Week Fifteen Journal Entry

I suppose I'll make a comment on each of my major units. One unit is Our Town. The challenge I am having in this unit right now relates to the fact that we have a classroom set of the script. In each of my Advanced English 8 classes, we are reading this play in class. The students don't (and can't) take the books home. And yet I've assigned a unit project. I've had to think about how the students can do their projects without a book in front of them. I also need to think about how they will prepare for their unit test. We'll need to do some good review work in class this week.

My other major unit is a memoir unit, which involves reading and writing memoirs. I've been thinking about how to assess creative writing. With my students, I've been stressing the idea that, with creative writing, reader response is critical--it's the measuring stick against which we evaluate our work. Thus far, here is what I've come up with:

Have you written a one-page memoir (due Monday Apr. 20)? worth 25 points
Have you responded to the writing samples of all your group members? worth 25 points
Have you edited your memoir, based on the comments of your group? 25 points
Have you posted your memoir to the Scholastic website? 25 points
TOTAL 100 points

This is a process, as opposed to a product, rubric. It will count for a test grade. At the moment, I'm happy with this plan, but it will be interesting to see how well it works in practice. My cooperating teacher has asked me whether I'm grading anything critically in this unit, or whether I'm simply giving participation grades. I'm giving her question/concern a lot of thought. I think that, with creative writing, I'm on the right track, but I'm not sure she would agree.

I'll keep you posted, gentle readers, on how this memoir unit turns out.

Week Fourteen Journal Entry

As I have started teaching my own material to Ms. B's classes this week, I've had to be very careful about the level of my vocabulary and the level of my material. I've started editing my materials, especially in my English 8 classes, with my students in mind. I've kept a mark-up of one particular document, Dr. O'Brien, and I'll be glad to show it to you. I feel like I'm adjusting to my audience. It's a cool feeling to now have my particular students in mind as I create my materials.

My fifth and sixth periods are both Advanced English classes, but the personalities of the classes are very different. Fifth period is active and conversational, sometimes difficult to control. Sixth period is generally subdued; sometimes it's even difficult to get class discussions rolling. I find myself lowering my volume and slowing down my presentation speed with sixth period. As with the vocabulary issue I discussed in the paragraph above, this is an issue of adjusting my manner and presentation style to my students.

I am ready to have my own students and get to know them and keep them all year instead of changing classrooms and adjusting to new students every eight weeks.

Week Thirteen Journal Entry

It's been interesting, in a bang-my-head-against-the-wall kind of way, to be in the school during standardized testing. Every teacher I've been around struggles with the issue of what to do with the students after morning testing. Administration discourages the teachers from covering new material or giving homework. So the teachers review basic material that is likely to be on the tests. This practice--testing in the morning, followed by an afternoon review in preparation for more testing--actually makes the monotony of standardized testing worse than it has to be. And this goes on for two weeks! Unbelievable.

Of course I am trying to form my own opinions as to what I will do when I am in charge of a classroom. Here are a few ideas--

• I think it would be a good time to play word games, like Scrabble.
• I'm collecting funny grammar bloopers that could be developed into mini language or grammar lessons (making grammar FUN is the eternal dilemma).
• The post-testing afternoons would also be a great time to let the students do sustained silent reading. I realize this might not work in every class. One of Mrs. B.'s honors classes has 28 students, with a high concentration of boys. They come into the classroom with pent-up energy, and I really can't imagine them settling down with a good book. But SSR would work in some classes.
• Maybe we could learn some jump-rope rhymes and go outside to jump rope. It's a poetry lesson in disguise, right? (This is beginning to sound like a multi-disciplinary P.E. unit in the making.)

So those are a few ideas. I hope to add more.

Contrary to our agreed-upon schedule, I told Mrs. B. that I would start teaching on Monday. When I initially agreed to this, I thought I would go ahead and begin teaching my 10-day units, but then I realized that I would see 5th period every day (the lunch period stays constant), but I might not see 6th period for two days in a row. The classes would get really out of synch. So I'm developing a fall-back plan. I think we'll study onomatopoeia on Monday; write haikus on Tuesday; and I'll start my 10-day units on Wednesday. These are self-contained lessons, and it won't matter if 6th period misses one of them.

