I started the first couple days of the school year, as well as orientation, and I want to write about that, as part of a teaching blog….I promise I will come back and do that soon.
However, I wanted to put an announcement here in case anyone didn’t hear. I wanted to introduce Ethan Daniel List, born 9.12.06 at 4:58 pm. He was 7 lbs. 13 oz and 21 inches long!
Well, the interview process is over! I learned that I’m not very good at interviewing. I knew that, but had it reaffirmed several times. I had a bunch of interviews, but didn’t get job offers from most of them:
Wayne Central: Decided after interviewing me that they were looking for someone with different certifications
Brighton, Fairport, West Irondequoit: Didn’t get the job
East Irondequoit: Never got back to me
Victor: They are still supposed to get back to me, according to their original timeline, but I’m not that interested in the position (alternative ed, in a brand new program) (although I wouldn’t necessarily turn it down).
(and yes, Fairport interview process was very hard, and was my worst interview)
On a good note, its working out anyway. I got a job with the City, teaching at Edison, in Jo Ann Morreale’s position because she’s retiring this year. I must have made a good impression, because she really pushed with the principal to hire me, and he came in and observed me and talked to me and was really interested too. Over the last couple weeks I have been meeting with HR and Michael Chan and so on. I got a call last week about 9:30 at night that they had just gotten permission to hire me, and I went and signed my contract today!
I’m really excited because I really liked it when I was there, and I think its a good match for me. I’ll be teaching Earth Science and one section of AP Environmental Science, which is also a big plus. It also makes me feel better about my apparently poor interview skills, because I got this job based on people actually seeing me interact with kids and doing the job, and getting to know me. I’d rather get hired for that than for selling myself in the interview, which I’m not good at.
This just seems like one of those things that’s supposed to work out. As most of you know, I’m pregnant and due in mid-September. Part of the deal with hiring me is that Jo Ann is going to cover my maternity leave and help me transition in and her transition out. I will be in her room, so we can spend some time looking at what’s there and getting some great resources and supplies. I am really excited. I just hope I am up to the task of filling her shoes!
Well, our final post for class this semester is supposed to be on me as a science teacher…where I came from, where I am now, and where I would like to go.
Don’t worry if mine looks really long, I am taking large parts of it from my portfolio personal statement…
In my own past, I was a successful student in school, and always enjoyed school, but I never thought I wanted to be a teacher. I received a B.S. Degree in Environmental Science, with minors in Studio Art and Geoscience from William Smith College in November, 1999. I worked for approximately three years as an environmental consultant, where I had the chance to see the knowledge I had gained in my undergraduate education applied in the real-world. During my environmental consulting career I attended the University at Buffalo and pursued a Master’s degree in Geoscience. I obtained this degree in December, 2003. As part of this degree I did extensive fieldwork, original hydrogeologic research, and acted as a teaching assistant.
When I completed my degree, I did not readily find a geology position, and began substitute teaching, tutoring, and obtained a position as an adjunct instructor at St. John Fisher College. All of these experiences came together to convince me that I wanted to teach. I truly loved those experiences, and could envision myself teaching, and being passionate about teaching, for many years into the future. This decision led me to my present position, completing certification and my master’s degree in education. During the time that I have been pursuing my certification and degree, I have become more convinced that I made the right decision, and have become more able to articulate the kind of teacher I want to be, and what I believe is required to be a good teacher.
A teacher should be a teacher for all students, and believe in the right of all students to be educated and to learn. While the content and instructional strategies used for individual students may different, all students can learn, and should have access to the maximum extent possible, with the necessary supports. Education is not something to be granted only to those who fit into a mold of ’student,’ or only those to whom school comes easily. School is a place to learn content, but also to learn to be a productive member of society and to prepare for life in the real-world, outside of school. As such, a teacher has an obligation to help all students learn, both content knowledge and life skills, and to assist all students in reaching their potential.
