Student Focused Lessons

In one of my recent LLED classes, one of my professors demonstrated how to successfully incorporate a writing clinic as part of an interactive activity. I’m disappointed to say that this was my first exposure to such a workshop. In my own high school experiences, my teachers always addressed issues in writing or grammar by handing out unapplicable and unconnected worksheets. Each worksheet would present a very specific example of a common error in grammar, attempts that my teachers would view as efficient enough to cover any of our personal struggles in any area. We would complete the tedious work to satisfy our teacher’s requests, then would be forced to hear over and over again that “we’re just not learning from our mistakes in our papers.” Why did my educators not see the connection? I feel the demonstration of a writing clinic in my first in my block class successfully showed my class of future teachers a more interactive and effective way to improve and work with students writing. To be honest, I left that class encouraged, but totally bitter. My experiences in high school were NOTHING like that when it came to working with and improving my papers and those of my peers. I feel that if my teachers had just taken the time to work with the class and their papers in such activities, we would have been able to improve upon our mistakes and build our writing as a whole through these improvements (not to mention how much red ink could have been saved). I’ve decided to focus these frustrations into my own future teaching, applying what I’ve personally experienced to create the most effective lessons.

Alright enough of my rant, I’ll get on with my explanation and why I’m talking about this. I have found that as a pre-service teacher, it is essential for us to be willing to incorporate new methods and techniques of teaching into our curriculum. All of the teachers in my past who I have really grown to respect, admire, and strive to be like were all open to new things and tried to constantly adjust their classes and lessons to fit in with the needs of the students. The classes that I struggled in the most were always taught by educators who followed the same, tedious, strict lessons year after year. They refused to incorporate technology or any more recent methods into their curriculum, and, each year, students left the classroom bored and frustrated. In one of my older posts, Struggles in Connecting with Students and a Little Inspiration, I mentioned a former teacher and a personal inspiration in teaching, Mr. Del. One thing I didn’t mention in this post? Mr. Del was a math teacher, i.e. he was absolutely passionate about my most hated and most difficult class. Year after year, I dreaded entering any math classroom because the material was difficult enough for me to comprehend on its own, and the teachers made absolutely no effort to “spice things up” or try to make things fun for us as students. Yes, I understand math is math is math… it’s hard to make it fun or interesting to individuals who just don’t get it or enjoy it to begin with. Even with this being so, I very quickly found that I not only understood my work in Mr. Del’s class, but that I actually didn’t mind doing the work. Why is this so? I attribute this to two things: Mr. Del taught a class that he was completely passionate about, making him sincerely WANT us to learn and understand the material. Even more so, he allowed this drive and want for our success to help him make his lessons more flexible, allotting more time and attention, when necessary, for trouble areas. He was not only willing to spend more time teaching the class, but he continually offered up his free periods and time before and after school as opportunities for us to meet with him to address problems and make improvements. This willingness to work with the students, focusing on our needs, showed us how dedicated he was to teaching and maximizing our personal improvements. We, in turn, took his dedication as a reason to try harder in his class, even if it was just to make him happier.

I believe that any of us, especially as future teachers and former students, can obviously see what positive results can come from dedicated teachers who are willing to make the lessons work with the students, and not the other way around. I’m determined to make this a personal goal of mine, enabling me to always ensure that my students are gaining as much as possible from my lessons.

