Breaking through

I have been teaching my KPTP lesson for the past two weeks now. During my lesson, I have been teaching my students sonnets. To start off, we learned about the different types of sonnets and practicing analyzing them. We focused more on Shakespearean sonnets to ease our way into more of Shakespeare’s works. Students normally struggle with Shakespearean language. This is typical, especially for freshmen, to not understand what the sonnet is saying because of the language. In a previous class, we studied the language and even took a test over it. Due to studying issues students did not do so well. They are learning the power of studying now after that test. They also are finding out that asking “why do we need this in life?” gives them the answer of “You will need it in the next week when we start reading Shakespeare.” So this then leads to the question of “Why are we reading Shakespeare? We won’t need that.” Well, the answer to that is that they are correct; they may not use it as much in the future. This will help them analyze things that they do not understand. They will be almost bilingual because the language is so different from ours. Our students are learning that Shakespearean words are used more frequently than they think. They can figure things out because of the help of Shakespeare. Another part of the answer to the same question from students is that Shakespeare wrote about themes that are timeless. The same themes are used today, they are learning from where the themes were put into practice that far back. There is so much more that they are learning from reading and understanding Shakespeare; students just do not realize it at the time of learning.

            To get back to the breakthrough of my classes; I had my students review what they learned about sonnets (what makes up a sonnet, what the key components are, etc.) and apply their knowledge into writing their own sonnet. Of course, I did NOT have them write in iambic pentameter. They recognize that this is part of the sonnet process, but that would have been too difficult for my students in a short period of time. I also had my students present their sonnet to the class and explain the accompanying visual that they chose to compliment their sonnet. Out of the two classes I had do this assignment, all but four students completed and presented their sonnet on time. I am not sure about those four students if they will complete the assignment. This is a proud moment for me because I was able to give them a difficult task and have the majority of my students complete and enjoy the assignment. I asked my students to write me a paragraph over their inspiration for the sonnet and then tell me how they thought they did. The majority of them said they were proud of their sonnet and enjoyed sharing their work to the class. Being able to get this reaction from my students made my week! The creativity that was given through their work was outstanding. All of my students were engaged and enjoyed sharing their creative side.

            The website I have chosen to incorporate in this post is a list of 30 ways to use creativity in the classroom. As teachers, we cannot be afraid to use creativity to an advantage in our classroom. My students now understand sonnets and were able to do so in a creative way. They all enjoyed the assignment. The link:

http://www.opencolleges.edu.au/informed/features/30-things-you-can-do-to-promote-creativity-in-your-classroom/

Keeping Everything Together

Student teaching has officially begun and already life is beyond hectic. People can warn you that student teaching will be busy beyond belief, but you almost don’t believe all the warnings. Well, they are real and I have officially figured this out. What I have realized from this semester so far is that plans NEVER seem to go as you want them to. My CT and I have changed our plans for this semester multiple times. I knew that as a teacher, you change your mind and have to rearrange many times. This is part of the deal; we work with our lesson plans and change them to make them work for our classes. I have learned that having lesson plans made in advanced does help; just scheduling certain dates becomes the tricky part. Having to move the dates around can be frustrating at times, but seeing the students benefit from these decisions helps ease the mind. Reflection over these decisions has helped a lot as well. This is why our teachers stress to us just how important reflection time is. Planning so far has been by far the most difficult part of my student teaching. I know this will only get easier as time goes on and I gain more experience.

            Now to focus on the classroom itself, the students are having a problem staying motivated. Grades are not giving them the push to try harder and do their best. This seems to be the low of the school year. Where students just have a hard time getting back into the groove and do not believe their grades at this point matter as much. So how do we, as teachers, motivate our students to keep going and not give up now?