If nothing else, I'm learning to roll with the punches.

Week Twelve Journal Entry

I am now in the process of preparing the three units that I will teach at Hampton Cove. These include a unit on Reading and Writing Memiors for regular English 8; an Our Town unit for advanced English 8; and a unit on reading comprehension strategies via A Child Called It for remedial reading.

My planning process is beginning to feel more familiar. I really can't say yet that it's getting easier, because there are different challenges with each unit, but it's becoming more familiar because I'm beginning to know how I like to have things organized.

In terms of the material, I have been very pleased to find that there is material on the 8th grade level that I enjoy. The book Ms. B. recommended for English 8, King of the Mild Frontier, is a lot of fun to read. In it, Chris Crutcher recounts his memories of growing up with his brother. Their antics--typical boy stuff--are hilarious. Ms. B. thought this book would be a good choice to keep the students' interest at this late date in their middle school careers. My second text, Our Town, was generally familiar to me, but I'm not sure I had ever read it. This celebration of everyday life has been a joy for me to read, and I hope it will be for the students, as well. I had previously read my third text, A Child Called It, which recounts one of the worst child abuse cases in the state of California. It's an inspirational story that should convince all readers not to judge the proverbial book by its cover. I believe it will not only be a vehicle through which I can teach some reading comprehension strategies, but also promote the idea of accepting the people around us. I had not thought I would enjoy middle school material, but these texts have been very pleasant surprises.

Week Eleven Journal Entry

Spring Break: I'm a big fan :)

Week Ten Journal Entry

OK, the thing that blew my mind in the high school atmosphere was the prevalence of drugs in the teenage culture. Now in the middle school atmosphere, the thing that is blowing my mind is the level of cheating I’m seeing among the students in class. Here are a few of the things that have happened since I began second placement: I've quietly spoken to J. and M. for looking on their neighbors’ papers during a test. Mrs. B. caught a student filling in answers to his homework as she called out the correct answers. Another day, as students graded each other’s papers, a girl asked her neighbor not to mark all of her incorrect answers. The girls agreed that if Mrs. B. really cared about this work, she would grade it herself. They knew that I overhead their comments.

I know that I have to walk a fine line here with Mrs. B. I don’t want to come across as being critical of the way she conducts her classroom, but at the same time, I have to find a way to reign this in during my teaching days. I know that I will have to cruise the room a lot and stop allowing the students to grade each other’s papers--at least in the way they are currently grading.

This brings up another issue. The amount of grading a teacher has to do is overwhelming. I experienced this for a mere four weeks during my first placement. I didn’t want to collect all the work the students did "for a grade," but I found myself saying, “If I think that you guys aren’t really doing this work, I’ll be taking it up for a grade.” I often felt that taking a grade was my only leverage to get students to do their work. The result was that I was swamped with work in the evening, when I really needed a break and a little rest. To avoid this trap, many teachers do let students grade their fellow students’ work in class. I know that, in addition to the types of dishonesty I’ve described above, student grading also presents privacy concerns.

The best solution I’ve seen came from Mrs. K. at Bob Jones. After her students had done a particular assignment, Mrs. K. would tell them to put away their pencils, pens, and all their personal things. She then handed out red pens and told the students to correct their own papers as she called out the answers. Mrs. K had eliminated the privacy concern, but it would be more difficult to eliminate student dishonesty. I only observed two of Mrs. K’s classes, so I’m not sure how she was implementing this practice over time. In order for self-grading to work, it would be important for the teacher to spot-check the student grading and come down very hard on cheaters. I would like to hear your opinion on this issue, Dr. O’Brien. As I’ve said, one of my goals for my second placement is to find ways to work smarter, and this is one problem I would really like to begin solving.

