Week Seven

I am learning more and more every day as I teach. This week, as I do every week, I found myself putting my philosophy of education into practice.

This week, I gave my very first after school detention. During the week, I had a student that requested help from the LDR teacher while she was in the room. Our LDR teacher has push in minutes every morning and afternoon for about an hour each time. In our classroom we have four students that receive LDR minutes. The student that received a detention from me is not one of them, however, our LDR teacher is always willing to help all of our students. This student was struggling with some independent work. The LDR teacher told him that she would be right with him after working with a student on her caseload. Her time with her student took up the remainder of her minutes in our classroom and she had to go to her next classroom. On her way out, she forgot to let myself or my cooperating teacher know that there was a student waiting for her.

I noticed that the student was moping in his desk shortly after the LDR teacher left the room. I didn’t that he had asked her for help. I approached the student and simply asked what he was doing. The student mumbled under his breath so I bent down to his level and asked him again. This time I could hear him saying something about the LDR teacher. After I figured out that he was upset because she hadn’t helped I brightened up and reminded that he has myself and cooperating teacher to help him as well. Next time, the LDR leaves the room he can simply just ask one of us instead. While I had hoped that this would alieve some of the student’s anger, the student simply rolled his eyes at me and told me he wanted the LDR teacher’s help not mine. I calmly explained to him that she had to be in another classroom and couldn’t stay but that I was happy to help him with his question. Before I could even finish my sentence the student yelled at me saying that he didn’t want my help and he wasn’t going to work unless the LDR teacher came back to answer his question. I was embarrassed. A student had just yelled at me in front of the entire class. Because I knew that I had to make sure I was calm before I addressed the situation I simply asked the student to wait in the hallway for me. After a few deep breaths, I met the student in the hallway to discuss the situation.

I tried to approach the topic gently. I started by asking the student if he knew why I asked him to meet in the hallway. I explained that I did not think it would be appropriate or fair to discuss his behavior in front of his peers. I asked him if he thought that he did that for me when he chose to respond to me the way he did. The student continued to be defiant and defended his behavior by saying that all he wanted the LDR teacher. I knew that I could not indulge the student by arguing so I simply stated that the way the student reacted to me was disrespectful and inappropriate. I asked him how he thought I should handle the situation. The student said he didn’t know. He didn’t think he did anything punishable. So I sent him back to his seat and was stuck with a hard decision to make. The student had disrespected me in front of all of the students and refused to cooperate with me when I tried to diffuse the situation. I chose to give him an after school detention. I didn’t want to, but I knew that I had to do something.

I stayed after school with the student while he served his detention the following day. I got a chance to discuss with him what had happened during that time and he understood that his behavior was inappropriate. Together we developed a better way to respond when we are angry. We decided that when we are angry and a teacher approaches us to help us we may simply say, “I am upset and need a minute to calm down. May I please get a drink of water?” He hasn’t needed to try this strategy out, yet.

Illinois Professional Teaching Standard Number 2: The competent teacher has in-depth understanding of content area knowledge that includes central concepts, methods of inquiry, structures of the disciplines, and content area literacy. The teacher creates meaningful learning experiences for each student based upon interactions among content area and pedagogical knowledge, and evidence-based practice.

2N) The competent teacher facilitates learning experiences that make connections to other content areas and to life experiences;

This week, I was more intentional about building connections between lessons and subject areas. I started out simply by incorporating vocabulary and spelling words into other subjects and allowing opportunity for students to practice using them. For example, we were practicing inferencing in reading this past week. The student read a passage about a boy at a funeral. When I asked the students what they could inference about what the student was feeling many students decribed him as mournful which is one of their vocabulary words. I led the students to say the word mournful when one student described the boy as being sad. I responded with saying, “Yes, he is sad, but he may be more than that; he may be full of sadness.” Which is the definition to mournful.  

Classroom Confidential: 

1. Too many social studies classrooms use a lecture and note taking model of teaching. Schmidt urges teacher to break away from the textbooks and PowerPoints and give students more tangible ways to study to history. She gives suggestions like primary source documents, visual images, artifacts, literature, and architecture. Using these kinds of artifacts to teach give the students a more authentic learning experience with social studies. 

2. I believe that authentic assessment comes in many different forms. Teacher can authentically assess their students is many different ways. Students can be assessed through application of their skills in a real world environment. I believe that students can also be assessed authentically by giving students options to demonstrate their skills.