Viva Discordia

It's all coming to an end...

2011-04-19T19:54:00.000-06:00

Well, here we are. The last entry. Well, it's the last entry as an EPS 350 blog, anyways. I have to talk about how I've changed, as a teacher, as a result of my pre-internship, and boy, have I ever. I've grown, really.

Let me just start by saying my pre-internship was a universally positive experience. I could barely even contain the joy I felt throughout that three week block, and felt myself talking about it endlessly. It's true, teaching does take over your conversations. My co-op and I got along famously, and my pre-internship partner was a gem. We worked in perfect sync, like some sort of well-oiled, teaching machine.

One of the largest areas where I changed, and grew, was in organization, and dedication. I mean, I am still pretty disorganized, but this experience forced me to learn how to put my nose to the grindstone and PRODUCE. As well, it forced me to keep some sort of system for my materials, lessons, and everything else under the sun I came across. It was truly a "trial-by-fire" in a sense, because I felt, after the first day, in which I ran short of material on a lesson, that I would sink if I didn't make some vital changes, and fast. I mean, trust me when I tell you that you don't want to run short of material... once is enough for that feeling. God, another side-story: At one point I temporarily misplaced my marking sheet and folder of student assignments, and wow, there is another feeling I never want to experience again. You should have seen me while looking for it. My face blended in with the damn whiteboards! But yes, organization is key to teaching, and that includes your thoughts, papers, life, everything.

Another few areas, and broader areas, were just in student interaction. I mean, the classroom environment is just so centered around you, the teacher. If you're happy, confident, and excited, they'll feed off of that. Now, you can't run a class on sheer enthusiasm alone, but my god it helps.

Also, I learned that like, a personal attachment to certain lessons can set you up for quite the fall. I put together a lesson, which I loved, and thought was such a creative endeavor, only to have the students get moody and reject it initially, which made ME moody. Wow, the two days I spent on that activity were particularly miserable, and I guarantee it would have been MUCH better if I would have taken less offense to the students' initial reaction to my assignment.

I'll punctuate this by saying the most important point in my growth as a teacher. After this, I feel like I can BE a teacher, and like I WANT to be a teacher, and hell, maybe even like I can save the world, just a little...

Just a little.

What makes ME a good demoman!?

2011-03-09T22:58:00.000-06:00

Well, we are supposed to put together our thoughts on what makes a good teacher, so here goes the neighbourhood!

It's funny, because there is such a network of not-so-tangible qualities that make a good teacher. Moreover, I think there are a lot of different types of "Good teachers," all with qualities all their own. At any rate...

I think a passion for the material is pretty important. Like, you really can't expect the students to care if you don't. That's not to say every teacher needs to be jumping up and down about fractions, or teaching photosynthesis TO THE MAX! I'm just saying that, even if you find the material boring, a general enthusiasm for the pursuit of knowledge is so necessary for a teacher. It's a learned profession, everyone in the faculty says so. I mean, I will fight tooth and nail (although I doubt it will truly be a fight) to keep from stagnating.

I think a love of people, in general, also goes a long way. I mean, if you generally dislike people, especially kids or adolescents, I sure hope you're not planning on becoming a teacher. However, you should be able to relate to people, enjoy their company, and value them overall, because who are you going to be dealing with? Students, other teachers, parents, board members, it's such a social and political job that you have to have some people skills to be successful.

You need some sort of classroom management skills. I've seen them come in all forms. Some people have such commanding personalities that you merely want to do what they ask you. Some people are such powerful speakers you just want to listen to them. I've seen teachers who are excellent and developing rapport with their students, which will result in a somewhat unconventional looking classroom, but one in which students will do what you ask of them regardless.

Also, the ability to adapt. If you have a healthy wit, a decent bank of overal knowledge, and some wisdom, you are so advantaged as a teacher. I mean, it's such a performance to be up there, and while good planning can minimize problems, it won't eliminate them entirely.

I could go on all day about what makes a good teacher, but to me, there is not one "Good teacher." I think there are tons of combinations of different things that make up good teachers. One teacher could be good, while standing in stark contrast against another great teacher. Like, it's really how it all comes together.

It's just that... I'm always reflecting, even when I'm not writing it down...

2011-03-01T23:36:00.000-06:00

We have reflections on reflections today here folks. I dunno if we were supposed to have one for reading week, but while I was about, I talked to plenty of people about education systems and issues, so here goes... I'm going to have like, two weeks worth of entries in one long post, so prepare yourself for something real serious...

