An example of weekly reflections:

On Monday I led discussion with the Advanced Composition students.  I realized that while I try (and succeed most of the time) to welcome all thought and ideas with literature, it can be hard to do with something that is opinionated based like race.  There were times when things that the students were saying that I felt were ignorant, but I didn't want to tell them they were wrong.  I am not sure where that line when I should tell the students my opinion and when I should only let them express their opinions.  It was a very interesting discussion.

Tuesday, I had the same class do a prewriting activity using photographs.  I had them get into groups of 2 and write as many words describing the picture as possible on the chalk board.  My intention for doing this was to begin to generate ideas as well as to start thinking of descriptive words to improve their papers.  I then had them pick one of the pictures and write about it using one of their remaining modes.  We then shared some examples of what they had written.  We repeated this process.  Overall, I believe the students got something out of it, however, if I were going to do it again, I would as them to think of possible topics for each of the modes for each picture.  I think this would generate more ideas and conversation.  I have been struggling a little bit on how to lead interesting prewriting activities because I have done so little personal prewriting!

I also did some acting with the freshman Shakespeare today!  It was very intimidating for me to teach Romeo and Juliet. I feel like Shakespeare is a language I am not entirely sure of!  I broke them up into their groups and each of the group performed about 30 lines.  They had to direct the Romeo and Juliet for each scene (we were doing to balcony scene).  Overall, I think they enjoyed it, but, if I were to do it again I would want them to have more rationales for their directing choices.  I would bring in a sample directors book so they could see the kind of details I was looking for.

Wednesday
I broke up today's Shakespeare lesson into 2 sections.  The first section I had them illustrate the Friar’s speech in Act 2.  Overall, they did a wonderful job, however, I should have gone into a little more detail when they were explaining what they were drawing.  I know they got the gist of it, but a little more digging would have been helpful!  After that, in their groups, they had 12 questions to answer about the rest of the Act.  This worked out really well.  It allowed me to see that they understood Romeo and Juliet outside of class discussions.

We also had a student come and talk to us about issues he is having.  It made me realize how important the job of a teacher can be.  The students really count on teachers sometimes to be the parents they don’t feel comfortable going to.

Thursday:
In the advanced composition class we had a discussion about prewriting.  They seemed resistant to doing it so we discussed it.  Essentially, they all declared that they do not use the prewriting time effectively.  They would rather be at their homes, sit in front of their computer, and then write the paper.  So, while we did not reach a solid conclusion, we did use a lot of the period discussing our topic for the paper.  That seemed to be helpful.  I put the students into groups, had them come up with possible topics, then we discussed those topics.  They said that this worked better than prewriting.  However, I believe that next time I will start out the same way, but I will have them write at least a paragraph to get them stared thinking about a topic.
 

An example of a semester reflection:

One of the theories we have discussed regularly is the importance of a culturally diverse classroom.  Although the school I was at was predominately European American, the classroom I was observing in had a pretty good range of racial diversity.  The Advanced Placement literature and composition class had a wide range of literature.  For every book that had a white author there was a book written by a person of color.  There were many more African American authors than other minority authors.  There were also an equal amount of books written by men and women.  However, although the class was diverse with race and gender, the classroom was not diverse in literature about sexual orientation or religion.  I believe that these are two aspects are essential to the environment I was at.  The school I was placed at was a very Christian, heterosexual school.  My cooperating teacher and I had discussed how difficult it would be within that community to be a homosexual person because the community viewed that as unacceptable.  Therefore, it is even more important that the students are exposed to books and discuss content such as other religions and sexual preference.  The Advanced Composition class was also good about discussing culturally diverse authors.  For each unit that students would receive a packet of information that contained multiple articles.  The packets that I saw were diverse and touched on multiple issues.  The freshman class was not as culturally diverse.  They do not have the freedom the older classes have of having materials not from the assigned literature book.  The literature book appeared to have pretty good diversity.  I glanced through it while I was preparing for my poetry unit. However, I made my own selections for a poetry packet because I felt they were better at expressing cultural diversity.

