(One of) My First Hard Days

Though I woke up this morning with the confidence that today would be a good day, and even got on the road a solid 15 minutes head of schedule to assure that I would be the first in line for the copy machine this morning, today did not turn out to be a good day. The moment my students arrived, their grumblings reminded me of the severe disappointment that I experienced on Friday while grading their first To Kill a Mockingbird reading quizzes. This trimester, in attempt to align with the new national standards, my school is trying something new. We are assigning literature to our students as homework while teaching them unrelated material in class and assessing them on their reading comprehension on a weekly basis. This differs significantly from the heavy discussion based classroom I am used to and the changes are not being warmly received. 

The first quiz was a wake up call. To me and the students. Of my 32 students first hour, 5 passed the quiz with higher than a 60%. This was simply a reading quiz that was meant to assess their higher level thinking skills as related to this novel. It had to compensate for days without discussion or even mention of the novel. As hard as this has been on me to give up my favorite aspect of the English classroom, it must be equally hard on my students. With this being one of the first grades on the books for the new trimester, many of my students are currently failing the class. They, and their parents, are freaking out.

The complaints, both justified and unjustified, were mentally exhausting. I did everything within my power to console them, however, and constructed for them a success strategy. Everyone who did not pass this quiz is required to do a reading guide for the next set of chapters to be tested. If they pass, then they are welcome to discontinue the use of the reading guide, but they may find it helpful for their future success. If they fail a later quiz, the reading guide will be reinstated. This will be true for the rest of the students for the rest of the year. I also showed them an example of a quiz turned in by one of their peers that was done tremendously well. His name was not on it and in no way was he identified, but he set the example for my expectations for the rest of the class. As a last measure, I asked my students to anonymously respond to the following questions:

How much of the book did you read?

How accurate was this quiz in assessing how much and how well you read the book?

Their responses were not surprising. Of my 32 students first hour, 7 claimed to have read every word of every page assigned. That means the other 25 used a combination of laziness and sparknotes to fail the quiz. 5th hour did marginally better. It was a rough day. Students were upset. I was fried.

I had a heart to heart with my students and told them that I did not intend to alter the quizzes. We were going to work harder to raise up to the high bar rather than lower it to met our sub-par standards. This, I think, was the right approach, even if they don't see it yet. Hopefully, one day they will.

My First Field Trip

After weeks of work and pleading, our efforts finally paid off to take our remedial English students on a field trip to see The Hunger Games movie which we had just finished reading in class. The book was used to teach reading comprehension, vocabulary, and literature appreciation. It was the first book many of our students read cover to cover, and our biggest struggle was keeping them from ruining the end of the book for those whose reading pace was slower than theirs. The students completed large projects to wrap up the unit, and their reward for completing two C or better projects was the movie. All but two students from both classes completed the assignment, a record for this class.

We took a bus from the school to the theater, and the concession stand was opened early just for us because we had a special 9:00am opening day showing of the film for just our students. They sat scattered around the whole theater and constantly critiqued the movie's variances from the book. In the end, the student's loved our outing and their 3 hours away from school on a Friday, and in memory, we decided to take a group photo. After we took several shots of the students, one yelled out, "The student teachers, get the student teachers in the picture!" which was followed by a chorus of "yeah" and "get in here!"

My co-student teacher and I joined with huge smiles. This class has become so important to us, and for them to make us feel included in their group was really touching. It was the highlight of my week.

Teaming

Today I started team-teaching a unit for a remedial English class with a special education student teacher. We are teaching To Kill a Mockingbird which I have taught for the third time now in two months, but somehow it hasn't gotten old yet, especially because this time around is so different. Because this is a special class, it has its own curriculum, and my co-teacher and I have a lot of freedom. We are taking our sweet time making our way through the unit, and we're spending a considerable amount of time reading aloud. Our objective is to convey to our students the severity of the social issues taking place at the time and helping them realize to some extent the remnants of the racist sentiments tainting the modern world. Making the lessons from nearly a century ago relevant to our young audience may be a challenge, but it is a challenge I am up for as long as I have a partner by my side. I am very excited to sharing my newbie experience with this fellow student teacher, and I look forward to what we can learn together and from each other!

New Trimester

Today was the start of a new trimester with dozens of new faces. As my time is coming to an end at my student teaching placement, the education of these students is really just getting underway. A student told me today how hard it is having student teachers in class because the students get to know them and trust them, and then they up and leave. If the students feel the sudden detachment, I can only imagine how I will feel when I have to say my final goodbyes. I have already arranged to stay at least three extra days with my students, but I am afraid this will not suffice. I am busily applying to jobs right now so that, with any luck, after the start of my next school year I will be seeing many faces over and over and over again. I can only hope that I find a school that fits me as well as where I am now.

Extra Credit

Never have so many students inquired about their grades than at the end of the trimester. Something clicked in their brains this week as we were studying for our final exams and everyone suddenly became keenly interested in their GPA. I think mothers had something to do with it. I had students with Ds and low Cs asking for extra credit. I even had a mother of a student email asking for extra credit on her son's behalf! My answer must be a determined, "No!" Extra credit is for exemplary work that in some way stands out from everyone else's in a positive way! If the only exemplary aspect of your work is your astounding lack of effort, I am not going to be so moved as to offer you extra credit to make up for your laziness. You need to be conscious of the credit your are receiving, or not receiving, as the trimester unfolds, and you need to put a little effort in sometime before the last week of the trimester.You must earn your grades, and if you are earning a D or an E, than that is what you are going to get. I am not rewarding your last minute attempts to compensate for your poor work ethic. I honestly believe that I am being entirely fair in letting you, my students, live with the grades you earned. I am in the business of rearing adults and in respect of that I am going to treat you as such. If you want an A or a B, earn it, and I will be happy to deliver.

Student Presentations

This week is the end of the trimester for the students at my current placement, and as a special end of trimester treat, I assigned a fun project to my students. I asked that they brainstorm lists of things that they are good at and things they like to do, and from that list I asked them choose one skill to demonstrate in front of the class. I made this a formal assignment by requiring a visual and an outline of the five-step process that they would be demonstrating.

Topics included how to make paper air-planes, how to make grilled quesadillas, how to write a song, and how to play defensive linebacker in football. Anyone who brought in food for the class as part of their presentation got extra credit, so today alone we all got grilled cheese, rosemary bread, and a cupcake. Based on these results, I think that I will require my students of any age every year to do demonstration speeches! This is definitely an assignment worth 'stealing' from my CT!

No Voice

A strange pity fell across the room this week when a coughing fit incapacitated my voice in the middle of a classroom discussion. I rushed to get my water bottle, having realized that a cold was setting in and trying my best to be prepared, but it was not enough. Momentarily, my voice was gone. And no student made a peep. Several glanced sideways at each other, wondering what to do, but no one made a definitive movement or spoke. I croaked out an apologized, and my students just stared, dumbfounded. A teacher with no voice is no teacher at all! They didn't know how to react! They shifted uncomfortably as I gulped down water and tried to dislodge the frog that had settled in my throat. After 90 seconds of discomfort for all involved, I managed a squeaky sentence that slowly evened out into a hoarse echo of what my voice was minutes before. This would have to do.

Never before had I been so captivating to my students. My sudden lack of voice was obviously the most astounding thing to happen in our classroom that morning, or likely that week. I was slowly able to get the class back on track with my weaker voice, but my whispered tones worked wonders for behavior management! With all of my students straining to hear me, they were forced to be quiet and focus. Moral of this story: take the good with the bad and make the best of what you've got!