Week Nine Journal Entry

This is the end of my first week at Hampton Cove Middle School. The atmosphere here is much different from Bob Jones. First, it's much smaller--there are only 500 students here, as compared to 2200 at Bob Jones. Second, the atmosphere feels much more relaxed. The teachers arrive at work later, and they visit with each other in the hallways. They seem to enjoy knowing each other. And because this school is so much closer to my house, I'm spending less time on the road and seeing my family a lot more. So, in sum total, this placement feels much more relaxed for me.

With all that said, the slower pace right now is a bit frustrating. I have to observe my cooperating teacher until the spring tests are over. At that point, around April 9, I will begin teaching my unit. Then I will have to quickly wrap up all the loose ends and add the required material to my portfolio. Late April will be busy.

As I read back over this post, I realize that I'm contradicting myself. I want to find ways avoid the often stressful, hectic pace of teaching, and yet right now I'm frustrated with my slow pace. The perfect balance is hard to find and even harder to maintain.

Week Eight Journal Entry

On Friday, my last day, the students in Mrs. T's mythology class threw a party for me, complete with food and their presentation of an original poem. I'm inserting the poem here. Those knuckleheads really did a nice thing--they almost made me cry.

In accordance with recommendations in the UAH student teaching handbook, I observed various English teachers throughout BJHS this week. I saw and heard some very impressive students and some very impressive instruction.

• Mrs. H. teaches writing in such a wonderfully structured way. I would love to spend more time in her classroom, and I would love to borrow all of her instructional materials.


• Mrs. K's AP students were were very impressive. Mrs. K. asked them to write three sentences describing natural settings. After about five minutes, the students shared their sentences with the class. Some of the sentences were so good, I think it would have taken me a week to write and edit something like that.


• Mr. P's Creative Writing II class was also very impressive. On the day I observed, the students were "workshopping" a poem that a fellow student had written. The students' comments were a testament to their incredibly mature reading skills. I told Mr. P. I didn't know any teacher or class was conducting this type of writing workshop on the high school level. Every student in the (admittedly small) class gave the author constructive feedback. No one said, "I don't know," or "I just really liked it." While there was positive and negative feedback, the negative comments couldn't have been easy for the author to hear. She handled it like a veteran, though.


• Mrs. B. teaches the lower-level learners in an applied English class. Out of 23 students in the class I observed, she has 19 IEP's. I listened to Mrs. B. read a chapter from The Grapes of Wrath to her students. She lead the class discussion with patience, compassion, and humanity. I was amazed that, in a class with this many IEP's, the students were perfectly behaved. It would have been interesting to observe Mrs. B's class at the beginning of the semester as she established her discpline plan.

Tomorrow, as week nine begins, I head to Hampton Cove to begin observing Ms. B's eighth grade English classes. Hampton Cove has a reputation as a good school, and I've heard that Ms. B. is very nice, so there are two things to be thankful for. I believe a couple of things will be tough, though. First, unlike BJHS, I will be coming into Ms. B's class at a point in the year when the students and the teacher already know each other. There won't be any get-to-know-you games to help me learn students' names. Hopefully Ms. B. will be able to give me a seating chart to help in this regard. Second, we are heading into the final quarter of the year, and the students will have spring fever. To exacerbate this problem, these are 8th graders, who probably feel like they're "so over" this middle school thing. Oh, well. I'm about to graduate, and I may have a touch of spring fever myself. We'll have to work through it together.

Week Seven Journal Entry

As I've been wrapping up my Julius Caesar unit and my mythology unit, I've been grading unit assessments and returning them to students. Some of the grades are really low. I don't like to hand low grades back to students. Several students created fantastic statues of Julius Caesar characters, but the written portions of their projects were lacking or nonexistent. In most of these situations, the problem has been the student's failure to follow directions. With almost every assessment I have created, I've given the students a project description, along with some sort of rubric, even if it was minimal. If the students cared to know point values for different aspects of the assignment, those were available.