I'm going to start with what happened today, because it's still fresh in my mind. I was introduced, and exposed, to my school's new registration / class offerings, and it seriously blew my mind. The whole idea revolved around having students, in preparation for grade 10, choose whether they wanted to enroll in what I'd loosely call "trade math" or "academic math." I forget what the former was called, but the latter was like, "pre-calculus" or something. At the beginning this doesn't sound so bad, because it gives of the air of tailoring classes to student needs and interests, even though it is, quite obviously, academically tiered, with one math holding a certain stigma compared to the other. However, I guess the "trade math" is NOT recognized for students looking to enroll in university, which, to me, is a complete crock. I really can't make myself clearer than saying students don't know what they want to do in grade 10. Well, they do know, in that they are concerned with their friends, their relationships, and themselves, but the future really holds zero weight in their minds. Worse yet, if a student takes "trade math" and decides he or she wants to, instead, take a shot at college, they have to start from square one... trade math 10 CANNOT serve as a prerequisite to academic math 20. It just seems outright insane to try and set students on such deeply-rutted, and divisive paths at such an early age. Moreover, obviously, since anyone with the slightest urge to apply to college will go for the academic math, the trade math path is doomed to become nothing more than a stigmatized sort of "idiot math." Maybe I'm being reactionary, but I just don't know. As a sidenote, the idea of stigmatizing trades at all bothers me to no end. What is there to frown upon? More money? Shorter school? Practical knowledge? Pfah!

So begins the second part of this post... while I was in Whistler over reading week, I talked to a whole network of different people from different places, gathering interesting opinions and thoughts on education. Here are some of the more interesting ones, bearing in mind that this is all hearsay, and might require a bit of fact-checking on Google...

I get the impression that teaching is more of an onerous career choice in the United States than in Canada. Mind you, the general consensus is that the American school system, in its current state, is a catastrophe. I mean, it seems to be in a crisis state at this point. They spend an absurd amount per student, teachers are apparently underpaid, and success rates are lacking. Mind you, I've been watching nothing but libertarian "school choice" propaganda videos... I guess, in the states, or most states, your schools are chosen for you, based on where you live... the big libertarian solution is to give parents the right to choose where their kids go, and to shut down schools that are sparsely attended or doing poorly. Another sidenote: I have done my research, and I do know that it's effectively impossible to fire a teacher in the states for bad teaching. Basically, they have to get caught in some scandal to get the hoof, which is kind of scary, considering the flood of teachers applying for jobs in the states. At any rate, I was talking with some people from San Diego, and when I told them I was going to be a teacher, they treated it like such a wildly heroic endeavor. Around here, I don't feel it is... that's not to say I'm in it for the money, or that it's the most thankful job out there, but like... with the right set of degrees, a teacher's salary is nothing to sneeze at, especially considering the benefits, and factoring in the extended holidays involved in the profession. That said, the money sure wasn't the attractive factor to me, but I'm not going to treat myself as some underpaid martyr just yet...

Talking to a guy from the UK was interesting too, because man, did it ever seem like their schools are a good head and shoulders above ours. Mind you, this man had the money to fly to Whistler from the UK, so that may explain his child's seemingly stilted schooling. At any rate, his kid was learning Shakespeare at age 11, and had been for some time already. This blew my mind, (I'm really on a Shakespeare tear lately) as I couldn't have imagined approaching that stuff at an earlier age than 14 or 15. Apparently he got into arguments with his girlfriend regarding the validity and necessity of teaching Shakespeare to students, as he, being a scientist, believed there to be greater merit in teaching science. His girlfriend argued an appreciation of the arts was a necessity to any developed citizen. His clever retort was that she needed him to set up the V.C.R., making some jab at her lack of technological literacy for all the literature she reads. His son talked my ear off too, which was all sorts of fun. It was honestly like speaking to someone with my vocabulary, but like, still the mind and mental development of an 11 year old. Like, he wasn't smarter than our students, but better spoken, if that makes sense. Their school is considerably more rigorous than ours, however. This kid had like, three languages under his belt, and was obviously learning much higher math, science, and literature concepts than I had seen in equivalent grades here. It made me really wonder... is the answer to make things easier? Honestly, in each troubled or problem, or even in "richer" schools, the big answer seems to be to keep scaling back what students learn, or taking much more time... but in one of my field placements I wound up in a grade 5-8 split, and the kids couldn't multiply and divide at all. That seems like such lunacy to me. They spent a week learning about fractions with manipulatives, which seems like such an insanely long time to spend getting the mere concept of fractions down. I just don't know. In the same breath, it's no use sizzling through material, only to drown students, and overwhelm them. I just don't know.

