Freire's chapter was hard to read, honestly. I can't imagine teaching students like that, let alone that there are teachers out there that already do. I wanted to believe that I came from a different school, that I came from something where we didn't just regurgitate answers when the teachers asked us but I can vividly remember reciting our multiplication tables in third grade when our teacher held up a card with numbers on it. I had no idea what we were doing. I didn't even know what a "times table" was at the time, let alone what the numbers meant. I just knew my classmates were saying numbers, so I did, too. As you can imagine, I never got the answers right.
I've come along way since those days, but I can still see it in some of my classes even in college. Maybe I'm just biased towards my English Lit classes, but I've never just sat there and had to regurgitate information in those classes (high school, yes, college, no). In my math classes, oh absolutely I had to just rattle back information that I knew. Quadratic formula? Have no idea what it does but I know a song to remember the formula (I think it solves something to do with parabolas, I'm pretty sure?); the formula for slope? Yeah, I got 'chu but beyond telling you "rise over run," I haven't the foggiest. I don't want that for my students. I don't want them to tell me that Mustafa Mond is like a biblical figure in Brave New World, I want them to tell me why they think he is one. I want to hear what they have to say. My students are not my banks to deposit my knowledge. I want them to build their own banks full of their own (and other students') knowledge.
I like the talk about a partnership vs a "student-teacher" relationship. While I feel like Freire is getting a tiny bit dramatic talking about liberation and oppression, I do agree that students will not get much out of their education if there is a "Charlie Brown teacher" standing at the front of the classroom mumbling, Womp womp womp.
Wednesday, January 27, 2016
Monday, January 25, 2016
Assessing and Evaluating Students' Learning
This chapter that we read has actually been super reassuring for the future. I was concerned about not knowing exactly what or how to grade. I feel more adequately equipped to handle assessing my students' work, which is really comforting.
What this chapter reinforced that this class has introduced to me is blogposting for responses. It takes the stress off of discussion, I feel. Students are given time to think over reading assignments and pose discussion questions on their blogs. It's not necessarily anonymous but nobody is actively sitting there listening to your response and it gives you time to rework what you might actually be trying to ask or say. Journal writing works the same way. It's good to be able to just "dump" all of your thoughts and feelings about a particular topic onto the page without worry of judgement. Turning in the journals or the blog posts is a good way for private feedback from the teacher, as well.
I've never been totally into peer feedback, especially in my lower level classes in college. I don't claim to know everything about grammar, but I can assure you a lot of the people I peer reviewed with in class didn't know a lot at all. I would try to help them by writing in the margins, letting them know what could be fixed and they never took my advice. They gave bad advice, as well. It was frustrating to spend time peer reviewing and not getting anything out of it. There was never really a point as I wasn't learning anything and I felt my peers weren't learning anything, either. But this chapter has revised my interest in peer reviewing with its tips as to how to teach students to peer review. That was one thing I had never really thought about: most kids probably aren't brought up to know how to review - they just say "good job" and move on with their day. If we teach our students the questions to ask, peer reviewing could actually be something much more than what it is now.
PS: I promise I kind of know how to read a schedule. Sometimes.
What this chapter reinforced that this class has introduced to me is blogposting for responses. It takes the stress off of discussion, I feel. Students are given time to think over reading assignments and pose discussion questions on their blogs. It's not necessarily anonymous but nobody is actively sitting there listening to your response and it gives you time to rework what you might actually be trying to ask or say. Journal writing works the same way. It's good to be able to just "dump" all of your thoughts and feelings about a particular topic onto the page without worry of judgement. Turning in the journals or the blog posts is a good way for private feedback from the teacher, as well.
I've never been totally into peer feedback, especially in my lower level classes in college. I don't claim to know everything about grammar, but I can assure you a lot of the people I peer reviewed with in class didn't know a lot at all. I would try to help them by writing in the margins, letting them know what could be fixed and they never took my advice. They gave bad advice, as well. It was frustrating to spend time peer reviewing and not getting anything out of it. There was never really a point as I wasn't learning anything and I felt my peers weren't learning anything, either. But this chapter has revised my interest in peer reviewing with its tips as to how to teach students to peer review. That was one thing I had never really thought about: most kids probably aren't brought up to know how to review - they just say "good job" and move on with their day. If we teach our students the questions to ask, peer reviewing could actually be something much more than what it is now.