I do believe that students and teachers have to learn each others' styles. If I worked with these students for longer than eight weeks, I think some of them would learn to take me seriously. They would realize that when I say this project has three parts, they really have to do all three parts. Simply doing a great job on one part won't get you a good grade.



One thing I'm doing to encourage students, even when I have to give them bad grades, is to make encouraging comments on their papers. I've heard one teacher say that he can make a "C" feel like a congressional medal of honor, and he can make an "A-" feel like a slap in the face. He's probably doing that through his comments on student papers. I've been giving a lot of feedback, and I hope I've been able to encourage students, even when I've had to give low grades.

The traditional grading system certainly is not perfect. It doesn't seem fair that one student easily earns A's every week while another has to scratch and claw for C's. However, I have recently been a student in a class in which I knew the professor planned to give every student an A. Knowing she felt this way definitely affected the amount of attention I paid to that class. It became a lower priority for me than the other class I was taking. That experience convinced me that, even though the traditional grading system is not perfect, it does impact student motivation; as a teacher, I'm not ready to abandon it. So I keep assigning grades--high grades and low grades, and I try to find something positive to say even when I have to assign a low grade.

Week Six Journal Entry

On Thursday of this week, my English 10 students submitted their Julius Caesar projects. I had given them three options from which to choose for this project. The first option, an artistic response to the play, involved creating a three-dimensional bust of a character. I required that they identify four textual passages that would form the basis of their interpretation. The second option was to memorize Antony's funeral speech. This project choice required students to prepare an autobiographical study of the character, as well as blocking notes to encourage them to think about their physical performances. The third option was an essay response that required students to further investigate the issues and themes of the play.

I spent a lot of time creating the project descriptions. My main concern was that all the options should seem as equivalent as possible in terms of the work required of the students. After I assigned the project and asked students to commit to a particular option, I was a little concerned that so many of them chose the art project. One day in class I told them I was a little concerned that they must believe the art project was the easy option. I let them know that I had designed these options to be equally demanding. And then I waited to see what they would turn in.

The due date was Thursday, Feb. 12. Students started coming to turn them in as soon as they arrived at school so they wouldn't have to carry this stuff around all day. I was absolutely thrilled with their submissions. At this point, I have seen 23 statues and heard 6 speeches, but I have not yet read the essays. Two young men who had been absent on Thursday performed their speeches on Friday, and they were excellent. Mrs. T. commented that she had not thought any students would choose the speech option, and she had been very pleasantly surprised.

At the risk of tooting my own horn here, I believe the care I took in designing the project options really paid off. I believe students understood my expectations because they had been outlined very clearly. And they came through like champs.

Week Five Journal Entry

I have taught Ms. T's English 10 class for three full weeks. I will continue to teach it for a couple of days this coming week as we review the unit, take the unit test, and present projects. I almost wish I could teach Julius Caesar again next semester because there are some aspects of my unit I know I could improve on.

As I taught the unit this time, I had made pencil notes in the margins of the teacher's textbook to remind me to elaborate on or examine certain parts of the text with the students. Now I believe that I should have made better lecture notes. Lecture notes would have helped me to stay focused on the big idea of the unit. Such notes would also have helped me to give a more consistent lecture to both sections of English 10. At times, I know I said things to one class that I didn't say to the other. For instance, I discussed the map of a Shakespearean plot with one class, but not with the other. These inconsistencies complicate my assessments because I would have wanted to ask Block 2 about how the typical Shakespearean plot related to JC, but it wouldn't have been fair to ask Block 3. I regret this, but I'm not beating myself up too much over it because there is no way to teach every possible angle of this play, and I have to remember that this is the students' first reading. If they continue to read Shakespeare throughout their lives (big if), they will learn more with every reading.

Two major tools I used to help the students understand the play included the DVD recorded performance and comprehensive act-by-act study guides. However, I did not ask the students to take notes during class. Simply reading and understanding the archaic language was enough of a struggle for many of the students. As I compiled the unit test, however, I began to regret not asking them to take some notes on major concepts. This is something I will do differently if I teach the unit again.

