Dread Central (Essential) Question

            Starting from day one of my process of applying to Rhode Island College, I was stuck on the idea of how I can evenly mix the role of mentor/tutor, that I have become very comfortable with in my work with after school programs, and the role of instructor. I know many things about myself, I can create a safe environment for children, can become a person they run to if they have pressing issues,  and I can coach them through even the toughest problems that their teachers give them. But what I don’t know is how to be the instructor/teacher. I don’t know how to give out the homework, present material, or how to effectively grade student work. Now like everything else, I didn’t become a valued mentor and tutor overnight, it took experience and practice, but I am a little terrified to enter my first class and fail at being an instructor. I know over time, I will come to find the appropriate balance through trial and error, but before I start I’d like to come up with a map, a starting place, I can deviate from if necessary.

            When it boils down to one single question, my essential question is: How can I balance my identity as a mentor/tutor with my future identity of instructor/teacher?

Community

While studying education, something that is always mentioned is the positive classroom community. We’ve all realized that learning cannot take place in an uncomfortable or unfriendly environment, so we need to have a positive classroom community. But what exactly does the word community mean? To paraphrase a large amount of different definitions, a community is a a “group of people sharing common goals and attitudes”. So to think about what I would like my classroom to look like, I would want my students to have an attitude that they can accomplish anything I give them, and a goal to do their best and learn as much as they can.

These are things that go into my personal identity as a teacher. But now the nerve racking question of how can I create this positive classroom community where my students are inspired and motivated to do their best? Luckily, the internet is vast and offers many ideas that I can mull over and decide what I may want to try and what I don’t want to try, here is an example, http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/sept08/vol66/num01/Seven-Strategies-for-Building-Positive-Classrooms.aspx. Chapter 7 in Subjects Matter also explicitly lists some strategies to build a classroom community.

To connect to the article on mindfulness, while the idea of The Still Quiet Place may seem a little goofy, I think it would really work in a high school classroom. School is stressful enough and sometimes even I find myself needing to take a step back and look at things in smaller pieces instead of just the large final product. A friend of mine that teaches social work classes at RIC was recently telling me about how it’s that time of year when his inbox is swamped with student emails and that he ends all of his e-mails with “remember to take deep breaths”, something I feel everyone forgets. But to get back on The Still Quiet Place, after I read the article on mindfulness on Thursday, I was immediately determined to use this practice at work the next day, and I knew exactly who I was going to use it on.

There is this one 8 year old boy that I often refer to in my head as “the end of the world kid”, because if the littlest thing goes wrong or someone looks at him the wrong way, he seems to act like the world is coming to an end, having a full on tantrum. Well, Friday morning at 7:00 A.M. when his brother told him he didn’t want him on his foosball team, he began crying and screaming at his brother calling him a “stupid jerkface”. Even though I was half asleep still, The Still Quiet Place popped into my head and I quickly called this child over and told him I wanted to try something out. He started to cry more because he thought he was in trouble, saying he didn’t really mean what he said. I reassured him he wasn’t in trouble and when his sobs turned to whimpers I had him close his eyes and find his quiet place. He relaxed very quickly and when he was finally relaxed enough, he gave me a hug and went back to playing. I was impressed at how well it seemed to work and I am definitely planning on using it on a larger group. Unfortunately it was about 20 minutes until it seemed like the world was ending again. I now know I have another tool in my back pocket to use when things seem to get a little out of hand. I’m actually curious about other techniques like this that could be used to relax students.

Cooperative Learning Connected to ELL

After class last week I decided to look more into cooperative learning and Spencer Kagan who had been mentioned. I came upon this awesome page on using Kagan structures for ELLs. This page seen here, http://www.kaganonline.com/free_articles/dr_spencer_kagan/279/Kagan-Structures-for-English-Language-Learners talks about how certain techniques and approaches to cooperative learning could be used for all students, not just those that are extremely proficient in the language, allowing everyone to learn and participate.

On this page, the idea of PIES is mentioned which are all parts of cooperative learning, and it breaks down to Positive Interdependence, Individual Accountability, Equal Participation, and Simultaneuos Interaction. These are all things that need to be considered when creating a cooperative learning assignment. They are also some of the things that we had experienced during the activity in our last class. Looking at this and reflecting on my experiences in school, I can see when some things were done right and when some were not. I like looking back and seeing the ways that had worked best to facilitate my own learning.

