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.