La Comunidad

This past week was short and sweet. The school I student teach at only had school Monday and Tuesday before we got out for Thanksgiving break. During these two days I could tell my students (and teachers) were a little antsy because they were excited about their days off. 

We also wrapped up our unit on Indirect Object Pronouns, because we figured if we put it off until after break, students would have forgotten some of the information we had been going over. On Monday in class, we went over their homework, which was a little difficult, but good practice. Then, I tried an activity to help reinforce how Indirect Object Pronouns work. For the activity, I created several sentences containing indirect objects. I wrote one word (in Spanish) on each piece of poster board, as well as the each indirect object pronoun on each piece. In class, I took a sentence and handed one word to different students. Then I asked them to come forward and unscramble the sentence to make sense in Spanish. At this time, I also gave six students one of the six indirect object pronouns and asked them to come to the front of the room as well. Some of the sentences that students had to unscramble were harder than others, so I started with the easier sentences and we worked our way to the harder ones. After they formed the sentence, I would go through the four steps with them to finding the indirect object pronoun. First, we found the verb(s). Then we asked “who?” or “what?” based on the verb(s) (the direct object). Then we asked “to whom?” or “for whom?” based on the direct object (the indirect object). Then, we asked which indirect object pronoun we would use based on the indirect object was used. After we identified the indirect object pronoun (IOP), I would have the person holding the corresponding IOP put themselves in the right spot in the sentence. We then reviewed the sentence quickly before we started a new sentence. I think students really liked this activity, because they were able to stand up and be more involved in their learning. They were also able work through the steps and see the placement of the verbs as the students moved their bodies around. I was really happy with how this activity went and believe it helped prepare them for their quiz the next day.

Before I had students take their quiz on Tuesday, I reviewed their homework with them and then worked through a quick review for their quiz. For this review, I tried to model just how the quiz was formatted so there wouldn’t be any surprises on the quiz. Although they were doing well with the material, it seemed as if students doubted their abilities. They almost seemed to think that the way they were doing it was too easy, so it must be wrong. So, I had them work through the four sample sections and explained the answers after they were done. This helped students gain some confidence with the material and proved just how much they know. The grades on the quizzes were very good. There were a few students that I noticed were still having quite a bit of trouble with the material, but the majority of the students either made no mistakes or just small mistakes that they didn’t get much marked off for.

Last week, I set two goals for myself: to write at least four dialogues before break starts on Tuesday and to start using the new overhead projector in our room. Unfortunately, I didn’t quite reach either goal. I started on my dialogues before Thanksgiving break, but did not finish with four of them. I will have to keep working on these for this upcoming week. I also was not able to use the new overhead projector because the technology people are still working on getting it to work. I hope it will be ready to go for this upcoming week, however, so that I can start using it.

The goals I would like to shoot for for this upcoming week are to start planning the unit that will start the first Monday in December in order to better prepare myself to teach new concepts in Spanish, and to enjoy my last few weeks of student teaching while I am also trying to set up a job and finish various things I have left for school. In order to finish with the least amount of stress possible, I have to focus each day on getting things done and in order.

The word I chose to describe this week is anticipation. Not only were students and teachers alike ready for Thanksgiving break, but also it was evident that students were ready to be done with the various tests and quizzes they had to take before their break. I also feel as if the staff at Lincoln Hall is feeling anticipation for their new building, which they are working on designing. There have been, however, a few issues they have run into concerning the new building.  The community around Lincoln Hall is upset that the administration has not been keeping them informed of their plans. They feel like the district is trying to do everything without their input, which is making them mad. Currently, the community is trying to sue, because they don’t like how everything is going.

Throughout my student teaching experience, I have learned just how big of an effect the community can have on a school and vise versa. It is essential that they keep one another informed, because what each of them does has an impact on the other.

Parents and families of students are included in the community. While at Lincoln Hall, I have come to understand the importance of contact and communication with parents. Parents like to hear how their child is doing in school, whether it’s good or bad, so they know how they can help them. It is essential for middle school teachers to have communication with parents especially because a lot of middle school students avoid telling their parents a lot about school. Being able to conduct parent teacher conferences gave me a good chance to work on my communication with parents. Of the students’ parents I conferenced with, I can tell that it benefited their child (at least for the time being), because the parents were able to get their student back on track if they were struggling and/or we worked out a plan to help their child.

Parent teacher conferences were also interesting, because we met parents coming from a wide range of ethnicities. There were some parents that had trouble speaking English, which was sometimes a struggle. It seemed as if we were always able to figure out a way to communicate, however, and ended up on the same page. I noticed that many of the parents were extremely supportive of the teachers, which was great, because they realized that we want to help their child as much as they want to as well. While conferencing with parents and students, we were able to work out plans to help promote students learning and well-being. For example, at conferences, I pointed out to one parent that their daughter always seemed to do her homework and participated in class, but it was like there was some sort of disconnect with the material when she took tests and quizzes. I suggested some things to help their daughter and let them know I was always available to help her and explain things further if she was having trouble explaining. She decided she would start coming in to go over her homework more thoroughly and to ask questions about material she was struggling with. We all decided this would help and everyone was happy with the decision.

I have not had much of a chance to collaborate with students with disabilities and chart their progress because I don’t have any students with disabilities that disrupt their learning. I have a student with ADHD, but she is on medication and is very bright. I also have a student that uses a michrophone because of her hearing, but she does well in class too.

