Blog #7: Mechanically Inclined

I think that so many people are afraid of teaching grammar because its a subject that you often have to approach backwards. By the time we, as high school teachers, will be coaching students in the concepts of grammar they will already have their own ideas fully formed about what is and is not correct in a grammatical sense. Much of our challenge as teachers then is not just imparting new knowledge, but also to get rid of the 'bad' knowledge that our students bring to our classrooms.  In this way I think I have learned more about English Grammar in many of my German classes than I ever did in my English ones.

What I mean when I say that is that frequently, in German class we would discuss the basic grammar of German. The easiest way for our teacher to teach us German grammar was to relate it to English grammar. Herr Unruh taught us grammar backwards. Thanks to this approach, it was much easier for me to understand grammar.

So, I'm not really scared to teach grammar. I just want to be able to teach it in a creative and engaging, and yes, backwards sort of way.

Anderson's vision is essentially to practice, practice, practice, provided that the practice is text based and meaningful. No busy work. he wants learning grammar to feel like play. His vision is creative and effective and seems to me a little bit "pie in the sky". I didn't agree with his comparison of marking errors to marking a child's artwork. For one thing, I remember art class in high school, and I definitely had my artwork "marked up" so to say. For another, if I don't mark a student's errors I can't imagine how they will know it's wrong. That frustrates me in my own assignments, when I get a grade without feedback, I need to know what the issue was or I can't hope to fix it.

Even with that I did feel like Anderson made several good points. I specifically liked his point about "correct-alls" that come form the student's own writing. I think that might be more helpful than simply not marking errors.

Blog #6: Demo Reflection

When we began the planning process for our teaching demos, neither Mackenzie nor I had a very clear idea of what exactly we wanted to do. We'd never taught a lesson before, and although we had an idea of what our topic was meant to be, we had no clue about how to make that into an actual lesson. And thus began a period of intense confusion as we tried to find a text that interested us and fit the topic of diversity. Luckily Mackenzie and I stumbled upon Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and an idea was born!

The comic became the central focus of our lesson and I think its what made our lesson a success.Nearly everyone mentioned how creative the lesson was and one of our peers felt it did a great job of engaging everyone! This was nice to read, especially considering that one of our main concerns was the full engagement of our students.

I think that the main concern our peers had was lack of authority, Apparently there were a few side-conversations going on during our lesson that our students thought we should have stopped. I either didn't notice or felt that stopping them would have drawn the focus away from the lesson. Apparently the focus was on these discussions though, so I think I would have been better served addressing them. For instance, during a part of the lesson where I was instructing two students were conversing while I was talking. At the time, I ignored it, but now I think I would have been better served by walking over and rapping my knuckles on their desk as I continued teaching. It would have re-engaged them in the lesson, without stopping my roll.

One of the better points that was shared with us via the peer-review sheets was that our class discussion was "incredible" according to one student. INCREDIBLE! I loved seeing that!

A little thing that also made me laugh was how divided the class was on my shoes. I got one student who said they were unprofessional, while another specifically mentioned them as being an awesome choice. It just made me laugh a little.

Overall I think our lesson demo went well and I think I definitely know what to work on for the ext one!

I loved working with Mackenzie, I know she's going to be a great teacher in the future. I can't wait to see all of us as teachers in the future actually, I know we're going to be excellent!

Blog #5: Lesson Planning

       Lesson planning is one of those things you know you'll eventually have to do as a teacher, but no one really looks forward to it. I am undeniably glad that I had Mackenzie to plan our first lesson with; without having that person to bounce ideas off of our lesson plan would have gone nowhere very fast. 

       My favorite aspect of lesson planning was definitely coming up with the activity. It was fun and exciting to be able to plan something fun and creative for the students and I liked being able to fit it into the scaffold. Even though it was difficult to arrange the project like this, it was a fun challenge. On the flip side, I though that writing out our rationale and filling in the student objective and teacher goals was our most difficult task. These parts often felt too obvious to really word properly and for others it just seemed like we were searching too much for what would 'give us the points' so to speak, rather than what the actual objectives or goals or rationale really was.

      I feel like this is the sort of skill that, once mastered, maintains a pretty steady difficulty level. Meaning, that once we completely understand how to write a lesson plan, whatever difficulty level it took for us to work through that mastered plan, writing future plans will continue to be that level of difficulty.Which is not something I'm looking forward to, honestly. But at the same time, having accepted that I feel better prepared to be a teacher and to teach effectively. Which is the ultimate goal as a teacher. 

Blog #4 Classroom Environment/Discipline

My ideal classroom would be set up the same way as my AP German classroom. When you first walked into that room you were greeted by colorful and humorous posters, which made it feel more welcoming and relaxing than my typical high school classroom. I want my future classroom to have this same aura. I would like to have the desks set up in small groups so that small group discussion can be efficient and so that kids can really bond with the peers at their tables and feel more comfortable sharing their ideas. I want my walls to be covered in humorous English themed posters, so that when their mind eventually wanders they won't be thinking about other subjects. I want an old fashioned chalk board at the front of the classroom and a white board in the back so that I can move from front to back and keep kids engaged and keep me from losing my mind standing still all day.