Also on this page are descriptions of the levels of language acquisition, something that I often see touched on but never explored as much as I’d like. This is definitely a website I am going to bookmark and look back at when planning lessons for ELLs. The page lists different techniques that could be used for the different levels that are listed. I’m excited to explore cooperative learning in my own classroom, and to use it the actually effective way, unlike the way many of my own teachers have used it.

Interesting Video

I came across this video today on how some teachers in the Bronx are trying to make science interesting and fun. A very hip way to get students interested in subject content and connecting it to things students are interested in.

http://www.upworthy.com/an-incredible-teacher-made-up-a-curriculum-to-get-this-kid-to-laugh-at-a-photosynthesis-joke

The Big Bad Textbook

While reading chapters 3 and 6 of Subjects Matter I was constantly reflecting on my own experiences in school with textbooks in high school, and even sometimes in college. The fact of it is that textbooks are synonymous with the word boring. Often when a teacher told me to read a  textbook, I skimmed it to get the main idea about what was being conveyed, otherwise after the first page of the assigned reading I would have drifted off to thinking what I was going to eat for dinner. I agree completely with this book that textbooks should be used as a reference with its vast information, while articles about real world incidences should be used as the course reading. This way students can look up concepts and see how they are applied in the real world.

I actually have a friend that works at the Pearson office in Boston, editing math textbooks who says that the amount of knowledge in a textbook is completely overwhelming and could never be covered in a school year. This is a friend who actually got his math secondary education degree. I decided to look at Pearson’s website www.Pearson.com and instantly was reminded that this is a corporation with one thing truly in mind and that is money. At the top of the page, they display the share value proudly. This makes me wonder if we should really trust corporations when it comes to deciding what should be taught or tested, *cough* ETS *cough*. Even upon closer examination of their website, I got to a page on education, and there is no mission statement, just information on their success and control of the textbook world. Are textbooks really engineered to educate, or make money for the manufacturers?

 

Crisis Prevention

I have been working with children for close to a decade now and have been to many different workshops, trainings, and conferences on the elements of child care, but one of the most important and useful I have experienced is the crisis prevention training from the Crisis Prevention Institute. http://www.crisisprevention.com/Home

Hearing Principal L talk about some of the recent issues at District C, I was reminded of my CPI training and how various elements may go into a student’s “bad day” causing them to lash out, and the many strategies for de-escalation. This is definitely worth checking out and there are a lot of helpful tips and strategies. Here is a page with a little information on de-escalation. http://www.crisisprevention.com/Resources/Knowledge-Base/General/De-escalation-Tips/De-escalation-Techniques

To give you more of a taste of the different things to check out involving crisis prevention is the verbal escalation continuum, which is shown below, this is a design of the stages of a verbal crisis. This has some intervention strategies at each stage.

This website is full of many things that I feel everyone working with children should be exposed to in order to be able to create the safest environment possible for everyone.

Speaking on ELL

When discussing ELLs, one major element is the culture of power. And the question that goes along with ELL instruction is how do we assimilate ELLs appropriately into the culture of power, when they start further behind other students. It seems that District C may be developing a great way to do this by creating a community around it. With such a large ELL population, it is no doubt necessary for District C to create a strong learning environment for ELL to be able to go on and function in the world after school.

           

In the document from George Washington University, there are many approaches, techniques and elements of teaching ELLs and I find them to be very simple, yet I am able to see just how well they might be able to work inside of a classroom. This also immediately brought me back to some of the differentiation practices that I have already seen while observing classrooms at District C. These being the two different articles in the art room, one with simpler language, and the different approaches for the movie in the science room where the teacher handed out a few notes that could help students articulate what they are seeing on the screen.

           

But one thing that I have come across that was not mentioned in the document is approaches to directly inspire ELLs to work hard. On the New York City school department’s website I found a page for ELL instruction that mentions inspiring ELLs with model ELL students that have succeeded against the odds and went on the big things. The page can be seen here, http://schools.nyc.gov/Academics/ELL/default.htm . By showing students what could happen if they work hard, I believe that current ELL students will believe that they too can succeed, making them want to put in the time and effort that is necessary.

Also I stumbled around this cool picture which I think would look nice hanging up in a classroom.