When I have my own classroom I will make sure that I communicate with parents often, be it good information or bad. I think it’s important to inform parents on how their students are doing and to gain their trust and support. When the school year first starts, I would like to try to call all of my students’ parents just to introduce myself and let them know they can contact me if they ever need anything. Then, I will try to call parents right away when I notice a student struggling in hopes to correct the problem quickly. I think it’s nice to contact parents when students do well in school too so they don’t just expect it to be a bad thing when the teacher calls home. My cooperating teacher suggests that I keep a record of when I contact parents, just in case they try to act like I never tried to contact them, which I think is a good idea.

In our Schmidt reading this week, I learned even more about the community and relating it to school. The thing that stuck out most to me in this chapter was using the community to connect to student learning. Learning does not only have to take place in the classroom, but can go beyond. When a teacher incorporates the community and students’ lives into learning, it can benefit learning greatly. One of the most important aspects of using the community as the classroom is that students are the ones in charge of their learning. It gives them the chance to explore and ask questions, which they can learn from. It is also active learning, which is always a good change of pace, which students enjoy. I also really like how Schmidt explained community based learning as life and learning being “fused.” This lets students use real world situations and connect it to their own knowledge and learning.

Using the community as your classroom has endless opportunities, which students will most likely never forget. Relating real life situations to learning helps students comprehend the relevance of learning and makes it more interesting. I look forward to using the community in my lessons as a teacher whenever possible. 

Tecnología en la Aula

This past week flew by yet again. Even though it was a full week, it felt like it was shorter. I started out the week working with a substitute teacher as my cooperating teacher had just gotten married the weekend before.  Although it was hard work to be prepared for everything that happened between Thursday and Tuesday, it was great practice for me as it was more like having my own classroom.  Near the end of the week this week, I could tell my students were starting to get antsy with anticipation for Thanksgiving break, which is quickly approaching. I had trouble keeping students quiet all day, which, from talking to other teachers, seemed to be true in their classrooms as well.

One word I might choose to describe this week, however, is drama. The eighth grade students have been having some trouble with a bully in the school. Today, the drama continued and it was evident that many of the other students were fed up with the actions of the bully. Despite their impatience, they are afraid of turning away from her (the bully) because of what she might do to them. They are not only afraid she will verbally bully them, but also that she might try to physically hurt them. The student has already been suspended twice this year for bullying, but the teachers had not realized how bad the problem had gotten until today when another event took place. When this happened, there were many students chomping at the bit to share their stories of being bullied by this same girl. The girl isn’t only bullying random students in the grade, but the people she calls her friends as well. These so called “friends” shared with my cooperating teacher and I today that they feel afraid to stop being her friend because of what she might try to do to them. 

In some ways I feel like I’m not quite sure what kind of advice to give my students, because I have never seen bullying at this level. My cooperating teacher seems to be experienced in dealing with this sort of situation (although I’m don’t know if she’s seen a case quite as serious before either). She has not only dealt with bullying as a teacher before, but she has had first hand experience with being bullied in middle school. This allows her to give students advice about what they should do and how to deal with it. It’s really hard to see this happening to our students because we can tell how much it is affecting the whole grade. Although bullying is a terrible thing, it’s been helpful to hear about dealing with it as an educator because I know that it is something that may happen quite often in middle school.

On a lighter note, last week I set two goals for myself: to look at the results of each students quiz and figure out which questions many of them got incorrect. Based on these results, I wanted to review the material to make sure they understood before moving on to new topics. I also wanted to have a good mock interview with Superintendent Klaisner and to learn a lot from him and the experience. Unfortunately I was not able to do a mock interview with Superintendent Klaisner because he accidentally double scheduled meetings at the time I was supposed to meet with him. I was able to show up a few minutes earlier than we had planned, but we were only able to review my revised resume and cover letter. He asked me to set up a date to do the mock interview for the beginning of December, however, so I will email his assistant on Monday. It’s really nice of him to be willing to meet with me and help me as all of this is relatively new to me. As for my other goal, I took notes of the most common mistakes and reviewed them with students the following day. What I think helped students the most was not just to correct them, but that I also tried to explain to students how they might have gotten goofed up. This ways students understand how to fix their problem next time as well as understand the difference between different grammatical structures. For example, many students were saying “puedas” instead of “puedes” which cam from their thinking the “poder” was an “ar” verb instead of an “er” verb. By explaining that they had to memorize the infinitive and not forgot what type of verb it was they were able to fix their problem.

Next week I’d like to set a few more goals to work at. The first goal I’d like to to write at least four dialogues (which will be used for assessing students) before I start my break on Tuesday.  My second goal is make is to start using the new overhead projector we recently had installed in our room. It will be a nice tool, but I will have to make an adjustment in my presentation of the material.

Speaking of incorporating technology in the classroom, I have learned a lot throughout the semester about using technology as a fun and helpful tool in the classroom. We have used and learned about (at an institute day) several different technology tools that can be beneficial in the classroom. For example, I wrote about using Voki, which is a site where students create their own avatar and can record their voice to make it talk. Students really seemed to enjoy this tool, not only because they could be creative in creating their own character, but because they were able to rehearse and record their presentation in Spanish, rather than presenting in front of class. This took away some of the nerves of speaking a foreign language in front of piers and allowed them to take more risks and be creative in what they said in Spanish.

At one of our institute days I also learned about several other web 2.0 tools, which can be used in the classroom. The ones that most stuck out to me to have the potential to be effective in a foreign language classroom were Spaaze, Blabberize, WriteComics, Audio-Boo, Stixy, Fotobabble, Goanimate, Live type, and Voicethread. I look forward to using some, if not all, of these technology tools in my classroom in the near future. They have the opportunity to create fun, engaging ways to help students practice their reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills in Spanish. With so many useful tools available, it is easy to incorporate technology as a great tool in the classroom.

