On Friday, my teacher gave me homework. "Figure out a way to get them to want to read Lord of the Flies. Figure out what we are going to do with them."
I will take that challenge!
I have no idea what my teacher is looking for. I haven't read Lord of the Flies since my junior year of high school and even then, I probably didn't actually read the book. Clearly, I am not an expert in it. But I'm gonna do my best with it.
I read the wikipedia page for the book (I'm sure English teachers everywhere are shuddering right now. Stop it. Wikipedia is legit. Chill out.) and then got a copy from the library. I opened the book and read the first paragraph. I put the book back down and got out my clipboard to start taking notes on all the things in that first paragraph and on that first page that would confuse students (and confused me too).
This is where I am starting. Imagining that I am a student reading this book for the first time and trying to figure out what could confuse them or make them not want to read it. One benefit experienced teachers have is that they know what has confused students in the past. I have to guess. I have no idea what my teacher has done with this book in the past and I have no idea what she plans to do with it now. I am very curious to see how she gets our students interested in this book.
I have ideas that are tailored to this specific group of students. They don't like to read. They get bored easily. So far they have read literature that is very distant from them. My goal is to make it relevant. To force them to see themselves inside this book. I think this is actually a good book for this.
I remember not liking Lord of the Flies, but I can't remember if I actually read it or not (sorry Mrs. McDowell, I didn't actually read everything you assigned) or why I didn't like it. So I am reading it suspicously. I am looking for whatever made me not like it. It may have been the action of the book. Children running around wildly and trying to make adult decisions was probably not something 17 year old me wanted to read about. But it may have been something else. I may not have felt connected to the characters. I may not have understood the story or the been able to see why the characters behaved the way they did.
I intend to find out why I didn't connect with this book and how I can help my students connect with it.
Ultimately I think the power of a story is its ability to allow one person to see the world from someone elses point of view. This is part of why I read. I want to experience the world the way other people do. This ability to see the world from other points of view is one way to grow as people. My students need to grow. They are ignorant. It sounds mean, but most high school students are ignorant. They have lived in the same place with the same people for most of their lives. They hang out with people who believe the same things they do and live similar lives as them. My students need to see the worlds that other people live in.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Coffee Day, But a Struggle
Thursdays are Coffee Day. YES! It's hard to explain how important things like Coffee Day are. That is not what this post is about.
Yesterday (Biscuit Day) was a struggle in one of our classes. Students were very disengaged and very resistant to reading The Canterbury Tales. Granted, I have never read The Canterbury Tales, but I don't see why they were so resistant. They said it was boring, it was hard to understand, they weren't interested. Yeah, well you can't love every single thing you do in school all the time.
I don't think their attitudes are due solely to them being bad students or unmotivated students. I think it has to do with the style in which they are being taught. Yesterday so many kids had their heads down or were asleep or were doing other work. I think it was because they were bored and had no part in what was happening.
The teacher read to them. For a long time. Sometimes she would stop reading and summarize what she had just read for them. That is it.
The students were expected to listen and pay attention. Well they have no reason to. They have no reason to listen because they are not responsible for any of the information. She didn't ask them questions or give them the opportunity to share or get involved. I think this is more (or equally) to blame for them hating the reading.
I had to opportunity to talk to a former student of my teacher's. He told me when she did that he fell asleep every time. It didn't matter what they were reading. If she read to them, he went to sleep.
My goal for Hamlet with them: Make it more involved. Not in an annoyting "here is a worksheet! Do it." sort of way, but in a "let's make meaning of this together and try to figure stuff out as a group" sort of way.
Maybe it is because today was Coffee Day and maybe it was because I had someone else to talk to all day who affirmed the fact that sometimes that class just sucks, but either way I got very impatient about these students today. I want them to learn. I want them to want to learn. I want to help them work toward being self directed and thoughtful individuals. I want to do things really differently and give them the chance to actually enjoy what we do and read.
Yesterday (Biscuit Day) was a struggle in one of our classes. Students were very disengaged and very resistant to reading The Canterbury Tales. Granted, I have never read The Canterbury Tales, but I don't see why they were so resistant. They said it was boring, it was hard to understand, they weren't interested. Yeah, well you can't love every single thing you do in school all the time.
I don't think their attitudes are due solely to them being bad students or unmotivated students. I think it has to do with the style in which they are being taught. Yesterday so many kids had their heads down or were asleep or were doing other work. I think it was because they were bored and had no part in what was happening.
