Three Lessons To Be Learned

This week I taught my second lesson at the high school this time about the Korean War. I didn’t feel as confident on this topic as I had on the previous one. I also was trying to limit myself to only thirty minutes and of course that didn’t work. I went on for about forty minutes or so. I couldn’t think up an activity for the students for this particular topic so unfortunately it was more along the lines of a lecture. I attempted to turn it into a discussion but it's hard when you really don’t know what they’ve already covered. There's a standard from NC about knowing your content that I always pride myself on because this standard for me has never been hard to achieve. But this last lesson hit me at the one area I’m weak in because I only have a simple understanding and knowledge of the Korean War. But the next lesson will be even harder because I’ll be teaching on the culture of the 60’s. Not just an area I don’t have much academic knowledge of but also my least favorite decade in American history. So far I think that there is a lesson to be learned. From my first lesson I need to restrain myself and determine what most important that students understand. From my second lesson I need to know all my content thoroughly. And from my third I need to be able to teach and treat with equal importance my least favorite subject and my favorite subject.

Sherlock

This week we had someone from one of the schools in North Carolina come by and teach us about data collection. She was nice enough and pretty laid back I did learn about the different data that we will collect or if we don’t someone else will, and that's probably not a good thing. This all has to do with the standard that states “the work of the teacher results in acceptable, measurable progress for students based on established performance expectations using appropriate data to demonstrate growth.” I learned more about just how much almost anything and everything can come back and bite us in the butt if we are not always on our toes. I’ve learned what kind of data we will need to collect and what they say, I’ve learned the different forms of assessments, but I have yet to learn what I’m supposed to do with this. Well you just make changes and implement more effective policies to increase student understanding. Well that's great how am I supposed to do that Sherlock? It's great to have all this data at your fingertips but it doesn’t do anyone any good if we don’t know what to do with it.

Scire quod sciendum

This week I finally presented my first lesson plan at the high school, one down two to go. The lesson plan went alright I suppose, it didn't go exactly as I had planned. The lesson plan was more lecture based than I would have liked it to be. With this particular topic I had to teach, the Great Depression and New Deal, it’s incredibly hard to do anything but lecture. I asked for advice and tips from my clinical educator who said that "sometimes you just have to lecture." Not the most comforting advice. I'm glad she thought I did well but she’s not the one who will be grading me on my performance. Despite this I was able to put some stuff into my lesson that got the students engaged and talking about the content because of how "crazy" some of the stuff I was saying was. Which was great, as it related to the particular topic I was teaching on, I wasn't expecting the reaction I got but this was a great surprise. It was a demonstration of the relation of government projects and government jobs to the increase from 24% to 67% to 87% and finally 94% income tax by having them take the percent from a dollar in nickels. Their response showed me they had more understanding of economics than many high schoolers I've met. It provoked an interesting discussion that got EVERYONES attention. I was able to connect it to the whole lesson to show that there was a connection to what I was teaching to what I had them doing. I think it also made what I was teaching clearer to them.



I attempted to make the lesson engaging and interesting to the students which is hard to do with such a Depressing topic. Yeah I know that was a really bad joke. But there is a standard I found that I've always tried to incorporate into my lessons and is probably one of the few standards I feel is not such a waste of time. By that I mean it is important and is not so overly optimistic, it is do-able and relevant to what we are supposed to do as teachers. It is realistic and not the whole "how we'd like the lessons to be" or "how we like class to go" types that stress us out about how we're supposed to incorporate all of this. "Teachers make the content they teach engaging, relevant, and meaningful to students' lives" I tried this in my last lesson that I presented to our class; in fact it was the whole basis of my lesson. If any of you have read by past blogs you know that this standard is the one that I treat as a personal standard and the whole reason I got into this in the first place.

