Like a parent, I have watched each of you grow and change and fail and succeed over the course of our time together. I have also witnessed the ways in which each of you is consistent--your personality, your mood, your work ethic, your commitment, your reliability, your energy, and your investment in this challenging, reflective process.
For this week's post, to bolster you as you work on "tooting your own horn" and to provide kernels of ideas for your final reflection for your TWS, I'd like you to reflect on where you've been and how far you've come as prospective teachers. Think back to when you began this journey--what did you think of yourself? what were your worries? what did you expect classroom teaching would be like?
Now, examine where you are presently. Try to point to--to name, specifically--at least TWO areas where you feel you have grown or developed as a person and teacher of children. And, to practice naming our weaknesses, point to at least ONE area (relative to teaching and working in a school) where you feel you still need to develop.
Let's practice the art of taking stock and being honest with ourselves. Toot, toot.
10 comments:
I remember day 1 of microteaching I was paralyzed with fear. I was so nervous that I was going to screw up, that I would forget something or say something wrong, that I wrote down everything I wanted to say word for word....a script. I read from my lines, from the PowerPoint, and developed (or rather became painfully aware of ) nervous habits that included rolling a dry erase marker between my hands, playing with my hair, and tugging my shirt down. It was ridiculous how anxious and scripted my “teaching” was.
I have come a long way since then. My nerves have calmed immensely and my “script” has dwindled down to notes and reminders of important topics to touch upon. I am much more comfortable in front of a class now and I am much less afraid to be wrong.
I think that my biggest growth has been in my confidence, in myself as a person and as a teacher. When I began the teaching program at RIC I knew I wanted to teach, but I wasn't sure how it was going to happen (if I hated standing in front of a college class giving a presentation, how was I going to do that on a daily basis to a bunch of kids I didn't know?).I also used to worry incessantly about “classroom management,” and about not knowing all the content backwards and forwards. I now have much more faith in myself, in my abilities to run a classroom and to know what I need to know to help children learn. My worries have transformed from “How am I going to stand up in front of the class and teach a lesson?” to “How am I going to create a lesson that will be interesting enough to reach all my students?”
Along the way I've also learned to be more clear with students. When I first started spending time in the schools I found that my directions weren't always clear and that I sometimes had trouble explaining myself. I've gotten much better at making sure each student is aware of the homework or instructions to an assignment. When possible I now try to write instructions on the board (after saying them out loud), ask what questions they have about the assignment (a tip from Dr. Cook), and after I have handed out, or explained a homework assignment, I have the students repeat it back to me before the bell rings.
There are a few areas I still need improving in, but the area that bothers me the most is making sure each student has a voice in my class. I want every student to feel comfortable and to be able to share their thoughts in my classroom, but I do remember how it was to be the shy student. Often I didn't want to speak up and I always appreciated teachers that didn't make me talk. On the other hand though, I know that had some teachers made me speak up more maybe I wouldn't have been so shy—maybe I would have learned to speak up for myself sooner. So this is an area I'm trying to work on...making the shy kids feel comfortable enough so that they won't be scared to speak up once in a while.
When I began this journey I know that I was one of the most shy people. I was afraid to talk out in discussions in my classes, I sat by myself, and did not talk to many people at all. I was unsure of myself in front of a group of people. Lack of self-esteem, lack of self-confidence.I worried about EVERYTHING. I was afraid of what people might think/say about me, I was afraid that anything I had to say would not contribute to the class, and I was afraid of looking like the suck up to the teacher if I spoke when no one else was saying anything.I expected that teaching was going to be hard for me because of my shyness. How were my students going to like me if I wasn't sure I really liked myself?
Those are the words that describe the girl I used to be.
Now, I can confidently say that I love the person I have grown into. I love that I am not afraid to talk to people, to make eye contact. I know that for the most part...except when I am being silly...the things that I have to say in a class do matter, that students make a classroom work...every student not just some...so that includes me. I am comfortable standing in front of students and peers and I try not to worry about what they are thinking about me, I worry more about if they understand what I am saying.
