The Station Sensation -- Sara

Last Friday, I taught my first lesson using stations. We had a lesson on the Underground Railroad and the Abolitionist Reform Movement. I divided the classroom into 7 stations. At these stations, students were analyzing images and abolitionist propaganda, taking a Underground Railroad adventure on a National Geographic website, holding and analyzing artifacts that resemble life as a slave, and listening to a speech made by Frederick Douglass. I even had them read an excerpt from the slave narrative of Harriet Jacobs and created a simulation using a few blankets and a table where students had to crawl into and pretend they would hide there for seven years.

Although the preparation and the administration were exhausting, it was the best lesson I have taught yet. I recommend teaching stations because the students can focus on many different skills during one day. It is also a great way to accommodate for students with disabilities. There was a very limited amount of reading and writing. While working in cooperative groups, they were able to interact at the same pace with their peers.

Working in stations also got my students excited about learning the topic. They have never worked in stations in my CT’s classroom before. They were eager to identify with the historical persons we studied and asked many questions that showed they were thinking critically about the material. They were so excited after their class, they told other teachers about the lesson. Word spread around the school. By my fourth lesson, I had the librarian and media specialist taking pictures for the school newsletter, and four other Social Studies teachers came to check it out. One teacher even requested a copy of the lesson plan so they could use it next year! All my hard work had paid off.

Here are some recommendations I have for using stations in the classroom. Some are ideas I thought of, and others were hard lessons learned!

· Assign cooperative groups ahead of time. I was lucky to have thought of this before the lesson. As one person, it is hard to run around to seven stations discussing content, as well as worrying about discipline problems.
· Invite volunteer parents or other teachers into the classroom. I had one station where the students were so excited that they got a little silly. I was told after my lesson, that there is a volunteer list made of parents who are eager to come in and help. Our librarian also came in to help and she was delighted to be working in the classroom.
· Have something to do if students finish their station task early. I kept a list of discussion questions at the table that were relevant to the station content. This encouraged their learning and identification with the material, as well as kept them from finding something else to do for themselves (which is usually off task or bad behavior!).

I motion to end debate, er, move, er … what? -– Abri

I am going to have a class full of disappointed faces tomorrow morning. It’s not that I want to make the legislative process more difficult. It’s not that I am trying to prevent the 1st Session of the 111th Congress from passing any key legislation. The fact remains that I am the President of the United States of America (at least, for the next week) and I need to protect my citizens, even if my Senate believes that they should be able to restrict some rights. You see, my class full of 28 Senators just passed a bill to require mandatory driving tests for Americans over the age of 65. Technically, that is unconstitutional because it violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. More on that later …

We are a third of the way through our Model Congress and it is even better than I anticipated that it would be. I have served as a student representative in the past, but none of those experiences reached the level of engagement that I have seen over the past week. Our Congress is more limited because of its size and time restrictions, but we’re still getting some quality work. All of our students have been assigned to a committee and more than half of our students are serving in a position of Congressional leadership (such as the Speaker of the House, the Majority Leader, the Minority Whip, etc).

Our students are quickly picking up on parliamentary procedure as well as the ins and outs of committee work. They are also discovering that passing a bill through Congress is a lot more work than they thought it would be. In the real world, only 4% of bills that go through Congress actually make it into law. One of my students (let’s call him Daniel*) stopped me in the hallway last week and asked, “So, is this really what it’s like? My bill is stuck in committee. Is there any way that I can get it out? How does Congress ever manage to get anything done?”

It is a fair question. How does Congress ever manage to get anything done? Daniel and his fellow students are discovering that the key is compromise, compromise, compromise. They are also living the legislative process instead of just reading about it. They are seeing first-hand how our government is structured to allow everyone to express their opinion, to allow only the best bills to go through, to restrict those who would try to harm a section of the American population, and to make sure that one governing body does not wield too much power.

Which brings me back to my role: I am the president. It is my job to check my own students and ensure that they are working for the best interests of the American public and not just for themselves. Of course, they can still override me, if 2/3 of them decide that I am wrong. In that case, the bill will go to another teacher in the school who acts as the Supreme Court. There is no way to override him!

Regardless of if this bill sees the metaphorical light of day, this simulation is providing my students with a window into the real world. They are living government, an experience that will hopefully stick with them for years and that might change how critical they are of their representatives in the future. I have discovered that the key to a good simulation is providing students with an authentic experience that they can make their own, and I can’t wait to see what else my students come up with.

