. They have different teaching styles and personalities but seem to work together like clockwork. Mrs. B is the adult-time comic relief and stresses to me that she is very open and blunt (clearly), but that she can tell I can handle it. Thanks Mrs. B. they often support one another by having whole fourth grade meetings and share many of the daily and weekly preparation activities.

I have many memorable stories from the week. Two of my favorite stories come from the same student—the already famous Daniel. As I noted in a previous post, Daniel believes that a pandemic is “a plague that is sweeping the nation.” In the terms of H1N1, I feel his definition isn’t far from the truth. My second Daniel story occurred in the hallway on the way to art class. A warning: I was breaking the rules by whispering back to him. He hung back with me when we left the classroom. He walked quietly for a moment and then asked me if I thought education was a right or a privilege. I responded that I thought it was both. He said that he thought public education was a right and that private education is a privilege. I responded with the right he has to a public education is a privilege. He must have been satisfied with my answer because he stopped talking then. I look forward to more stimulating (but only when appropriate) conversation with him.

I am in awe of a lot of factors about my first week in a classroom. The school I am in works. The students pass tests. Everyone is friendly. It is clean and comfortable. The teachers seem to come from examples in textbooks and the students respond as you would hope they would to research-based management and instructional strategies. The students want to learn and seem excited to be starting another year. I am still on the cusp of whether or not the experience will prepare me for a ‘real’ classroom. Will it be too easy? Is it not a realistic setting in comparison to where I might find myself in a year? Or will it be a great experience to see effective teaching and have plentiful opportunities to hone my instructional craft and teaching confidence without worrying so much about classroom management? I have always imagined my first student teaching experience have to be extremely stressful, exhausting and occasionally tear-inducing. Does it have to be overwhelming and ‘realistic’ for me to learn as much as possible? I don’t know yet. Like I said, I am still on the cusp.

Memories of Week One

My fourth grade class has twenty-six students with thirteen boys and girls. There are six students that need extra support from special education. As a result, a paraprofessional is in the classroom practically the whole day. It is sure nice to have an extra adult in the room to help with these students.

I feel very fortunate to be with a team of four teachers that support and work together to get things completed. They share curriculum and materials to make the workload a little less cumbersome. The school district has done a lot to give teachers resources to use in lesson planning, and these resources are available right online. This makes it a lot easier to do some planning at home.

The school climate seems overall positive. Like most schools, teachers seem to stick with their teams. Each grade has a different lunch period, and this is the time when adults can connect on a personal level. After or before school, teachers are busy getting ready for their school day, and there is always an abundance of work and not enough time to get it all done. I suppose teachers learn to pace themselves and take things off the list as they are completed. They live with the motto "What doesn't get done today, can wait until tomorrow!"

Something memorable about my first week would have to be the mini unit on Monarchs. Monarch eggs were bought from the local college, and pairs of students take care of the Monarchs by feeding them and cleaning out their temporary homes. The students get to see first hand life science in the classroom. They learn new vocabulary, see the lifecycle, and record observations. This unit is interactive, and it has the potential to be memorable for the students. I know I will remember it long after my student teaching experience.

Now that my first week is completed, I am surprised at the amount of work that goes into making the day run smoothly and how fast the day feels. It is hard to get all the subjects into each day and even each week. Part of this struggle is because it was the first week of school, and the routines needed to be established. Setting up these routines takes double the amount of time, and they need to be reviewed until they become natural.

Something else that surprised me had to do with the read-a-loud portion of the day. I was going to take this over on day one, but my cooperating teacher called me over Labor Day weekend to tell me she changed her mind. She wanted to do this for a few days first. Her reason was that everything that happens in the day was a learning experience for myself. After observing her leading the read-a-loud, I was glad she didn't have me do this right away in the first week. As she read, she practiced many high level-reading techniques with the students like predicting what would happen next. I didn't realize that even read-a-loud look a little preparation and thinking before it happened.

I am excited for week two to begin. I will get to take on more responsibility, and learn even more about how to be an effective teacher. Hopefully, I can manage to get a majority of my ideas into practice while I am student teaching. If not, I know that "What doesn't get done today, can wait until tomorrow!"

I student taught for 14 weeks with Ellen Applebaum (pseudonym) and her fifth grade class at the West Street School in Geneva, NY. I was a starry-eyed 21-year-old who had only discovered I wanted to be a teacher during my sophomore and junior years of college.

Mrs. Applebaum had a great reputation. She was probably the age I am now, but she seemed very mature and experienced (characteristics I don't necessarily embody all the time now). I remember that she was organized, a firm disciplinarian, and just a little traditional in her methods of teaching. At the same time, she was very warm toward me, gave me lots of responsibility quickly, and was open to my trying new things with her class. She said she liked having student teachers because they offered daily professional development around progressive pedagogy. I really admired Mrs. A. and soaked up all the mentoring she offered. We became close during that semester, and a couple of years later, when I got married in Maine, she was there!

West Street School worked in close partnership with the college I attended. I had done fieldwork at the school with grades K, 1 and 4 previously, so I felt comfortable in that setting from the start of my student teaching experience. I don't remember interacting with the principal at all, but I can still see her face (and not remember her name). The school was somewhat diverse with African American kids being the most visible racial group; socioeconomic status among all the children varied. Geneva was not an affluent town, but it was on the shore of Seneca Lake, which attracted wealthy 2nd homeowners, and faculty from the local private college sent their kids there. I remember feeling like expectations for hallway behavior were overly-emphasized (all kids walking in single file along one side of the hall, no talking and no dragging your hand along the tiled wall--seriously, who can resist running his/her hand along those cool, smooth squares with the rough seams at regular intervals? To me it was therapeutic.)

