Rockstar Theorists

 Rockstar Theorists

There are many theorists that have influenced my personal teaching, but a few stand out above the rest. The first theorist that comes to mind is Jean Piaget. Constructivism is one of the theories that has resonated with me the most. Constructivist is the idea that new knowledge is created with reference to prior knowledge. When an experience doesn’t agree with the the cognitive schemes we have for a subject, a disequilibrium occurs that drives learning. This disequilibrium is behind the teachable moments that make lessons much more memorable. In my everyday teaching, I try to create teachable moments by using real-world examples and having students role-play as professionals to solve practical problems. I also make a concerted effort to smoothly transition from one topic to the next so that students are continually reflecting on their background knowledge.

    

   The second theorist that has most influenced my teaching is Howard Gardner and his theory of multiple intelligences. I agree with Gardner’s idea that different students have their own strengths, weaknesses, and personal preferences. Balanced teaching should therefore include variety to appeal to these learning styles. This approach will not only help students with diverse learning needs, but help students become more well-rounded learners. Finally, following Gardner’s theory incorporates repetition in a way that isn’t too boring for the students or the teacher. For example, I’ll often start a new unit with a hands-on activity, then use written notes, readings, lab activities, and videos to cover the content. If students don’t understand the material the first time it’s covered, they’ll ideally get the hang of it when we use an approach that resonates with them. 

    Finally, Carol Dweck and her theory of the growth mindset has had an influence on my teaching since our very first residency. Keeping the growth mindset in mind has altered the way I provide feedback to students. Instead of saying things like “you’re smart,” I try to give feedback such as “you must have worked hard,” or “your efforts really paid off.” These latter comments suggest to students that their success in the course is in their hands. I’ve heard many students comment that they “just aren’t good at science” or “just aren’t smart,” but I hope that embodying the growth mindset will help my students put forth more effort, persevere through challenges, and see mistakes as learning opportunities rather than failures. This is a skill that will help them succeed not just in my classroom, but in all aspects of their lives. 

    Throughout our MAT program, I have been exposed to many theorists and theories that have influenced my teaching. Not all of them have significantly resonated with me, but the teachings of Piaget, Gardner, and Dweck, among others, have impacted the way I approach my lesson planning, teaching, assessment, and feedback. As a professional, it is important to constantly reflect on my teaching and look for ways in which I can improve. I hope to use the teachings of these theorists, and others I learn about in the future, to mold myself into the best teacher I can be.

Classroom Goals

Classroom Goals

In ED640, I established goals for myself that I hoped to work towards during ED645. The first goal was to establish classroom rules and procedures that I can take with me when I become a teacher of my own. I’ve been fortunate to work with two great mentor teachers that have helped me become a better classroom manager, and I can confidently say that my internship experience has provided me with rules and procedures for the future. For one, I like having students start each class by writing the learning objectives in a log and answering a warm-up question. That immediately gets students thinking about science when they walk in the room and it provides me with an opportunity to activate student background knowledge. I also like placing papers that the students need to pick up at the front of the room near the door and bins for students to turn-in their work at the the back of the room. This allows students to flow into the room easily, collecting papers they need for the day, and turning in papers for me to collect. As for the rules, I’ve learned about the importance of developing rules with students and being consistent when enforcing those rules. For example, discussing what it means to be respectful with your students on the first day of class is a great way to ensure that everyone is one the same page regarding appropriate behavior. I want to have a similar discussion about the use of phones when I become a teacher of my own. I think phones are amazing technologies that can certainly enhance education, but in my experience, phone are mostly a distraction in the classroom. Therefore, having a discussion with students about appropriate phone use could be potentially invaluable in the future.

My second goal for my internship was to familiarize myself with the curriculum and start to develop my own lessons and units. Carroll County fortunately provides teachers with a curriculum that has lesson plans, PowerPoints, activities, assessments, and other resources to make this process much easier. My mentor teacher has also allowed me to use many of his own resources so that I have many options to choose from when planning lessons. I’ll usually look at what the county provides, what my mentor teacher has, and resources I have created myself and decide which ones I want to use during class. The scope and sequence provided by the county has also given me a good idea of what topics to cover and how to pace myself. So far, I think I have done a good job in progressing to meet this goal. I have been using the 5E model to plan all my lessons and have my resources organized very neatly on my laptop, on a flash drive, and in a binder so that I can reuse them as needed in the future. I was initially concerned with how I would decide what to teach, when to teach it, and how, but my mentor teachers have given me excellent guidance in curriculum planning.

