Posts (page 2)

Or is it about to set?

This summer has gone by so fast.  As I sit here and think about how nervous I was in May about this whole adventure, I'm proud of myself for how far I've come.  However, I'm not any less nervous.  One week from today I will report to Chastain Middle School as a first year teacher, and its on.  No more MTC summer school.  No more daily evaluations and feedback.  No more role-plays.  It'll be real.

I feel like I'm pretty well prepared for whats ahead.  My biggest concern is managing a larger, worse behaved class than I had this summer.  I know that'll be a challenge and a source of great frustration for me.  I'm pretty comfortable with the content and lessons, as I'll be teaching the same thing I taught this summer, so I have a little bit of a head start.  I'm really excited to move down to Jackson.  I feel like there is a really good group of first and second years down there and we'll be living really close together.  More than anybody else, we in Jackson still have an MTC support group that is available in minutes.  I'm also looking forward to moving to a little bit larger city (although I really like Oxford) and my house.  This will be my first real living on my own experience, and I'm excited about it.  I really like the house, too.

So, with my focus on my excitement, today I pack up and move to Jackson.  This week will be hectic getting the house set up and trying to knock out some lesson planning and going to the district office and my school and maybe even having a little fun.  I'm nervous now, but I think once I get down there its going to get really intense come the first of August.  I've asked a lot of questions about the worst case scenarios, so I have a sense of dread about them coming, but I think I can make it through now that I know what to look for and have support just down the street or at my school to vent to and get advice from.  Despite all of that, I still think that this is going to be a great, amazing experience and I'm going to learn a LOT.

They say it gets worse before it gets better.  I'll be ok.  The night is darkest before the dawn.  I've got flashlights.

Our training this summer started with a few days of orientation (mostly intros and paperwork).  That was the easy part.  It quickly progressed to grad school education classes and actual teaching.  June consisted of teaching summer school from 8am to 1pm, then taking class from 3pm to 5pm, followed by lesson planning pretty much all night.  July was a little better.  More teaching, but less class.  Instead of class after summer school, we had classroom management role playing workshops to prepare us for classroom chaos, verbal confrontations, physical confrontations, and other special situations.

The most beneficial aspects of the summer were the time spent with second and third year teachers.  During time just hanging out, I asked a lot of questions about what things would be like, what's good, what's bad, what to expect, etc.  I think I learned the most when I asked questions about negative things, like, "When did you want to quit?" or "Why did you want to quit?" or things like whats the worst part of the job.  I feel like if I know the ugliest parts of the job, I'll be able to recognize them when they happen and know that they've happened to others, and that, like others, I'll get through them.  The second and third years are a great asset and being around them so much was very helpful all around, from time relaxing to evaluations and role playing.

The thing that I think could improve the summer training for future first years is to allow them to observe more teachers during summer school.  As it stands now, we could only see the teachers in our classroom (or, more accurately, HAD to watch the teachers in our classroom) unless we wanted to sacrifice a planning period.  Early on, planning periods are absolutely critical for our time management.  Besides just needing a break for mental health, I know that I needed the planning period to PLAN.  Lesson planning took me so incredibly long for the first few weeks and I did not want to sacrifice this time.  However, I would have really enjoyed and benefited from being able to leave my classroom while not teaching or planning to observe my fellow first years and the second year teachers.  Especially when I'm searching for an appropriate teaching style to adopt, I feel it would be incredibly beneficial to expose myself to a myriad of styles.  Being chained to my classroom made my development as a teacher progress more slowly than it otherwise would have.  It also exposed me to fewer types of students.  My class was five well-behaved kids.  Realistically, I have zero classroom management experience.  Considering this is widely considered the most important part of teaching here (or at least the most difficult thing for MTCers to excel in), it would have been very helpful to observe in classes that were larger and had more problems and student misbehavior.  If nothing else changes, I hope that MTC's policy on peer observation is changed for the future.

Do you want the good news or the bad news?