By the way, the title of the post is supposed to be “I motion to move the previous question.” The students are still working on that one! But I think that they will have it down by Friday.

* Name changed to protect the student

The Importance of Language -- Kare

When giving a unit mastery test earlier this week, the importance of language struck me. As an English teacher, I view the English language and communication as the heart of my curriculum. I believe that literature should come secondary to these broad-based language communication skills. Yet, due to standards and department-wide curriculum guides, what I teach is the literature and its corresponding history and literary connections. On my unit test, then, I asked questions in various formats to assess student understanding of the various literary components. Thus, the language skills become secondary with regard to assessment.

During the test, several students finished within the first half hour—keep in mind this is a test designed for a 90 minute block. Though I have not graded the tests I somehow assume these super-quick students did not perform at their best. The majority of students took about an hour or an hour and twenty minutes to complete. The last four students to finish included two foreign exchange students and two Korean students. All four had at some point throughout the test asked clarification on questions—particularly questions regarding abstract concepts like “significance.” It dawned on me that these non-native English speakers were perhaps the last to finish the test because of language issues. While I did not intentionally develop question phrasing or vocabulary that would “stump” students, I did use typical English vocabulary and specialized language to talk about abstract literary concepts designed for the college-bound junior class I teach. I want my students to demonstrate their knowledge of literature but also their language skills. I am facing a debate now regarding how to balance these two demands with particular concern for non-native English speaking students. My teaching beliefs value language while my mandated curriculum values literature. And I feel stuck.

Feeling Happily Possessive --Cati

I’m about to sound selfish and like it’s all about “me”—but honestly, one of my favorite things about student teaching is feeling like these are my students, and we are together in my classroom. I feel like I have been given a huge, brightly wrapped, shiny present and get to open it every day all over again.

Part of the reason why I feel like these things are mine is because my cooperating teacher gave me three classes at once, my first full week as a student teacher, and started directing student questions to me and leaving the room sometimes. Students saw that overnight I had apparently become “their teacher.” My cooperating teacher was also absent for family reasons for three days in a row that first week. Students saw me running the show and a sub sitting in the back of the room. Yup, I’m their teacher.

And I simply adore being their teacher. It is amazing to me how quickly I have connected with these students. Having sat and observed them all year, for upwards of one hundred hours, and having taught them several lessons, I thought that I already “knew” them and had connected with them. But this feels entirely different… cracking up at the creative ways that they try to call me “Ms. Schwenkler” in Spanish (the last name is hard enough, and for Spanish II kiddos the “Ms.” part often comes out as “Mrs.” or even “Mr.”)… giving them pep talks about how they can do better on the next quiz… getting high-fives when I pass my boys in the hall.

Every time a student smiles at me, I feel my heart glowing, and when they laugh at me because they think I’m being “too enthusiastic” or laugh at my laugh because it sounds like a fire drill is about to start, I know I’m doing something right. I get to be “that” teacher who’s weird and quirky and hey, holds your attention as a result. Students keep looking at me funny as they get back quizzes and written work covered in red ink as I celebrate their progress, note their areas for improvement, and use some combination of exclamation points, stars, and smiley faces. Yes, that took me forever. No, I can’t imagine giving you back anything else.

I love feeling like a teacher. And while that means that I’m sick (I already had to stay home one day), and I’m starting to wonder what kind of mauve eyeshadow would best complement the growing circles under my eyes, it also means I get out of bed at 5 a.m. every day so, so happy to go in and interact with my students. I share Kyle’s surprise at how fun it is to work with ninth graders, having also thought that I would only want to work with the “older, motivated students.” My AP students are quiet and boring compared to my hilarious, endearing ninth and tenth graders who vary greatly in terms of achievement and motivation, but they all make my heart sing.

Black Stuff All Over My Fingers --Eric

It's a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it. I use the dry-erase board. No matter how carefully I distance my hands from the pen's felt tip as I write, or from the eraser as I wipe the board clean, at the end of the day my fingers are covered in an inky grime that turns the sink black when I finally wash my hands. Teaching is about getting your hands dirty. The strongest and most valuable moments in my teaching are often the messiest, as they involved a whirlwind of activity and places which call my attention. However, these are the moments in which the most honest-to-God teaching takes place.