I'm out of breath now, though. See you all next time.

Double entry... all the way

2011-02-13T19:30:00.000-06:00

I'm gonna use this for both my EPS blog here and my ELNG reflective assignment, because the topic is pretty relevant to both I suppose... at any rate...

I'm also going to use proper indentation for paragraphs... whoopie...

My big consideration is what to teach students in English courses. Could there be more questions surrounding this topic? I mean... I'm going to come right out and say that I think it's a bit funny that I didn't get a whole lot out of my English class in terms of writing, and what little exposure I did get came in Academic writing. However, my teacher did such a poor job of it that I basically had to forget it all in order to survive English 100. That's besides the point though. I find it strange that academic writing is much of a focus at all in high school. For starters, what percentage of students head on to university? Secondly, it sends a funny message: "If you aren't going to be spending your twenties dissecting literature, there's not much of a point to you learning how to write." Now, I don't know if this has changed, and I think it has a bit, as my high school experiences are getting a bit more stale by now, but like, I don't entirely know where the balance lies. Should kids be writing to express their thoughts? Just to communicate? Hell, lately, by what I've seen on facebook, I'd be satisfied if my students didn't make fools of themselves in their status updates for god's sake. How would that be for a lesson? "Your facebook updates SHOULD contain the following: Capital letters when appropriate, punctuation..." I mean, it feels like the lesson should be "You SHOULD care if you look like a big fool!" Oh well, back on topic... But yeah, should they write to express their thoughts? to dryly inform? To argue? To create? To entertain? Well, to be honest, I think entertainment might be a cornerstone of most any writing, but writing is so damned multifaceted. Maybe students should be given some choice. Does expressive writing sound like a good class? Actually, I'm pretty sure my one prof has a good solution in the idea of a broad writing portfolio, giving students the freedom to write what they want. Even still, that doesn't leave much room for intensive instruction on any specific faction of writing.

On to reading, now... I really disagree with shoving canonical literature down students' throats. I, as a college student, find Shakespeare tough to approach, and even tough to relate to. While I agree that the stories are pretty timeless, and hold insightful commentary, they are just tough to get through. It's like eating a loaf of bread. I mean, it seems a bit sticklerish to hold students to something that I, as a university student, don't enjoy approaching, and in which I don't see the value. Maybe we should get students reading, and enjoying it, before we hand them a network of stuffy old works by dead British authors. Mind you, I do see that happening as well in classrooms. My literacy group teacher gives her students a pretty broad array of relatively new books to choose from, so I'm glad for that I suppose.

End Transmission....

The critical thought follow-up...

2011-02-06T20:04:00.001-06:00

I'm writing this at someone else's super bowl party... I don't want to hear about any lack of dedication on my part...

I had planned on talking about this in my last post, the idea of teaching kids critical thought, but I felt like I was running a little long with that last post.

At any rate, the term "Critical thought" gets chucked around so much that it has basically lost all meaning, so I'm gonna kind of lay out the context in which I'm talking about this concept. Obviously, there is the general idea that you shouldn't accept information at face value, without being critical of it, or questioning its source, validity, plausibility, feasability, and basically ever "ility" there is to tack on to this sentence. However, what I'm mainly concerned with is critical thought in relation to current events. I remember, in high school, having a metric ton of teachers who crammed current events down our throats, but they never really gave us the tools to work with the newspaper, so to speak. To background this, I believe that most news sources are somewhat... alarmist, and understandably so. I mean, they have to sell newspapers, or gain viewers, or what have you, and it's a lot easier to do that if people think the news holds some privvy information that I can arm myself with when the world collapses. If you want evidence of this, look to the H1N1 outbreak... as far as the news was concerned, I was to be stocking up on canned food and encasing myself in a bubble... and it worked! I was glued to news sites for a while, until I just shut down to the whole idea, and realized that the sky was not, in fact, falling. However, as I was saying, I had a ton of teachers who would throw newspaper headlines in my face daily, but never really said that the news could concievably have an agenda of its own, just like anything else, and that nothing is truly impartial. Hell, even statistics, which are considered to be the world's impartial information safe-haven, require interpretation and representation to hold any meaning, and that representation and interpretation could hold a significant slant or bias. To get to the core of my philosophy here, students need to be shown the news, and taught how to dissect it. I, and the people in my classes, were taught to accept, well, everything at face value. I can remember only one teacher, our media studies teacher, teaching us about critically consuming media. The funny thing is that media studies is considered such a bird of a course, but it had one of the more lasting impacts on me. In fact, I spent a period of time resenting that course because I could no longer enjoy family guy, as I was aware of the parts of my like, lizard brain that it played off of. "Be aware of the high volume of 'shocks' and 'stunts' designed to re-grab your short attention span." I dunno. I think this sort of concept should spread throughout the whole curriculum. I mean, it's a biiiit tougher to incorporate it into English, depending on what you're reading, but Social Studies, my minor, is ripe for this sort of material.