The good news:

I think my overall comfort, classroom management (of which there is little because of the makeup of my class), and teaching (by this I mean explanations, questioning, and generally getting information from my head to the heads of my students) is improving and pretty good overall.  My lesson was effective and the I interacted well with the students, using a lot of informal assessment via questioning and observation as they worked on their own.  Related to this, I've also improved on my communication, that is to say I talk a little slower and I break things down more effectively with better examples than I did before.

The bad news:

My lesson planning still needs some work.  I'm still struggling with breaking things down all the way.  I just said I've improved in this, but I still have a ways to go.  In this lesson I can see that my students stayed with me in the beginning, but I began to lose them near the end of the block when I was transitioning to explaining a more difficult concept.  Because of this, I lost them and I don't think they mastered my second objective as fully as I would like.  I need to continue to break things down and plan more time for independent practice, especially for more difficult topics.  I think that if I bite off a little less in each lesson this will be easier.  The transition from 50 minutes periods to 100 minute blocks has hurt my ability to do this some, but has also exposed me to how long 100 minutes is and how much I can fit in.  I'll get there.  I think I'll like working with a block schedule in JPS.

The bottom line:

Compared to my first videotaped lesson, I think I have improved, if subtly.  I still need to work on the same things as I did in that lesson, namely the speed at which I talk and time management, but its getting better.  I also think that my lessons are still and continue to be effective in that the students are engaged for the most part and meet the objectives.  We'll see if this stays true once I have to spend more energy managing the classroom.  I just hope that doesn't cause me to sacrifice too much from my lesson.

Wow, shameless and lame.  He doesn't even say that, that I know of.  But if he did, that would make it even funnier.. or maybe funny at all.  I'm sorry, Jeremy.

I've really enjoyed having Jeremy as my TEAM teacher.  He is very approachable and I never felt uncomfortable around him.  I also think he's pretty funny and has a great outlook, which helps me to put his comments and suggestions in context.  He has a very laid back attitude and style, which I think cuts back on being able to easily identify things that he's taught.  However, I have picked up some valuable lessons from him.

First, break it down.  Jeremy gave us some lesson planning tips at the end of June, which all involved simplifying information and hammering into the kids' heads.  Coming from the college lecture background of "look at these powerpoints and listen to me read them or maybe even rehash them in my own words while you furiously write notes, sleep, talk online, or maybe glance at the copies of slides you have in front of you if you were lucky enough to get a copy from me even though you don't really have to pay attention because the notes are all online" teaching, I have struggled somewhat with really simplifying information to the basics to maximize retention.  Jeremy's tips have helped me improve in this area.

The second thing I've learned from Mr. Fiel is to find what works for me.  In the role plays and his general advice about classroom management, he often will point out how what he does in practice differs from what many of the other teachers do.  He is conscientious about warning us of this, but he also talks about how what he does is effective for him.  The lesson I've taken from this is that even though his methods may not be "by the book," he still is able to accomplish what he wants to accomplish.  His recommendation to start out doing the things we're taught and diverge as necessary is probably how I'll try to survive this year.

Related to the above, Mr. Fiel has taught me so adjust to my administration and school temperament.  In pointing out how his style differs from others, he also points out how his administration differs from that of others.  He and Ashley Johnson have very different teaching styles, but both are effective.  Their schools have different temperaments and administrations, and they would probably not be able to swap strategies and survive.  This year I'll need to come in with a plan for management and instruction, but also be prepared to adjust to the policies and temperament of the school.  I may have to take more crap than I'd like just to keep control, or I may be fortunate in being able to discipline more sternly and frequently.  Either way, I'll need to adjust.

See, Jeremy?  You did teach me some stuff.  Thanks.

I still feel that there I have a great deal of improving to do before I can say there is only one thing left to improve on.  I know that this blog is about the single thing I most need to improve on, but I feel like its nearly the same questions.  Singling one aspect of my teaching out as the worst is difficult.  So many choices.  I'll pass on things like varying my questioning techniques and classroom management (I haven't really had much practice in this, so it very well could be awful...) and talk about lesson planning.