NIKE

Well I finally gave my presentation this week and unlike last time I wasn't so stressed out about presenting it. I feel like the 6 point lesson plan template that Dr. Clark gave us to fill out and put almost word for word what we were going to say really hinders many people from doing better. There's an almost "I have to stick to the plan and can't deviate from it" mentality, at least it is with me. I scrapped my original plan and came up with a different lesson and only took me thirty minutes to put together. Instead of trying to put together an intricate lesson that revolved around students debating with each other I went with an entire lesson based solely on establishing relevancy revolving around discussion. I decided to stick with the Roman Republic but I was also teaching about US history and US government to connect it to other subjects and build a foundation of understanding so they will know something going into those classes the following semester. Overall the lesson went according to plan I just didn't get to cover all of it so it felt lacking in some areas. But the great thing was that the students were way more involved in the discussion than I originally though they would be which I think made the lesson better. Now there's a NC standard that says something along the lines of "Teachers make the content they teach engaging, relevant, and meaningful to students’ lives." And no I didn't memorize that, I had to go fishing on their site to find a standard that was relevant to this. But I believe that, at least to some extent, I achieved this. And honestly this lesson was fun to teach I only wish I had more time to teach it because I hadn't even got to the REALLY good stuff yet.

Plan B

This week has been quite a trip with everything that's been going on the projects, papers, quizzes, and tests. But working on my lesson plan for this week was a breeze and didn’t take me long to put together. It had everything in it that would make a great lesson but after this week I realized that I made one fatal mistake that I had not taken into consideration, students don’t always do what they’re told. And that's what happened, half of the class didn’t watch the video before class and the other half had a hard time understanding it, that was my own fault I’ll admit. But while I was fishin’ around on the NC Standards site trying to find one that relates to this situation and I guess that would be to know your content. I am a bit paranoid at times and sometimes that comes in handy because I had a feeling just before class that most people didn’t watch it and that my lesson would have to be scraped. But where this standard applies, at least to my understanding, is just a few hours before class I came up with a plan B just in case. Plan B was related to my first lesson but had a lot of changes to take into consideration that students didn’t know the content. Not sure if there is a standard relating to this but I think it would be a good one and that is always be prepared for the worst case scenario. But I knew my stuff well enough to create a whole new lesson to adapt to the current situation. The more I reflect on the new lesson the more I see some more flaws in my original that I had not seen before. But I think it offered a good experience that we need to be ready for anything and always have a plan B and be able to adapt to the new circumstances.

Sisyphus...

Today's class really went by fast, now I know a lot of people say that and don't mean it but seriously where on earth did the time go? I felt like we were only in there for thirty minutes or so. Not sure if that's because I was focused and didn’t notice the time or I have poor time management skills. Probably a bit of both.

Today we were working on creating an infographic which until today I’d never heard of. But it required that we reflected/assess and self evaluate where we are. This is a key part of our job as teachers in assessing, reflecting, and evaluating ourselves; hence why it is one of the NC standards. We have to be able to do this and see where we can improve as teachers; to get students engaged in the learning process, enhance and transform learning, establishing relevancy, and integrating literacy. Just listing all of these things that we have to consider is stressing me out. I can’t help but feel that there is this almost “your best will never be enough” feeling that makes me a little depressed and stressed in constantly trying to do better knowing you will have to be doing this regularly. Where you think “yes, this time I’ve finally done it. There’s nothing more to improve on.” but it never is and we have to continually look for ways to improve. It is like Sisyphus rolling the boulder up the mountain.

It's not the improving thing that stresses me out but it the feeling of trying to get students engaged in the learning process, enhance and transform learning, establish relevancy, while also planning lessons (most likely for several subjects), creating tests, coming up with projects, deal with the principal and angry parents, jungle your own personal life, and fight the urge to just take the easy way out and lecture. I guess it’s the trying to get everything right even though you never will that is getting me.