Sometimes my weakest moments in the classroom are when we hold whole-class “discussions,” such as when we analyze John Donne's metaphysical conceits and his sonnets broken up into discrete arguments. The text is Donne's “Holy Sonnet 10,” a poem in which the speaker challenges death itself. “Death be not proud,” it famously starts, “though some have called thee / Mighty and dreadful.” I thought I did everything right. I had them anticipate his poem through their own experience (e.g. “How many of you know someone who died?”); I even activated some schemas by having them discuss a thematically related painting (Sir Thomas Aston at the Deathbed of His Wife). Both of these went well. I taught them the Italian sonnet rhyme scheme and had them discuss the pros and cons of poetry that follows a strict structure. This went well, too, because they anticipated what I intended: by being familiar with a poem's structure, its meanings become more accessible to the reader. When we went to actually trek through the quatrains to see the Italian sonnet style in action, however, I could feel their enthusiasm alchemize to lead and sink lower and lower on their shoulders and eyelids. By the end of the activity, leaving the poem behind for good seemed about on par with candy at an end-of-the-year party.

In the same lesson, ironically, we shifted gears completely and the students did a writing workshop for a creative writing assignment they have been working on. I set the students to move forward on their own, critiquing each other's writing in a loosely structured format (“praise/question/suggestion”), while I moved around the room and addressed specific needs.

I have never felt so needed in so many places at the same time. Many of the students had incredibly deep questions that demonstrated an amazing understanding and concern for the task at hand. Many of my students who need the most love and attention to be successful in the classroom had worked their selves ragged in the name of the assignment, producing amazing work. I wanted to be everywhere at once. I wanted to spend the entire period with the same students at the same time to give them the help and the attention that they deserved. In the same instant I wanted to be hovering over the students who could not stay on task to save their lives. That comes with the territory.

These were the moments where I felt the most connected to student needs and student learning. It was the messiest, because of all the activity happening at the same time, and all the specific needs that need to have been addressed at the same time. Yet these were the moments in which I could attend to students individually and help move them significantly forward. Real learning took place here. It's ok that at the end of the days I got my hands dirty with the work. Tomorrow I'm ready to do it again.

Sometimes, it takes two -- Abri

One reason I want to be a teacher is so that I can make history, government, and other social sciences come alive for my students. Beyond just learning dates, important people, and events, I want to help students experience the past and present, and imagine the future.

I’ve been around teachers all of my life. You could say that it’s in my blood; in fact, my mom says that I used to come home from preschool, arrange my stuffed animals in neat rows, and teach them what I had learned each day. I rarely got bored in school growing up, but whenever I did, I would think about how I would have presented the material differently. Last summer I could hardly wait to apply my own life experience to classroom theory and be able to get to student teaching as soon as possible.

But if I have learned anything from life it is that things rarely turn out the way that you plan, and often that is a good thing. I realize now that my original grand plans for student teaching were missing one essential element: the influence and support of my cooperating teacher. I dreamed about all the wonderful things that I would do with my students, and of how my ideas could make the difference their lives. I knew that my cooperating teacher would be around to offer me advice and to critique my performance, but I was expecting that our roles would be kept separate. The downside to this premature vision was that I would have to navigate a great deal of my student teaching alone.

Thankfully, this is not the case. Not only have my cooperating teacher and I forged a successful working relationship, we have also been able to co-teach our classes. Co-teaching can often be a tenuous process because every teacher has a different style, yet it is becoming more popular in the era of IEPs and individualized instruction. A true co-teaching experience is a collaborative effort in which both parties fuse their skills and expertise to enhance classroom learning and make it better than it would have been if only one of them were teaching. Each teacher has a different concept of their ideal classroom and co-teaching challenges individualism for the good of students.

My cooperating teacher and I have been co-teaching for several weeks. Some days this looks like one of us leading a discussion while the other adds comments to illuminate parts of the discussion. Other days this looks like us switching back and forth with different activities throughout the class period. Most recently we have started simulations in our government classes – a Mock Election and a Model Congress. Now, co-teaching is both of us walking around our classroom or the computer lab to take note of student progress and help groups as they have need. I have even been able to lead one of the classes in the computer lab by myself!