Struggles in Connecting with Students and a Little Personal Inspiration

How am I going to connect with my students? It’s a question I’ve pondered over dozens of times, as I’m sure almost every other potential or established teacher has at one point or another. Ask any current or former student who their favorite teacher and why, I guarantee you that part of their reasoning will be that the specific individual related to them and thus gained their respect and admiration. As I was looking into this issue a little more, I stumbled upon a classmate’s blog post (and follow-up post) that I felt indirectly addressed some of the issues I was thinking about. Kim Cuppett’s blog post entitled “If Someone Hits You, You Should Hit Them Back,” reveals some of the frustrations she encountered while at work teaching at a low-income housing. She struggled and seemed generally awestruck whenever she was informed by one of her students that the little girl got into a fight on the playground because she was taught that if she’s hit, the right thing to do it hit back. I personally feel I would’ve had a very similar reaction to Kim’s. I feel that it is essential that Kim is trying to find a way to address this issue of a tendency to violence in these children, especially as an educator. Yes it is important for anyone and everyone to know how to defend themselves, ESPECIALLY those who live in troubled or dangerous areas. However, it is also key that we, as instructors, make our students’ safety our number one priority. In Kim’s instance, having a child who was hit or slapped bring the issue to an adult enables to the violence to be eliminated or put down. Yes, students often do respond to their peers being “snitches” negatively, but if the issue is addressed appropriately and if the students bring it up with the right authority (i.e. a teacher that they view as “cool,” the problem can be put down much more appropriately. More than anything, it is our absolute duty as instructors and caregivers for these children to eliminate any kind of violence as we see it. No matter what our backgrounds and past experiences are, the children need to come first, and their safety has to be a constant concern. So, I feel that what matters most is that Kim’s concern over how to address the issue showed that more than anything her main priority is to keep these kids safe and to help them learn and progress as much as possible in life. I think this really shows her priorities as an educator are just where they should be.

As I continued to think on this issue, I came upon a topic that I have often struggled with when I began to view myself as an educator: how do I relate to students who have gone through things or are going through things that I have never encountered in my own life? This past summer, I worked at an inner city tutoring program where, for five days a week, I helped students ranging from Kindergarten age to Seniors in high school. Going in to the position, I was terrified. A vast majority of these kids were part of this program because they were labeled as troubled students who had no motivation to do work or even try in school. They attend school in one of the largest school districts in my area, while I graduated in a class of a little over one hundred and twenty students. From the beginning, I knew that even at their young ages, many of these children had encountered many struggles in their lives that I really wouldn’t even want to imagine enduring. Many came from households of one or no parents because they had abandoned them or were in jail, some were impoverished, and many saw firsthand the abusive effects of drugs and alcohol. To make matters worse, many of the children had gotten into lots of legal trouble on their own, leaving me truthfully intimidated at times. As a substitute tutor in the program, I moved from the elementary school, to the middle school, to the high school teaching completely different children each week. This made my job even more difficult, as constantly being the substitute made gaining the students’ respect a challenge because they weren’t used to me and didn’t know me well. Though my first week or so was rough, I quickly found that my students built more trust in me because I didn’t grow up under the same circumstances that they did. They were well aware that I went to the costly private school and came from an upper class family. However, they came to respect me because they realized that I tried to understand what struggles they were going through and, more importantly, they recognized that I sincerely wanted to help them to do better. Because I treated them with respect and refused to accept laziness or unreasonable excuses for not giving me their best work, they came to realize that I was trying to do what’s best for them. And having those students work hard as part of an attempt to impress me and gain my respect was the biggest reward I took from that program.

Now, reflecting back on my own high school and grade school experiences, I found that when I look back to the teacher that to this day I still call “my favorite teacher,” I’ve begun to question myself as to why he’s my favorite instructor. Of course I think back to the jokes, the fun classes, the tests that I feel he might’ve made a little easier for us because he liked us. But, more than anything, I think back to a time that personally crushing for myself and my classmates, and most likely overwhelming for my young and relatively new teacher. Part way through the school year, my class suffered the loss of a classmate and my good friend to cancer. The loss was a shock and ultimately a blow to the small student body, and the teachers all obviously struggled in helping us cope. My teacher, Mr. Del, openly admitted to my class that he didn’t know Ezra and that he had never personally lost a friend at such a young age and couldn’t comprehend what we were going through. However, he admitted that he had only heard great things about Ezra and would love to hear about him, if we were willing to talk. Though the conversation began with tears and overwhelming sorrow, everyone in the room quickly found themselves laughing as we told our teacher about all of the crazy and fun things our lost friend had done while he was alive. He had taken the initiative to address our loss directly and was the only teacher to give us an opportunity to just talk about everything that was going on in our lives. He had no idea what we were experiencing in this loss, but because he showed us that he wanted to try to understand, we grew to respect him. He taught me that no matter how different you are from your students and their lifestyles, by showing them respect and a sincere concern for them, you can truly connect with them and impact their lives.