As for classroom discipline the most immediate experience that pops into my head occurred in my freshman year. We were in Biology and the topic of the day was evolution. Our teacher had started her lecture with a sort of general disclaimer that while you didn't have to agree with her she did have to teach it to you. The warning didn't sink in with one of the students. His dad was a pastor at a local church and this kid got very worked up about the creationism/evolution debate and essentially broke down in a faith crisis in the middle of class. He was very argumentative and confrontational and he kept asking questions she couldn't possibly answer before she yelled at him to leave the room if he had such a problem with it. He burst into tears in the middle of class and she sent him to the principal and made us spend the rest of class watching a video.

I feel like this wasn't very effective for a lot of reasons. Number one is that she let the situation escalate to the point of no return. The kid she had the altercation with was very well liked by everyone, so naturally we all took his side. This situation made us lose all respect for her and I remember that after that the rest of her class was a bit of a joke. Number two is that it made it nearly impossible for the kid to do well in her class after this. When you get in a screaming match with a teacher you can't go back to that teacher for help if you're having difficulty with a concept. Another reason it was ineffective is that it changed her relationship with the whole class, not just this one kid. I feel like if you, the teacher, are having trouble with a student it would be more effective to deal with it one on one, because that way what you say to that student only changes that one relationship. Her very public altercation made the rest of us begin to see her as just another adult looking to make our lives difficult, whereas before she'd been a fairly decent, if dry, teacher.


When it comes to classroom management, I think the most important take-away for me is to avoid public punitives. I remember when I was in high school that image was everything and I can imagine nothing more embarrassing than being yelled at by a teacher in front of everyone,  I think it would be helpful to be aware that sometimes kids have other issues in their lives that mya be affecting their performance in school, so taking the moment to talk to a kid after class, even if you have to write a note explaining their tardiness, could really make a difference.

The simple rules I would use would be something to the effect of Listen, Learn, Laugh. Essentially, if students listen to me, then they learn with me, and then they can laugh with me. I want my classroom to be fun, but we can only have fun if they listen when I talk and they respect me, just like I want to be able to respect them.

Blog #3 My Learning Style

I mentioned in my last post that I am a terrible student; I failed to mention that I am a great learner.

I don't mean that in an arrogant or condescending manner. I simply mean that absorbing and applying and articulating new information comes fairly easily to me. It's something I'm good at. So, in order to figure out, or understand, my learning style, I had to think back to the last time I had difficulty learning a new concept.

In my Junior year of high school I took an Honors level Chem course; partly because I needed a science credit, and partly because there was absolutely no way was I going to learn anything in a classroom full of mere plebeians. I knew science was usually a difficult subject for me, but I was riding the high of an overly successful year of Honors Physics the year before. Honestly, how different could the two sciences be?

Let's just take a moment of silence for Adolescent-Amber. She was a special snowflake.

I was rather quickly disabused of this notion, but the intervening period really tested my strength as a learner. I scraped through that class in a constantly shifting balance between frustrated and apathetic. To this day, I'm still not sure how I managed to get the grade I did. Miracle or teacher intervention: either is equally probable.

That class was taught linguistically (via lecture) with intrapersonal homework assignments, visual model-building projects, and interpersonal lab days. I learned and understood the most about chemistry on lab days.

I need the freedom to openly discuss and think through problems within a small group setting to really achieve an understanding of any given topic.

To that end, small group discussions and Socratic Seminars would be the most helpful for learners of this "intelligence". My instruction should be gently guiding and it should facilitate an open environment for these individuals to learn in.

Not every student does best in interpersonal styles though.
Let' consider how we might teach a poem to different students:

Kurt: Let's propose that Kurt is a Linguistic learner. he understands new material by using words effectively, I would read the poem aloud once, than have Kurt read it aloud as well. Since "I, Too", by Langston Hughes is a response poem, I would have Kurt write a response to a poem as well.

Charlie: Suppose that Charlie is a Logical learner. she need to reason or calculate her way to the meaning. I would ask her first to identify the tone of America when this was published, and then from there I would ask her to identify the broad themes of Langston's work.

Lawrence: If Larry learned independently I would ask him to construct a journal entry picking out any literary devices employed in the poem.

Maria: If Maria was an interpersonal learner, I would have her read the poem and then come up with three questions to ask the class during a Socratic Seminar.

To wit, my three questions about the poem are as follows:
1. If this poem were longer, would it be as powerful?
2. Does this poem stand on its own? Or do you need to read the first to fully understand it?
3. How different would the poem be if it were written by today's 'assigned-to-the-kitchen' minorities?

Blog #2: My Adolescent Identity

When I turned thirteen, my older sister Sarah emailed me a link to Facebook as a birthday present. At the time, this seemed like a really thoughtful and, frankly, awesome gift. We had been in PA for three years now-having moved from Ohio when I was ten- and I was itching to communicate with people my own age and not related to me by blood. I was home-schooled and lonely and Facebook was how I planned to change that. 