To me, the most important benefit of co-teaching is the ability to offer individualized instruction to more students. Some of our students have had trouble with the bill writing process for Model Congress. Co-teaching has allowed me the freedom to guide one student in research about Roe v. Wade, help another improve her writing, and edit a bill on nuclear fusion written by a third, all the while knowing that my cooperating teacher is looking at the big picture. When he sits down with a student, I do the same thing.

These simulations are helping the government process come alive for my students. I do not think that co-teaching is necessary for a successful simulation, but it certainly helps. I hope that having the opportunity to work directly with my students will make them more successful when we elect a president and open the 111th Congress this week! Stay tuned!

Flexibility: Plans? More Like Guidelines, Methinks! -- Amelia

Ah, yes—that stunning word we’ve heard since day one of our teacher preparation classes: flexibility, flexibility, flexibility! The extreme necessity for flexibility was my first rude awakening in the realm of teaching. Now I know why all the other teachers sweetly smile with shaking heads at my neatly organized and dated lesson plans nestled in their shiny page protectors. My poor naïve lesson plans, gleaming with expectation, structure, and punctuality.

While I was quite aware of the need for flexibility, the term was much more surreal and distant, like a tropical island—until now. You’ve heard that Jamaica has beautiful beaches, green luscious landscapes, and warm weather, all of which you can picture in your mind’s eye. However, you can’t quite fathom its impact until you experience it for yourself.

It all began with the rescheduling of Benchmark testing, which ended up being a month ahead of schedule. So I planned accordingly. Then came the rescheduling of the SOL practice Writing test. First, it was March 4th. I planned accordingly. Then it was March 11th. I planned accordingly. Then it was March 18th. I planned accordingly. Then it was back to March 11th. Yep, you guessed it. I planned accordingly. Then back to March 18th. Yes, it was finally given on March 11th.

I must admit: I’m a sucker for schedules. I plan and prefer that things go according to plan (at least the big things). So in the beginning of all this, I was having quite the panic attack. Somehow, I managed to rearrange my brain. I realized that I was viewing lesson planning as some sort of code of rules. Once planned, lessons are immutable procedures that have been set in stone, probably because I invested so much time in them. Then I heard a voice echoing in my head… It was Captain Barbossa. He was saying, “The code is more what you'd call ‘guidelines’ than actual rules. Arrrrrg. Matey!” Okay, I added that last part.

But I realized that I have to view my schedule and lesson plans as mutable, flexible guidelines. Perhaps teachers are more like pirates than you might think at first glance. (Not the pillaging and plundering aspect, of course.) As teacher, we must ride the waves, or go with the flow, or whatever cliché works for you. Just like pirates, there is a greater force guiding our sails. We can either work against that force or work with it. Personally, I’ve learned that working with it is much more sane.

Cross my heart and hope to die, I will never be absent again! -- Lizzie

Recently I was out because I had a job interview. While this should be something to celebrate and I should hope for more days like this in the coming future, I am absolutely dreading ever having to miss a day of school again. Who knew how much work it was putting plans together for a substitute?! Every little detail has to be explicitly stated and every minute occupied in an effort to lose as little time as possible. It takes lesson planning to a whole new level!

Usually I like to come home after school and take a little breather before jumping into planning for the next day, but when you are going to be absent, everything must be taken care of before you leave school for the day. Everything planned. Everything explained. Everything sequenced and paced. Everything copied. When I plan for myself, of course I take all of those things into consideration, but things don’t have to be so set in stone yet. Often times I even think of better ways to do things while I am in the middle of them and end up changing things around. Even just explaining all of my ideas for one class and explicating them on paper takes so much more time than I ever would have imagined!

Even though I’ve spent the last two paragraphs basically complaining, part of me is rather sad about missing school. It will be my first day away from my students since beginning my student teaching. While I know that they will all be fine in the capable hands of my cooperating teacher and probably will not falter at my absence, I will miss them. When I was putting together my plans, I couldn’t help but think how fun and engaging some of the activities were and how it really did sadden me a little that I was not going to be able to be there to see my students engaging in them. As much as this disappointed me, it also made me smile because I realized that even though I’ve known them for a short time, they are becoming a part of me. I am falling in love with teaching and with my students. I never thought that I would actually look forward to getting up at 5 am, but I truly do. I am eager for each new day with my students and never ceased to be both amazed and entertained by them. So for now, I might be away from them for a day, but I will be thinking of them and will be ready to get back and pick up where I left off on this crazy journey known as student teaching.