I remember my college supervisor said I would remember my student teaching experience in surprising detail for many years. He was right. I could write about lots of stories, but I'll share one management technique that I borrowed from Mrs. Applebaum and ended up using through my own tenure as a teacher for 8 years.

I learned about Mrs. A's freeze/share idea in the hallway--surprise, surprise. To help the kids practice appropriate hallway decorum (I mean really, they were in 5th grade. If they didn't know the expectations by now, they were NEVER going to learn), Mrs. Applebaum would line them up and take a demonstration walk down the hall. If she said, "Share", the kids were expected to keep walking, but to stop all talking. If she said "Freeze", they were expected to stop walking and talking. We never really used this in the hall, but it was good practice for the classroom where we used freeze/share a lot. For example, if the kids were working on a group math exercise using manipulatives, there were plenty of times when we wanted them to keep working, but to listen to instructional clarification or praise. In this case, we would say, "Share". At other times, if things were really off track, or if we wanted to add a new dimension to a task, we could use "freeze" to stop the action and redirect.

After a couple of weeks, we could practically whisper "freeze" or "share" and the kid were so attuned to these cues that they would respond immediately. Eventually, we invited the kids to use "share" if they needed the class's attention during an activity. At first, a few kids took it too far, but we were able to squash those impulses quickly and the word became a great community-building tool.

As I said, I used this strategy to great effect in my future classrooms. And I'll admit that at the beginning of every year I had my students practice freeze/share in the hallway!

I've always been attracted to management techniques that are respectful, purposeful and flexible. Freeze/share meets all these criteria. I'll be interested to know what you both embrace as management strategies in your classrooms this fall.

A Nine Year Old's Definition of Pandemic

The first day of fourth grade of course involved hand washing reiteration and importance, especially because of the flu. While the teacher was talking, the word pandemic was used. Mrs. B.: "Does anyone know what pandemic means?" Daniel: "A pandemic is a plague that is sweeping the nation." You might just be right Daniel.

Fifth Grade

Spelling has never been my strong suit. I can remember the massive spelling units each week that involved using the words in many different ways on worksheets. I despised the worksheets and spelling tests that were due each Friday morning. At the start of the year, my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Christianson, introduced the spelling curriculum to the class, and then she pulled me aside to introduce a separate curriculum that I would be using. I loved the new curriculum. It was the easiest set of words, and there were no practice sheets. As a result, I didn't even need to study. She taught me that teachers set standards or expectations for their students, and in some ways, we need to start high and adapt to a more workable level. Starting with low expectations does an injustice to the students.

With this separate curriculum, there were fewer words to learn each week, and it was suppose to get harder as the year progressed. Mrs. Christianson should have pretested me at the start of the year to see where I should have begun. She assumed I would work through the easy words and get to my level quickly. I took a test a week like I did every other year, but I should have moved much faster. She should have been attuned to the fact that the first half of the year was extremely easy for me in the area of spelling. From Mrs. Christianson, I learned that teachers need to be observing, assessing, and changing curriculum based on the students needs. I hope to use this experience when working with those in my own classroom.

Mrs. Summers

Mrs. Summers was my middle school Social Studies teacher. She also taught social studies to all three of my sibblings. Three out of four of us won the school's Geography Bee. My older brother was (and could possibly still be) the only student in the history of our grade school to pass the ridiculously difficult test to make it to the state Geography Bee. He got his first question about a river in Iraq incorrect. We were all shy and studious students who were able to succeed at something in front of a crowd of parents, teachers and classmates. I think we owe our successes to Mrs. Summers. She encouraged us to come out of our shells and try harder at what she knew we were good at and truly enjoyed learning about. She helped us to focus on our strengths, while at the same time understanding the hesitation and insecurities we had about ourselves and our confidence as shy middle school students. She didn't make a big deal out of our winning and embarass us in front of our classmates. She addressed us individually. Mrs. Summers was certainly a no-nonsense kind of teacher, but that didn't hide her heart and her sensitivity to student's emotional needs. She helped me and my sibblings to grow personally by encouraging us-but not forcing or singling us out-to go beyond our comfort level for learning. What I take away from Mrs. Summers as a teacher now is that even though you know a middle-grade student could excel at something and might enjoy it, there are sensitive emotions involved in putting yourself out there and showing confidence in your brain, body and self. A Geography Bee is an extreme example, I know. But some students, instead of you pulling them aside in front of their peers, might appreciate a note on their paper or a book slipped into their desk or homework folder instead. I am glad to note that I did see Mrs. Summers a week before I started my first term at St. Kate's. She gave me a hug when I told her I wanted to be a middle school social studies teacher.

What Mrs. Burdick taught me about teaching (even though she thought she was teaching me about writing)

Mrs. Burdick was my 10th grade English teacher. Before the start of the school year, rumors floated around that she sometimes cried during class when she got overwhelmed; this information added a certain tension to every English class, and before Christmas vacation, the rumor was confirmed. Mrs. Burdick did cry sometimes, in frustration, annoyance, and just plain tiredness, I think.
It may be surprising to hear, given that opening paragraph, that the lesson I take from Mrs. Burdick about teaching is not that teaching can be so difficult sometimes you just “lose it”; instead, Mrs. Burdick taught me that effective writing teachers give substantive feedback. They respect each student’s piece of writing so deeply that they’ll spend hours and hours outside of class reading and responding to the writing to make it better. I turned in at least three drafts of an 8-page paper about Huckleberry Finn and every draft came back to me with streams of comments. Mrs. Burdick taught me that when you take the work kids do seriously, they’re more likely to take themselves seriously and work very hard to get the learning right.