Secondly, to be able to reach all students, a teacher must be willing and have a desire to get to know, respect, meet the needs of all students. Within the classroom, all students should have voices and their learning should be scaffolded in diverse ways and paces to reach desired outcomes (Gee, 2003; Rogoff, 2003). While students may start in different places, and may not all reach the same outcomes, but, for the the partnership between the student and teacher to be successful, the teacher must be a leader and a model and must have a genuine interest in getting to know the students, understanding their backgrounds and needs, and finding ways to meet those needs. Meeting those needs may be through accommodations and differentiation, such as presenting instruction and accepting proof of knowledge in different formats, or it may be through supplying additional scaffolding and other types of scaffolding to help students reach the desired outcome. This is not a burden to the teacher, but an obligation of the teacher that stems from respecting and knowing the students and viewing them as part of the classroom community (Rogoff, 1996; Villa, 2003).
To be best able to provide this differentiation and scaffolding, and to help students learn key concepts in the subject area, a teacher must have a very strong foundation of content knowledge from which to draw (McDiarmic et al., 1989). A teacher who has this knowledge is better able to draw out main ideas of the content, and essential questions, able to make the content relevant to students, and facilitate students in the process of making connections between the course content and their lives and between different areas of the course. Someone who has more experience and knowledge with the content can be more creative in terms of lesson planning and use a greater variety of instructional strategies to motivate students and help students construct their own understandings.
Additionally, for science in particular, there are other aspects of science that are important besides what is strictly written in a textbook. These additional aspect of science can be broadly defined as the ‘nature of science’ and an understanding of how scientists think and work. These cannot be satisfactorily taught to students from a textbook alone, or by a teacher who does not have a good understanding and first-hand knowledge of the underlying nature of science and of inqury. A teacher must have these experiences and knowledge to be able to give students opportunities to act as scientists and to learn about the nature of science (Clough, 2000; Lederman, 1992; Lederman, 1999).
Many of these opportunities to participate in science, in addition to helping students learn the content, help them to be engaged and motivated both toward the content and toward the course. A successful teacher must have a repertoire of instructional strategies and methods with which to engage students, and to help them act as active participants who are engaging with both the content and the classroom culture. Students learn through their own experiences, senses, and interactions with the material (Bybee, 2000; Kluger-Bell, 2000; Chiapetta, 1994). For optimum learning to occur, they must be active participants in the classroom. It is the teacher’s responsibility to design experiences for them where they are actively engaged and offered a variety of choices. These allow them to experience construct meaning and also assist with motivation.
Lastly, a teacher is a professional and a role model for students. As such, a teacher has a responsibility to act as a professional and as a positive example for students. Acting as a professional includes intangible things such as: treatment of other students and colleagues, and attitude and mannerisms in the classroom. It also includes being organized, well-planned, and prepared each and every day, and for units as a whole (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005;Lederman & Niess, 2000) Finally, being a professional stretches outside of the classroom to the school community and the community of other teachers or science teachers. Lastly, acting professional means being involved in the school community, in terms of being visible and collaborating with other teachers for the benefit of students (Friend & Cook, 2002). A professional teacher should always seek improvement, stay informed of best practices and regulatory changes, and interact with colleagues for the betterment of his or her teaching.
As a result of my experiences, which have been extensive for a beginning teacher, I have made good progress toward these goals, but of course, as a beginning teacher, I will continue to learn and develop in these areas. In my long-term substitute position at Hope Hall, I had the chance to test my abilities, particularly in the areas of engaging students, meeting the needs of a diverse student population, and educating all students. I was successful at meeting the diverse needs of my students, and at getting to know and respecting students. I was particularly touched, on my last day, when Sister Diana focused on how professional I had always been, and how I really understood the kids and what they needed at that school. She said after my first day she did not see me acting like a rookie teacher, much less a student teacher. That was a huge compliment to me, and really boosted my confidence. Despite that high praise, there are still things several areas that I would like to continue to work on.
I would like to continue to build my collection of activities for students to be actively involved and integrating more inquiry and nature of science into my classroom. I would also like to continue to improve in the area of differentiating instruction and assessments. I would also like to focus, when I have my own classroom, to a better management system and establishing classroom culture and expectations from the beginning of the year in a clearer, more ocnsistent way and teaching behaviors (such as groupwork, lab work).
I worked during those three months at Hope Hall on building many of these other aspects of culture into the classroom. This was difficult through most of my experiences because I was only in the classroom for a short period of time, and did not get the opportunity to establish expectations and classroom structure/culture in the beginning of the year. I have made good progress as a beginning teacher and plan to continue to keep these goals in mind as I progress through my teaching career. In the future, I would like to continue to work toward these goals through continued professional development, reflections, and explicit thought on these topics.