I know that I talk toooooooo fast a lot of the time. Its a weakness. I think that I get so excited about things that info just flies out of my mouth. My fast talking has been a challenge for me in the classroom because my students' brains do not all work at the speed of light like my mouth. :-D I am constantly working to tell myself to SLOW DOWN...WOAH THERE ALLIE...and bring it down a few pegs.
I feel I have grown as a person and teacher of children in my ability to engage students.I was worried that I may run out of ideas on how to keep kids moving....but so far so good. My classroom is very hands on and active. I don't like to sit still for very long so I make sure that my students are not sitting still for too long. Having them up and moving around allows for me to visit them individually and in groups...I know things about every one of my students because I've talked with every one. They trust me with info about their lives.
Ultimately, I would say that I have grown in my confidence and my knowledge of how to get students involved in the class.
See ya tomorrow Ninjas!
Kate & Allie (ha ha, that used to be my favorite show back in the 80's)--
Your pieces are stunning in their eloquence and honesty. I wholeheartedly agree with each of your self-assessments, and I am so proud of you both for your amazing ability to put into perspective the person you were and the person you have become. I've said it before and I'll say it again: self knowledge is the greatest "byproduct" of your teaching. Every day, you learn more and more about yourself, about your limits and tolerances and biases and weaknesses and talents and fears.
An article of mine is being published in December in a journal called The New Educator. The article is based on my research with new English teachers and is titled: "Coming Into My Own as a Teacher": Identity, Disequilibrium, and the First Year of Teaching." In that article, I quote someone else whose research I use a lot and appreciate. Her quote is this:
"I have come to feel that self-knowledge is a major fruit--perhaps the major fruit--of early teaching experience...intimately bound up with the struggle to understand and change the self."
Bluntly put: If you're not learning about yourself and your limits, if you're not reflecting on who you used to be and marveling at who you've become, if you're not open to change---well, then, you're not BEING a teacher. You are just acting like one.
And, there's a difference.
Thanks to both of you for being such inspiring writers and thinkers and for kicking off this week of self-evaluation.
Peace-
Out of out cohort, I met Rich first, he was introduced to me by my boyfriend at the time, Rich had writing 100 with him. The same day I was given Rich’s CD, and told that he was working on writing a book. Wow. That’s what I was thinking. I met Dr. Cook at the end of first semester I believe – when I was running around Henry Barnard looking for someone to help me pick my classes. She offered to help and then became my advisor. In the chaos we refer to as our required course list, she created a plan with me (even then she knew I needed to be organized!), and I didn’t feel so lost anymore after our first visit. I met Allie in writing 100, and I seriously look back and laugh because we had to do a really weird writing project together, it’s funny to look back and see how far we’ve come. We were total strangers and now we are great friends. I’m sure I met Ashley is Zornado’s class… Or let me rephrase… one of the Zornado classes we had taken (201,202, and Zen…Ashley, do you remember sitting on the floor meditating?! I think I sat on my 202 book ha-ha). Four years later Ashley was helping me begin writing my final English paper for 460. I met Kellen in Dr. Scott’s class – I think 336 – and then I had a few more classes with him – the most memorable…Dr. Sweeney! Dr. Sweeney announced after Kellen’s presentation one day, “Kellen, you are a really cool guy.” It was a funny moment, but of course true! I met Kate in 406, we sat next to each other for an entire semester as the only two English majors in that class. We probably talk more in seminar once a week than we did that entire semester; it’s weird how professors can develop the classroom culture so differently. I’m glad I had the chance to actually get to know Kate over the past year. I know I have had an English class with Charlene, we’ve talked about it! But, for the life of me, I cannot remember which one! It’s a blur of 9 a.m.’s and writing papers. I met Rebecca in practicum last spring, and now we hang out on Thursday nights and play apples to apples (haha). I know this wasn’t part of the blog prompt, but what Dr. Cook had written really got me thinking… When we first started, did we think we would end up here - together? THINK ABOUT HOW MANY TIMES OUR PATHS HAVE CROSSED! Think about what we learned in writing 100, think about how we teach writing now… Think about the ways we have impacted and influenced each other’s learning…each other’s lives… Look at how far we’ve come.