That's my speech this time. Has anyone seen a performance so cheap as the autotuned routine that the Black Eyed Peas put together for the superbowl half-time show? Also, for a superbowl meal, my sister put together grilled cheese burgers... it's a burger sandwiched between, get this, two grilled cheese sandwiches. Also, there was ham and a fried egg on it. As a joke, I decided to put literally every condiment they had on top. Let the good times roll.

Who to teach to, with some critical thought splashed on the side....

2011-01-28T17:26:00.000-06:00

Well, this concept came up... at some point in class. We've abandoned the model of teaching to the middle, or at least that is what I am to believe. Instead, we differentiate instruction, and teach to everyone. However, this concept leaves me with a whole network of questions. Are we essentially preparing three separate lessons, or four, per lesson? I say three or four because it seems like the student grouping is viewed as follows: Bottom, middle, top, and special needs, or differently able, or what have you. This, along with the inclusive model of education, puts a huge strain on teachers, and really challenges them to step up in a lot of ways. Now, I'm coming out and saying it right now, I'm all for inclusive education. I mean, the last thing I want to do is brand a group of students as "The stupids" and shove them into the basement. However, I have a whole host of questions and concerns. Isn't differentiating instruction doing the same thing a bit? I mean, "Here you go Johnny, here is your special test! And your biiiig felt marker to write it with!" (I so stole that joke off of someone.) Moreover, I can't help but feel a certain level of futility with changing terms for students. It seems like any special-needs related term eventually becomes stigmatized... but then I think I agree with it, still. I mean, we aren't calling people "Morons" "Retards" or "Cretins" anymore... not in any official way, anyways. I'd prefer to go in the direction of the positive, to keep from beating someone down. Only so much wordplay can go on, though...

At any rate, back to differentiating. I can't help but think that kids at the lower end will get the attention. I mean, we assume that students at the top will merely take it upon themselves to be good, active, and engaged learners, because they are good. We neglect the possibility that they may get bored, and reject formal education... and without that, they are kind of sunk in this day and age in terms of an intellectual career of some kind. Which is the greater tragedy? A kid falling through the cracks from the bottom or the top? How differentiated can differentiated instruction be? Can I show students a history documentary, and have some recite facts from the documentary, while getting others to give me an in-depth analysis of the events outlined in the documentary? Do I grade students on a relative scale, based on their own person growth? Or do I make them all jump through the same hoop, or over the same hurdle?

Honestly, it makes sense to me to grade students based on their own personal improvement. What else can we expect, really? As long as they are improving themselves, and show drive, are we not succeeding? Obviously, I don't mean infinitesimal improvement, but significant strides. In a gym class we don't look at every student and say "Welp, your final is to become Charles Atlas." No, they get assessed in the beginning, and graded on their improvement. I mean, it's important not to discourage the lower kids by setting them up for failure with the impossible requirement, while, at the same time, making sure that the "smart" kids don't just coast.

This has become more long winded than I thought it would, so I'll save my critical thought speech for next time. Speaking of which, tune in next time... same bat time, same bat channel!

Changing gears again... EPS 350 - Jan. 20, 2011

2011-01-23T23:33:00.001-06:00

We are supposed to keep a reflective journal, so I figured why not a reflective blog? Ooh-rahh...