A Student in Need; I’m a Teacher Indeed -- Kelly

The math department offers lunchtime tutoring in my classroom every day. Members of the Math Honor Society, as well as a few teachers, come and help students study. Wednesday looked like any other normal tutoring day; the rowdy clique of honor society students came in and circled up, eating their lunch. One or two timid math students approached and nervously asked the teacher on duty for help. I sat off to the side and worked, munching on my lunch. Then, one of the honor society students walked in with a girl I hadn’t seen before. “Guys, this is Rosa.* She’s a new student here; she’s from Honduras and doesn’t speak much English. I’m showing her around and she wanted to come eat with me.” Rosa seemed shy and hesitant, as many do when immersed in a completely foreign culture. The math clique asked her a few questions in broken Spanish but for the most part let her be. I speak mediocre Spanish and briefly considered jumping in, but hey, I guess I still find it hard to break into the cool kids’ clique at lunch.

Later that afternoon I got an email forward from fellow blogger Cati, who is also placed at my school. Rosa is a recent immigrant and, beyond speaking very little English, has had little in the way of math education. She can add and subtract but has not been taught multiplication, division, fractions, basic shapes and their properties, etc. The Spanish department head had sent this email to a number of teachers in the school asking them to brainstorm ways they could collaboratively help Rosa succeed.

I was appalled that a high school student could be so critically behind. Add that to the fact that she does not speak the dominant language in the school, and the number of people who are able to help her is limited. My heart naturally bends toward students who are faced with big obstacles, and I feel acutely for Rosa. I wish I had more skills to offer help to her. I did what I could; I emailed my math advisor to ask about Spanish recourses, but beyond that I don’t know how much help I will be able to offer.

Rosa’s situation caused me to reflect. Her case is the first one that has really made me feel that gut-wrenching “Ah! This is terrible! What can I do?” feeling that teachers get when they desperately want their students to succeed but are at a loss as to how. Certainly I care about all my students and hope they all will achieve something in my class, but it is those special students who are faced with so many more challenges than their peers which makes me feel like a teacher. Rosa was my first case. I’m sure I will come across many more such students in my career. They will each have their own unique heart-wrenching story and seemingly insurmountable challenges. I only hope I am able to help as many as I can.

*Name has been changed.

Where a kid can be a kid -- Kyle

Imagine a place where students actually perk up when they are asked to do something in class. Imagine a group of students who are so motivated to learn about seemingly boring texts like The Odyssey and Great Expectations that they finish their books weeks before the final reading is due. Imagine a classroom that is actively engaged for an entire ninety minutes in pursuit of an education based around discovering deep and influential meanings of literature. Now imagine that I have been given such a class for my student teaching experience.

Unbelievable, I know, yet I have proof! This Monday, obviously a day when students do not want to be awake at 7:20, let alone working, I taught a lesson on archetypal theory in The Odyssey. Archetypal theory is essentially the universal idea of the hero’s journey, which is wonderfully modeled by Odysseus’s quest to return to Ithaca. Needless to say, the ideas presented were highly sophisticated, and I worried that my students may be turned off by the difficult content on an unfortunate day. My worries proved groundless; the class jumped enthusiastically into my planned activities. To make the concepts easier, I presented the theory to them through “Calvin and Hobbes” comic strips, and my students immediately wanted to assume the roles of the precocious youngster and his imaginary, yet oh-so-real, stuffed tiger. When I introduced markers and chart paper, the lesson practically ran itself. They were even excited to stand in front of the class and present what they learned over the course of the day.

No one is more surprised than I to discover that teaching the 9th grade is a wonder and a delight. When I first engendered the idea of being a teacher, I wholeheartedly believed that only the upper echelons of the high school strata would do for me. I wanted to teach 11th or 12th grade literature because I was under the impression that those students were the only ones who could discuss the merits, or lack thereof, of the literary works that I studied in college. I am quickly discovering, however, that while my AP 12 class is challenging and exciting, I am having far too much fun with my 9th graders to dismiss them to the void of subjects that I will never teach.

I have found that 9th grade lies in that strange time between the social awkwardness of middle school and the stratified society of high school. As such, my students are willing to act like children, yet conduct themselves with a surprising sense of maturity. Because I myself am a child at heart, I await every 7:20 AM with great anticipation and excitement. That is the time that I am forever surprised and forever overjoyed that I find myself teaching the 9th grade.