The district in which I am completing my student teaching is trying to push technology in order to bring the world into the classroom. This is a great idea, which I fully support, because we have so many tools available to us. But, we must be careful with how we use these tools, because they can be less helpful than we think at times. For example, this semester our school wanted my cooperating teacher and I to try a technology tool called VuVox. It was a tool where students could record their voice to pictures moving across the screen. So, we had students do a presentation for Day of the Dead on different famous Hispanics which are dead. Unfortunately, however, this site did not work very well and we were all very frustrated with trying to make it work. Students stuck it out, though and ended up doing alright besides some weird problems with the program. It was good to try, but I don’t think I’ll use that tool again in the future.

Each of the tools I mentioned earlier would be useful in different ways and could apply to various learning goals. For example, in order to help students with speaking tools such as Voki, AudioBoo, and Blabberize would be most useful. Typewithme, Letterpop, and Bitstrips and WriteComics are tools that would be more appropriate to help students with their writing abilities in the target language. To help with reading, there are tools such as online newspapers, manythings.org, and cueprompter.com As for listening skills in the target language, there are tools such as Lyrics training and 10 questions.

Along with using the new overhead projector this week, I would like to start planning a few lessons in the remainder of this semester in which I could incorporate more of the tools I have learned about. I think students would enjoy using them and have the ability to learn a lot.


In order to continue developing my technology skills and my ability to incorporate technology in the classroom, I will attend workshops and study on my own. Many times people will have website which help people learn how to use a technology tool. This will be helpful in learning how to use tools in the classroom. I will also try different tools in my classroom, which will give me more confidence in using them. 

I look forward to the upcoming week, but can’t believe how soon we’re closing in on the end of the semester. It’s going to be really sad to leave Lincoln Hall and I know I will miss it a lot. 

Evaluación

This past week went by extremely quickly yet again. It started out a little rough with illness, but the rest of the week went much better. I was even able to manage the classroom completely by myself this week Thursday as my cooperating teacher was gone to prepare for her wedding, which was Friday. We also had conferences this past week Tuesday and Thursday nights. They went well and I learned a lot about dealing with parents. On Thursday night I had the opportunity to do the conferences on my own as well, which was great practice.

Last week I set two goals for myself: to set up a mock interview with the superintendent in my district and to work on calling some of the more quiet students in class to make sure they are participating and feel involved. I feel as if I was able to fulfill both goals. I set up an interview with Superintendent Klaisner for this coming Wednesday and I worked hard at calling on students that are more quiet this week to make sure they were participating in class. 

This week I would like to set two new goals: to look at the results of each students quiz and figure out which questions many of them got incorrect. Based on these results, I will review the material to make sure they understand before moving on to new topics. I would also like to make it a goal to have a good mock interview with Superintendent Klaisner and to learn a lot from him and the experience.

One word I would choose to describe this week would be tiring. I was sick during the first part of the week, which drained energy out of me, especially when I returned back to school on Tuesday. Then, my cooperating teacher got married on Friday, which meant that I as on my own Thursday for the school day and also for parent teacher conferences at night. Everything went well, but I was quite tired by the time I reached Friday. Thankfully it was Veterans Day on Friday and we didn’t have school. I felt like the weekend was a good time for me to get some extra sleep and completely recover.

Throughout the course of my student teaching I have learned a lot about assessment for two main reasons. The first reason is my action research project. In order to monitor students’ progress and see their improvement over a course of six weeks, I used many different forms of assessment. It was great practice and it allowed me to physically see how my students are doing and what we still needed to work on. I also liked using different forms of assessment, because it gave a wide variety of students the opportunity to show me their comprehension through using their strengths.

Another main reason I have been able to learn so much about assessment is because of the new standard based grading my school has just switched over to. In order to see if students are actually meeting the different standards we have to form assessments that are going to prove whether they did or not. Instead of receiving only a percent grade, we also rank their scores as a “warning,” “below expectations,” or “meeting expectations”. In order to receive a “meets expectations” students have to score at least a 70%. Because of this new system, it has made homework not actually worth any points because it doesn’t count as a true assessment unless it is graded based on accuracy. (We typically just check if the homework is completed and go over the answers as a class.)  Unfortunately many students see the homework as unnecessary because it doesn’t actually affect their grade directly. We try to remind them, however, that because they don’t do the homework, they will most likely receive worse grades on the actual assessments because they haven’t had enough practice with the material. A few students that had this mindset at first have figured this out, but there are some that are still just struggling with seeing the relevance of the homework we assign.

Whenever I give an assessment I look at the results to see what students seem to be struggling with in particular. If I notice a trend in their struggles, I make sure to cover that area more carefully after the assessment to make sure they aren’t missing anything. I try to have the students that already understand help explain how to do whatever other students are having trouble with. This goes along with my first goal, as I will be sure to study the results on my students quiz to make sure they understand the material. If I notice they are having trouble with a certain area I will be sure to review it again in class.

Studying the results of assessments is also especially useful when I give students informal assessments. These are usually only worth between five and ten points and are often while we are still learning the material. I allow students to use their notes as I simply want to make sure that students are understanding what we are doing and are getting practice with it.  I grade these the night before and give them back to them the next day. Based on how students do, I know whether or not I have covered the topic well enough or if it still needs some more instruction. If a lot of students are having trouble with the material I make sure I explain where they are going wrong the next day in class. Then, I give them another informal assessment to make sure they know what we’re doing this time. Sometimes I notice that a student is completely not understanding the material being taught. When this happens, I write on his/her paper to come and see either Miss Ricotta or I to get help. I do this so that the student can get the help they need without slowing the whole class down with explaining things that most people already understand.

