Weekly Blog #4

This week has been a waiting week for me, which has been somewhat frustrating missing out on all of that classroom time that I could be getting. I was hoping that I would be placed by now, but apparently it is proving just as difficult to replace me, as it was to originally find a placement. I have been taking the time this week to review my previous lessons and observations that I was able to complete before losing my placement. This week was also the meeting that I had with my instructor for ED 341 where we went over my first TPA lesson plan that I had previously submitted. It was a very good meeting because of the clarity that I gained on the amount of detail that will be required of me from here on out in future lesson plans. I didn’t realize just how specific the grading criteria would be once we submit our final Pearson TPA. I was receiving A’s on my last lesson plans and so I thought that I was meeting all of the criteria, so it was a very constructive meeting. I just finished my second lesson plan for the class with the new criteria that I was given and everything is definitely much clearer for the reader to completely understand all of the learning objectives and various teaching strategies. It took at least an extra hour to complete the lesson plan in the new format, but I think that now I have done it once, the future plans will flow much easier and not take nearly as long. I was also able to meet with the placement advisor this last week to talk about my placement. It seems that I might actually get at the school that I was hoping to get into as long as the teacher is willing to take on a student teacher candidate. I am really looking forward to my new placement and am very excited to start teaching my lessons that I have been preparing. That would also be my highlight for the week if I in fact get placed there because I have two nephews that attend the same school!

Weekly Blog #3

I participated in the Common Core State Standard seminar that was held at EWU on the 30^th of April and would like to talk a bit about it for my blog this week. The information was extremely useful and enlightening to hear it talked about a bit with other educators that are going to be required to teach it. One of my favorite things about the new CCSS’s is how they are aligning multiple subject areas together. I think that English Language Arts is one of the most pertinent subjects for students to master in order to be successful in all subject areas. Students must learn to read and write on a higher level than what they are currently being taught and I think that with CCSS it will assist in them doing so. Every subject and every situation in life requires communication and that one thing that is being stressed with the new common core standards. There were some very good questions that were raised at the seminar too. One in particular that really caught my attention was how these new systems of grading are going to benefit learning. This was brought up because mostly all of the grading is going to be done by computers. It is good that standards are being raised in reading and writing, but how will we as educators fully know whether or not the students comprehension is there, when a computer is grading based on certain words, sentences or format. I think that in order to fully ascertain whether or not a student is “getting it”, then their work needs to be critiqued by an actual person and be judged on their abilities rather than just whether or not they can formulate an argument and put it down on paper. I guess I have some mixed emotions about this. I am really glad that teachers are going to be held more accountable in order to ensure better teaching, but at the same time I think that the grading system to see if that is actually happening needs a little fine tuning. It is good that the nation is heading in a positive direction but I fear that they may be rushing certain specifics. Another good thought that I had after I left the seminar was the issue about the main purpose of these new standards are geared towards preparing students to go on to college. That is great, but what about the students that have no intentions or no means to go off to college after high school. Some may take family jobs on the farm or continue with their passion to be a mechanic, something that doesn’t necessarily need any formal continued education. I am sure that they will still get a good education, but it almost seemed like there was too much emphasis on the after high school years for these students, instead of just concentrating on the present and how to teach them the best for them as individuals. Just a few thoughts…

Article 2 Response: Issues in Assessment, Enterprise and Higher Education: the case for self‐peer and collaborative assessment

This article was written in 1993, but I found it to be very appropriate for current issues in assessment in a secondary level. The article discusses strategies at a higher level education, like a Jr. College, but fits in to today’s issues at the secondary level. Today we are encountering issues of education being linked with economics and politics. There are three main ideas of assessment that are, self, peer and collaborative assessment. I find that each of these approaches are extremely valuable today in a secondary setting because it allows each student individually and collectively for the entire class to be held accountable for their own work and for their own assessment that they will have. It is extremely important for the student to have a say in how they will be graded, and I feel that it is just good practice as an educator to do that. With the current issue of common core standards becoming more of a reality now, I think that it is crucial to keep these types of assessment strategies in mind. Each student is different in their learning styles as well as whole classes are different from one to the next. I know that with the new core standards we as educators are going to be required to teach the same material to all students and all students are going to have to demonstrate mastery through the same type of assessment. But, I think that it is still up to us as educators to decide how they demonstrate that mastery. It is important to also teach our students responsibility and by having them involved in the grading process will benefit them greatly.