When reading sections of “The Quality School” by William Glasser, several things stuck out to me. Probably the most striking is that after reading this, I think we have learned more classroom management than I may have realized before. A lot of what we have discussed has been theoretical, but still gave us a grounding for a lot of discussions about management. This book did a good job linking the theory that we have been learning, and the ideas of school reform and how a school should be run specifically to management. There was a lot of discussion that draws parallels between students in a school and workers in a business. He discusses the idea of teaching students to be responsible and to buy into the system, rather than to simply be asked to comply. He emphasizes building relationships with students and limiting or abolishing the use of rewards and punishments. He argues for a more humane vision of classroom management and of a school, where students are encouraged and more intrinsically motivated to produce quality work.
Much of this I thought was familiar to me, based on past coursework. It was helpful to think of management in terms of the theory and background we have been discussing. However, it still did not answer a lot of practical questions for me, or give me advice on how to approach them.
When I think of classroom management I think of two different things. (1) a particular student who is ‘acting out’ or ‘causing trouble.’ I am pretty comfortable dealing with these situations, both from readings, and mostly from past experience at BOCES. The other side of classroom management is MUCH harder to me. (2) This is not one particular student, but a general classroom environment where either a lot of people are involved, there is just too much noise and goofing around, or where there are a series of smaller things, rather than one bigger incident. I don’t think I am as good as I could be at handling this type of classroom management, and I have seen very few resources or specifics.
However, as I am typing this, I typed classroom management into amazon.com and got tons of books listed. I think we are still right to have the theory and foundation behind us, and then I can look into some ‘tip’ books….
I was interested to read about cooperative learning because it something that I’ve been giving a lot of thought to lately. I have been putting kids in groups frequently, but I’ve been really struggling with balancing the benefits of that for them, the benefits to me (its easier to manage, they want to be in groups, and I can help 6 groups better than individual kids). I have also been trying to sort out how to assess them, and how to balance the fact that they learn from each other, but the fact that I still need to get a good handle on what they know individually. Another topic that I have been wondering about with cooperative learning is whether its better to pair kids randomly, and expect them to work with a variety of students at different time, or whether its better to have carefully selected heterogenous groupings that are consistent for a long period of time and create some type of built in support for the students.
The readings addressed some of these, but definitely left a lot unanswered. The reading did pretty effectively present some ideas for how to have cooperative grouping and still assess students individually. They still determined any success or failure based on the same types of assessments, however. Also, this author assumed (as many readings do) that its optimal to have heterogenous groupings. I think there are benefits to this, but I also think its important to set the expectation that students sometimes be randomly grouped, and be expected to be able to work with anyone else in the class. I have not seen research to support this, and I’d be curious.
Finally, the ideas presented in this reading did not seem particularly creative or revolutionary. They were very concrete on some aspects, but i would like to seem more concrete suggestions and specifics on how to teach these behaviors, and how to use cooperative learning a little more innovatively.
After being this far into my placement, I finally feel like I’m making progress….there are things that I know I want to do in my own classroom that I know won’t happen here, but I’m starting to know what some of them are. For example - I know that I want to work harder to calling on all students, and developing procedures for them to get them used to working a little more independently, or using some strategies to get help before yelling for me to help them. Also, I am getting more comfortable with the concept of community in the classroom, and what I can do toward that goal.
The Earth Science is going pretty well, probably the best of the three. The next unit is that atmosphere and weather, which is not my best area, but I feel like I have some ideas how to approach it, and the backwards design idea is helping, even if I don’t do it completely. Physical science has been working on density this week. It is going very slowly, but going well. We looked at Coke and Diet Coke, determined which floated and sunk, and then figured out the density of each. We also figured out the density of a Kit-Kat bar and then broke it in half and figured out the density of both pieces. That did not work quite as well because they did not measure very carefully. Its still good practice for them though. They remember the formula much better, and are getting practice measuring, doing density, collecting data, etc all at once rather than doing “a unit on measuring” - how much more boring can you get?! That was a good connection from mass v. weight (or at least the mass part) to density. I think on Tuesday we’ll finish up talking about density and going over the main points of the lab. I may make up some questions for them to help wrap up and discuss some of the problems (measuring, wrapping on the candy bar changing the mass, etc). Then we are going to do the can cars that Dick helped me make. I think we can tie that into F=ma and finish up that unit on Force and Motion and Newton’s Laws before we start our Simple Machines unit. Then I’ll be just about done. I definitely like having a longer range plan…..but I’m making progress….