Setting goals and reflecting on one’s progress towards meeting those goals is important in any setting. This is especially true for an inexperienced teacher. Teachers use feedback from student assessments to improve the learning process, and it’s similarly important to recognize that teachers must continue to learn and grow concomitantly. Upon reflection, I think that I have done a good job of meeting the goals I set for myself at the end of ED640, but there are always ways in which I can continue to improve.

Communicating with Parents

Communicating with Parents

    This past week, I sent home three emails about students inappropriately using their personal electronic devices in the classroom. In our classroom, we don’t allow students to use their phones unless the teachers, myself and my mentor teacher, allow it for an explicit purpose such as a Kahoot quiz. During all other class times, student phones must be put away and silent. I clearly expressed this to my students on the first day of class as we went over the syllabus and the consequences for violations of our rule pertaining to using electronic devices. The first violation results in a verbal warning from the teacher. The second violation results in a minor referral and email home to the parents/guardians of the student. The third violation results in a major referral and detention. The fourth and all following violations result in a referral to the administration for discipline.

    Thus far, students have been pretty good about not using their phones during class time. I have had to give verbal warnings to ten students or so during the first two weeks of class, and three students have violated the phone policy twice, resulting in emails home. Filling out the minor referral, which automatically send an email home, was a little awkward the first couple of times. It’s weird emailing a parent to say that their child has gotten in trouble for something, especially as a student teaching intern who wasn’t had to do this before. That being said, I had every student and teacher sign a form saying they had read and understood the syllabus, so I wasn’t too concerned with the parents reacting negatively.

    The outreach seems to have resolved the issue, although it may be too early to say. I think many students thought we were bluffing or being dramatic when we said we wouldn’t allow phones on the first day of class, but the referrals and emails home seem to have sent the message, because I have caught fewer students on their phones since the first email was sent home, and the three students who have second violations haven’t been on their phones since. I think this is one of the scenarios in which it’s useful that students talk to each other so much. Word spreads pretty quickly that when it comes to phone use in the classroom, we mean business.

    Although my communication with the parents of these students went reasonable well, I was surprised that I didn't receive a response from any of the parents. If I had received a minor referral from a teacher when I was a student, I know my parents would have responded with an apology and assurance that it wouldn’t happen again. Similarly, none of the students had their phones taken away by their parents, so it’s possible that they don’t see it as a big deal. I don’t want to have to assign detention for something relatively harmless like using a phone during class, but if I don’t enforce the rules we established at the beginning of the semester, students won’t respect them at all. Communicating with the students and parents about these policies should reduce the number of violations going forward.

    If I had a “do-over” of contacting the parents of those who had received two phone violations, I don’t think I would do anything differently. It hasn’t been long enough yet to see if the contact home will change student behavior long-term, but so far, it has worked well. If I had to do anything differently, I would maybe show students the Cell Phone Violation form we use to keep track of violations. Every time I see a student using their phone in class, I ask them to put their phone away, and record the details of the violation on the form, including the date of the violation and a description of what the student was doing and what the student was supposed to be doing. Each student has their own form, so I know exactly how many violations a student has at any given time. If I had shown this to students on the first day, it may have made it more clear that we were very serious about monitoring and disciplining infractions. Before I sent the first email home, I suspect many students thought I was bluffing. Now, they know I’m serious, but it may have been better to firmly establish that from the start.

Reflection- Classroom Management

Reflection- Classroom Management

At the end of ED640, I set a few goals for my full-time spring internship. My first goal was to establish my own classroom rules and procedures that I can take with me when I become a teacher of my own. My second goal was to familiarize myself with the curriculum and start to develop my own lessons and units. My third, more broad goal, was to become a better classroom manager specifically from a disciplinary perspective. The first and third goals certainly relate to this week’s topic of classroom management, and my internship experience and the readings from this week have already changed my perspective on these goals slightly.

    Establishing my own classroom rules and procedures is a tricky thing to do during an internship because I’m working with a mentor teacher in that mentor teacher’s classroom. I don’t want to come in and completely change the way things are run in the classroom, but I do want to gain some experience as the head of the classroom and simultaneously adopt classroom management ideas according to the suggestions made by my mentor teachers. Fortunately, my current mentor teacher is very flexible, and starting in February when the third quarter begins, I’ll have more control over the classroom. Until then, I’m adding ideas to my repertoire that I can use in the future. One routine that I really like is starting every class with a warmup and using a timer to keep students on task. This is an idea I got from the mentor teacher I worked with in the fall at the middle school level. As students are entering the classroom, she displays a timer on the screen that counts down from 5 minutes. Students have those five minutes to write down their objectives and complete the warm-up. During this time, the teacher can take attendance and help any students who may have been absent. After the warm-up, the teacher can then read the learning objectives, review that warm-up, and go over the agenda for the day. I really like this approach because students are immediately productive when they enter class, especially once they become accustomed to the routine. I hope to use this in my future classroom and extend this idea to the end of class for conclusion activities.