PS: I promise I kind of know how to read a schedule. Sometimes.
Wednesday, January 20, 2016
Standards Based Grading
I was against standards based grading for the longest time; in fact, it was so long that it was only taking my Winter 2016 class of English 493 that changed my mind. I heard all the flack that the tests caught and was super surprised that there were actually people that were for something that caused teachers in Atlanta, Georgia to alter their students' test scores to make them appear better than they were. Why would we want that for our schools? For our students?
Those teachers made a poor choice but that should not reflect poorly on the actual benefits of standards based grading. While I am not at all for coddling students (I'm not saying throw them to the wolves, but I am saying that after high school, they'll need to be ready to be told "you need to do better."), I am for standards based grading. If we set up a national standard for our students to achieve before they enter the real world, they'll be much more adequately prepared to handle what comes their way. A zero on an assignment to most students is just that: a zero. It doesn't help them prepare for the next exam; now the student is just worried about doing better on the next exam to make up for that zero. The stress I remember feeling in high school was awful; I don't want my students to go through that. I want them to see the marks on their paper and know what they can do to fix the marks and what resources they have available to them. We're not teachers to cut down students who might have outside factors contributing to their lack of studying; we're teachers to build up every student that comes through our classroom door.
This post is running a tad bit long, but let me discuss one of my favorite movies. Stand and Deliver was a properly made movie based on a true story about teaching. Jaime Escalante was so good at what he did, when his students - almost all from working-class Hispanic families - passed the AP Calculus exam with flying colors after being confined to the "dumb" math classes, the Educational Testing Service demanded the students retake the exam. Jaime believed so much in his students that he continued to prepare them until they were told to retake the exam with only a day's notice. The students went on to pass the exam - most with 4s and 5s. If we're not prepared to believe in our students, to believe that they can go from the bottom to top with our assistance, then we don't deserve to be teachers. Sometimes we might be the only ones who believe in our students.
Those teachers made a poor choice but that should not reflect poorly on the actual benefits of standards based grading. While I am not at all for coddling students (I'm not saying throw them to the wolves, but I am saying that after high school, they'll need to be ready to be told "you need to do better."), I am for standards based grading. If we set up a national standard for our students to achieve before they enter the real world, they'll be much more adequately prepared to handle what comes their way. A zero on an assignment to most students is just that: a zero. It doesn't help them prepare for the next exam; now the student is just worried about doing better on the next exam to make up for that zero. The stress I remember feeling in high school was awful; I don't want my students to go through that. I want them to see the marks on their paper and know what they can do to fix the marks and what resources they have available to them. We're not teachers to cut down students who might have outside factors contributing to their lack of studying; we're teachers to build up every student that comes through our classroom door.
This post is running a tad bit long, but let me discuss one of my favorite movies. Stand and Deliver was a properly made movie based on a true story about teaching. Jaime Escalante was so good at what he did, when his students - almost all from working-class Hispanic families - passed the AP Calculus exam with flying colors after being confined to the "dumb" math classes, the Educational Testing Service demanded the students retake the exam. Jaime believed so much in his students that he continued to prepare them until they were told to retake the exam with only a day's notice. The students went on to pass the exam - most with 4s and 5s. If we're not prepared to believe in our students, to believe that they can go from the bottom to top with our assistance, then we don't deserve to be teachers. Sometimes we might be the only ones who believe in our students.
Wednesday, January 13, 2016
Team Teaching!
Team teaching is pretty fantastic. I think the Leavitt article did a swell job of covering the important aspects of team teaching. I thought that I had never experienced team teaching when we first talked about it in class but then I realized that I had had the opportunity in high school to do such; I took a class called "American Experience" which smooshed together our junior year history, English, and religion courses. It was really cool because it was a two hour block of three teachers getting up and teaching together - literally team teaching (I don't know why I thought I had never come across it before). It was nice to see the three different perspectives on whatever we were learning. Religion and history obviously intersect pretty well, regardless of beliefs - both teachers were able to discuss, civilly, their beliefs about what happened at different times in religious history. The class was mainly based on American history, but it was interesting to hear about the different ways religion shaped what was going on at the time.