So Close Yet So Far Away

I don’t know about the rest of you but I feel like this semester has really started to fly by with the snow break and one week of classes cancelled. I feel like I should be farther along in the learning process but I’m not. I don’t know how to explain it.
    Well anyways, I got to observe my clinical experience placement’s class and it was slightly different than I thought it would be. The day I came to observe was the day when only twenty five or so minutes was spent teaching the rest of the time the students were quietly working on an in class project. So I didn’t get to observe a whole lot about what to expect when I have to teach a lesson. The good news was that it gave me almost an hour to ask the teacher a bunch of questions about her class. Then I learned that I may be in way deeper than I originally thought. My teacher teaches four other subjects and depending on what day and time I choose I may be teaching anything from US government, world history, US history, to AP Euro. If this project didn’t count for as much as it does this wouldn’t worry me at all because I’m pretty well grounded in each area. Either way this will definitely prove to be interesting.
    Despite this, I think this will prove to be an interesting lesson seeing as if/when I get a job teaching I will mostly likely have to teach three or four different subjects. I’m a little nervous and a bit excited, kinda strange but that's the best way I can put it. I am looking forward to having to give a lesson to our class though. I spent a lot of time working on this one and I looked back on my last experience in 250 and took all that I had learned into consideration. Having to keep a blog like we did in 250 was very beneficial so I could read my own thoughts from back then. Not joking, these blogs really do come in handy when going back over what we’ve covered in the semester or in my case last semester. So word from the wise, put some effort into these blogs trust me it comes in handy later.
    Tschüss

The Six Point Worry Plan

Last week in class we worked on our six point lesson plan and were trying to hammer out the details. Which I’m glad we spent time on because I have a hard time putting pen to paper when it comes to planning. I know what I want to do for the lesson but the way we’re supposed to turn in our plan, with the word for word what we’re going to say, that I have difficulty with. The other part is the presentation, it’s not so much getting up in front of people and teaching I have a problem with it’s the limitations of the presentation. I’m not sure how to explain it but I can give an example I know the people teaching music will understand:

Having to teach a lesson on how to play an instrument or understand the gestures (not sure what it’s called but this is what I’ll call it for now) the composers makes. But most people in the class don’t play an instrument and are not musically inclined, like myself. The lesson is also in mid-stream so the “teacher” has to pretend that the “class” has already gone over the info and would understand when in reality we have no clue what is being taught.

            The teacher learns so much about each student and how they learn, their reading comprehension, and strengths and weaknesses, etc. But in this we are attempting to create an artificial class with no history and teaching a lesson that would be in mid-stream.

            The other experience has its own problems, by other I mean planning three lessons that we will be teaching to actual students. The problem here is the limit again of not knowing the students and missing the crucial information. The second is that our presentation of the lesson is limited to something more along the lines of a lecture or the teaching format of the actual teacher. I prefer the flipped classroom to teach but most teachers don’t use this and because of the technology limitations in the class this teaching style cannot be used.

            It is all of this that has me worried and I know I have a knack for being negative or being able to find the bad in everything I just hope I’m over reacting to all of this. I’ll find out after my first presentation so time will tell.

Coffee, Coffee, Coffee!!!

Well… his week has been an interesting one. Recently I’ve come to realize that I really need to work on my attention to detail and keeping on top of class work. I had failed to keep up with my professors’ schedules and didn’t see the due dates for papers and projects were coming up. Because of this I’ve spent the last five or six days running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to finish them. I’ve been downing six or so cups of coffee and it’s now starting to catch up with me and now I’m having a harder time sleeping. Just great. Despite my best efforts in keeping a schedule so I won’t end up in this kind of situation I’m still having problems. Almost every semester that passes it becomes ever more apparent of my short comings in this area. It worries me sometimes how forgetful I am and puts me in a tight situation. I’m not worried because of the problems I’m facing now but because of the implications it will have in my career if I don’t nip it in the bud. When you’re a teacher staying on top of things and getting things done on time can mean the difference between having a job and losing it.

 

While I am glad that this new project we’re working on, Best Practices Handbook, is in groups I can’t help but harbor some negative feelings toward it. Not the project specifically but group projects as a teaching method used in classes. I’ve talked about the benefits of teamwork/group projects before but I do believe that in some ways it hinders the learning for some students. In my experience, since middle school, team/group projects have provided a way out for some students to sit back and watch everyone else in the group do the work (or in some cases the one carries the four). In the ideal group, it exposes the members to other points of view and different ways to solves problems or create a desired product compared to individual projects. I’ve seen that work before and it’s great when that happens but realistically some members will refuse to work yet take credit for others solution or product. After looking at my team members I don’t worry about this kind of thing happening like it did last semester. It will be interesting to work with them since their areas of study are so vastly different than mine.