Everyone wants to be the teacher that allows students to leave their classroom with the firm belief t that this individual positively impacted their lives. However, I feel that because of age differences or differences in socioeconomic statuses, many teachers unintentionally give up on this opportunity because they think their understanding of their students is just too far out of reach. However, I feel that if we show our students that no matter what differences exist in our lives, we honestly want to understand their struggles and positively impact them so that they can be successful later on in life, these children will come to respect us and want to work hard for us. Once we establish this trusting relationship, I believe that we can overcome any kind of personal, social, financial, economic problems that our students face to give them a reason to try to eventually succeed, because, thanks to my always inspirational Mr. Del, I experienced this firsthand.

Sleepless in State College

Yes, don’t let the timestamp fool you, it is indeed almost 2 am on a Tuesday night. However, as I was applying the finishing touches on my comments to my wikispaces account, I realized that it would be a great idea to blog about how this completely unfamiliar technology is actually turning out to be quite helpful. As we set up small group wikispaces in my LLED 420 class, we applied them to our current lesson by listing dozens of education-related questions and providing answers and their sources. By using this resource to work at attempting to answer some of education’s most controversial questions, I forced myself to actually go beyond just getting the work done for the lesson and actually thought in to how I can apply these ideas and possible solutions in my own future teaching. As I read over each question and the answers skillfully provided by the members of my group or those which I researched myself, I found myself applying it personally each time. As I read each question I actually caught myself continually saying to myself, “Well, when I’m a teacher I want to do this, I want to teach it like this, etc.” I actually got excited completely a task that I expected to be tedious because I’m beginning to really view myself not as an education major, but as an actual future teacher. Exciting, right? Well, I can blame my imminent exhaustion and lack of sleep on this unexpected excitement and sudden involvement, but I also give props to wikispaces for being such an enabler of my new ideas. More to come, hopefully not at 2 am next time.

My First Experiences with my Personal Learning Network…

So, my first real blogging experience. I’ve never thought of making a blog before, as my view was that I really didn’t have much to say, and I’ve always felt that what I wanted to say should be broadcasted to the entire world. However, me finally being forced to make one for my LLED 420 class has finally allowed me to become a little more open-minded about the idea. This is mainly in part because Jason Whitney, my professor is encouraging us to use this blogs to our professional advantage to improve our personal learning network (PLN). We’re encouraged to use these blogs to interact with others in my field so that we can continually further our knowledge and abilities as a teacher. I’m starting to realize that I can definitely use this requirement for my class to my advantage. Who knows, maybe I can one day be considered “tech-savy.” Just kidding, that’s pushing it.

As part of the requirements for improving my PLN, our professor is having us explore other networking methods such as Classroom 2.0, Linked-in, Wikispaces, Twitter, etc. Now don’t get me wrong, I feel that any of the education-focused could be extremely helpful as an educator. My only reservations lie in creating a Twitter account. I have intentionally not taken the time to create one thus far because I feel that “twittering” is somewhat of a waste of time. If I need to communicate to students or fellow educators, just how effectively will I do so if I’m only allowed to enter 140 characters at a time (140 characters is about a sentence.) However, I feel that I will soon push aside my pride and in fact create a Twitter account, even if it’s just for the good of the class and so that I can say “Yes, I tried it, I Twittered.”

Well, I know I still have a great amount of work to go and definitely need to put more time into each individual networking site/method, but I feel that I’m at least at a good start. Over the course of this week, I hope to actually go beyond just setting up accounts for various social networks to actually learn how to work with them properly. I know this will take some time and focus, but I’m pretty determined. I’ll definitely keep my continuing progress posted!