A friend of mine brought up the idea of being auto-didactic today. It's a funny concept to me, in the sense that right now auto-didactism is much more accessible than ever before. Like, the internet, libraries, etc. etc. etc. are accessible to pretty well anyone. However, even though information and education is way more accessible, there is absolutely no value in auto-didactism. Despite the fact that you can acquire any information you want, the only valuable information has to come from a formal institution. Taught yourself to be a mechanic? No good, you need this certificate or that training. Have an innate, or self-taught, sense of the business world? Have fun with that, we only take admin grads here. I don't know. I find modern-day university to be kind of strange, some four-year stopover on the road to real-life. Mind you, I'm in a professional program, so it's much less strange where I am. However, there are a lot of basically worthless degrees out there... I mean, I've seen jobs posted that require "A university degree." Not a specific university degree, just a degree. I find something like, profoundly strange about that. I mean, how is a degree in history relevant to any job other than like, "historian?" People tell me it shows dedication, and I suppose I can agree with that, but I feel like a lot of places may be closing their doors to a lot of potentially quality employees with this sort of thing. Someone else told me "A university degree is the new high school degree." That outright scares me... university is expensive, and for it to produce the equivalent of the last generation's high school degree is kind of garbage. Nevermind the fact that formal academia is NOT for everyone. I mean, the academic world and the workforce really are quite far removed from one another, so it just seems so strange to consider achievement in one relevant to the other.

Well, that's my first post... Kind of all over the map, and I think I've raised more academic issues than I've tackled. In the future, I plan on discussing it with my friends, and pouring the results out on here.

ECS field blog: Nov. 28

2010-12-04T17:51:00.000-06:00

Today, My ECS partner and I taught a phys-ed lesson together. Well, he kinda had the wherewithal for it moreso. I'm sort of out of my element in the gym, unless it's like, dodgeball and stuff. But yeah, he has this idea for a sort of dynamic warmup. It had the students break into groups of three, and each had to do something different at a set of different "stations" of sorts. IE: 1 person had to do 10 cartwheels, another had to do 10 lunges, another had to hoola hoop 10 times... then on to the next one: 10 pushups for one, 10 line jumps for another, and the third had to carry someone around. It was honestly right on. I'm very much in favor of unique warm-ups, especially ones that get students doing things they wouldn't be doing otherwise... IE Lunges, core work, etc. However, the students don't always fully buy into these sorta things... so they will really half-ass stuff, sometimes to the point where they may as well not do it at all. I'm not sure how to, or if you can, get everyone super fully ultra engaged, but I know I'll try.

Floor hockey was the following activity, just with everyone in the gym. My ECS partner had a pretty swift idea, in chucking an extra puck into the game. It made everything way... funner. The kids all had more of a chance at the puck, and we didn't have to slice the gym in half and have to ridiculously small games of hockey on the go.

We had a sub for the rest of the class, and man, was she sharp. She had such like, a commanding personality, and could basically whirlwind students into doing anything. She was kind of like...foghorn leghorn. If a kid objected, there wasn't much reasoning going on, just "C'mon do it, it'll be easy, let's go hurry up up up!" and it seemed to work. I might try to employ that to a certain extent... We'll see. I already do it sometimes, but more motivational.

And that's it... my last field experience day. It's been a gas.

ECS field blog: Nov. 22nd

2010-11-27T12:02:00.000-06:00

Well, this week started with my ECS partner teaching a social studies / current events lesson. It was very similar in format to the one he taught last week, where he sort of read a little blurb on a current event of sorts, and the students answered a question sheet. This one was on the Chinese law which stated that families are only allowed to have one child. Honestly, I was a bit shocked about this one, because the students were having just a time coming up with an opinion on this. Like, asking them "Do you agree with this law? What if Canada passed a law like this?" got such a scant response. Usually they just didn't know. Also, personal freedom wasn't really high on the list of priorities with these kids. The idea of a governing body telling you how many kids you can have didn't register as alarming at all for most.

I taught the next lesson. I was trying to follow up on my simile and metaphor lesson by having the students write a descriptive paragraph describing and animal or character they dreamed up, or, well, anything really, as I said they could also describe an inanimate object. One student wrote about a roller coaster. This wasn't the greatest lesson, mostly because I didn't realize that some students might have a bit of trouble just hitting the pen to paper and writing a paragraph. Like, they all had ideas, good ideas, really, but throwing them together in paragraph form was tough. Most of them just talked with each other about their ideas, drew them, discussed them, but writing a paragraph was like, overwhelming. They couldn't organize their thoughts, and didn't know where to start. A lot of kids actually said that to me, lol. "I don't know where to start!" My co op teacher gave me some pretty helpful feedback. I should have put together a little like, graphic organizer on which they could jot down their ideas, and sort of plug them into a paragraph if they needed.