When I first started reading the Leavitt article, I was apprehensive about team teaching: these are my children and I want to teach them how I'd like. But team teaching teaches them even more than I could on my own. The article is right: teaching students how to have civil debates, I feel, is just as important as teaching them the subject matter in the first place. I think having a teacher pose questions to get students' minds going is also great. I've been a student for far too many years and I've had plenty of classes where I'm not sure what questions to ask; they might be there in the forefront of my mind, I'm just not sure how to phrase them properly. Having somebody else there to help ask questions is quite helpful. After finishing the article, I'm convinced that I'd like to team teach sometime in the future, maybe after I get my feet wet in actually knowing how to teach...
When I first started reading the Leavitt article, I was apprehensive about team teaching: these are my children and I want to teach them how I'd like. But team teaching teaches them even more than I could on my own. The article is right: teaching students how to have civil debates, I feel, is just as important as teaching them the subject matter in the first place. I think having a teacher pose questions to get students' minds going is also great. I've been a student for far too many years and I've had plenty of classes where I'm not sure what questions to ask; they might be there in the forefront of my mind, I'm just not sure how to phrase them properly. Having somebody else there to help ask questions is quite helpful. After finishing the article, I'm convinced that I'd like to team teach sometime in the future, maybe after I get my feet wet in actually knowing how to teach...
Wednesday, January 6, 2016
"Discussion" Discussion
"Discussion in a Democratic Society"
This chapter was interesting, and I really think a great way to start off this particular class. While I've always known that discussion can't be a thing without being prepared, I never really believed anything else was very important in a discussion. You read the material, show up, and chat. I never thought about it as anything more than that. But this chapter kind of skews that view; instead of just trying to say what I want to say, regardless of teacher status or not, paying apt attention to the other participants is important as well. Writing that out makes me kind of embarrassed but it's true: I was always okay at listening to what others had to say, but never fully there in the sense that I was actively listening to what other people were saying the entire time they were saying it. I remember one time in high school, I had to play a judge for a class project. Being judge included all the usual proceedings as a judge, including determining if someone's objection was uncalled for. The moment I stopped paying attention (for whatever reason), someone called out "objection!" and I hadn't the foggiest what they were objecting to.
But I digress. This chapter brought up a lot of excellent points for discussion. As I was reading it, I found myself thinking how I don't like to call discussions "discussions" and want to refrain from doing so when I start teaching because I was always... hesitant to participate in discussions. I never knew if my ideas were good enough to merit discussion. That could definitely just be me being the insecure student I was but I don't want any of my students to go through that same situation. Ergo, I figured calling them "conversations" was a better route, and, low and behold, one of the next paragraphs I read on page five discussed the preference of "conversation" over "discussion." There is a much more laid-back feel to a conversation; you can invite students to say whatever they'd like (pertaining to the topic, of course), regardless if they feel like it contributes or not. All you're doing is having a conversation, a little chat about a topic. I feel that removing the formality of discussion from the classroom would actually foster a much livelier discussion in the end.
This chapter was interesting, and I really think a great way to start off this particular class. While I've always known that discussion can't be a thing without being prepared, I never really believed anything else was very important in a discussion. You read the material, show up, and chat. I never thought about it as anything more than that. But this chapter kind of skews that view; instead of just trying to say what I want to say, regardless of teacher status or not, paying apt attention to the other participants is important as well. Writing that out makes me kind of embarrassed but it's true: I was always okay at listening to what others had to say, but never fully there in the sense that I was actively listening to what other people were saying the entire time they were saying it. I remember one time in high school, I had to play a judge for a class project. Being judge included all the usual proceedings as a judge, including determining if someone's objection was uncalled for. The moment I stopped paying attention (for whatever reason), someone called out "objection!" and I hadn't the foggiest what they were objecting to.
But I digress. This chapter brought up a lot of excellent points for discussion. As I was reading it, I found myself thinking how I don't like to call discussions "discussions" and want to refrain from doing so when I start teaching because I was always... hesitant to participate in discussions. I never knew if my ideas were good enough to merit discussion. That could definitely just be me being the insecure student I was but I don't want any of my students to go through that same situation. Ergo, I figured calling them "conversations" was a better route, and, low and behold, one of the next paragraphs I read on page five discussed the preference of "conversation" over "discussion." There is a much more laid-back feel to a conversation; you can invite students to say whatever they'd like (pertaining to the topic, of course), regardless if they feel like it contributes or not. All you're doing is having a conversation, a little chat about a topic. I feel that removing the formality of discussion from the classroom would actually foster a much livelier discussion in the end.
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