When I first started college, I knew I would want to focus on English, eventually to become a teacher. In that time, other careers had crossed my mind, but I always wanted to help people. At one point I thought medical…then I thought about the fact that I can’t even look at a paper cut… My sophomore year I almost transferred to URI, my junior year I almost transferred to Palm Beach Atlantic. But RIC was always home, and I stayed for countless reasons. It was never the school that made me contemplate transferring; it was the desire to live somewhere else for a while. It was the school that made me stay.
I remember being in English classes and not getting the same thing out of readings as other students, I felt that I always missed the deeper meaning – I have never been the philosophical one in class, I more or less take text for what it is – and work with it from there. I felt like I was less creative than others, and sometimes I thought, “what am I doing here?” Even when I felt like I was in the wrong place – or I didn’t understand literary theory (arghh 202!) I always knew this is where I WANTED to be, so I was determined to be good.
I was usually surprised when I did well on exams and papers, many times I felt like I just didn’t get it, but I guess I did. I was positive that I was not going to pass the PLT’s or PPST’s or PRAXIS – and I did… And one day I realized that I usually compared myself to my peers, and that even if I felt out of the loop in class sometimes, I worked hard and knew more than I thought.
In microteaching I never thought I would be able to teach for ten minutes…for twenty minutes… for fifty minutes… I teach classes now that are two hours long – and I think – look at how far I’ve come.
Presently, I have become good at encouraging students and teaching them to do their best. It is natural for me to tell students how well they are doing, even if it is just because they have nice penmanship. I am good at developing their confidence and making them believe that they can do well, that they can do better. Once students know I believe in them, they work harder and believe in themselves, which is important inside the classroom, and equally as important outside the classroom. Speaking in educational terms, I am good at “positive reinforcement,” and creating an environment where students feel they can share and develop ideas because I am not going to shut them down, rather I appreciate the fact that they shared their writing and thoughts with the class and myself.
I have noticed in middle school that I am great at being organized. And these students need this because they would literally lose their heads if they were not attached to their bodies, I am not joking! I have realized that being organized and prepared as a teacher creates more opportunities for my students to learn and grow because I am ready and able to guide them. On the flip side, if I came into class unorganized and unprepared – I would be hurting the students and their education. I am happy to say that being organized as a teacher is helping them. Recently, I have been teaching my students to come to class prepared, write in their agendas, organize their back packs at night, and to pay attention and be respectful when someone is talking. And yet, sometimes they are still very confused! It’s ok, we’re working on it.
My weakness, I need to work on filling in the gaps. It can be transitioning between lessons or making the implicit, explicit. This semester I have been focusing on directions and making sure all students know what they are supposed to be doing and are not confused… I also have been working on making sure that students know there is a purpose to the work we are doing and that they know there is a reason behind it all. I notice that sometimes when I switch gears from one thing to the next in class, some students have a look on their face that says, “huh?” This is something I have been working on, making sure that my lessons are cohesive and connected.
When I First started teaching, I spent most of the time trying to be "Mr. New Teacher who better get through everything he has to or else". I think this is because I felt a lot of pressure to perform and have my teaching philosophy and techniques down right out of the gate. I forgot to let myself shine through, and be less of the business man. My students didn't even know me and they noticed it. My cooperating teacher noticed it. And then I noticed it, and since then I have dropped that "hat" and teaching has been so much easier now that Mr. Z took over, and not Mr. Z The Suit. Personality adds so much to the learning experience, and I learned to not let anything get in the way of that.
Since then, I feel I have come far in terms of pacing a class. I have learned that for the most part, I can sense how slow or how fast a unit or a lesson has to move judging by how the class is responding. Sometimes it can be student work. But now I consider facial expressions, tone of responses, and the overall mood of the class. These big things were sometimes overlooked by me in the beginning, but now i can say the "Sixth Teaching Sense" has kicked in, and allowing appropriate time in class has been much easier. Also, engaging most students has become easier as well. It took about a day of waiting for people to respond to a question only to have blank faces staring at me to realize that I have to make a change. It all came down to giving them more ownership over the class. having people volunteer to write things on the board, or having students teach the class a topic ensured everyone was active in their work and students were really into what they were doing. Letting the students decide how they want to be involved helped a lot in engaging everyone. Ultimately, I have grown into the "guide on the side".