I have noticed that I have become increasingly efficient in my lesson planning, and am able to write better less in far less time than was required a month ago.  However, I still think that it takes me quite a bit of time and would like to reduce this as much as possible, without sacrificing the quality of the lesson.  The quality of the lesson, is the other issue I would like to improve on.  This, too, is better than a month ago.  However, there is certainly room for improvement.  I need to differentiate my modes of instruction more and find ways to students to teach themselves while I watch.  I'm still stuck in the "college lecture" format of teaching, which is terrible, especially when you're not teaching college.  Eighth graders can take about 10 minutes of lecture before coma.  I've also fallen into a rut of showing video clips in almost every lesson.  While I think that using media is generally good, I need to mix it up more and include different forms of media.  Beyond the fact that I think variety is better than the same thing day after day, I  don't even know what kinds of resources I'll have at Chastain, so I can't rely on having a projector.

I stumbled upon this clip on youtube and found it kind of interesting.  It doesn't quite relate directly to the students we'll be teaching, but it is a reflection of the system most of us are products of.  Kind of a "The World as a Village" of college students.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the lesson on the life cycle of stars that I videotaped.  I think that the students understand the sequence of events and the scale on which it occurs.  I don't really know what else to say about the overall effectiveness of the lesson... Oh, they were pretty engaged in an activity where I had them make a kind of time line for the life cycle of the sun and then make an analogous time line for the life cycle of humans.  They were working on this before lunch and when I told them to line up for lunch, all four of the kids stayed in their seats and kept working.  I had to repeat myself for them to stop working and stand up.  Perhaps I'm wrong, but I'm taking that as a good sign of interest.

I feel really uncomfortable with the rubric and assessing myself based on its parameters.  That's a huge problem I have with the way things are at Holly Springs.  I really have no bearing on where I stand compared to other people and where I should be.  That's not completely true, as I have been assessed, but I'd like to see other people teach (besides just those in my classroom) and also see how others are evaluated so that I can calibrate my expectations to those of the evaluators and TEAM teachers.  I feel like a process like that would not only expose me to a number of other teaching styles, creative ideas, and classroom dynamics, but also would help me to more objectively evaluate my own teaching on any given day.  As it stands now, basically my only two criteria for the effectiveness of my lesson are: 1) did the kids answer my informal assessment questions correctly most of the time, and 2) were they active participants with a little excitement in their body language.  If the answer to these two questions is "yes", then I feel like my lesson was effective.  But I've had lessons where the answers were "sort of" to these 2 questions and received favorable evaluations.  I just wish I had more experience with the evaluation process and was better able to apply it for my own benefit and the benefit of my colleagues, now that we're doing daily informal assessment/comment sheets for other teachers in our classroom.

That being said (sorry for the diatribe), I can recognize a couple things about this particular lesson.  First, everybody is right, and I recognize it while I'm teaching as well.  I talk too fast.  Shocking, I know.  I've heard that this is one of the more common problems, and I definitely have it.  In this particular lesson I didn't stumble over my own tongue, but that has happened.  It's not even nerves, either.  I just want to get stuff out and fit a lot on my lesson and just cram information into their heads and I need to slow down, plan a little bit less information into my lesson, and take my time going over things and repeating them.  I've started to do this, but I still notice that when I'm asked a question that isn't directly related to the lesson, or one that I may not be expecting, I kind of jump back into hyper drive and need to cut that out.  The second issue is my time management.  In this lesson I had two pretty good activities that were both cut a little short because I took too long on the Do Now and lectured too much.   Again, this goes to slowing everything down and planning less into the lesson, but its taking some getting used to for me.  On the one hand, I'm making sure my kids really understand things, which can slow me up, but on the other hand I cram too much stuff in the lesson, so I need to balance that out.

