Observing in an ESL Room

What?

During my first day of observations, the teacher asked the students to work in groups. Their assignment was to define one word, write down a couple of synonyms, and provide a non-example of the word. Then to show better understanding of the material, they were asked to use what they defined in a short sentence. Mr. P allowed the students to choose their own groups, which resulted in a couple students working on their own. These students weren’t of particular interest to me until I realized one of them didn’t finish the work sheet in the allotted time.

So What?

In the end, the struggling student finished the assignment with my help while all the other students were presenting their answers. This student genuinely wanted to complete his work, but needed someone else’s input to do so. I was proud of him for eventually answering the last two questions under my supervision, but then quickly started to worry because I knew he missed all of the information his peers were presenting. It seemed like this student just kept falling behind. Maybe this student will catch up on his own, but we all know how hard it will be for the student to complete the readings without a clear knowledge of key words.

I also worry for the student because he is very quiet. Thinking back on that day, I walked near this particular student on my way to helping another pupil who called out for my help. When I passed the more quiet student’s desk, he kept looking around instead of focusing on his work. Unlike the louder student, the individual who I am now analyzing never yelled out for my help nor did he turn to any of his other classmates for assistance. During my other observations, I noticed that he didn’t interact with his peers much before class started either. I am almost positive that his shy demure kept him from openly displaying his confusion right away and I am certain his timid behavior made him incapable of inserting himself into a group when people were choosing their partners. However, since it was a group assignment, he should have been appointed a group for the sake of consistency.

I wonder if working in a group would have helped the solo student more. Doing work with your peers can allow students a chance to receive more individual attention than they could receive from a teacher. Plus, a student performing the work correctly is modeling their thoughts and actions on the subject to an extent, thereby showing other students good thinking strategies. However, working with others doesn’t guarantee more understanding as our discussion on cooperative group work showed. In a scenario where group work was solely used, the student could have just copied the group answers down without any understanding. With words on his paper, I wonder if I would have been able to notice this student’s confusion or if he would have fallen through the cracks that day?  

I want to make clear that Mr. P. did help that student. During the activity portion of the class Mr. P. guided him through the first two questions. On the one hand, making sure the student had the definition and synonym is important because that portion of the activity helps the student answer everything else. However, finding the synonyms and definition was also the easier part of the activity. All the students had to do was look everything up in a dictionary and read the example sentence in their textbook. It was actually a problem a few of the students had at the start of the activity. I feel like modeling how to do the activity or clarifying the first steps may have saved the students some confusion at the start so we could have gone around and challenged the students with the harder material.

Regardless, I appreciate the fact that Mr. P. reached out to this student while still respecting the needs of the whole class. Mr. P. probably realized he could have spent a much longer period of time with the student I later observed, but left the student to work on his own because other groups also needed Mr. P’s attention. It always frustrates me when a struggling student can’t have the full attention of a teacher, but I am coming to appreciate it is the job of the teacher to be there for everyone. Still, even though I understand why a teacher moves on from helping a student, I can’t stop wondering how the child would have finished the assignment without my extra guidance. Better yet, how badly would his ego have been damaged when he was told to present and only half the activity was done? So even though I understand what happened that day, I am still bothered by it.

Now What?                                                                                                                                                                        

I was already thinking about this as I was preparing for the lesson I taught last week. So, to help students with the more analytic work, I made sure to model the basic thinking process in the hope of avoiding simple redundant questions. I also ended up assigning students to groups this class. I did this out of the hope that working together give the student the extra support I wouldn’t be able to as I worked with other members of the class. Furthermore, I had in my notes that I needed to walk around visiting every group. With each group, I had the goal of paying closer attention to nonverbal language. I attempted to have it be more of a cooperative learning experience, so I assigned roles. One of which was a coordinator, who had the job of including everyone in the conversation. However, I used the model one of my previous teachers taught me (and that was apparently the wrong way to do cooperative learning), so it really doesn’t surprise me that this student didn’t come out of his shell. He really wasn’t forced to because the structure I implemented didn’t encourage it. I just made him to sit near people without taking into consideration personalities (I honestly just tried breaking apart the trouble makers). I am believe that because I actually understand different ways to implement a more cooperative atmosphere, I will be able to better help this child during a group activity if my next lesson calls for one. Also to encourage a community of learners, I will defer to Mr. P’s judgment about whom the shy student feels most comfortable working with so that I can allow the student to be part of a community during my next lesson. I figure doing something as simple as think-pair-share in a comfortable environment will allow him to have a voice in the next class. I realize this is a small step, but for a student who normally doesn’t speak, I think this is an important first step. If it is possible to fit into my next lesson, I might work on teaching students how to have more of a voice in a conversation as well. If it doesn’t fit in, then I know this is something I would do if I was there longer

