Blog # 6

Sorry this is late. My husband got a new job and has been out of town all week for training. He got back Friday night.

4.2) Chapter 4 is all about teacher responses to student needs. Throughout the chapter there are multiple bolded subheadings (scenarios, specific strategies, and ideas for classroom routines). Choose three of them that you believe you can work on or that you would like to do in your own classroom, and explain why you chose them.

This was such a wonderful chapter I had a hard time narrowing it down to just three. As I was reading I found myself not just highlighting things that I thought were important to remember but also making notes in the margins of experiences I or my children have had or of questions I still have.

The first item I chose to blog about is the classroom environment. I decided a long time ago that I would have objects in my classroom labeled in both Spanish and French. Since then I have decided that I will still label things in French but I would ask my Spanish students to help me label items in their language. If I have students from other countries I would like to have them also label things in their native language. I think it would be fun to know how to say clock or drinking fountain in multiple ways. I would also like to have a culture week were each day we highlight a different country and or culture. All students can participate by showing or talking about the country they are from or where their ancestors are from. They could also talk about another state they have lived in or visited or a tradition their family has. There are many ways to have each student participate and feel special. This will also help students learn more about one another and create a feeling of community in our classroom.

My second heading is Hold Goal-Setting Conferences. I really like this idea but I am struggling with coming up with how I would do it. It would be imposable to meet with each student individually, every day, but would it be possible to meet with each one once a week or would once every two weeks be enough? I really want to do this strategy but I need some time to really think about how this will look in my classroom. I may not know until I meet my students. Some students may need to meet more often than others.

My third choice is under Guidelines for Classroom Operation. I started to laugh when I read, under Scenarios of Guidelines for Operation in the Classroom. It says “There are other ‘beliefs we live by’…” When my oldest son was 7 he asked what standards were, he had heard the word at church. I told him they were things we lived by. He responded by saying “I live by the mount ions.” Beliefs we live by makes much more sense. Scenario one talks about Ms. Gandy’s class and how if she notices a student that has just made a bench mark growth she will stop the class and have them come over to that students desk and have that student explain what they had just done. For some students this might work but for others it might be too much attention and make them not won’t to try so they are not the center of attention or put so much pressure on them to continue to succeed that they feel they have to cheat. This is what happened to me. When I was in junior high I had an English teacher that didn’t believe in putting everyone on the different spelling lists. He told us that we were all capable of doing the hardest level. The teacher would give us the new words on Friday to take home and study over the weekend. On Monday we would take a pre-test, anyone that got a hundred percent didn’t need to do spelling that week or take the final test on Friday. I am a horrible speller and never did well. One weekend I really studied hard, I memorized and used mnemonics to remember some of the words. On Monday I got a hundred percent. My teacher was so proud of me he showed all my other teachers my test and brought it up in class several times throughout the week. The next week I didn’t do as well and saw the disappointment in my teacher so I started to cheat, I had a copy of the words under my paper. When he caught me, that disappointment was even worse. We need to be careful how we praise our students, what might be a reward for one student could be a punishment for another.

In my daughters class they have class cheers and chants. The one I like the most and my daughter says most of the students like, is when a student says something is too hard and they can’t do it. The whole class chants “Yes you can, yes you can, yes you can, uh.” I asked my daughter how she felt when the class did this. She said she liked it because it made her feel good to have so many people believe in her.

5.1) On page 56 Carol says: “It is the teacher’s contract with the child to care intelligently, unyieldingly, and deeply about the individual’s strengths and weaknesses, dreams and nightmares, uniqueness and commonality.” I felt this from Carol when she was my teacher. It was a powerful experience that really did change me as a teacher. Is there a teacher in your past who seemed to have this “contract” with you? Please tell about it.

Above I told you a little about a teacher I had in junior high. I can relate to Carol and how she felt about her 8^th grade algebra teacher. I had those same feelings and emotions about my English teacher and class that first semester. He started out as being my least favorite teacher ever, but something happened the second semester that made me change my mind. I now feel about him and English the same way Carol felt about her German teacher. In the end he turned out to be my favorite teacher ever. The first semester of school all we did was spelling and diagramming sentences. I couldn’t spell or diagram sentences. I think he disliked me as much as I disliked him. I don’t remember ever having any scaffolding done on the different parts of speech. I think he just assumed we had all learned it in elementary school. I was pulled out of class for speech several times a week and now I wonder if that is where some of my academic gaps stem from. Our second semester was all about Literature. I was and still am an avid reader and even though I can’t spell or diagram a sentence, I can write. This teacher was thrilled when the quite, mousy girl that always tried to fade away was now participating in class. I loved having class discussions on the books we were reading and writing my thoughts down on paper. It turned out that I also had a talent for writing poetry. This teacher took an interest in me as a person. He helped me learn lines for the school play. Came to all my music and theatrical performances and would help me improve my writing. I felt that he really cared about me as a person. I wonder if we had studied Literature first semester and he had gotten to really know me then, if he would have taken more time with me and found other ways to teach me the parts of speech.

We must never assume that because a student isn’t getting a particular concept it is because they are lazy and not applying themselves. We need to first look at ourselves and the way we taught the concept. Then come up with another way to present the material that will be more closely related to the way that student learns.