In reality all I actually did with Facebook, as near as I can tell after hours of spelunking through my page, was to tell the three friends I had (my sister and older brother JD being two of them) that I was avoiding schoolwork by being on Facebook. Truly, an excellent beginning to my life on social media.

Fourteen was no better, though it did bring with it a change in schools. I started public school in the middle of the year, partially because my mom was fed up with me always being underfoot, and partially because I hadn't done a single math assignment for the class I was enrolled in and would have failed Algebra 1 if I had stayed in the homeschool. You can bet your bottom dollar all of my Facebook friends knew about it.

Starting in the middle of the year made certain things a little strange. For one thing, I was placed in Algebra 1, but I didn't have to learn the first units they had already covered and I had told my mom were done (but which totally weren't). To this day negative numbers are still a fuzzy area for me. 

If we're being completely honest, and I like to think we can be at this point, I'm a terrible student. I put things off until the last possible second; partly because I have ADD and partly for the thrill of coming in just under the wire. I forget homework all the time, and my grades have never really mattered to me. I never had to earn my A's in high school. I did the bare minimum and because I'm an excellent tester I managed to float through three years of high school by the skin of my teeth and the strategic use of study halls. I was more focused on finally having friends than I was on learning anything. The only reason I wasn't more of a class-clown type, acting up for the attention of my peers, was thanks to my natural fear of authority figures, which led to me being a model student in-class. The only problem being that the charade fell apart rather quickly once the adults were gone.

And so, my adolescent years were pretty smooth-sailing for a while. I put in the bare minimum, and I got out the maximum of what my peers were reaching for. Straight A's and a killer social life, every high schooler's pipe dream. It didn't last, and so senior year when the rest of my classmates were picking out decorations for their new dorms, I was having panic attacks about wanting to be an English teacher even though I was failing English. 

The failing grade wasn't due to a lack of knowledge or understanding. It was an essay, worth 200 points, that I had never turned in to be graded. For four months I avoided the eyes of Mr. Berrier in class and deliberately ignored the looming specter of my failing grade because the more time elapsed where I hadn't finished the essay, the less I could bear to even open the document to look at it. The shame and guilt swamped up and I couldn't handle the stress of not having it finished long enough to actually finish it. I couldn't even stand to open up the Word document, because just looking at the file shortcut made my stomach cramp up in abject misery and shame. The essay, originally due in October, only took me (measured in actual writing time) about three hours to complete. But I didn't hand it in until April. I couldn't explain to myself why I hadn't just written it, much less to the concerned guidance counselor who watched me break down in her office over the irony of my desire to be a teacher. 

In the way of things it was this class that made me absolutely sure I wanted to be an English teacher. It sounds bizarre I know. If anything this class should have made me forswear English all-together and attempt to live the rest of my life as a suburban housewife with tall hedges and all the latest gossip on the neighbor's current sex scandal. But tall hedges make me nervous, and I really don't care about any of my neighbors lives, much less their sexual endeavors. 

Mr. Berrier was also my Advanced Communications teacher, and for an assignment in that class we had to write a speech about our future careers. I had already kind of decided that I wanted to be an English teacher at this point, so obviously that was my topic for the speech. When we performed our speeches in Mr. Berrier's class, he sat in the back row and took notes so he could assess the speech properly. I remember that during my speech, when I first said "I want to be an English teacher", we made eye contact. I think I must have expected him to look shocked, or maybe concerned. I probably expected him to laugh at me. I didn't expect him to nod, like he had confirmed some pre-conceived notion of his, or as if he had already decided how well that would turn out for me. In my mind, this was a challenge. The gauntlet had been thrown and I was ready to fight. 

 As all AP classes do, this one ended with the AP exam in early May. By that point, I already knew I was graduating and after I took the test I no longer cared about it. It either would or would not count towards college but the results were immaterial. In early July I got an email from Mr. Berrier.

"I know that test scores aren't officially released to students until tomorrow, but I wanted you to know that preliminary reports show that you received a 5 on your English Lit & Comp exam!  You struggled this year with time management and it affected your marking period grades, but this really shows that you know your stuff when it comes to English, which should definitely make you feel more comfortable heading off to college as an English major!"

The above text was copied directly from his email to me. At the time of receipt I was eighteen and I took the email like a body blow. I thought he was mocking me, and making light of the genuine struggle I had endured senior year.

Looking back on it now, I realize he was not making fun of me. Mr. Berrier was an asshole, don't get me wrong. He was mean and crotchety and he had a terrible sense of humor, but he was not cruel or malicious, and he was a genuinely good teacher. 

When I was a teenager, or an adolescent if you will, my main concern was the future. I wanted to be past all the hard and uncomfortable experiences that high school wrought and I wanted to be past them now. Being older now, (if only slightly), I can say that I'm immeasurably glad I didn't have the ability to simply skip ahead past these chapters of my life. Although they were hard, and at times seemed impossible, they shaped me into the person I am today. And as terrible of a cliche as that is, it is also the immutable truth.I am glad for the struggles I have endured, and for the teachers that forced them upon me. So, thank you, Mr. Berrier. You'll never know what it meant to me, but I'm glad you almost failed me.