Sister Diana came in and observed my class this week. Overall it went really well, and she was impressed with a lot of things I did. A couple negatives - the kids were angels during the observation and then the next period that I saw them, which was later that day becuase of labs, they were back to a lot of talking and being really unfocused and not raising their hands, etc. That is more proof to me that I need to work on my classroom management, but I’m not 100% sure how to do that. I have some ideas, but I could use some advice. I am pretty used to, and more comfortable dealing with one or two kids who are doing something in particular. I have a much harder time when its just general background noise and classsroom atmosphere that’s not as good as it should be. That’s different to me, and much harder.
The other two things she came up with for me to improve she said are minor, but are things that I’ve thought about before, but haven’t resolved….
1) She would like me to make sure to call on and find ways to invovle kids that never raise their hands. I agree with this, but haven’t found how to do it. There are some students who I have a very hard time getting to participate in any way, and I am unsure how much to push them, partly because I don’t know why they aren’t participating.
2) The second thing that she wanted me to work on is the fact that sometimes (and during my observation) when kids are working independently they (obviously) finish at very different times. There is down time when the first kids finished don’t have enough to do. I don’t like that, but I haven’t come to a resolution. If I give them the next thing to do, they will just be even further ahead. If I give them something else to do, what does that look like, and what do I do with it (is it graded? extra credit? homework for other kids? not graded??) What is fair? And what if they need help with the second thing when I’m still helping kids with the first thing?
As I was thinking about ideas for acceptable evidence of students meeting objectives, as Brian suggested, I decided to post up here what we have so far so we can all see it:
Unit: Simple Machines
Essential Question: What would your life be like without simple machines?
Foundation Questions:
What is work?
What is energy?
Where in your life do you use simple machines?
What is a simple machine?
Since we also had some debate over content, I’m including this link:
Objectives we identified:
identify simple machines by type in their lives
create their own simple machine
use a simple machine to solve a problem
identify the role simple machines play in their lives
qualitatively state the relationship between work, force, and distance
Acceptable evidence (just my brainstorming)….
students identify simple machines around the school
bring in pictures of simple machines and correctly identify the type of machine
individually or in groups (?) design and build a simple machine to solve a designated problem, and identify the simple machines they are using.
in their simple machine, students will explain how their force, work, and distance is changed
students could write a story, or verbally tell a story explaining how a certain aspect of their life would be affected by not having simple machines…
Please comment 
Well, I had a big week this week….a lot to write about but I’m going to try to be a little more organized and not just ramble like I usually do. Brian came and did my observation on Thursday, and Dick came and observed and spent the day with me and helped out with some things on Tuesday. Both of those actually made me feel a lot better. Dick and Brian both emphasized that the schedule is hard, and the job is hard, especially with the number of preps, the schedule, and coming in mid-year. That made me feel a lot better because I think things are going ok, but I’m not thrilled with how they are going. I am learning a lot for the future though.
The kids spent most of Wednesday asking when Mr. Gatto was coming back, and why he wasn’t here again, because he was fun. :)…glad they liked him. He helped me, primarily, to start a big project with the physical science classes. We then spent the rest of the week working through it, and they did really well with it. We have been learning about forces and motion, and were just finished speed and acceleration, and were moving into forces. We started off by launching small marshmallows, measuring their distance and time, and then calculating speed. We also graphed the speeds. Then we moved into launching large marshmallows, and they did the same calculations and graphing for homework (independently). Yesterday, we did some questions for wrap up. We talked about (and wrote) conclusions (the effect of the weight on the speed), drew the force on the spoon, talked about what force made the marshmallow come back down, what force stopped it when it was rolling on the floor. I also gave them some made up data and had them calculate speeds and then answer some questions about the data (which could be large and small marshmallows, and how did they know).