            I found a list of ideas to help us keep students from hitting rock bottom. http://www.teachthought.com/teaching/21-simple-ideas-to-improve-student-motivatio/

This link has a list of 21 ideas to help teachers get out of the same routine. I mean, we teachers need to change it up every now and then also. Some ideas are of having the students feel like they have more power over their decisions in the classroom. I think sometimes we forget to let students have some control, we get so caught up in planning and hoping that it is engaging that the students feel like robots doing the same thing. Group work can only go so far to motivate students. To go along with this point, my CT and I have decided to have our students pick a book of their choosing to read. They will then do a book report over said book. Students will then connect their book to something happening today in the real world. Our students were excited by the fact they were able to pick out their own book. Giving them that one thing, they already were okay with the assignment. Hopefully they will end up completing and turning in their assignment. Only time will tell.

            Another assignment we will be doing towards the end of the year is an alternative book report over Night. Students will be able to choose their own project to complete over the novel. My CT and I are hoping to see that if the students get to choose their own project, they will be more invested and motivated to do the project.

            Other than the students not staying motivated, the students are behaving rather well. They see me as their teacher and treat me with respect. I am hoping this will continue on when I take over and teach all day.

A Letter to My Mom (Genre Reflection 2)

Dear Mom,

            You always ask me why in the world I want to become a teacher. Adding with an “I thought you wanted to help people” or “you won’t make any money!” Well mom, I will be helping people, just in a different way. I know you want me to become a nurse or doctor to be able to save lives, but that just is not me. I will be helping students find their voice, reach their potential, and hopefully they will go on to become the nurses and doctors. Helping people isn’t always just saving their life, you know. Oh and the money issue, if you think about it, nurses don’t make exactly that much money either for the amount of work they have to do. Teachers are underpaid, but I will get by just fine. Plus, you ALWAYS told me that money doesn’t buy happiness…it just helps sometimes. Anyways, just know that I’ll be happy with this decision. Which goes into your next argument, what happens if I get burnt out like some teachers do? Well so far I see no signs of this, I mean would I plan on going to grad school in this field if there were any indications I wouldn’t like teaching? Probably not. So back to the overall question, why do I want to become a teacher? Okay, so I could give you the stereotypical answer that every future teacher gives, but you’ve heard it before and you still have your doubts. So let me explain differently for you, I was born to be a teacher. It is who I am. I have you to thank for this. You taught me to love literature at a young age, you also taught me to say what is on my mind, and that there are always learning opportunities. So face it, you helped guide me down this path. I mean, if you REALLY wanted me to become a nurse or doctor, you should have raised me a tad differently. Only kidding, you did just fine. I think you should be proud that I am becoming a teacher! Be proud to know that you influenced me in such a way that I want to influence students. Now you know, so you can stop questioning my decision and let me graduate in peace!

I love you,

Sheila

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!

Genre Reflection #1

Hanging On

            The first teaching experience I faced was nerve racking to say the least. I felt as nervous as I did the first time I went rock climbing, two different experiences that had the same feelings. Nerves kick in and the adrenaline starts pumping through my veins, I walk in front of the classroom and walk up to the mountainside. All I can think about is hoping everything goes well. I grab hold of my first rock, my first slide of my PowerPoint appears and I start talking. The lesson goes on and I start climbing higher and higher, afraid to look down. The class is talking a normal amount and responding well, I climb on and think there is nothing to it. I notice my class is starting to get out of control with their answers, this is when I look down to see the ground far below. Panic starts setting in as I cannot get my class under control, I can feel myself beginning to lose my footing. I raise my voice and try desperately to get them under control; I reach out for another rock to regain balance. I miss the rock and am barely hanging on; my class is completely off topic now. Suddenly I hear another voice, my CT’s, calm the class down and help them refocus; a hand reaches down to me and helps me making sure I do not fall. Relief floods through my veins as I realize that the chaos is over and I can finish my lesson with smooth sailing. I made it to the top of the giant rock, part of the mountainside. I look out and see the valley below. The feeling of joy occurs when I realize that I survived my first teaching experience. Even through everything, I would do it again.