So far the only time I gave students the opportunity to do self-assessments was for part of my action research. Before students took the post-assessment, I gave them a sheet that had a list of all of the categories that were included on the test and the questions which fell under each category. Then, I gave students their answers to the pre-test (without the questions) and they marked off each question they got wrong on the categorized sheet. This way, students could see what they had had the most trouble with. Then, I told them to make sure they understood the topics they had the most trouble with before they took the test at the end of the review.

Involving students in self-assessment activities is helpful to them because they become more aware of their strengths and weaknesses. In the future I plan to use more self-assessment activities to encourage students to establish goals for their own learning and to take responsibility for it. I think it is a really useful tool.

Unfortunately I have not learned a lot about monitoring the progress of students with disabilities during my student teaching. Because Spanish is a class that students only take if they’re not in the special education program, I don’t have a lot of students that struggle with disabilities. I do know, however, that it is important to monitor the progress of each students, including students with disabilities, because it gives teachers and students the ability to see what students need to work on and what teachers need to cover more clearly. Assessment is the teachers window into his/her students brains. It lets us see what students need help with and what they are grasping. Sometimes some students struggle more than others, which may call for a different form of assessment.

My cooperating teacher and I recently started creating some modified tests for a few of our struggling students. Because many of our students already speak two languages besides Spanish we find that they sometimes get Spanish a little mixed up with the other language they know. For example, I have a student that is Greek and went to Greek school for nine years when he was younger. While learning Spanish, however, he says that he sometimes gets it mixed up with Greek. This made sense to me, because he had answered a question in class before that didn’t make any sense to me. It turns out that this was because he had answered using some Greek as well.

In order to modify a test for students like this or students that struggle for different reasons, my cooperating teacher and I make changes to take off some of the stress. For example, in the last quiz, we offered a word bank for the vocabulary section, which other students did not get. This way they didn’t have to worry so much about spelling, because it was right in front of them. They just had to be able to identify the different object in Spanish. Slight modifications like these made sure that these struggling students were still being tested on the same material and had to know what the different things were in Spanish, it just allowed them to not worry as much about petty things such as spelling and accents.

In efforts to help students assessment scores, it is also essential to give students time to practice. Each day in class, we take time to practice what we’re learning. Usually this take place through some sort of activity. I also give my students homework nearly every night, because 103 of my 108 students wouldn’t be going home and practicing Spanish otherwise because no one at home speaks Spanish.

Sometimes, however, students get things mixed up in their head even when they’re getting practice. When this happens it is important to make sure to give students time to correct incorrect ideas. This can be done in several ways. One of the ways I give students the chance to correct incorrect ideas is by reviewing the homework as a class. If students have any questions about their homework, I encourage them to ask. This way, if there is something they are not understanding, we can get it taken care of by answering their question.

Unfortunately, some students are more shy than others, which means that they might not ask a question even if they don’t understand something. So, just to make sure students are comprehending the material, I often give short, informal assessments in class to see what mistakes students are making. Then, the next day in class I address the most common mistakes so that they correct their incorrect thoughts. 

Justicia Social y Profesionalidad

It’s hard to believe it’s already November! I feel like this past week flew by as I picked up teaching full time again at my placement. It has been going really well, though and I’m excited to be there everyday, which is a great feeling. It is also such a busy time of the year that my cooperating teacher and I felt like we never got to sit down while we were at school. It was like we started in the morning and then before we knew it, it was the end of tenth period!

Last week I set two goals for myself: to collaborate with my cooperating teacher to get a sense of the rest of the semester and to work on promoting critical thinking and performance skills in my lessons. I’m not sure I can say I completely fulfilled my first goal as we weren’t able to sit down and work out the whole rest of the semester, but we did get to plan for the next couple of weeks and talk about other chapters we’ll get into later on. This week we are hoping we won’t be as busy and will be able to sit down and collaborate even more. As for my second goal, I feel like I have started to challenge my students into using their critical thinking skills as I have been talking more and more Spanish in the classroom. We just started a new chapter in our book this week, which gave me a good opportunity to step up the Spanish in order for my students to get more accustomed to thinking in and hearing Spanish while they are in class. They have been taking to it quite well and some students are starting to ask questions in Spanish, which is exciting.

The new goals I would like to set for this week are to set up a mock interview with the superintendent in my district and to work on calling on some of the more quiet students in class and making sure that they are participating and feel involved. I believe this second goal is extremely important, because often the students who are more shy or quiet can get overlooked with a class of so many students. By involving them more in classroom interactions, they may start to feel more comfortable and realize that I value their input.

Now, I’d like to take some time to reflect on this past week. One word that best describes this past week is whirlwind. This week absolutely flew by, as I mentioned earlier. We started out on Monday, celebrating El Día de Los Muertos (Day of the Day) with the students in class. We finished painting the calaveras (skulls) and talked more about how the day of the dead is celebrated and why. Then, on Tuesday, we had an Institute Day in which we talked about standards based grading and incorporating a global perspective in the classroom. When we had time to branch off into our different groups, the Spanish team met to plan the curriculum for the new 5^th and 6^th grade Spanish program. This was exciting and it was fun to have some input and share ideas. Then, we finished up a chapter with our students on Thursday with a chapter test. Students had some trouble with this test, because it was their first test on a full chapter of new material. Miss Ricotta said that this is typical of the first test on new material and that they usually do better on later tests. I also noticed that students didn’t do as well on their very first quiz in the year, but seemed to do better on later quizzes. Friday, we took started a new chapter entitled En el Mercado (In the Market) in which students will learn about different things that are sold in a market and how to bargain. I started talking in mostly Spanish with my students as well, which they have been doing a pretty good job with. I try to repeat things a couple times so that they can understand. It’s fun to see them put things together and comprehend as I speak Spanish.