    This week’s readings also provided me with a lot of great advice regarding classroom management that is supported by research. For example, Marzano and Marzano (2003) noted that having high quality relationships with students was the most important factor for successful classroom management. They go on to add that classroom management benefits from having clear rules and procedures with clearly defined consequences. Furthermore, these rules work best when they are mutually established by the teacher and the students (Marzano & Marzano, 2003). This is great advice that I can use in my own future classroom. Taking the time to get to know students seems to have a tremendous impact on their behavior, and I’ve seen firsthand that students are more comfortable when they know the teacher. Allowing students to take a part in making rules is also sound advice that I will follow because it gives students partial ownership over the classroom rules and procedures. Consistently and fairly enforcing those rules is key to maintaining the classroom once those rules have already been established.

    In terms of being a better classroom manager from a disciplinary perspective, Crouch (2016) notes that being a good classroom manager prevents many disciplinary problems in the first place. There’s no doubt that I will improve in this regard with experience, so I hope to use the second semester this spring to try out some classroom management ideas for myself. Like Marzano and Marzano (2003), Crouch (2016) states that getting to know students and establishing a positive classroom environment is best for limiting behavior problems. When those problems do arise, it is often best to place yourself near the misbehaving student, which often solves the problem. I’ve seen this in our classroom many times already. Simply letting a student know you’ve noticed their behavior is often enough to change that behavior.

In conclusion, I haven’t had many issues regarding classroom management during my internship so far. Most of the students seem to respect me, and I always have my mentor teacher to lean on if I have any trouble. There are a few students who tend to act out, but I’ve been able to handle everything thus far. My biggest concern is keeping students productive for the entire period. Some students work so quickly that I need to constantly find new things for them to do while their classmates are finishing. Other students would rather sit around and do nothing for the whole period. In my experience, it’s best to over plan for a lesson so that you always have an extra activity or two to fall back on for the students who work quickly. For the students who work too slowly, we’ll usually say that any unfinished work must be completed for homework and most of the students will want to avoid that. This issue has less to do with behavior and more to do with engagement, but both are relevant to classroom management. I hope my internship experience this semester, coupled with our MAT program coursework, help me fulfill my goal of becoming a better classroom manager.  

References

Crouch, D. (2016). Stop Disciplining – Use Classroom Management. Retrieved from http://edu.stemjobs.com/classroom-management/

Marzano, R.J. and Marzano, J.S. (2003). The Key to Classroom Management. Educational Leadership, 61 (1), 6-13. Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/sept03/vol61/num01/The-Key-to-Classroom-Management.aspx

Reflection- Student Behavior, Characteristics of Exemplary Teachers, and Goals

Reflection- Student Behavior, Characteristics of Exemplary Teachers, and Goals

    The experience I’ve had recently that I’ll grow from was one of my first exposures to very poor student behavior. I had a student last week who was off task while my mentor teacher was leading the lesson. We were drawing cells during the various stages of mitosis and this particular student just wouldn’t do it. I first tried just standing next to him to see if my presence would encourage him to work, but he just continued to ignore the rest of the class. I then quietly told him to get out his notes and start working, and although that worked for a while, I noticed a few minutes later that he put his notes away again. I then asked if everything was okay, if he felt sick, needed to go to the bathroom, etc. All I could get out of him was “I don’t know,” but I was able to eventually get him to take his notes out and start working again. This aspect of my teaching is what I would consider my greatest weakness primarily due to my lack of experience. Most students will correct their behavior if you remind them what they should be doing, but every once in a while a student will just not listen. I think I did a fair job of handling the situation, but I’m sometimes not sure what to do when dealing with poor student behavior. Am I being too lenient or too harsh? When should I send a student to the office or support room? I know this will get easier with experience, and I hope having a mentor teacher during my full-time internship next semester will help me grow as a classroom manager.  