They did great with it. They were excited to come to class, knew how to do the calculations much better, and also got practice measuring. I was surprised how well they did with the questions yesterday. I am really excited about how well they did. However — now what? I was very impressed how much better they behaved, and how much they learned. Next they are supposed to be working on newton’s laws, starting with friction and inertia (newton’s first law). We’ll see how that goes. I think this activity is something we could connect back to for that. I would like to do more projects like that, but they are going to have to be spaced out because I just don’t have the time and organization to get supplies, plan projects like that, and get them all set up and working all the time. I am convinced that they are much better though!
Brian and I also talked a lot about explicitly teaching them procedures in the classroom, such as signals to better get their attention, and procedures for what to do if they are stuck or don’t know what to do (check their notes, try again, ask a friend, etc before they panic and ask me). They are not very independent, but maybe they can be taught these procedures. They made a lot of progress over a few days with their behavior launching marshmallows. I think most of the labs they have done before have been very very very structured, and one of her posted lab rules is ‘do not go ahead.’ I don’t agree with that, but I need new rules to replace….
Anyway, making progress…
Well, last night I was just too exhausted to blog about this week, and I’ve been thinking about what to write about.
I’m much happier with how things are going than I have been. I’ve started doing a lot more hands-on and active learning kinds of things and I am really happy with how its going. Its more planning, and more work for me, but its well worth it because class goes so much better and I actually like they are learning stuff and getting it much better. I can’t do all of the classes at the
same time very well…I’ve put the most into Earth Science probably, and then bio. For me, there is the most available online for those because they are Regents classes. I know other people think that the Regents in restrictive, and I can definitely see where it is, but also it gives a good outline of curriculum and what to cover, how much detail to go into etc.
Some areas that I’m thinking about a lot, and struggling with:
I have been particularly thinking about assessment, especially since we talked about it in class so much on Tuesday. I don’t think I do a very good job with assessment, especially other types of assessment, which would be so critical especially for these students who test so poorly. However, I have a lot of trouble with three aspects of other types of assessment.
We talked a lot in class today about different types of assessment and what assessment looks like. It was a good reminder to me, because its one thing to read and think about assessment, but that was very different than what I usually see, or do, in the classroom. I think I do some formative assessment, informally, because I do a lot of things where I will teach some, and then they will have a chance to work, and I will walk around and talk to them about how they are doing, but….I think I don’t use that as well as I could. Its not graded, so it doesn’t get reflected in their overall grade - that is still based on largely summative assessments, which are not completely but predominantly tests. Also, I don’t think I do enough to modify instruction based on the formative assessment, or to have them be involved and buy into the assessment. Why not?….mostly because of time. If I ask them to try something, and they are all getting it, then I move on, if not then I re-teach it, and/or go over it together on the board. But then I don’t do enough to make sure they they got it after that. I would like to formalize that process somehow, maybe so it becomes part of their participation grade, or a percentage of their test grade - maybe through a checklist? It seems as if their participation grade now is very arbitrary. It is part participation (which is also personality), part formative assessment, and part behavior. I don’t know if that is what it is designed to be, but it is not clear, and would be hard to pin down.
Also, they are very unprepared to help design the assessment or to know what would be exemplary, and how to know if they understand something. That is a critical skill that I think I should spend time teaching them, but it would be very time consuming and I’m not sure how to integrate that with, or do it instead of, the content. It seems like I’m taking time away from content. It may actually be more important, but its still hard to balance.
One thing I have not done nearly enough of is other types of assessment. I completely agree with assessment having multiple access points, and multiple types of assessment, but, again, there are two main constraints on why I think I’m not doing that. First of all, time. Designing other types of assessment is very worthwhile but also very time consuming. The other constraint is the balance with NYS standardized testing. Because the students have such trouble with deciphering Regents questions, and working through what is being asked, I feel like it is very important to spend a lot of time on these questions, strategies, modeling the processes invovled, and practicing the questions.
Lastly, one thing we talked about in terms of assessment that I have been thinking about a lot in my own planning, and in working from the curriculum/plans that were left for me is the idea of really working backwards, and starting with what I want the students to know, and what are the most important, overriding key concepts and working backwards. This is something I want to work on more…identifying what they need to know first, then the assessment, and then how to get there. It makes much more sense to me than going through the chapter and then expecting them to be prepared at the end - which they aren’t.