One thing I am still working on in my class is consistently reminding students WHY they are doing what they are doing. I do it at the beginning, but can go a whole class without mentioning it again. Staying on top of this will keep class relevant to the students, and will help motivation. I know I need to do this and I tell myself all the time, its just DOING it all the time that I need to improve.
When teaching was just something that I talk about, awfully theoretically, I always worried about my ability to remain energetic. To not burnout. This was a worry because, I thought about the amount of time that I would spend to teach one lesson during practicum, and it was overwhelming to imagine that I would be teaching five lessons a day, five days, a week.
Now that I am teaching. This does not worry me. Dr. Cook once told me that I could take a class into the woods and just talk with them and they would be just as interested as being part of a lesson with a smartboard and a writing prompt and etc" I have always kept this comment in my head, and I have used it to fuel the classes that I am teaching. I have found a balance between "grand slam" lessons and the lessons where class feels more like a conversation at a coffee house.
My weakness is eliminating other aspects of my life to concentrate on teaching. I know that right now, as a student teacher, I am a college student, a teacher, a stockboy at a liquore store, a boyfriend, a tenant, and a head produce director, but it is hard for me sometimes, to realize that I have to concentrate on the most important things. The most important this is of course being a boyfriend, sorry, but love trumps school and teaching and money and all that jazz. As I move forward into a teaching career, I need to make sure that I can put enough effort into my teaching job and still satisfy all of the other elements in my life.
1. I am good weaving purpose into and throughout my lessons.
2. I am good at timing my lessons and being aware of pacing.
Like Kate, my micro, and many of my early lessons, adhered to a strict script, to the point where I panicked if I got ahead of myself, which happened often. Students would gaze up at me with the blankest of stares, occasionally looking to their classroom teacher to save them.
Okay, I might be exaggerating a little bit, but there were definitely some things that needed work when I started down this road, prime among them were my ability to explain myself and to go with the flow. I really did, both in 407 and early 410, have students staring blankly at me when I gave directions because I was really bad at it. This is something that I have taken care to keep in mind at all times, and it has paid off. Giving clear directions began to come more and more naturally working with Becky in Rita's senior class. The team-teaching approach forced me to better articulate my thoughts, as well as providing a second brain to improve on them, and clarify where necessary. If I had an idea and Becky looked at me blankly, then it was a pretty good indicator that I was talking crazy again and I needed to backpedal and expand. Eventually, there was a lot less "backpedalling" and a lot more anticipating.
Even over the course of the semester, I've grown in this area. Using guiding questions to work through a text has always seemed like an obvious choice and a necessary part of scaffolding, but sometimes my attempts at guiding questions were nearly as labyrinthine as the text I was trying to guide my students through. Bearing in mind Dr. Cook's critique of my teaching as sometimes being "too cranial" and Belanger's notes on bad questions vs. good questions, I've been able to better hone my questions. Specificity. Just like everything else. Specificity is absolutely key.
I've also finally reached a point where I can be productively derailed from my original plan. When I noticed a weakness in students' ability to expand on an idea, I worked in an extra lesson to slowly build them up to a paper that would require them to be able to justify their stance on an argument.
The main problem I am still having now is, surprisingly, coddling students. I have a VERY challenging student (Dr. Cook will agree here) that I just can't seem to get through to, but I hesitate, for whatever reason, to really level with him, for fear he will shut down completely in class, or that he will act out more. For the most part, my communication with my students is pretty good. It's a developing art, but for the most part, it's coming along pretty well. There are just a couple of students in a couple of classes that seem not to WANT to be a productive part of the classroom community and do everything they can to actively tear it down. My struggle is to keep adding mortar faster than they can knock it down right now, but in the end, I need to stop the wrecking ball.