Preparation For The Coming Storm

This past week has proven to be an interesting and productive time for me. For the past week or so I've been fiddling around with Sophia.org and figuring out how it works and what I can do with it. On top of this I've been looking at flipped classrooms to see how they actually function. Since the lesson plan is coming up quickly for this class I thought I'd get a move on it and do the research to make the lesson plan more effective than the last time I presented.


I've also been studying my professors carefully and observing their teaching styles and instructional effectiveness. My history professor uses a textbook that is entirely make up of primary sources (speeches, documents, letters, newspapers, etc.). We are to read these primary sources outside of class but class time is marked with lectures and discussions of the content and building on what we've read. Instead of reading from a textbook that only offers the publishers point of view, we read the actual sources for ourselves and interpret them. This creates the problem that I keep hearing from other students about how they have to actually think, interpret, and understand the content instead of just memorizing it like other classes. The only problem is that while we are looking at the philosophical, political, and religious ideologies of a given time period and the effects on society events such as wars, treaties, inventions, and key political figures are underplayed or ignored.


During my observation of my professors I've also learned what not to do. Another professor of mine attempts to teach wholly around discussion which is a good idea but it is poorly executed. He's a bit intimidating and no one wants to speak up which really makes things unproductive and awkward for everyone. He also has us reading a lot for each class to where it becomes overbearing and when taking into consideration the other classes we have it becomes work overload.


 So far it's proved productive and also frustrating trying to pull together fragments of what I perceive to be better ways of creating and executing an affective lesson plan. But I've got two more years before I have to start really worrying about that so that's a relief.

To The Hunt...

Today in class was different than I expected; today we were going on a scavenger hunt using a new app on out phones to complete it. Dr. Clark has been telling us about technological integration into our classrooms and today was an example of what that looks like when its implemented and put into practice.


I saw where it gave simple guidelines as to what to do but was broad enough to allow us to think critically and collaborate with others in our group as to how best complete the job. It gave us more freedom in how we needed to get the job done and a sense of independence among us as well as telling us that the teacher trusts us to do it. The activity allowed for diversity in answering questions and how we took on these challenges. I say all these things not because this activity helps us in increasing our knowledge on new material or improve our understanding of a standard. Instead, it acts as an example that this activity promoted critical thinking, diversity, collaborate and communication skills, trust between teacher and students, independence, and individuality. It serves as an example to what our activities should encourage and foster in our own students.

Back In The Saddle Again

Here we are again, gotta say I'm actually excited about jumping back in the saddle in EDU. I was surprised not to see any familiar faces from 250, well except Dr. Clark. It was great to see though that I'm not the only guy that's going in to teach history. It is interesting to see the new class where everyone is really quite and are a little timid to answer questions or ask them. Hopefully in a few weeks that will change and then it gets fun.

Despite EDU 250 being the hardest class I've ever taken it was also the most fun class I've ever had. Despite the chaotic schedule and over whelming amount of papers I actually missed doing this. But this time around I know what to expect and what is expected of me. Going back into this has proven easier than I originally thought because we're not covering info we've never heard before. Instead we are just building on prior knowledge from last semester or at least that's how it is for me. This helps in acquiring new info because I have something to connect it to.

I've been reading other student's blogs about this semester and it seems almost everyone is a bit intimidated by how much work there is for this class. If I had 21 credit hours I might be having a mini heart attack too but after last semester I've seen that it is possible. All you need is a large pot of coffee and an IV.

This is what I learned from my experience from last semester and that is:

1. Don't be afraid to ask questions, the professor won't bite.

2. Its okay to ask for help on papers and projects, that means from other students as well (I don't mean copying from other people's work or having them write it for you, trust me the professor will know). You're not alone on this.