One kid also commented on how fast I read, or talk in general. God almighty I have to work on that. Lessons aren't gonna be much good if I sound like an auctioneer. A seminar instructor of mine also kind of gave me a lecture on talking to fast, and powerfully I guess. She said some students might be like, spooked or intimidated. Mind you, I do speak differently in university than in the classroom.

After recess, it was reading buddies, and then math. My ECS partner and I went looking around during reading buddies, and I guess the band program runs during hte same period, so a slice of kids go off and learn instruments. Man, going in there and watching them was something, indeed. The band teachers seemed so like... crabby and militant. I mean, they obviously had high expectations, but whoof! I honestly thought the one was going to pack up and leave, "I can't handle this performance right now!" or something.

Math was okay. Once again, the different teacher came in, and the kids started acting up. She also has a pretty short fuse, and blows her stack on them pretty quickly every day. I dunno if I blame her, as they act up pretty bad. However, she seems to fuel the fire herself a little bit. who knows.

Next week, we are teaching a phys-ed lesson. Bonus!

ECS Field Blog. Nov 15

2010-11-20T15:05:00.000-06:00

This week started with me teaching a lesson on similes and metaphors. Whoof. Well, my co op teacher gave me a package with a bunch of question sheets and lesson ideas. My week was such a zoo that I relied heavily on it for my lesson. I had a big idea to teach about similes, ask the students about similes, have them come up with some, and work on a worksheet about it... same with metaphors...

As a side note, I've kind of noticed that I'm really into questioning in my lessons. I'm constantly going to the students for examples or answers instead of providing them myself. Hmm.

But as I was saying... The lesson was funny, because here it turns out that the co op had already gone through a lesson like this before... complete with the same worksheet i was using. I felt like a pretty big fool, because I'd have figured this out if I had kept better correspondence with my co op teacher. I could have just made up my own worksheet... the lesson may have still been redundant, but at least I'd have had something newer and creative. But yes, this fact caused my lesson to run way shorter. The students knew everything already, so any time I'd allotted to wrong answers or general discussion was now free. Also, I was less inclined to get really in depth with it. So I handed out the two sheets... I guess most of them never really did them initially, or had forgotten about them, so it wasn't so bad. It sucks though, I like going around helping students with activities like that, and most of them were just running through it mechanically with little thought...

Mr. X's lesson came after. He had one on Paul Henderson's jersey, also heavily reliant on a package the co op teacher gave us. It was a decent lesson, just on current events... I guess Paul Henderson's jersey recently went for a cool million to some private... well, millionaire, Mitchell Goldhar. The big idea was that Mr. X told the students the whole story, and then handed out a question sheet as a type of quiz. It was fun to go around helping the students... some of them could not have given less of a damn though. I mean, as soon as they heard "Hockey," they tuned out. The slice of Canadian history it represented was besides the point... hockey sucked, in their opinion, and as such lessons related to it also sucked. The sheet Mr. X handed out also had a "critical and creative thinking" section on it... I always get a charge out of students' reasoning and answers. Here's hoping that lasts long into my teaching career, as right now I like reading assignments.

After Recess, it was the same thing, math with the teacher for whom nobody behaves. This time, I actually started going around trying to give her a hand. I didn't want to step on her toes, but like... I saw one kid try to punch another kid in the face. I went and had a frank exchange of ideas with this student about the time and place for facepunches... which is never and nowhere, respectively.

All in all, a decent week. Next time I'm teaching a lesson on creative paragraph writing. Stay tuned... same bat time, same bat channel.

ECS Field Blog - Nov. 8

2010-11-20T14:24:00.000-06:00

In this one I continued my previous lesson on the long rifle registry. Honestly, this was more of a wrap-up and activity than a continued lesson. I had originally planned on having a bit of a debate or something, but I chickened out on that idea. At any rate...

My ECS partner (I'm not supposed to actual names, but typing "My ECS partner" is kinda tedious, so he will hereafter be known as "Mr. X.").... where was I? Oh yeah, Mr. X taught his lesson first. It was a continuation of his last lesson on Canada's food guide. He decided to check out the Health Canada website for this one, and have the students make their own food guide. They wheeled in these big laptop carts, which honestly looked like they had been shipped in from another planet. The kids each received a macbook, and got cooking. From what I've seen, it kind of seems like laptop lessons should be pretty loosely structured, and cannot really involve step-by-step, teacher-led instruction. Basically, kids should have instructions on the board, and go off of them... the laptops are just too inconsistent. Some are way faster, some have problems, so on and so forth. At any rate, it was a decent lesson... I found it funny what some students listed as regular activities. Some said they did pilates?! Others were like, marathon swimmers... I dunno.

