Reflection Six

Week Six Reflection
Leigha Tracey – BSU Student Intern
For the week of September 23-27

Participation/Observation (10)

My first student teaching evaluation was Monday afternoon. Mark Smith and I went through four INTASC standards and went over how I was rated in each area. As we moved through each standard I was able to relate how I rated myself on each. I found that I had rated myself lower in many areas than did Mr. Smith. He gave me some valuable feedback that I have begun to incorporate immediately. He did mention that I am too polite when giving directives. I have been meditating on this and haven’t decided on an approach that I am comfortable with yet.

I also taped a lesson on Tuesday. Mark gave me detailed comments on the unit and my presentation. I found this feedback to be very helpful and will aid in the revision of my unit plan.

The free-writing exercise was “stepped up” this week. Students were asked to focus their thoughts and to dig deeper with their writings. Mr. Smith chose students to read that have been quiet or are not performing well in the class. It was a good opportunity to see where they are in their writing and their critical thinking. Unfortunately, the products were less than impressive.

I have been reflecting on an issue that is carrying over from last week. During my lunch duty during ISTEP testing I noticed hostility in the lunchroom supervisors. They were walking around the room with their walkie-talkie’s looking very official. As an adult person in the building, I found it odd that when I smiled and offered a greeting I was ignored! I saw one woman get so upset with a kid for leaving his lunch sac on the table that she confronted him in a manner that would have scared me had I been that student. I sort of laughed this off to someone having a bad day, but then I saw two other supervisors storming around seeking out students that left trash on or near their table. From what I could see there were about six tables that had any forgotten trash. This seemed like a very tame infraction to me. Anyway, yesterday a woman came into our class to return a camera. I asked her if I could help her and she said “no.” She looked upset. One of the kids in my class asked me if I knew why she had the camera and I said no. The kid told me that she had been a photographing students at their lunch tables, then photographing the trash that was left behind.

I don’t even know what to say to that except that I truly think it is ridiculous. I spoke to Mark about it and he gave me some different points of view, saying that some people would say that because they crack down on the little problems, there aren’t any big problems. Okay, but I hardly think a few students getting distracted or just being rude can qualify as a problem. If I was a parent and my child was reprimanded for leaving a lunch sac on a table, I would have a few choice words to share with the school. I would feel differently if I had seen that there was some sort of a major problem, but the lunchroom is pretty normal from my point of view. Mark told me that I would feel differently after a few years of teaching. After thinking about this incident, I certainly hope I never feel different. I hope I never get so bent out of shape about a few wrappers and trash left by kids that I would scare them by approaching them in an intense manner. I hope I will always keep my perspective and let the little things go.

Teaching (25)

Teaching has been going well this week. I am trying something new to me – an entire unit. It will most likely last ten days. The students are being great. I began this project by telling the students that this was my first go at this, so we would have to work through it together and adjust as needed. They were receptive. I am finding that I need to back track and explain some things in more detail and there are other things that I have done in too much detail. Go figure! So far, the projects are on schedule and are progressing. This is a “good” class, so I will have to work on the unit to make it adaptable to classes that have fewer independent working abilities. I am very excited to see the end products and to see how the students react to having published their own work. I think it is very important to give tasks that have a purpose that students can tangibly see and understand.

I had an experience with a student this week that was both wonderful and disappointing. One of our less motivated students came and asked me for help writing his leads. I gave him a “lead map” so he could pick out the most important facts for his story. In discussing his ideas he discovered several different and more interesting angles. He left motivated and excited. His paper came in today and it was a bit disappointing. He abandon many of the ideas he came up with when we were working together. But, I am pleased that he came in to do extra work and I did peak some interest in him. That is a good thing.

Notes

• Completed bus duty
• Completed substitute teaching folder
• Took video of a lesson for review
• Presented three power points this week.
• Decided to develop “fill-in” notes for the class to keep them engaged and help them to organize the main points of the lecture.
• Implemented a newspaper unit. Received feedback from Mr. Smith.
  1. Regarding the Maestro process – relate the process to the real world and how it works in their daily lives
  2. Provide the class/teams with a way to choose a team Maestro. One suggestion was to have the students who wanted to do the job write down how many extra credit points they would do it for, then choose the person who wrote down the lowest number of points.
  3. Share the importance of each person in the process.
  4. Give them the goal up-front. Let them know this will be printed and given to peers.
  5. Have the Maestro meet with the “team” teacher to find out what is happening on the school team and report back to their group.
  6. Move around the room more often when lecturing. Keep eyes over class. Do not turn your back.
  7. When doing brainstorming as a group, check in with them at different intervals.
• Hargess extra credit – Give an extra credit project difficult enough to make it challenging to the students that excel, but accessible to those who need to improve their grade. Make the project worth 50 points (or a large number). For each person that does the project, the points get dispersed evenly. (If two do it 25 pts. Each.)