So, I can't tell you how many times I have sat down this week to TRY to write this. But, it seems WAY harder than it should. There is just SOOO much! So, in a blog like fashion...I'm going to take the "Nike approach" and "just do it".
I don't know where to START! I think I was born with a desire to teach. My earliest memories are of being a small child (maybe three or four) and sitting my grandfather down and teaching him. I think I told you guys about it before...I would fail him just to keep in in for his recess so I could keep "teaching". My grandfather is the one who encouraged me to keep going for this dream through my phases of "Maybe I want to be a Pharmacist" "Maybe I want to join the military" and he always said "But you're a teacher, teach!" When I got to my senior year of college I realized I couldn't just be a teacher and that I would have to teach SOMETHING. I hate Math, Science is too technical, I am SOOOO not a Physical education person, I have a hard time remembering dates...but English? Ooooo...I love English!
It was at this realization in my life that I also suffered a pretty bad injury. I had an anxiety disorder that went untreated or diagnosed for most of high school, and what would happen is I would get nervous, my breathing would increase, blood pump radically and my body would force me to pass out to regain control. This all occured in a matter of seconds. Multiple times family memebers and friends found me on the floor and I didn't really remember how I got there. One day I was home alone changing a light bulb in our hall, it's high up, so I was on a chair and...had an "episode". I fell off the chair and landed on the marble hallway. I had cut myself, and had a nagging headache, but I thought nothing of it. It had happened before.
They continued to fight to find out WHY this was happening and after about a year diagnosed me with anxiety. It wasn't until my freshman year of college that it all came together...my writing had lost so of it's technical skill and I had a hard time with some comprehension. I had suffered minor brain damage.
I spent weeks crying, thinking my teaching career was over. Meg Carroll in the Writing Center gave me a home in the center as a clerical assistant and I worked hard to re-train my brain. I needed re-teaching and practice.
I'm STILL not the grammar scholar I WAS, but...I learned I didn't have to be to teach. My problem now is mostly with my own writing and I see the mistakes in other people's work.
But that is just ONE way I grew. I have also learned more about myself as a teacher in the past 3 months than I think some teachers may learn about themselves in years. I learned that I am more confident infront of a class than I ever thought I would be. I learned that it's OKAY for students to know you're a human (actually better) and I learned that if your heart is in it...you can do almost anything!
I also know now that I will never master teaching. Anyone who thinks of themselves as a master of teaching is probably wrong. Education is always changing, always moving, as is literature. I will never master this! But I'm alright with that. I just want to be damn good t it!
To help me remember what occurred almost a year ago I referred back to my notes. January 21, 2009 (I think that this was the first day of class)Dr. Cook gave us a prompt "What is on your mind this morning as we begin this yearlong professional journey?" and this was my response:
I am excited to be part of this class among some old and some new faces. It is always difficult to start a new semester, especially containing classes like practicum and Eng. seminar. I know it will be difficult to accomplish given the hectic life I lead but I am looking forward to the challenge.
After reading this and other notes from Spring semester I can't help but laugh. I thought that last semester was difficult and challenging! I also went into last semester thinking that I was all set to teach and that there wasn't a lot more I could learn. I am embarrassed about that fact and have since realized that I never want to be "all-knowing" and pride myself in being a life-long learner.
I have come a long way since then. Unlike some of my peers who needed to realize how talented and intelligent they were and to build confidence, I needed a lesson in humility and understanding. Last semester as well as this semester taught me those skills. I have come to the realization that although I have a degree in Psych. and experience working with behavioral kids it doesn't prepare me for the classroom, a rigorous, academic setting where you need to not only be one step ahead with their behaviors but also academically.
This semester has taught me that I have a great understanding on how to approach text using research and innovative strategies to expand knowledge rather than going "by the book". I also know that I have a good understanding of my students academically and developmentally and I meet them where they are at.
I still have some aspects of being a teacher that I need to work on, but that is a part of being a life-long learner, and in the words of Aimee "I'm okay with that!"
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