One thing I think I have done well is prepare the unit test. I learned a lot in Dr. Enger's class, and I believe I write good assessments.

As we were finishing our reading of the play on Thursday, characters were dying right and left. Brutus and Cassius both "ran on their swords," and in the end, Brutus' body is laid out on a table. Antony stood over him, proclaiming him "the noblest Roman of them all." I decided that we should have a funeral for Brutus on Friday, complete with reception food and a guest book to sign. After all, these students worked very hard to read 100 pages of Shakespeare, and this seemed like a legitimate way to have a little celebration. The students agreed to dress in black and bring food. As it turned out, I had to leave school during the day on Friday to take my younger son to the doctor; he caught the flu my older son had last week. I was extremely disappointed to miss the funeral proceedings, but I left all my plans for Ms. T. to execute. I look forward to going to school on Monday to hear all about it.

Week Four Journal Entry

I am sitting down to write this entry on Sunday night. I have worked a lot this weekend. On Saturday afternoon I did some planning, then I watched Jason and the Argonauts in preparation for the mythology class I'm picking up on Monday. I skipped church (and the sunday school class I was supposed to teach with my husband) and worked all day today. I got a lot done, and I'm in good shape going into the school week, but I really didn't have a weekend. I have a feeling that not only will student teaching continue to be this way, but also my first year of work will be this way. Every class I teach for the first time will be a blank slate, with all the planning to do and all the assessments to create.

I'll report a success before I sign off for the week. As I've written previously, I'm teaching Julius Caesar to my English 10 classes. I have asked both classes to vote on whether Mark Antony is a good guy or a bad guy. In Block 3, J. exclaimed in frustration, "I don't know! I don't know if he's a good guy or a bad guy!" I was thrilled, and I told J. that Shakespeare would be thrilled. I believe this is the beauty of Shakespeare's work...he revels in the "grayness" (as opposed to the black-and-whiteness) of the world. There are two sides to every story. At the time, I knew that J. was frustrated, and to a certain extent, I sympathized with him. But at the same time, it was a thrilling moment for me as a teacher. I had not simply told my students that the play was ambiguous; instead, I had led them into that moment. OK, I had a little help from the Bard.

Week Three Journal Entry

This week I taught English 10 during Blocks 2 and 3. The week felt short because we were out of school on Monday for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and when the students returned to school on Tuesday, I devoted some instruction time to watching or discussing the inauguration. The unit I am teaching is Julius Caesar, so I was able to compare the murderous transition to power in the play to the United States' calm, democratic transition to power. The timing was good, and the connection was easy to make.

I am comfortable teaching the class, and I'm willing to admit that not everything is going perfectly. However, I am experiencing small victories sprinkled in among my difficulties, and the victories are keeping me going. Maybe the best thing to do here is to share a difficulty and a victory. Each of these incidents relates to classroom discipline.

On Tuesday, my first day to teach, I believe I handled a discipline problem badly. The situation involved a boy in the class. He was muttering comments under his breath constantly, slouched sideways in his desk, and talked openly to the students around him. I had asked him a couple of times to face forward in his desk, and he had ignored me. He was affecting the atmosphere of the entire classroom. I might add that this class has a high concentration of boys, and the classroom is full, so behavior problems escalate quickly. When this particular student continued to be disruptive, I basically had a "stare down" with him until Mrs. T. took him out into the hall to talk with him. The class was deadly silent. This student and I had created a bit of a spectacle. Hmmmm...not good. I am learning from Mrs. T's subtle manner of handling discipline situations. The lesson I took from this (and I'm not sure it would work in every situation) is that I should try to discipline students privately, without "disrespecting" them in front of their friends. We'll see. It's entirely possible that I will have a different theory next week.