In terms of my professional identity, I need to be careful with how I think about a struggling learner. Much of my language used earlier was closer to feeling sympathy for the student rather than empathy, i.e. when I said I worried about his ego and his shy behavior. I think calling this type of student a struggling learner will automatically connotate sympathy from me as it makes me think of someone who tries, but just can’t succeed and thereby harder to properly care for them. I am going to call the student I am thinking of now a persistent learner to elicit a more positive way of thinking. In using the term persistent, I am less likely to lower my expectations because I re-channeled my perspective of the situation so that the student will be able to succeed. To properly care for this type of student I am also going to have to make myself more available. In order to keep my expectations high, such a student does need extra help. This means I will offer to be at school 30 minutes before class and an hour after to give the persistent learner the care one actually needs.  

Lastly, I decided I will need to care for my other students a great deal more, especially when I have my own class. I will again make sure to visit as many students as possible during my next lesson when I assign them an activity. However, in the long term my only solution thus far is to check in with myself during the middle of the week to see who I have been overlooking. I remember Mr. Laplante mentioned how he overlooks the teachers in the middle so that is his focus this year. I am wondering if his strategies may be applicable to how I could deal with my own students. I think I am going to ask him this question the next time I see him. I also think I need to ask my cooperating teacher exactly what he does to balance the success of his class with the long term success of the struggling student. 

I feel a little more content about working with this particular student in the short term. Though until I get some more feedback about this topic, I am not as content about my long term success with balancing this type of learners’ needs with the rest of my students’ needs.

A Time to Retrogress

This week I decided to take a step back and comment on the book club reading we did a few weeks ago. It was of high interest to me, but I decided to focus most of my attention on the inquiry chapter that week. So in an effort to really digest the book club chapter here are my thoughts.

I actually don’t like that the chapter was entitled “Book Clubs.” I might be getting too nit picky here, but another term the authors used in place of book clubs was “reading circles” (201). I like this more generic term, because it made me realize you can apply this to many other types of text. For instance a shorter text like a times magazine article could still work. I am really happy the authors used a different word choice to help trigger the transferability of this structure. I always envisioned my classroom with some sort of current events learning center, but I never really knew how I would actively incorporate it into my classroom. Doing this center in terms of the literacy circle described makes sense to me because I can now carry out the discussion oriented aspect of my initial vision. For me the current events center was important for the students to read about, but also have a meaningful conversation because the information I would provide would typically be a policy or topic that could be debated, i.e. immigration, voting rights, war, environmental issues, etc. Although, this now leaves me wondering how I will engage the students with the more weekly happenings of the news. The two might become blended with the use of a researcher, which is my favorite role out of all the different assigned jobs students can have (208). I love it because this student has the ability to really engage more in depth with the news to see how history is alive.