While at my placement, I have found there are school policies and procedures that I have to abide by, as there are in every school. With students, I reinforce all of the policies and rules the school has set in place, in a professional manner. For example, the school has a zero tolerance policy for bullying. Although I have not witnessed any of my students bullying another student, I would report it I did see it going on. I have heard about students that have been punished this year for bullying other students already. I also like to keep an feeling of mutual respect in the classroom. I want students to know that I am serious about what I do, but also show them that I am a real person and that I care about them.

I haven’t had a ton of interaction with my students’ parents as of yet, but when I do, I make sure that I am professional and show them how much I care about their childs’ education and well-being. This coming week, we will be having parent-teacher conferences, where I will be able to interact with a lot of my students’ parents.

When working with the other teachers in my building, I try to act professional so that they see that even though I don’t have teaching experience, I am well qualified and have been trained well. I also make sure to listen to their advice and what they have to say in meetings. When we meet with our team each week, it is a good time for me to see how they deal with problems in the school, so that I will know how to do so when I have my own classroom and am part of a team myself.

Not only are there policies and procedures that need to be followed at a school, but there are codes of professional conduct and legal directives that need to be adhered to as well.  One legal issue that we dealt with earlier this year was about a student whose parents didn’t want their son to be in the special education program, even though he qualified for, and was previously part of the special education program.  In order for the school not to supply the student with special education help, they had to get sign permission from his parents saying that he was not supposed to in the program. It’s pretty sad, because we have seen him struggle in some of his classes and he’s not getting the help that he really needs. It may be hard for some parents to admit when their children need help, but it can really do a disservice to students when they don’t receive the help then need. This student started out in our Spanish II class, but dropped down to Spanish I, because it was a better fit for him. We have seen him do a lot better in Spanish I, but hope that he is doing just as well in his other classes.

Although I am not a part of it, the school I am at is dealing with some other legal issues regarding the building of the new school. In order to use some of the bonds they have, they have to connect the new school to the existing elementary school somehow, which is posing some problems. They are also running into some problems with the community because they have not kept them informed throughout the whole process. It’s interesting to hear about all of the legal issues that go along with a school.

There are also identification and referral procedures for students with disabilities at each school. As of yet, I have not had to follow these procedures at my placement, but I do know that a lot of documentation needs to be done beforehand. For example, if you suspected a student of needing any special education, behavioral, or any other kind of services, you would have to monitor the students behaviors and reactions so that you would have documents of specific examples when the students’ disability was inhibiting their progress and/or others’ progress in learning. Once there is documentation, professionals can start working on an IEP, 504, or behavioral plan for the student. Having these sorts of plans set in place can help the teacher better serve the student with the disability, as well as, the other students in the class. When I run into this sort of situation in the future, I will make sure that I figure out the best ways to help the student with the disability succeed in school.

In middle school, you will often have to deal with social justice issues as students don’t quite see the seriousness and harshness in some of the things they say.  Sometimes they think something is funny, not really realizing how what they are saying might hurt someone else.  Whenever I see this going on, I ask students to stop and try to explain to them that what they are saying is offensive and how it is disrespectful. For example, a few weeks ago my students were doing a project where they had to choose a relationship between two people and interrogate one of the people in order to practice forming and answering questions in Spanish. Two of my students had asked if it was ok if they pretended they were a lesbian couple fighting over another girl. They thought this would be funny, but I told them that I didn’t think it was appropriate because it could be offensive to some people. They had a hard time understanding, so I told them that we just never know, so it’s best not to choose this kind of relationship in case they step on anyone’s toes by doing so.

Although it was not in my class, there was also a student who posted some sort of racial comment on google docs just because he was trying to be funny. It ended up offending someone of that race, though, so the student who wrote it was suspended for three days. At this age, it can be hard for some middle school students to see how their words and actions, especially when they think they’re saying it in a joking matter, can be hurtful to people. By showing them that it unacceptable, it will hopefully broaden their awareness and keep them from saying some of the things they do and/or to think before they say them.

Currently, at my placement, I don’t really need any help from my supervisor. Things have been going really well lately, besides feeling a little under the weather. I hope that this coming week will go well and that I’ll learn a lot from the parent teacher conferences.

In my reading in Schmidt’s book this week, it focused on social justice, not only in a small scale as the things I was mentioning, but in a worldly sense. It talked about different things that go on in the world and how important it is to teach our students to be involved in helping create social justice. I liked the example that was given about pretending that your in class one minute and the next thing you know there is an earthquake. It says that before it even ends, you realize that “you’re in new territory” and are going to have to deal with some things you never even thought about before. This kind of project is a real situation in which children can take away a lot while learning from it. The chapter also mentions that students develop a vast amount of skills while experiencing and practicing social justice in class: application of knowledge to a real-life problem, critical thinking skills, problem solving and decision making using multiple intelligences, openness to new experiences and roles, realistic ideas about the world, awareness of community needs, and belief in the power of the individual to make a difference just to name a few.

Reading this chapter in Schmidt made me realize that although the small confrontation with issues that occur in the classroom is good, it is also a good idea to deepen a whole classes understanding of social justice as a class. It has encouraged me to bring a real world problem into the class and have students work on understanding it and figuring out how to help the situation. The chapter gives many tips on how to start a social justice action problem in the classroom, which is also helpful and I will use when I am able to do a project in my own class. 

Mejores Prácticas

I had a bit of a strange, awkward and uncomfortable week this week, but I feel like things are going to be much better here on out.  My goals for this past week were to continue working with my teachers to gain their confidence in me and to make sure we are on the same page and to plan my unit for the book I’m teaching in ESL. I made good headway on the my unit plan for Red Scarf Girl and my cooperating teacher for ESL seemed really excited about the activities I had planned. As for my other goal, I seemed to gain a lot of respect from my ESL cooperating teacher, but not from my Spanish cooperating teacher. I feel like it was ironic that the teacher I was having trouble with at first ended up being the teacher who was the most excited about me being in her class and had gained the most confidence in me, while my cooperating teacher in Spanish seemed to feel differently.