For me and my classroom I want every lesson of every day to be an enriching experience for myself as well as my students. I think that by having discussions through peer grading will help me become a better teacher, because I will be able to see what everyone thinks about a certain question on the assessment that they completed. If 60% of my class all writes similar answers to a test question and their wrong, peer and collaborative approaches will help me in seeing how I went wrong or didn’t fully explain something in the way that I had intended to. I don’t think that it is fair to the students to have all the blame for not performing well on a specific test. I think that the teacher should have to be accountable just as equally, because after all it is always the teacher that is “teaching”. For myself I want to know where my students are at collectively as well as individually, so I will definitely hold discussion groups as I return tests to get the students feedback of why they answered what they did. And with this collaborative approach, I think that it would still be ethnically correct to even change certain grades if the students can justify their answers through discussion based on what I had taught them leading to their ideas and therefore their answers on the test.

Works Cited

Somervell, H. (1993). Issues in Assessment, Enterprise and Higher Education: the case for self‐peer and collaborative assessment. Taylor and Francis, 221-233.

Weekly Blog #2

This has been a little bit of a challenging week for me. I basically lost my placement in my current classroom because my cooperating teacher is so overwhelmed with MAPS testing and the MSP test that is coming up in the next couple of weeks. My cooperating teacher teaches both math and social studies which I have mentioned in a previous blog and he is currently on a time crunch to get all of the students ready for the math portion of the MAPS section of testing. Because of this he doesn’t feel that he has the time for me to teach any social studies lessons during the next several weeks. He himself is only concentrating on the math portion of his class and will be using his allotted social studies time in addition to his math periods to get all of the kids ready for testing. This was a little discouraging to see how much of an emphasis these teachers are required to give to the standardized testing through MAPS and MSP testing. I have been hearing quite a bit in my education classes about how teachers are being required to teach more and more to a test, but this was my first encounter of just how intense the situation really is. My teacher openly admitted that he has to teach the students specific math areas and problems that will be on the test, in order to get them ready. I really find that unfortunate because I am unsure of how much the students are actually learning, because it seems to be more of a memorization practice than a learning one. I am confident that the EWU staff will find me another placement soon, so I can get back at teaching my lessons and learning as much as possible from my cooperating teacher.

I spent a couple class periods in my seventh grade class this last week that went very well. It was very fun introducing myself to both classes and taking the little bit of razzing that they dished out to me, being the “new teacher”. One practice that really stood out to me with this teacher was the entry tasks that he has his students perform each class and every day. So basically he has a quote on the board every day, and the quote could be anything from words to live by, to a well known philosopher. He has the students read it and then write a short paragraph about how they interpret the quote and what it means to them individually. I really like this task, because it teaches the students a little bit of history by explaining who the quote is by and the history behind it etc. But also it gets the students thinking in an intuitive way right at the start of class and so their minds are alert and ready to learn his future lesson. The students really seem to like the task and it also helps build the relationship with each individual student because he gets a little insight of how they think and what things seem important to each of them.

Weekly Blog #1

This was a really good week for me during my student teaching. I had my first full day of school today, which was really cool to see everything transition from start to finish. Last quarter I only did the last two class periods of the day for two days a week and it was a block section, so the only transition was from one subject to the next. It was also the same group in the afternoon until today, where I got to meet my cooperating teachers’ morning group of kiddos which was exciting! The day went very smoothly, which was a bit surprising to me considering that it’s Friday and all. I think that part of the smoothness was due to the fact that the students got to watch a movie for one of their periods today. I know that when I was in middle school, a movie day on Fridays was always welcome!

It was really nice to finally meet a new class of kids so I could see the difference of the dynamic from one group to the next. I was actually very surprised with how differently my cooperating teacher addresses/treats each separate class. As I mentioned, I have been in the afternoon class which has a total of eight students with IEP’s and the morning class only has one. So, it makes sense that he addresses each differently, which he obviously should, it was just interesting to the difference finally. I was also able to feel the difference in mood from one class to the other. We have been talking in class a lot lately about how each class has its own personality and I found that to be completely true today.

Today in class there was a student that continued to talk during the video, even after being redirected by the teacher several times. The teacher, who runs the classroom in a very structured format, called the student out in front of the entire class for their behavior. The student obviously became embarrassed and red cheeked, but did stop talking. The way that the situation was handled was obviously effective, being the desired result was achieved. I just think that with my own teaching style I would have handled it a bit differently. I don’t like to put the student on the spot and embarrass them into submission with their behavior. I find that a more empathetic approach suits me and gains respect from the students as well. I feel that this is a prime example of the importance of building individual relationships with our students. I don’t want my students to be afraid of me, but I also don’t want them to talk when they’re not supposed to be talking either. So, what do I do?! In my opinion, I think that if I know my students well and they know me, and we are in a mutually respectful relationship, then situations like this won’t arise. Or they at least won’t get to the point where the student has to be redirected 3 or more times, one time will end the behavior.