    I believe there are many characteristics to being an exemplary teacher. First, I think an exemplary teacher must have good people skills. After all, being a teacher involves constantly working with people of all ages, including students, colleagues, parents, and administrators. Having people skills means being a good communicator, understanding development, and working well with a diverse population. A second important characteristic of an exemplary teacher is enthusiasm. If a teacher is enthusiastic about his or her content their students will likely show a concomitant level of engagement and motivation. Flexibility and organization are two more characteristics of an exemplary teacher that are sometimes at odds. A good teacher must carefully plan units, lessons, assessments, and individual instructional activities to ensure that the content standards are met and students possess the skills they will need when they leave the class. However, a teacher must acknowledge that plans cannot be so rigid. Teachers must differentiate to accommodate the needs of various learners and realize that sometimes things don’t go according to plans, and one must be ready to adapt to the situation. I tend to be very organized and hope, with experience, that I can become a more flexible instructor as well. Lastly, kindness is crucially important for a teacher. There are times that I have to remind myself that I’m not just teaching science, I’m teaching kids. I remember how tough it can be to be a kid. Students get stressed out, have bad days, and consequently aren’t always on their best behavior. Regardless, we as teachers need to recognize these difficulties and do our best to be understanding.

    Next semester will be a busy one for me. I’m both excited and nervous about starting my full-time internship, so I do have a couple of personal goals in mind. First, I want to establish classroom rules and procedures that I can take with me when I become a teacher of my own. It’s one thing to read tips and hear suggestions from other teachers, but being in my own classroom will be a completely different experience, and only with practice will I be comfortable as the head of a classroom. I’m fairly confident with my content knowledge and teaching ability, but improving my classroom management skills is the most important goal I have. Secondly, I want to familiarize myself with the curriculum and start to develop my own lessons and units. One of my minor concerns about teaching is knowing exactly what content to cover. The NGSS and MSDE standards are a bit vague, and most of my classroom experience is at the middle school level. I know that Carroll County provides their teachers with unit plans, lesson plans, PowerPoints, and assessments from which they can develop their own materials, so I hope to tweak these to fit my style and generally familiarize myself with the curriculum. I don’t have any other specific goals for next semester, but I hope to continue improving my teaching in general by gaining more experience.

Reflection- Second Observation and Learning Beyond Memorization

    Reflection- Second Observation and Learning Beyond Memorization

The recent classroom experience that I will grow from was my second observation of the semester. My first observation went reasonably well, but I knew there were areas in which I could improve heading into my second observation. For example, I wanted to do a better job of engaging all students during class discussions, so I made a concerted effort to give each student the opportunity to participate during our discussions. Similarly, I wanted to utilize a more effective closure activity since time slipped away from me during my last observation. This was the first unit-review lesson I had the opportunity to plan and execute, and I thought it was a good experience that I can replicate going forward. We used review activities at three different stations to help the students review for their unit test. I noted in my last blog post that we’d had a lot of success using stations in our previous classes, and they once again paid off in a big way. Stations appeal to various learning styles and keep students engaged because they aren’t doing one thing for too long. I even planned ahead and had additional activities designed for those students who finished early, which my University mentor said was a good idea to have for any lesson. The best part of the lesson, in my opinion, was the concluding discussion. I ended the lesson by revisiting the essential question that students read at the beginning of class each day: how are living things alike? This question asks students to integrate content from throughout the unit and relates what we’ve learned in class to real-life, and I was ecstatic about how well the discussion went. Using the essential question to wrap things up at the end of a lesson is something I hope to do repeatedly in the future. It was also interesting that we learned about the Charlotte-Danielson framework during the week of my observation, allowing me to use the readings from that module to prepare myself as best as possible.

    One of the major themes of our MAT program thus far has been implementing a curriculum that goes beyond fact memorization towards the development of the skills and mindsets embodied by real-world scientists. Our classes should therefore provide students with the opportunities to think, read, write, and behave like scientists do. To accomplish this, we must first capture student interest with engaging opportunities. I think inquiry is especially effective partially because students learn better when they want to learn. If students are studying something that interest them or is relevant to their everyday lives, motivation and engagement will be higher than if students don’t care about what they are learning. This is why providing opportunities for student engagement is crucial in a STEM classroom, and my Action Research project is designed around improving engagement and achievement through inquiry. Reflection is another important component of STEM lessons. Something I’ve heard that has stuck with me for a while is that we do not learn from experiences, rather, we learn from reflecting on experiences. Reflection allows one to consider how their understanding of something has changed based on an experience. Does this new experience agree with my previous understanding, or do I have to rethink what I “know” based on new evidence? Furthermore, one can use a reflection tool such as this blog to pose questions that frame future learning. Having students reflect on their learning is a small, but significant, way to consolidate learning. Using engaging activities and reflection promote habits that will make students successful lifelong learners. In my experience, these practices aren’t especially difficult to implement in the classroom. Student engagement can be captured with demonstrations, lab activities, videos, or even intriguing questions. The key is to use a variety of techniques because not every student will be “turned on” by the same thing. For reflection, students can keep journals that they regularly write in, allowing them to consider what they’ve learned in a given period of time. Both of these methods take learning beyond fact memorization. I know from experience that the facts students memorize in school will be forgotten with time, but the skills and mindsets students develop will stick with them for much longer, leading to success beyond the classroom.