My goals for the upcoming week are to collaborate with my cooperating teacher to get a sense of the rest of the semester and to work on promoting critical thinking and performance skills in my lessons. Sometimes I find it hard to incorporate critical thinking when I am teaching a lot of Spanish grammar, but my goal is to find ways to do so this week. I also want find ways to have my students practice their performance skills in order to feel more comfortable with the language.

A word to best describe the events of this past week is awkward. I had to have some uncomfortable conversations this week, which made it feel weird. I am confident, however, that the rest of the year is going to go well.

In my ESL classroom, I was able to teach a lesson about the book we’re reading: Red Scarf Girl. For part of the lesson, I gave my students the option of responding to one of two quotes from the book, which held a lot of importance.  This activity required my students to use their critical thinking skills. They had to tell me what the quote meant to them and why it was a significant part of the book. I received a lot of different answers, which showed my that my students were thinking hard about what they were reading. I was really happy with how they did with it.

I have also been working on trying to ask my students more questions. For example, when they ask me a question, instead of just giving them the answer, I try to ask them questions that will lead them to answer the question themselves. I like this technique, because it makes them think about what they already know and they realize that they know more than they thought they did.

Even though I don’t have to write full lesson plans anymore, I think it’s still important to make sure I at least write a sequence of events and goals/objectives for my lessons. I find it important to still write goals/objectives from my lessons, because it reminds me what I want my students to know in the end and keeps me focused on what I’m teaching. It also urges me to think about the relevancy of all the activities I have planned.

When planning my lessons, I also have to think about ways I will have to modify my instruction for different groups of students. For example, my eighth period class is usually quite a handful. There are a lot of students in this class that are really close friends and like to talk a lot. Sometimes this means that I have to modify my lesson so that they can participate in a way that they can handle and stay under control. But, I also want them to learn the same information. One day, for example, I had my students play a vocabulary game to review for their quiz. For this game, students were in groups on the floor. Instead of playing the same game with their class, however, I had them play a different game with a partner in their seats. They were still able to learn the same thing, but in a more controlled environment that was better for their learning.

I have one student that uses a microphone because she has a hearing disability, but this does not seem to interfere with the class at all. She doesn’t need any modifications other than me to wear the microphone when I teach. If she ever has a problem, however, she knows she can come talk to me and I can go over it for her if she needs.

One way I am able to meet the diverse learning needs of all of my different students is to offer several different activities with provide a variety of ways for students to show me their true potential as a student. Offering different options for projects and different assessments is a good way to give students a chance to use their strengths as well. I have done this a few times at my placement, but I think it’s something that I could continue to work on, even if it is a little more work. It’s just better for the students.

This past week I did not teach a lot due to the unusual circumstances, but I did teach a lesson which the students seemed to have fun with. I was teaching students how to do commands in Spanish. In order to practice, I gave each set of partners a different location (so that they could use a wide variety of vocabulary words) in which they had to write down five affirmative commands and five negative commands that would be appropriate to the location. So, for example, if they had “la clase de español” (Spanish class) they might write “Escucha a la maestra” (listen to the teacher), “Haz la tarea siempre” (always do your homework), etc for the affirmative side and then “No uses un telefono cellular” (Don’t use your cell phone), “No masques chicle” (Don’t chew gum), etc for the negative side. Students really seemed to like working on this project. In order to make sure my instruction was clear, I gave students an example of what I wanted them to do.

Sometimes when I am explaining an activity or assignment, I can tell that I am not being clear based on the reactions I am seeing from my students. For example, students will usually have a look of confusion or questioning if they don’t understand exactly what I want from them. Some students can be hard to read, but others can hide it at all. If I notice any students with these looks I try to give them example or go over the instructions a different way. Then, I ask students if they have any questions. This allows them to ask any specific questions about something that I may have forgotten to explain or needed to explain more thoroughly.

For example, the other week when I was teaching students about direct object pronouns, I gave them an assignment that I could tell they were having trouble understanding how to do. When I noticed their frustration, I had them stop so that we could do a couple examples together. It turned out that the task was more doable than they thought, but they just needed an example to compare it to.

Although there isn’t always a lot of time allotted in the general curriculum to teach students various cultural aspects, we decided to take the time to teach students about day of the dead, which occurs on November 1 and 2. It was important to learn about day of the dead, because many people think it’s the same as Halloween is here, but, in actuality, it’s very different. In order to prepare, we started students on an art project that is typically done in Mexico to celebrate day of the dead. They are making what is called a reverse glass painting. Instead of actually paining it on glass, we had students draw out a skull on a piece of overhead transparency. Then, on Monday, students are going to use different colors to paint the skull. When they are finished, we will put a piece of black paper behind it so that the colors will pop out. They look really good when they are finished and it gives students a chance to take part in a cultural experience. While they are working on their projects, we are going to share facts with them about the day of the dead. This is also a good activity, because it allows students that enjoy art to excel in their creativity and get involved in what they are learning.

(Here is an example of a reverse glass painting of a skull, just like we're doing in class.)

The anticipatory set is another part of the lesson that can get students involved in what they’re learning, because it sets the tone for the lesson each day. I find it hard to administer a good anticipatory set sometimes that hooks and holds the attention of my students, because often my cooperating teacher wants me to start with reviewing the homework from the night before. After we review the homework, however, I usually try to create an anticipatory set that gets students excited about what we’re going to learn.  Anticipatory sets are important, because it not only gets students excited about what we’re going you learn, but it gets their minds set to think about the topic and has them wondering and wanting to learn right off the bat. 