Mr. X's lesson took a good chunk of time, which was for the best, because I had scrapped the "debate" part of my lesson. We continued with reasons against the long-rifle registry. One reason students kept bringing up as a 'con' to the registry was the idea that someone could steal your registered gun, commit a crime with it, and you'd take the fall for it due to the registry. I kept explaining, however, that the police have a larger body of evidence than the gun registry... Also, they didn't understand that if you have a gun that is stolen, not reporting it as such is a crime in itself. Thus, if a crime is committed with your stolen gun, the police should already know it is stolen, and if they don't, you're in trouble... At any rate, I got them to fill in some reasons why they support or do not support the registry. Most of them said they supported it, because it helps control crime, or that guns are bad and scary, or something. A few really good answers came in, a few underwhelming answers came in. It was pretty good though.

The math period was a bit more interesting. The teacher, to be known as Mrs. Y., always has trouble controlling the class. She isn't the usual classroom teacher, which is a challenge in itself, but she... her disciplinary actions only seem to encourage more acting up. She is very nagging and adversarial, in such a way that evokes a response from the students. One kid seemed to have a bit of a rage problem, in that, whenever he got reprimanded, he would respond with gritted teeth. He was also pretty defiant in general with Mrs. Y.... I think something might be going on in his home life, or something. It's not normal to seethe around like that...

That's about as much as I have for today. Tune in next week... by which I mean in five minutes, because I'm about to post my next one.

ECS field Blog: Nov. 1

2010-11-02T16:14:00.000-06:00

This one was kind of interesting, as I taught my first real lesson this semester, but I'll start from the top.

It's always remarkable to me, how poor of a sleep I get before these field days. Maybe it's nerves, or like, adjusting to being up late on the weekends, but it seems like I always get a crummy sleep, even though I get to bed early and try to wind down appropriately. Honestly, though, it probably just feels like I got a poor sleep. Chances are I woke up like, maybe twice during the night, and then in the morning: "Whadda night. I didn't catch a wink of sleep. What am I doing getting up at this hour anyways? Has the world gone mad?" and so on...

Once again, I arrived at the school, yakked it up with the receptionist a bit. It's kind of funny, because whenever someone is friendly, I feel compelled to chat with them, but worry about talking their ear off. She seems the same, so each of our encounters is marked with me slowly backing towards the door while maintaining full conversation.

Gym was kind of the same old same old again. Kids played four corners soccer. Not a bad game.

When we came back after Recess my ECS partner started his lesson. It was on the food guide and the food groups and what have you. The lesson went reasonably well, but the kids got pretty chatty throughout, which didn't bug him at first, but like, it can hit a pretty rank pitch pretty quickly. Near the end, I saw some kid having a swordfight with himself, using two pairs of scissors.

My lesson was on the long-gun registry and the debate surrounding it. The big idea was to have kids rattle off what they knew about the registry, the pros, the cons, and in the end to come up with an informed opinion of their own. Then, they'd back that opinion up in a sort of classroom debate. I only had a half an hour, so like...

this is kind of a random interjection, but I think I just drank a glass of water that was sitting on the table all night. Gross.

At any rate, I only had a half an hour, so I got through the pros, and a few of the cons, which is about what I had planned. The kids have the material all laid out on a handout I had prepared, so picking it up next week won't be too hard. It was kind of funny, as some kids were forming some pretty good pros and cons, but like, sometimes, they had trouble articulating them. Like, A kid would put up his or her hand, start something off, and I could see where they were going, but halfway through they'd say "Uhh, nevermind" or "Uhh, I forgot." Usually, another kid would fill in the rest. The kids weren't such a zoo for me, because the teacher, before I spoke, kind of gave them all hell for acting up earlier.

But yeah, it was pretty right on, and I'm going to continue next week.

ECS field log: Oct. 25, 2010

2010-10-25T17:40:00.003-06:00

Today I taught my first lesson, together with my field partner. I was pretty nervous. The big plan was to teach a Phys-ed lesson, where we taught the kids some footballs skills, mainly throwing, catching, and running routes. We originally planned to teach them the very basics of gripping the football to throw it, and where to place their hands to catch it, then following up with a warmup, and an exercise where students ran routes and caught a pass, undefended at first, and defended afterward.