I was really looking forward to reading The Reluctant Disciplinarian because I am worried about my ability to manage my classroom.  It started out with promise, but after a while I began to get the feeling that the author was telling me less about how to manage a classroom than about how to play a teaching game.  I appreciate his early advice about overconfidence and some pitfalls that most beginning teachers come across while learning, but the chapter about what doesn't work started to read like a chapter that could have been titled "do what everybody else does because its what's expected."  I didn't necessarily have any grand designs of changing the classroom management landscape, but at the same time its somewhat discouraging and disheartening to hear that creative or new approaches are inherently bad.  And I'm not even a creative person.

Don't go don't go don't go don't go

Just kidding.  It has been invaluable to have the second years here with us as we begin our journey as teachers.  They're help and never ending generosity with their time and ideas have helped me when I couldn't think of anything and also helped me to think of things on my own the next time around.  So thanks.

What I've learned:

1) Keep the students involved in different ways.
One thing I have struggled with somewhat so far is the transition from an educational environment that is almost entirely lecture based to one in which lecturing is borderline sinful.  I am a sinner.  This was brought to my attention by my second year and (in my case) MTC alumna quickly and has vastly improved my teaching and helped me to create more interesting and engaging lessons for my middle school students.  I still struggle, especially in the summer school setting, with trying to squeeze as much information into a lesson as I can, which tends to mean a little too much lecturing, but I'm getting better at it.

2) You WILL want to quit.  Trust us.
Especially before teaching, I was asking a lot of the second years about their experience of their first year.  Of those that I asked, nearly all said that they wanted to quit at some point.  While this is not something that will help with my teaching technique, per se, it is definitely a nice piece of information that will help with my sanity.  I am confident that the MTC will teach me how to be a good teacher.  My doubts lie about my ability are connected to the fact that this is an entirely new experience for me in an entirely different place than I have spent the other 22 years of my life.  I like to hear about the bad things.  I ask the second years what they did wrong and how bad it was and what it was like and all of that stuff because I want to know what the dangerous things look like so that I can avoid them.  If I walk blindly into an oasis, thats ok.  I need to avoid the quicksand.  Knowing that I WILL want to quit and leave this God forsaken state and its horrible educational system filled with rotten children is incredibly valuable information to me.  Knowing that those thoughts are coming will help me bare down and push through to the renewed appreciation for the beauty of this place, the hardworking people in the system, and good kids that really do try.

3) It's the little things.
Don't talk so fast.  Don't turn your back to the students, they will throw things.  If you think it's important for them to know, write it down.  Model it first.  After posing a question, wait for the uncomfortable silence, then wait a little bit longer, then call on someone......... etc.  All great advice, and there's so much of it!  I am happy with my progress so far and I think I'm on my way to being able to survive in the fall, but there are still a couple big things and a boatload of little things to work on, refine, and polish before I can consider myself a good and confident teacher.  I am thankful to all of the second years who have taken the time to observe me and give me feedback on my teaching.  The second year and alumna in my room are great daily guides to improve my teaching, but its always nice to have new eyes watching and picking up on different weaknesses and pointing out different strengths to help me be the best instructor I can be and point out that I still don't have a clue.  I thought that humility would be important before I got here, but I'm convinced its essential, now.  I owe it to the second years and other evaluators who have offered me criticism, and always constructively.  It's not fun to here, but it's helping (I think).  Keep telling me the little things and I'll keep working on them.

I won't talk about the non-teaching related things I've learned from the second years.. that's not assigned.  Nevermind, here are a few that may or may not be associated with teaching:

I can't do 100 push-ups in 15 minutes, but I'm only a half liar.
I can hold my breath while crossing the Mississippi River between Memphis and Little Rock.
I've built houses without roofs.
Come to think of it, I may be currently working on a beautiful place in Cincinnati right now.
I am not as good at skeet shooting as I thought.
Ben Guest has a silent classroom.
Volleyball is a lot more fun than I thought.
Wagon Wheel is a great song.
It is possible to have that much enthusiasm.