Colaboración

Although I don’t feel completely comfortable at my new placement yet, I think this week went much better than the last. I’m starting to get to know my surroundings, my cooperating teachers, and my students, which has helped a lot. I know that this placement is going to be a challenge for me, but I think it will be a challenge that will really push me to grow as a teacher.

Last week, my goals were to gain some respect from the cooperating teacher that didn’t seem to have a lot of faith in student teachers and to develop ways students can work on their speaking (in Spanish) in the classroom. It seems like I did gain some respect from my cooperating teacher, which was great. On Monday, we sat down and talked about things we were having trouble with and it seemed to help a lot! It seemed as if we were on different pages beforehand and it just needed to be understood what we needed from each other. Things have been going a lot better with her and I believe she has gained a lot of confidence in me after seeing me teach this past week. I’m excited about the improvement we have made in our relationship. I have also given my students a few opportunities to speak this week, but I’d like to keep developing this throughout the semester.

My goals for this coming week is to continue working with my teachers to gain their confidence in me and to make sure we’re all on the same page and to plan my unit for the book I’m teaching in my ESL class.

The word I chose to describe this week is actually a Spanish word: “mejorando”. It means “getting better”. In my eyes, I feel like this is the only way to describe how this week went. Last week, I felt terrible and overwhelmed about my placement. This week, I’m don’t feel all the way adjusted, but I do feel like it’s getting better and better each day. It may not by my ideal placement, but I know I can get a lot from it and become a better teacher because of it.

This past week I learned a lot about collaboration. I have two cooperating teachers at this placement and I am finding that it can sometimes be hard to try to collaborate with both of them. I especially had a hard time last week, my first week, when I wasn’t exactly sure where I was supposed to go and when. This is when I learned just how big of a role communication plays in collaboration. If there isn’t clear communication, it is impossible to collaborate. After straightening things out between my and one of my cooperating teachers this week, I feel like I have been able to collaborate with both of them much better.

I have also come to realize what a big part schools take on within the larger community context as well, especially being as big a school as ETHS. This was definitely apparent as we had teacher’s conferences, which make up a large number of the people who live in the community. There were many students that were very interested in everything we do at school and wanted the best for their child there.

While I was at my old placement, Lincoln Hall was trying to decide on whether they will renovate the whole school or tear it down and build a new one. The larger community played a big role in this as Lincoln Hall had to get permission from various people in the town to do either one. This is because it truly does effect the community around the school.

So far, I have been able to work with my cooperating teachers to develop different activities and teaching strategies to create an effective learning climate. We have been trying to work together to make the most of our time. In my ESL class especially, my cooperating teacher and I try to incorporate their cultures, personal experiences, and personalities into the course as well. This makes helps students feel comfortable and accepted in the classroom, which is what we want. We hope to make it a place where they will feel safe and valued.

At conferences, my cooperating teacher and I were also able to discuss students’ lives outside of the school with some of their parents. We learned a lot that we didn’t know previously, which can account for some of the behaviors of various students, whether they are good behaviors or not. For example, we learned that one of our students is dealing with depression and sometimes gets really angry because of it. Although we have not seen this to be much of a problem in the classroom for far, it is good to know so that we don’t set him off for any reason if he seems to be overly depressed or unmotivated. We also just received an email from the mother of one of our students explaining that she was absent quite a bit because of depression and anxiety problems. She mentioned that one of her biggest phobias is rain, which made us understand why she keeps missing so much school. She really struggles with the phobias, to the point of having been hospitalized a few times because of them. It was important for us to know this so that we can understand her struggles and help her out in any way we can.

Because I’m only in my second week at my new placement, I have been doing a lot of co-teaching and co-planning. This has been working well, because not only have the students been able to get used to having me do more teaching, but I can also get used to the way my cooperating teachers teach their classes. I also sit down with my teachers to plan for the next week before I create all of my lesson plans.  This semester, I also have a class of native speakers, in which they are learning a lot about Hispanic myths and legends. Unfortunately, I have never read these myths or legends and, therefore, I don’t know how well I would be able to teach them alone. I have also been warned that the native speakers like to challenge their Spanish teachers, especially if they’re not Hispanic (like me). This makes me feel really uncomfortable, so we have decided that it might be best for my cooperating teacher and I to just work on co-teaching for this class.

During this past week, I started feeling a little more comfortable at my placement, which made it a little easier to initiate collaboration with my cooperating teachers than it was last week when I was new and terrified. I think a lot of my problems with my one cooperating teacher stemmed from lack of communication and, therefore, collaboration in the two days I was at the school for class last week. Things are starting to get better, though, which makes me happy.

I was really happy to see my supervisor this week, because he was a familiar face in a big, somewhat uncomfortable place. It felt comforting to talk to him and tell him how things were going so far, even though it wasn’t easy. He made me have a more positive look on the whole situation and reassured me that I wasn’t the only one to have had trouble adjusting. I was really glad he could come. J

Escribiendo, Escuchando, Leyendo, y Hablando

This week was certainly a change, to say the least. It has been really hard for me to adjust to the high school level, especially during the middle of their semester. I’m sure it will get better as time goes on, but this past week was a little overwhelming for me. But, to start off, let’s review my goals from last week. They were to have a first good week at my new placement and to learn how to prepare for and present an upper level Spanish class. I suppose I can say I probably didn’t really meet either goal. I can’t say that I had a good first week at my new placement. It felt uncomfortable as I am in such a big high school and am nervous about connecting as well with my students. One of my cooperating teachers is really nice, which helps. I am a little nervous about having to coordinate with two cooperating teachers as well. I learned some about how to conduct and present an upper level Spanish class, but it was kind of a short week due to conferences on Thursday and Friday and a test on the first day (Tuesday) I was there. I feel like I need at least one more day to observe, but my teacher kind of wants me to start right away on Tuesday. I feel like this last half of the semester is going to be very stressful for me.