Reflection- Station Teaching and Asking Questions

Reflection- Station Teaching and Asking Questions

One of the strategies my mentor teacher and I have been using recently is station teaching. Science is certainly a great subject for student-centered learning, and having a second teacher in the classroom allows you to split the class up and get more done in less time. The recommendation to use more station teaching came from our school’s principal himself, so we’ve made a conscious effort to better use the space and resources available in our room. When we introduced the various organelles to our students, for example, we used three stations. At the first station, students used their textbook to label and color plant and animal cells. The second station required students to use the prepared PowerPoint to complete a table of the organelle functions. Finally, students at the third station completed a Venn diagram that compared animal, plant, and bacteria cells. This approach to the organelles is definitely more student-centered than lecturing the class for an extended period of time, and it prevents the students from becoming disengaged because they have the right amount of time to complete their task before switching stations. The stations have worked so well thus far, we’ve decided to use it again to review for their upcoming exam. It’s also nice from a classroom management perspective because both teachers are responsible responsible for only half the room, and I can better meet the needs of struggling learners with the reduced student-to-teacher ratio that station teaching provides.

   

    I recognize that station teaching isn’t always a possibility in classrooms for obvious logistical reasons, but I think if the opportunity presents itself to use station teaching, it’s certainly worth a try. Our foundations-level class, for instance, has an aide that works with them during every period of the day. For the first few weeks of the school year, she helped students stay organized and on-task, but recently, the shift to more station-teaching has given her a more active role in the instruction. This approach utilizes her abilities better than a more traditional approach, and makes classroom management much easier. On the days I’m there, having three teachers means that each of us has responsibility for a small group of students and a single activity, which I prefer when compared to having a primary teacher and two assistants. During whole class discussions, I’ve noticed that certain students can become disengaged and fall off task, forcing the teacher to slow everyone else down by addressing the issue. With small groups, student behavior is much improved, and having stations that appeal to different learning styles should support differentiation, too. Utilizing stations in a classroom with one teacher has some problems, but if I ever have the opportunity to co-teach, I’ll use my internship experience to design lessons that maximize engagement and learning with stations.

    One of the practices my mentor teacher does that allows students to pursue knowledge of their own interests is ask them what they want to learn at the beginning of a new unit. She’ll show the students a video or demonstration that introduces the next topic, then ask the students what they want to learn by the end of the unit. As members of the class shares their responses, she writes these questions down on post-it notes so that she can check-off the questions as they’re answered throughout the unit. For questions that would otherwise remain unanswered, she does some research on her own to ensure that no student is unsatisfied. I think this approach is interesting because it allows my mentor teacher to work with the natural curiosity of the students. Then, at the end of the unit, students can look back on these questions and reflect on how much they’ve learned since those questions were asked. In my future classroom, I hope to use a similar technique in conjunction with learning objectives to serve as progress bars for student learning. At the beginning of each unit, we’ll go over the learning objectives for that unit, and students will add questions of their own to the list. If this list is displayed prominently in the classroom, it can serve as visual reminder to students of their progression. Then, we can consciously reflect on these at certain points of the unit. For example, I can ask students to respond to questions such as the following in their journals: “Right now, how confident are you in your ability to complete this learning objective?” or “Now that we’re halfway through the unit, are there any more questions you’d like answered?” Encouraging students to reflect on their learning will ideally encourage self-regulation, a crucial skill to learn in adolescence.   

    The idea of using student-generated questions appeals to me because different students will want to take different things away from the same class. The learning objectives created by the school district and/or teacher outline what all students should be able to do by the end of the class, but having students create their own personal “mini-objectives” by asking questions and setting goals allows me to help them to tailor the learning to their own interests. When I was a student, I didn’t pay much attention to the learning outcomes listed in the course syllabus. I understand their importance now more than ever, so I hope to have students be more cognizant of them and perhaps even take a more active role in their construction when I become a teacher. If nothing else, I expect this approach will help some students see the value in what they are learning even if they don’t pursue a career in the sciences.