We ran into some issues kind of early. First off, My partner and I had to basically participate in order to get some kids off of the bench, as they didn't have anyone to play catch with, and pairing these two kids together was asking for trouble. The one was a bit more of an instigator, and the other was obviously incredibly shy and nervous about doing the activity at all. This kept us from being able to watch the students, and comment on what they should do to improve their skills. However, our co op took over this role, which was pretty considerate.

There was another issue in running the routes... no matter what routes we told the students to run (We had a sheet of paper that illustrated the routes, neither him nor I expected the students to know any route by name), the students would basically run a very sloppy out, or lazy post. I started only telling students to run curls, to see if any of them would catch on, even with extended explanation. No such luck. At this point, we decided to scrap the exercise with the defender, as it would have been a debacle, I'm sure.

We moved, afterward, just onto a game of continuous football. It's pretty well "Ultimate frisbee" with a football. Two steps with the ball, ball can't touch the ground, students had to get the ball in either net. We split the gym into two halves to get more kids involved, and get the kids more touches. This worked out well, the students really liked this game, and everyone got involved in some regard.

I was a bit worried, personally, about an adaptive dimension. There are two students in the class who are pretty well missing a hand, through a birth defect. We asked the teacher what we should do, and he said they adapt themselves. Going too overboard in catering to them only singles them out or alienates them. Honestly, he was right. They made some dandy catches, and the one might catch better than I can.

The rest of the day was pretty standard, we helped out with this, that, and the other. My ECS partner and I kind of discussed some classroom management strategies, as the music teacher used the waiting strategy, and basically whittled the whole class away, as half of the class talked freely and the other half got frustrated. With this, I don't think waiting is always the best strategy, and sometimes you have to cut more of an imposing figure to keep a class in line. Nothing too out of hand, but this teacher would have done herself a favor in taking a more active role in classroom management.

And that was the morning in my ECS class. Next week I'm teaching a social studies lesson on the long rifle debate in Canada.

Changing gears, here...

2010-10-21T19:28:00.003-06:00

Yeah, so this thing has been collecting dust. Honestly, looking at political cartoons, even to make fun of them, is depressing. Might pick it up again, but for now, I'm going to use this thing for my ECS field reflections.

Oct. 17

The first thing I did, after walking through the door, was talk to the receptionist. She was phenomenally nice, almost strangely so, but I think she just registered that I was nervous and was trying to make me feel comfortable. It worked. I met my co op right afterward, who was talking to my ECS partner. Honestly, seeing teachers involved with any sports programs is kind of funny, in that they operate outside of the dress code. Needless to say, I felt a little overdressed, but off we went to the room.

I guess his class is a grade 7/8 split. In these situations, I can't help but wonder if these splits are for struggling grade 8's, exceptional grade 7's, or any such reason. At any rate, we sat around for a while, making stale, awkward chit-chat with our co op until class started. There were a few kids who walked by, and one made a point of introducing himself to us. The teacher later informed us that he was a higher maintenance student. I'm always a little torn about this practice of warning new teachers, or future teachers, about certain kids. I mean, if the student is higher maintenance, I'll surely find out on my own. Telling me this only colors my view of this student right from the start. I don't know, I'd much prefer to come in with a clean slate.

Phys-Ed wasn't anything overly remarkable, aside from the warm up. The teacher kind of had a series of stations set up, marked off with big, laminated cards made of construction paper. Each one had an exercise on it, and a number of reps to be done. Honestly, it was pretty good, because they were mostly core exercises that more people should do, and nobody ever does.

What followed this was a language exercise, just correcting a few sentences, and then the students went off to music, and then french. The music class was a funny thing to watch, as the students seriously ran rough-shod over the teacher. Mind you, her choice in activities weren't the greatest, and her classroom management strategies bordered on bizarre.

The French teacher certainly had her hands full as well, but she did a better job handling the students. I think it's almost a natural, or universal rule, that students rowdy up when dealing with any teacher but their standard home room teacher. She did a good job with them though. However, what I found strange was that french was quite obviously not her major, or field of study. She confirmed this afterward, saying she got the job by knowing someone, essentially. She was an incredibly nice lady, and seemed like a friendly, good-spirited teacher, so I'm up in the air with my thoughts regarding this.

That was my first day in the classrooms, and my reflections therein. Enjoy.