My goals for next week are to gain some respect from one of my cooperating teachers, as she doesn’t seem to have much faith in student teachers and to developing ways students can work on speaking in the classroom as the structure of the course doesn’t allow them many opportunities to do so.

As I alluded to before, a proper word for this past week might be overwhelming. I just didn’t feel good about it and really don’t look forward to going back. I do, however, realize that this challenge will probably make me a better teacher. It was a little reassuring to hear my teacher talk to me about how much she has learned over teaching the classes for the last 11 years. It’s just hard for me to deal with, because I feel like I won’t be able to teach at the same level as she does in the Spanish classes.

One of my strengths in English grammar is that I am able to give students examples of how it works to help them understand how it is used in Spanish. Sometimes, I have to teach a grammatical form in English before I can teach it in Spanish or else they might not know it even exists. For example, when I teach Direct Object Pronouns, as I discusses last week, I had to show them what they are and how we use them in English first before they could understand how to use them or what they are in Spanish. I don’t know if this applies to me directly, but many native English speakers often have trouble with pronunciation, spelling and capitalization in Spanish due to their inherent desire to make it like English. We need to remember, however that it is a foreign language, not English. (This is kind of a hard question to answer because I teach a different language. J)

Using diverse instructional strategies and assessment is extremely important because each student has different strengths and weaknesses. By incorporating several different strategies and offering different assessments, each student should be able to use their strength at some point or another. By doing the same thing all the time, you are doing some students a disservice, as you might not be able to see their true potential. Each student learns in different ways and has different gifts. It’s only fair to let them have the chance to show you were they excel.

I feel as if I usually explain myself well with oral instructions. But, sometimes what I think will be a good enough explanation, it turns out that I need more. When I was at my first placement, I taught the same class five times. During the first class, I was able to recognize when I didn’t explain something well based on student’s reactions or once they started working and it was different from what I had wanted. When this would happen, I would stop and explain myself more clearly, because I was then able to see what I was saying that didn’t make sense or wasn’t clear enough for them. Then, I would change my strategy of explaining for the later classes in order to avoid this confusion.

As a teacher, it’s important to listen to your students well, for several reasons; to help them with their work, to make them feel comfortable and accepted, and to realize when a student is struggling and needs help. One day, I was helping a student and realized that he was very confused with the material that we were learning. So, I sat down and explained things to him again, and in different ways. I wouldn’t have realized he was struggling as much if I hadn’t taken the time to listen to him.

There was one day, when I had a student try to ask a question, but was able to articulate exactly what she was asking. After she stated her question, I tried to answer her based on what I thought she might be asking, but I could tell it wasn’t the answer she was looking for. Instead of changing the way she asked the question, she tried to ask the same thing over and over, which had my cooperating teacher and I both trying to figure out what she might be asking. She finally gave up and we moved on to answer a different students question. He posed it very clearly and I answered it with no problem. Then, the first students piped in and said that that’s what she was trying to ask. I believe she had trouble asking the question, because she didn’t know the material as well. She didn’t know how to ask the question she was wondering about, which also made it hard for my cooperating teacher or I to answer.

I have had several students whom have missed school for different cultural holidays as well. Both Id for Muslims and Rash Hashanah for Jewish people occurred while I was at Lincoln Hall. It was sometimes hard to have everyone caught up after these holidays, but the students did pretty well making up what they missed. Many planned ahead of time as well.

I think it’s very important for teacher to be good models in effective reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills, because it will hopefully rub off on students. It will also benefit students because the teacher will then be able to help them easily. This isn’t only important during some activities, but in everything.

I’m a little concerned about having my observation this coming week, because I have only been at my new placement for a week, in which was only had two days of school due to conferences and Columbus day. I don’t feel comfortable enough to start teaching really, because I have only seen my teacher teach once (the other day the students were taking as test). But, I want to practice once before my supervisor gets there. It just feels uncomfortable and I don’t know exactly what I’m doing yet.

In Schmidt, we read about writing, which provided several great ideas. I didn’t have my students at my last placement write too much besides what they would do for their projects and homework. Their first project they had to write a poem about themselves and the second project, they had to write a script that had at least 16 lines. In order to prepare them for this, I explained the rubric to them and them gave them an example.

But, as Schmidt suggests, there is much more that I could’ve done, and can do in the future, to help them. For example, we could have done some warm up activities, which Schmidt highly recommends, because she explained that one the scariest things for a student, or even adult, can be a blank page, which you know must be filled. She gives several warm up activities students can use. I really liked to of her strategies, including from lips to their pens and sequence. From lips to their pens get students thinking in the right way and allows them to realize how to paint a picture with words. Sequence is a great warm up activity, because it forces students to think about when they should say what and where it makes sense.

I really liked what Schmidt said near the beginning of the chapter, “that if students are to make knowledge their own, they must wrestle with facts, struggle with details, and rework raw information into language that reaches their audience”. I really believe this is true. It’s good for students to work hard on and struggle with writing in order to make it perfect.

She also mentions that writing is like a sport. I understood this as writing needing to be practiced. You can’t just automatically be good at writing. It’s something you can always get better at with practice.

I think journaling is a great idea which allows students a lot of practice with writing. When I’m a teacher, I plan on having my students journal. It’s not only great practice, but they can look back on their work and see how much they have improved.