Week 4/5 Reflection

The last two weeks of observation at BHL took place during the Milestones Testing. Apparently, this year the scores don't count, but the 7th graders are not aware of this. They had heard rumors from the 8th graders about scores not counting, but the teachers did a good job of discounting these rumors to help the students put forth the effort necessary to excel at the tests. Tests were held on Tuesday and Thursday over two weeks. The first week involved the ELA tests. The first portion was multiple choice and the second portion was writing. After taking the ethics tests for our pre-certificate training, I was intrigued to see how the teachers work with students in between test days without giving any specifics of the test away. The biggest thing I took away was that it's okay to spend the day before the writing portion working on writing; telling the students the specific type of essay they would write and going over similar prompts is when the ethics line would be crossed. With everything that is going on in Atlanta schools, I think it's good that Georgia is beginning to take precautions to ensure something similar does not happen in the future. Back to BHL, I noticed that during the ELA week, the students had no interest in being in English class. They had just spent 4 hours on English the day before, so who can really blame them that they don't want to talk about literary elements and writing on the day in between. The teacher had the students edit a peer's paper (the student was anonymous). The students were not engaged in this activity at all. Perhaps instead of giving them a cut and dry assignment, the teacher should have come up with a game or some sort of "out of the ordinary" activity so that the work would feel less like English class or be remnant of the Milestones test they had labored over the day before. The next week was Science and Math testing and it was clear that the students were way less reluctant to attend English class this week. The new challenge is that now that they have taken the end of course test, what is the motivation to do the work? The teacher and I had a brief conversation about how he was going to have a little more liberty in planning the last month of class, which is good since it would take a lot of creativity to motivate the students. Overall, BHL was an incredible experience. The students are so bright, and it really is a beacon of light in the Athens community. I was happy to finally be able to apply some of the pedagogical strategies I learned all last semester. You don't know until you try a strategy, and BHL was the ideal environment for working with young writers and students.

Parking Lot Reflection 8

Again, excuse the thumbnail

Week 3 Reflection

This week was a lesson in how much students hate standardized testing. I'm unsure how much review they had done over the week in their other classes, but Mr. S was adamant in having the students review key concepts that would be on the test. One thing I noticed was that the things they were reviewing this week were things that had been discussed through their 3 writing projects the previous weeks. In math, it would be hard to continuously discuss the same concepts, but in an English classroom, it seems fluid to have all the concepts not only build on one another, but also go back and review each standard as you move on. The students were definitely not excited about reviewing for the test. Most of them preferred talking to another over doing their work. When the teacher saw how slack they were being on their assignments, he announced that he would choose one over the weekend to grade. This was a good way to get their attention because without knowing which assignment would be graded, they are forced to complete all of them. I also got the opportunity to look over some of the papers with feedback.  The teacher did a great job of giving constructive criticism and also building up their creative side. I noticed that most of the feedback was given during the writing process so that the students actually read the comments and took the time to make some changes. Students who got below a certain grade were able to rewrite their papers and resubmit them for a grade. While some students were doing the review sheets, one student was working on rewriting his paper. I thought that this would be an issue, but it seemed like the teacher was okay with it because at least the student was being productive. I got to lead a review session this week, which was awesome! It was cool to be able to go over the short stories and get the students to relate to them so they were interested. One of the short stories was about basketball.  I brought up the tournament and let the kids talk about who they wanted to win and how they felt about the games, then we moved on to answering the questions. By engaging them with the story and themes, the students seemed more eager to share their answers, but this could also be because I wasn't their teacher so they felt obligated to participate. One thing that I struggled with was that one student was willing to answer the questions, but did so even when I hadn't called on him.  It's tough because I wanted that student to continue to participate and be enthusiastic, but I also didn't want it to get out of hand and keep other students from participating. It's hard to find that balance of what's appropriate and what's disruptive, and it's difficult to find a reaction that is not discouraging. In the end, I made a joke about it and the student began waiting to be called on. Hopefully, every classroom management issue is that simple to deal with. I was worried that the students wouldn't respect me for whatever reason, but looking back, that seems like a silly fear that holds no truth. The students may not always like Mr. S, but they do respect him and they do the work for his class. The students that are known for acting up in other classes don't seem to act out as much in his class, perhaps because of the subject matter, perhaps because of the work, or perhaps because they just enjoy Mr. S as a teacher. Either way, I have loved watching this teacher lead his classes and I would love to be a similar type of teacher one day, that students will do the work for, but also aren't afraid to have a little fun. This week was a lesson in balance.

Parking Lot Reflection 7

Parking Lot Reflection 6

Parking Lot Reflection 5

Weekly Reflection 2

This week I went to class on Tuesday and Friday. Essentially, I got to see the students begin a narrative, and then I got to see the end result. It was incredible what some of them had accomplished. There was one student, however, who only had two paragraphs of loosely related material. He seemed so worried about typing everything correctly, the font, the spacing, and basically everything but the actual paper. I sat down with him and we talked about what he wanted to write. And I typed for him to speed this up. I know that I was attempting the "co-authoring" strategy that I read about last semester, but I fear that typing for a student might be helping them too much. This student had also not finished an essay out of the three he was assigned, so I also just wanted him to be able to turn something in. Success reinforces success, but when is scaffolding enabling? This student had good ideas and he dictated everything to me, he just wasn't able to get it down on paper himself. On a test he's not going to have someone to dictate to, so is it harmful to give him that scaffolding now? Apart from that, a lot of the students had really strong narratives to turn in. Even the students that seemed frustrated at the beginning of the week were able to turn in good work. For the students who had finished their essay, the teacher assigned a book cover to work on. I loved this idea because it engaged the students who love to draw. Many of the students struggled to come up with creative titles but Emma and I tried to get them past "My Morning Routine." A lot of the students seemed far more interested in writing a narrative about their own lives than writing an informative piece on cats and dogs. Initially I was surprised to hear that BHL had outstanding writing scores, but after working with these kids it really shows. I hate to admit it, but I'm starting to like 7th grade.