I think using a book in class can be a great idea too though depending on the choice. It will take more time; however as long as I have the right book, I am fine with taking some time away from the traditional curriculum. One of the books I actually really want to go read right now, and potentially use, is Fail-Safe (203). It would fit into a unit on the Cold War quite well given the circumstances of the time. Though, what I like most about the book is that it has such a provocative ending that provides for great discussion as D&Z described. It definitely doesn’t sound like a dry text. I had a freshmen history teacher who gave us a list of books to choose from and they were all just a boring recreation of facts regarding the war of 1812. It was like another boring text book, which as we saw through D&Z’s prior chapters, doesn’t help encourage reading. Unsurprisingly to D&Z at least, I along with majority of the class, sparknoted the assignment. Although, what is stopping a student from doing this even with a book club? A quick solution is just making students reference the pages of the information they address in their notes (though I am sure there are still shortcuts there too). I think better solution relates to this experience for it shows just how careful I do need to be when picking a text in order to motivate students. This just reaffirms how I will need to read the books ahead of time myself with a critical eye to the content. Although, l sometimes wonder what it is students will actually like to read. So I am happy I came across good reads, it’s a website that reviews books. Some of the reviews are from high school aged individuals (my target audience)! So getting actually feedback from this age group will also help me in making my decision of what to include (see below link). I am also thinking I might have a suggestion box early on in the year. It is another way to get feedback on other possible motivating texts. Though I would make clear to students that they can’t pick a book they already read. Having the student write their name on the suggestion would help me coordinate to avoid that issue.

I also enjoyed how D&Z suggested the assessment be used so as to keep students motivated. As the authors were bemoaning the need to assesses, I had to laugh when they said let’s figure out how to do assessment “without wreaking them (the book clubs)” (211). At first, I thought they were exaggerating about how assessment could harm a student’s reading. Then thinking back on some of my experiences in English class, I realized they made a good point. I had a few teachers that made me read a book, but in order to see if I was doing the reading I would have random quizzes. Rather than read for what was interesting, I was forced to read for mundane knowledge level questions. Those classes always tended to bore me because we were being forced to regurgitate information rather than really think about the text. So using assessment like the checkbrick provided at the end of the chapter is so much better because it actually encourages discussion thereby acting as a sort of intrinsic motivation (214). This also made me realize that the goal of my lesson under the UBD structure will probably have to be vague. I say this because when I give the students control of the lesson to make connections and question on their own, there really isn’t much I should be specifying to them aside from my desire to have them think about a certain content critically. At least that is how I am interpreting it. At the same time, I am thinking students do need some guidance in order to relate the content to why the book was assigned or was important. By guidance, maybe I am thinking more along the lines of a proper structure or procedure like the variety of strategies D&Z provided in chapter 5. For instance, coding the text leaves everything to the student’s opinion, but it is based on codes previously taught (115). At some point though, I feel the reading should have some final activity that puts into focus why so much class time was spent on the book (an issue D&Z didn’t cover that deeply). So at this time, I wonder just what assessment to use to meet my more specific goal under the UBD method of planning without “ruining” the reading? 

                

I am sure the first time I ever run one of these, I will come away asking many more questions given the intricacy of this task. However, this chapter made me excited to use a technique that has such a great potential to motivate and incorporate current events.  

Side note: what is the difference between a reading learning center and a literacy circle? I realize the skills one works less on content, but how does this differ from the expository learning center?  None of my searches come up with a clear explanation (see link #2).  

Links

1.       http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/historical-fiction-for-teens

2.       https://www.teachervision.com/learning-center/new-teacher/48462.html?detoured=1

Parent Panel

Disposition is something we talked about in past classes, but it was an idea that came to life after the parent panel.  We had to be respectful and empathetic to an individual whose viewpoints tended to insult us. Many members of the class chose the safe route and just didn’t speak to her. Disengaging is a wise decision (especially when you don’t have to be a part of the conversation), but what should we do when we have to react to an unpleasant situation off the cuff? I say situation too because  one of the promising practice sessions I attended showed how it won’t always be the parents whose viewpoints conflict with ours (see the second to last paragraph of my promising practice letter for more information). It is a vexing problem that just keeps coming up.