Something else that I thought was interesting was the way this school had set up the tracking system.  The freshmen are not tracked.  I thought this was a wonderful way to set up the school.  For at least the first year, the students are not put into categories.  They are allowed to express themselves and demonstrate their abilities.  Then, after the first year or two, the students are tracked.  I thought this method worked well because for the students that want to take more advanced classes, the option is there.  However, I didn't feel that the students were forced into a track they were unable to get out of.  It was interesting seeing the difference between the untracked freshman and the tracked seniors.  When I began preparing for the freshman, I had to have a fairly specific lesson plan that all students would be able to understand easily.  I also tried to make sure that there were lots of hands on activities that worked with the multiple learning intelligences.  While I also did this for the Advanced Placement seniors, I did not do it to the extent I did with the freshman.  Most of the time I could explain something at the AP students would be able understand something without me needing to explain something in a different way.  I also led the class in more of a college level discussion scenario instead of daily hands-on tasks.  If I were to teach another AP class, I would probably include more hands on lesson plans, however, I do not feel they are as necessary as with untracked freshman.

Overall, I had a positive experience at this teaching placement.  I learned a lot and am still reflecting on what I need to improve on.  One of the aspects that was interesting was grading the students papers that I assigned.  I have discovered that I need to decide how I want to grade these.  My cooperating teacher focuses a lot on grammar whereas I tend to focus on grammar only when it is impeding my comprehension ability.  Instead, I look at what the paper is saying and how the paper can improve on the content of the paper.  I need to improve my grammar abilities, however, I'm not sure if I want to focus on the grammar of the student papers.  I also discovered the importance of a very specific rubric.  If I were to assign this paper topic again, I would make a different rubric.  I did not like the way mine separated things.  I also continued the method of how my teacher continued to grade papers.  I did not accept papers that were not turned in by the end of the day.  If they were not turned in, then they received no credit.  However, my teacher would always accept a redone copy up until a week later.  Then, if the student did not have the grade he/she wanted after the second rewrite, they would have another week to complete a rewrite.  It was a continual cycle until the student failed to turn in the paper by the new due date.  I found this to be effective because for the students that wanted to put in the extra effort to get a good grade, this worked well.  It was interesting that many of the students did not take me up on this option after their paper.

Something else that I discovered is that I am still not entirely sure how to find the balance between keeping control of the classroom and allowing the students to talk to each other and not feel inhibited to express themselves.  Although my classroom never got out of control, there were times that I wanted to bring the students back together quicker than they did.  Along the same lines, I also am still struggling to discover were the line is between being a personable teacher that has authority and control over the classroom and a teacher that is a pushover teacher that is attempting to get close to the students.  I do not want my students to sit in rows and do worksheets all day, but I also do not want my students continually off topic.  I am hoping that my next placement will help be find a better balance.

I have also learned the importance of leading discussions.  It is something that still intimidates me, especially with the AP students and Shakespeare.  With the AP students, it intimidates me because they are so intelligent and I am not sure that I know more about the book than they do; however,, this semester has shown me that even if I read it for the first time with them, I am able to pick up on more of the details and meanings.  I still sometimes struggle with posing my questions and responding to student answers and questions.  I am not always sure how to respond to student comments.  I think that the more practice I get, the more comfortable I will become.  With literature such as Shakespeare I have realized how important it is to know the play line by line because the students ask questions about random facts and it is had to go quickly back and find the answer.  However, I have also found how important it is to let the students know I don’t know an answer if I don’t instead of making it up.

I really enjoyed student teaching at the high school level.  I enjoyed to energy of the freshman and the depth of thought the older students portrayed.  I felt that I was able to get to know the students on a personal level, which helped me to teach better.  It will be interesting to see the difference between high school and middle school.  I am wondering if I will be able to make the same connections with the students at the middle school as I was with the high school.  Overall, I thought it was an extremely beneficial experience that I learned a lot from.
 

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