The Calm Before the Storm (Student Teaching starts soon!)

May not seem like I am excited for Student Teaching, but on the contrary; I am very excited! I cannot wait to start teaching more and getting so much closer to being done with college and closer to my career of teaching in my own classroom. So as we come to the middle of the year and a nice little break, I have encountered problems, which are to be expected. Before I thought technology would be great to use, then I questioned it and I also questioned my students’ potential with the honors level. As this semester is coming to an end, I have made the realization that my students ARE interested in the material and the discussions (they are so great and fascinating listening to them analyze a text, wonderful!), however, they are NOT interested in doing their work! These students have gotten lazy! When they do their work, they produce great things. Such bright students, but they are just not always choosing to do so. This starts the process of trying to get my students to do the work. Like I mentioned before, they are participating in fascinating discussions and getting all the points, if they choose to read the novel that was given as homework. Some even tell me that they just will not do their homework because they do not feel like it. Seems like giving the grades that have been given are not always a motivating factor. They do not understand or care that their grades matter in the future. Asking them “do you really want to take this class again next year?” helps a little when they realize that if they do not get a passing grade they will have to do just that. What will stop them from just getting a passing grade then? I went to search for a possibility, it seems that I am not the only one having issues; most of what I found was a comparison between American students and Foreign students. This is not my problem at all.

            First, let me give the definition of a lazy student from an article: “defined as a student who has the intellectual ability to excel, but never realizes their potential because they choose not to do the work necessary to maximize their capability.” As teachers, we will always have to deal with a lazy student. How exactly do we do so when the student is absolutely not going to have it? As teaching.about.com has given advice to, have the parents support their student with their education. I agree with this. Having parents become more involved with their student’s education would be beneficial to both parties. The parents will know what their child is learning and the student will know that it is important to get an education and to learn. When parents put an emphasis on it, they will know that they do need to focus. They may not like it very much, but I’m sure we would see improvement. Now here lays the other problem, how do we get the parents willing to be involved in their student’s school work? Not all parents will be up for this. This is the question I cannot find an answer to. I am open to any suggestions at this point!

            A quick update about the iPads in the classroom: they are going great now that we have worked through a few problems! Students love them and are getting their work done on them. They seem interested still and are invested in using them. It is great that they get to use them in different ways.

Website used: http://teaching.about.com/od/School-Decision-Making/qt/Dealing-With-A-Lazing-Student.htm

The Ultimate English Teacher Dream: KATE Conference!

To start off with, Taylor Mali was the best part of the KATE Conference. Well, in my opinion that is. Having the opportunity to listen to him read his poems was an experience I will never forget and made me wish all that more that I could write poetry like he does. Anyways, he did a fantastic job! To be expected, he has inspired me to read poetry to my students the way he reads his. Made the poetry sound more alive and less intimidating. Also, finding out that he is rather funny made it all that better!

This was only one keynote session; the other one that I found interesting was the first one that happened Thursday morning by Dr. Howard Pitler. He talked about editing and papers, how we as English teachers should not be editors, but in fact teachers. Getting students to edit on their own type of thing. English teachers are sometimes guilty of editing too much, so we must balance this out. He also went into how we can incorporate more technology into our classroom. Where as I am rather lucky to have an iPad cart and use some of the apps already, having others see and learn that they can be awesome was great too. I got the chance to tell the other pre-student teachers that I just used this app and show them. That was rather neat.

This goes into a breakout session that I attended, by accident actually. I’m glad that I walked into the wrong room and the lovely lady I was with convinced me to stay. Turns out, this was one of my favorite sessions. This one was about how we can use blogs to incorporate more writing into the classroom. Change of audience is an easy switch and the students do not have to feel intimidated by the paper and pencil. We were also introduced into ways that the students could go to a website and type things and they would immediately appear to everyone, so if a student has a question and does not necessarily want to speak up, they can type it and other students can answer or the teacher can. Gives them something to focus on with their work. This session reminded me of what I am doing currently, writing this blog to be exact. I would love to be able to utilize them in my classroom someday and see how that goes.

I would like to note that my fellow classmate, Mrs. Springs, did a fantastic job on her breakout session! Hers was another favorite and I learned new things. She had us make a poem or story using emoticons that turned out rather interesting and funny. This was really engaging and I was in awe that she was able to do that on the spot like she did. Listening to the more experienced teachers share their ideas was great as well. Over all it was a very engaging session!

I had a great time at the conference, some of the content was intended for the experienced teachers who may have needed a reminder or learn things, but not so much for us. This is perfectly fine since there were more of them anyways. Kind of nice knowing that what I have learned and am learning is what they are teaching or suggesting teachers to try out. I will definitely not forget this experience!