  For now at least, I am going to tackle the parent part of the equation. After really thinking about the content of the panel most of what we heard boiled down to some sort of an emotion. You heard the mother warn us that there would be plenty of hostility on the parent’s part because it is the parent’s job to protect their child. Less obvious was her desire to form a relationship with her child’s teacher again to ensure the best for her offspring’s education. Even after the panel, the story Prof. H told us about the worst parent her husband dealt with was a conversation born out of frustration. Thinking of conversations in this light, reminded of the discussions I had as an intern with the victim services department at the AG’s office. The content of most discussions varied based on if it was an assault, molestation, theft, or rape. However, I started categorizing victims based on their verbal response (i.e. hostile, calm, depressed, scared, etc.). For each categorization, I then created a sheet that had the best strategy for dealing with each kind of emotion given the line of profession I was in and then memorized it. When panicked myself (yes, I do poorly when people start crying in front of me), I find that pausing and taking a deep breath was just the transition I needed to address whatever situation was thrown my way and remember my strategies. Given the success I had with this method during my internship, I am tempted to create another list when I start teaching. I might even be able to start now given that some strategies for emotions are transferable across the board (i.e. when dealing with hostility it is best to disengage and give the speaker space). Still, I wonder what kind of categories teachers have for parents and what strategies they use when speaking with them?

I know before last week, one of my labels was “the helpful parent.” The label helpful was pretty one dimensional. Under this categorization the parent was willing to work with me to further the education of their child. Yet, we saw during the panel that the desire to further a child’s education can take many forms. One mother wanted the best for her child at the expense of others. While this same individual held a lack of appreciation for differentiation despite the fact that she has children who learns in different manners. Rather than celebrate these differences she spoke of them in a horrible manner, which I am willing to bet is something her child picks up on. At the same time, this mother is the head of the parent’s committee at CF and clearly wants to be involved in her children’s education. She is technically helping, but at the same time I hesitate to say she is completely helpful. Misguided might be a way to describe it. I say misguided because it seems some of her logical flaws did come from a lack of knowledge on the subject. For instance, in the hallway she made clear it that she had an extreme dislike of the inquiry project we observed the student teacher utilized because not everyone is learning the same thing .She went on to say later that we weren’t really seeing much teaching happening either. Right away this made me think about the “transmission mode” of teaching Wilhelm (42). Here the teacher has control of the class, but under this method the students merely regurgitate information. Also, the students are all technically on the same page then, but very low level learning is occurring as Wilhelm later shows. Yet, this is the type of education most people are used to seeing. I didn’t grow up with it and neither did the prior generation. So I don’t think most parents can see how useful inquiry can be during a short observation because of just how foreign it is and how subtle the learning really is until you talk to the students. Just because someone isn’t writing in their journal right away doesn’t mean they aren’t on task. Pausing to think through what is occurring next or asking a classmate about their work is still of value. The first is collecting their ideas (which might be done slower than their neighbor, but hey they are still thinking!). While the second was able to have a debate about what should be included in the project as both had different opinions. To be fair, the section we observed got off to a slightly slower start then I would have liked, but I appreciated what the lesson allowed for whereas this parent was too annoyed with everyone being at different points to really entertain the potential of the lesson. If the parent were to come to me with these complaints, the parent is technically trying to help her child. However, the class can see this complaint isn’t entirely accurate.

Before RIC, I may not have seen the potential in the inquiry lesson either though. Just this semester we read about UBD, Vygotsky, Inquiry, Book Clubs, and so much more. So I think it is important I realize just how much more information I am in possession of for I will need to really take the time to explain this knowledge to most parents and why this knowledge impacts how I am running a lesson. I will want to use some of the theories by name in order for them to recognize I am an authority on the subject, but at the same time I don’t want to make them feel like their opinion isn’t of value. In the situation above, I painted helping as confining to my ideas on education, which isn’t entirely the case. I need the parent input too because parents know many aspects of their child better than I do (they did raise them after all). So we need to work as a team. Prof H. mentioned that being on an equal playing field could spark a more constructive conversation, i.e. like when she spoke to parents at the laundry mate. So now I am wondering, as the lines become blurred what defines a professional parent/teacher relationship?

On some level this analysis just made me worry about parents more than I was before. It seems like there are more ways in which a parent could parent a challenge than I originally thought. So even though I am now a bit more hesitant to allow a parent in my class when I first start teaching, I think the student teacher who early let my group observe with the parent was on to something. We can’t shut the parents out because of how valuable their help can be to a classroom. So we have to let them in and figure out from experience how to handle the situation (my time at the AG showed me just how invaluable learning from discussion really can be).   

