Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Free write (10/27/10)


I was sitting at a new restaurant/bar in Como, MS this past Monday with some friends of mine. The atmosphere was genial, the company pleasant; beers were drank and great conversation was had. Not everyone taught at the same school, so, naturally, differences between schools was a common theme for the night. Someone from my school brought up a topic that was very interesting to me. Interesting not only because of how egregious its existence is, but also because it’s something about which I had never really thought.
So we’re sitting there and the subject somehow shifts to in-school assemblies and one of us goes on a justified rant about it all. While I am sure that we both agree that these are great little rewards for our students, in the end we are a school under conservatorship for having very poor state test scores. Also, our school has one of the lowest graduation rates in a state with low graduation rates. When we are constantly reminded of this and constantly pressured to improve our teaching and even berated when we do not perform well, does that not lend evidence to the argument that missing a period and a half or more for an unnecessary student body meeting about whatever is somewhere in the realm of being ludicrous? These kids need to know that they should take their schoolwork seriously. What they don’t need is to all meet outside for the entirety of first period to have three or four students say exactly the same thing and intermittently sing hymns, especially when we have an intervention period that’s just perfect for such a thing. These kids need to be aware of breast cancer and be told that domestic abuse is a terrible thing. What they don’t need is to miss the last two periods of the day on a test day watching skits and being talked to by the police department. Just today they missed second period and half of third to watch some skits and listen to some raps about not doing drugs. Once again, the message was great, but the students at a school with our school’s reputation should not be missing vital class time to watch this stuff. These are activities that I believe should occur in your “normal, everyday” high school, but certainly not in a high school under conservatorship. If they must happen, then they should be fewer and farther in between because the things I’ve talked about have occurred in the past two weeks and I feel like I am probably forgetting something (oh yeah... homecoming... I don’t even want to get into that one).
Anyway, it’s not that I had never actually noticed these things. I can vividly remember asking a couple teachers if we would ever have a “normal” day again (whatever that means) after having assemblies, homecoming, and what not for a week and a half. However, hearing this teacher go off on the matter really made me think differently about it

Monday, October 18, 2010

Content Literacy for Today's Adolescents Chp. 4

 One part of chapter four that I wholeheartedly agreed with was the section labeled “Effective Assessment Involves Students”. Though I would consider myself more along the lines of traditional when it comes to assessing student work (i.e., as the book puts it, thinking of assessment as something that a teacher “does to a student”), I can’t stress enough how much students themselves hold the most stock in their own education. Even not-so-great teachers like I currently am can still present the information to the students adequately enough for them to be able to understand it... that is, if they even care to understand it.  To use an apt cliche´, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. 
     Now, the book calls the student-teacher relationship an “equal partnership” as far as assessment is concerned, which I completely disagree with. How could working to create creative and engaging lesson plans (with formal and informal assessments inserted of course) for a customarily boring subject to be presented to apathetic, ungrateful, disrespectful teenagers ever possibly be construed as equal in any sense of the word? If it were equal, then I’d feel safe in assuming we would be doing equal amounts of work. So let’s see... hmm... I work all day at school and they begrudgingly do some of their own work. I win this round, and by win, I mean I lose this round. Though, it hasn’t really gotten out of hand yet. After school, I come home to assess their work, call parents, and lesson plan, while they... what do they do? Some of them go home and do work and that’s great. Individually, maybe there are some students who have an equal partnership with me, but I consider the student body to be just that, one body; they are one entity with whom this partnership exists. That having been said, the vast majority go home, and don’t do, or study, or attempt to retain anything thereby making this an extremely unequal partnership.
     The book says that students have a number of ways in which to increase the potency of my assessments:
  1. “Recommend possible assessment activities”
  2. “Assist in the creation of rubrics and checklists”
  3. “Apply rubrics and checklists to their own work”
  4. “Participate in self-reflection and evaluation activities that encourage them to relate their performances to the strategies they have used”
To make an addendum, I’ll put a fifth parameter:
  1. Derrr, go home and do some frickin studying on your own and take this crap seriously
Honestly the only one of these that I would even consider at my school and especially at this point in my teaching capabilites is number one, other than that, this book is spitting out ideals at me that I just don’t care to hear right now.

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Subject Area Reflection Blog #1

For my reflection blog I decided to write about my experience with the 15-minute mini lesson. Unfortunately, fully replicating the classroom environment is nigh impossible... especially with only six people there including myself. Not that I’m complaining, though, because classroom management typically isn’t one of my strong suits. Even so, classroom management nestled in on the situation, with DH being the main antagonizer.  I used my silent checks system introduced to me by AW and believe I did a much better job of being consistent than I have in times past. Most received one or two checks, but DH worked her way up to 4, which prompted me to pull her aside during independent practice to let her know her situation and to give her a choice with her behavior; i.e., either straighten up or receive a referral.
     As far as the activity goes, I really appreciated this chance to try out one of DH’s creative teaching tools. Through it, I realized that I hadn’t planned my instruction enough so that it would be obviously clear to the students what to do. Consequently, it led to a lot of talking by me that was, in reality, completely avoidable with better preparation. It made me realize that there are just too many things I take for granted when it comes to what I expect students to already know.  It’s very frustrating, and I think that the frustration these situations create in me can very easily permeate itself to everyone else in the room, and make for a not-so-fun environment.  Other than that, once everyone got on the same page as me concerning how to do the activity, I feel it went well. It was definitely refreshing for me to use a new method of getting information across.
     Things to work on: 
  1. Continue working on and increasing my consistency
  2. Prepare more on the instructions part of the lesson