So that was a difficulty. Thankfully, the next day, I had a small victory. I was cruising the room as students worked on their bellwork. One boy (L.) wasn't doing his work. I asked him why he wasn't working, but when he didn't offer me a substantial reason, I didn't press the issue with him. He knew, however, that I went to the podium and made a note. Later, while the students were reading their parts for Julius Caesar aloud, L. spoke out to let me know that he didn't know what in the world was going on in this play. I thanked him for letting me know that. I said, "L., this is my third time to study this play, and I'm glad you reminded me that this is your first time to read it." I slowed down my instruction and took extra pains to make sure everyone was getting it. After class, L. came up to me and apologized for not doing his bellwork. He said, "I will work for you in here--I don't know what got into me today." That was a great feeling, and maybe the lesson here is similar to the lesson I learned through the difficult situation. Subtle reactions and a hesitation to embarrass students in front of their friends can earn me a lot of credibility with these students in the long run.

I feel like 80% of my energy is going towards interpersonal relations, and about 20% is going towards English Language Arts. Maybe the balance is even more skewed than that. That's OK. I'm learning.

Week One Journal Entry

As I sit down to write this first journal entry, I have been on-site with my student teaching assignment for about a week and a half. I have been paired with Ms. T., whose school is on the “block system,” which means that each class period lasts approximately 90 minutes, and each day consists of four class periods. Ms. T. teaches Myth and Legends during first block; English 10 during second block and again during third block; and she has planning during fourth block. Ms. T. has been extremely open to my presence and participation in the classroom, and I am thankful for her attitude.

To a large extent, the first week of class was devoted to “ice-breaker activities,” which helped Ms. T. get to know her students, helped the students get to know Ms. T., and gave the office time to get all student schedules straightened out before the hard work of the semester began. I really enjoyed meeting the students. I saw, and continue to see, so much individuality in the way they dress (camouflage skirts and patent leather combat boots) and the way the style their hair (dreadlocks arranged into pig-tails). Sometimes I see their too-determined confidence and their silence as psychological chain mail. I empathize with the student who trembles when he has to read his bio poem to the class. I know that the boy who is sitting in the back row with his bangs over his eyes is a still water that runs deep. I am a beginning teacher, and with the idealism of a beginner (which I hope to hang on to through the years), I want to reach every single one of them. I enjoyed finding chances to talk with some of them this week. I talked with W. about the Miami Dolphins’ losing season last year. I talked with E. about the readability of Stephen Hawking’s theories of physics. I talked with B. about the upcoming lacrosse season. I talked with K. about the difficulties of moving here from Utah over holiday break, and I talked with C. about the difficulties of moving here from Puerto Rico over break. I look forward to working with all these students more and more over the coming weeks.

Week Two Journal Entry

Last week, in my first journal entry, I wrote about how much I’ve enjoyed meeting the students and seeing signs of their individuality. The thing I want to write about this week is also student-centered, with a bit of self-discovery.

Like a lot of people who become teachers, I have always been a good student. As a young student, I hated group work, and I will admit, to my embarrassment, that I never really had enough patience to slow down and help the slower learners around me. If I had had a motto as a student, it would have been, “Every man for himself.”

I find that I am viewing the classroom very differently as a teacher. As I watch Ms. Thaxton teach her lessons and assign group work, I worry that A. never finds a partner. As we go through the Daily Grammar Grams, and the capable volunteers come to the board to correct the sentences, I worry that the students who chose not to volunteer were the students who didn’t get it. As I have begun to plan my lessons and even write my quizzes, I worry about how W. will do. I imagine D. reading my test questions and not understanding my vocabulary. I change the wording of the questions and re-save the document.

I understand that my newfound sensibilities will prove to be a strength and a weakness for me. This was brought to my attention earlier in the week as I meticulously taught a lesson on direct objects. Ms. Thaxton commented that it might have been too low-level. My defense would be that a lot of students had missed a direct object diagnostic question, and apparently this instruction was needed, but I know that she has a point. I can’t forget to keep the advanced students in mind, as well as the low-lever learners, as I plan. Welcome to the world of differentiated instruction. It is certainly a tough puzzle to solve.