              Since I still want to learn as much as I can about parents before entering the field and I found some links I want to share with everyone. The first gives a categorization of some parents, a scenario, and a strategy to work with the parent. The second is solely for principals working with difficult parents. Even though it is principles, I found a good deal of the information transferable. A poignant section was the one that said to deal with parents, you need to deal with yourself first. Hope you guys enjoy!

1. http://teaching.monster.com/benefits/articles/9762-how-teachers-can-work-with-5-difficult-types-of-parents?page=2

2. https://www.nassp.org/portals/0/content/46790.pdf

Promising Practice Letter

                                                                                                 November 5, 2014

Dear Mr. A,

Thank you for taking the time to present “Teaching While Brown: Learning Under the Influence” during this fall’s promising practice conference along with your uncle. Listening to you discuss the racial barriers that still exit in education and what can be done now to help solve the problem was inspiring. Furthermore, it fit in well with the conference’s theme of culturally responsive curricula in STEM. The cultural aspect of your presentation became evident during the mental activity you asked us to do. After having us reflect on characteristics of our favorite teacher, you pointed out that race, gender, ethnicity or any other superficial trait possessed by the teacher was not among the list. Here race wasn’t an issue. Instead it all came down to how the teacher made us feel. To further prove your point both you and your uncle gave examples of teachers who didn’t look like you, but still impacted your life. All of which led to the assertion that urban students shouldn’t have to wait for a teacher who looks like them to come along and give them a quality education. Especially since most people who look like them at the moment, don’t go into education.

 As a student at RIC learning about how to become a teacher, my professors have spent a good deal of time showing us the potential of every child. I went into the profession partly to change students' lives regardless of who they are.  However, I soon found that being raised in an all-white public school setting led me to develop some subtle stereotypical thoughts that would be detrimental to my teaching all students well. A really important step in shifting my thinking process has been my going to CF and other urban schools. Of even bigger help is having discussions on this topic regardless of how difficult it is for people to speak about. This has been a long process for me and I still have room to grow like many other educators.  Although, it seems some educators have further to go than I do given the severity of the “us vs. them” attitude you highlighted through your personal experiences on the subject. Given the aforementioned, I think the opening activity really stood out to me because it is a quick, useful, and poignant way of showing other colleges that students can learn from anyone despite outward appearances.  

The conversation that addressed STEM really connected with me too, which I found surprising. As a future history teacher, I don’t exactly have to worry about the content covered under the STEM subjects. However, you approached STEM from the angle of increasing tests scores by improving critical thinking. Such a skill is one that can transfer to any subject and is one that I find incredibly important for students to develop. What really struck me though was that the majority of the suggestions (i.e. storytelling, relevance, and authenticity) are all ideas I am learning in my classes at RIC. Due to the time constraint, you weren’t able to go into much depth on your solutions. I agree at a quick glance that the ideas to increase critical thinking would work given all the reading I have done in my classes on the subject. However, reading about an idea and hearing about it from someone currently in the field of secondary education are entirely different. So even though you couldn’t add much more to what I have learned thus far, your authority on the topic reinforced that what I am learning as a future teacher candidate is something I actually should be doing as an educator. 

Despite siding with your educational philosophies, I can’t get past the stories you told about people who hold a conflicting view. The one that I keep thinking about the most was a story in which one of your colleges said the way to increase test scores within the school was to give the teachers “more white students.” You then become offended and responded to the other teacher in a hostile manner. My first reaction was to be angry at the other teacher also, so I can understand why you lashed out at this teacher. However, I am wondering if you were able to have a more calm conversation with this teacher later on down the road about his poor attitude? If so, how? If not, do you wish you acted differently towards this teacher at any point during your relationship? I ask because I am curious to know how you go about opening and maintaining a dialogue with a teacher who is part of the current problem. I would like to do everything within my power to help eradicate the gap in education and I think an important step in doing so is having these difficult conversations.

I look forward to your response. Already the information discussed during the session made me more confident in my approach to teaching critical thinking and broaching sensitive issues with other professionals.                                                                        

 Sincerely,

             Kendra King   

Chapters 9&10: Book Clubs & Inquiry Units

This week’s reading on inquiry units and book clubs complimented each other well. As D&Z’s outline of each method show, both put the teacher in a more facilitator role, allow for choice, encourage critical thinking, and utilize small group work. Furthermore, and apparently incredibly important, is that both can be assessed! I says this portion was critical to the authors because they decided to spend about fourth of Chapter 9 discussing just how to develop assessment methods and then revisited the topic once again in Chapter 10 (210-215, 227-229). I was tempted to focus solely on assessment as it is the subject of our next class. However, I decided to start analyzing the concept of “big ideas” again precisely because we will do a fair job discussing assessment next class.

 “Big ideas” is a topic we covered through the UBD material so I though chapter 10 would be a reiteration of concepts I already understood, but I was wrong. During the UBD reading I kept thinking that the big idea was literally a large concept, which lead me to think of historical questions on the national level. The examples given in the essential questions section reinforced my thought process, especially when the author asked “’When should the United States go to war?’” (77). However, D&Z’s Chapter 10 really showed me how big ideas could actually be on a smaller scale. On page 225 right next to the chapter title “Inquiry Units: Exploring Big Ideas” is a chart entitled “Kinds of Inquiry Project.” Among the list is a suggestion for the students to explore “their family history.” As much as I like reading about national history most individuals (myself included) will never make an impact at this level. That is fine though, because people can still make a difference in their town, state, neighborhood, school, family, etc. Yet when I think of a typical social studies class, lessons and projects encouraging individual engagement in the community (also known as civics) is typically missing. Just think of our observations of CF, there are no civics electives. While I realize history isn’t quite high on the priority list in the education world, especially since RI only requires students take 2 years of the subject, I wondered why schools don’t try to make the most of engagement during the short time history classes are mandated.  

A Google search lead me to a civics fact sheet (see below) which indicates that most states have civic standards embedded somewhere within other subjects that are often not included on state assessments. Rhode Island turns out to fall among most states, yet it looks like our standards are more clearly outlined (see below standards). Apparently, between 2008 and 2011 a civic specialist wrote a whole section of civic standards. Many of them specifically mention local level history too!  However, I put my excitement on hold because something doesn’t add up. So why create something so detailed and time consuming, but then never actually require it? According to one article, it is because of budgeting issues. The Department of Ed fired the specialist, which we all know occurred as this was the transition to the common core and other assessments (See below story by FairVote.org).

While I am jealous that assessment enables the STEM subjects to promote curriculum change, at least the standards I want are written into the Rhode Island education system (and not judged by a group of bureaucrats who know little about teaching!). As D&Z stressed, you must always justify your lesson based on the standards you cover, which will be simple now that I realize the depth of the civic standards in RI. Of even more help is the “back-mapping” strategy discussed (227). Here you are going backwards in your lesson to see what standards are incorporated into the lesson. It is like UBD in a sense because you doing something backward, but with UBD you are designing the lesson instead of undoing it. So looking at standards using this strategy does give me a leg to stand on to an extent. However, since I did make the jump to a change in curriculum rather than a change in instruction methods its seems standards and assessable lessons aren’t always the paramount issue in regards to creating engaging lessons like the past two chapters describes. The fact that civics isn’t its own class is case and point. Other factors like time, money, and administration, and the STEM craze probably heavily influence the fate of the history curriculum. Yet, given the problems that accountability creates for people who use inquiry lessons, would a national test on civics really help a civic class centered around inquiry? Probably not. So now I am wondering, what local schools actually have this more engaging philosophy of teaching and which don’t?  Better yet, are the schools without civic classes open to a change in curriculum and teaching instruction eventually?

Links

1. http://www.ride.ri.gov/Portals/0/Uploads/Documents/Instruction-and-Assessment-World-Class-         Standards/Social-Studies/RI_SS_GSEs_gss-HS_9-12.pdf

2. http://www.civicmissionofschools.org/the-campaign/civic-learning-fact-sheet

3.  http://www.fairvote.org/news/notwithstanding-budget-crisis-r-i-mustn-t-cut-civics-position-2/

*These are in the order I mention them above.