The teacher read to them. For a long time. Sometimes she would stop reading and summarize what she had just read for them. That is it.
The students were expected to listen and pay attention. Well they have no reason to. They have no reason to listen because they are not responsible for any of the information. She didn't ask them questions or give them the opportunity to share or get involved. I think this is more (or equally) to blame for them hating the reading.
I had to opportunity to talk to a former student of my teacher's. He told me when she did that he fell asleep every time. It didn't matter what they were reading. If she read to them, he went to sleep.
My goal for Hamlet with them: Make it more involved. Not in an annoyting "here is a worksheet! Do it." sort of way, but in a "let's make meaning of this together and try to figure stuff out as a group" sort of way.
Maybe it is because today was Coffee Day and maybe it was because I had someone else to talk to all day who affirmed the fact that sometimes that class just sucks, but either way I got very impatient about these students today. I want them to learn. I want them to want to learn. I want to help them work toward being self directed and thoughtful individuals. I want to do things really differently and give them the chance to actually enjoy what we do and read.
Teaching All Day: Actually Teaching
After the quiz, students went to lunch. When they came back, it was time for me to actually teach them. I didn't get to choose what I taught them or the method in which I taught them. My teacher gave me the transparency's and information to present.
Sometimes the best you can hope from that class is that they will listen and stay awake. I worked extremely hard to get kids to listen, stay awake, and engage. I asked them questions and made them raise their hands and volunteer information. Anything to make sure they were actually listening to me. One time I called a kid out who was sleeping. Other than that, they did pretty well.
My lesson was admittedly boring. I would have done it differently with different technology and different circumstances. If I had had time to plan I think there are ways I could have made it more interactive (more 'inquiry' based for those EDU peeps reading this), but time was not available to me.
In a few weeks, I have to take over completely. I am teaching a unit on Hamlet in one class and a unit on King Arthur in the other two classes. Sometime in the near future I need to figure out what the poo I'm going to do with these.
My goals for these kids involve more than them staying awake and being quiet. I don't want them to be quiet. I want them to talk about the material. I want them to be involved in it.
I don't believe that teaching is merely one person standing in front of the students telling them information. That is not teaching. That is throwing information at them. What does that teach them? To sit around and wait for someone else to do intellectual work for them and then hand them the product. I'm not about that at all.
Standing in front of the class giving them information is one of the most boring things ever. I want teaching to be an adventure. I want to learn too. I don't want to do the work for them. That will not help them later in life. When they get jobs or go to college they will not benefit from believing that it is acceptable to sit around and wait for someone to tell you everything you need to know. Some things you need to find out or make meaning from on your own.
Sometimes the best you can hope from that class is that they will listen and stay awake. I worked extremely hard to get kids to listen, stay awake, and engage. I asked them questions and made them raise their hands and volunteer information. Anything to make sure they were actually listening to me. One time I called a kid out who was sleeping. Other than that, they did pretty well.
My lesson was admittedly boring. I would have done it differently with different technology and different circumstances. If I had had time to plan I think there are ways I could have made it more interactive (more 'inquiry' based for those EDU peeps reading this), but time was not available to me.
In a few weeks, I have to take over completely. I am teaching a unit on Hamlet in one class and a unit on King Arthur in the other two classes. Sometime in the near future I need to figure out what the poo I'm going to do with these.
My goals for these kids involve more than them staying awake and being quiet. I don't want them to be quiet. I want them to talk about the material. I want them to be involved in it.
I don't believe that teaching is merely one person standing in front of the students telling them information. That is not teaching. That is throwing information at them. What does that teach them? To sit around and wait for someone else to do intellectual work for them and then hand them the product. I'm not about that at all.
Standing in front of the class giving them information is one of the most boring things ever. I want teaching to be an adventure. I want to learn too. I don't want to do the work for them. That will not help them later in life. When they get jobs or go to college they will not benefit from believing that it is acceptable to sit around and wait for someone to tell you everything you need to know. Some things you need to find out or make meaning from on your own.
Teaching All Day: Giving A Quiz
Last Friday my teacher was absent. I knew ahead of time and she left me lesson plans. In two classes all I did was journal sharing at the beginning of class, giving instructions on an assignment, and pressing play on the movie they were watching. That was the easy part.
In the other class I had to give a quiz and teach. Giving a quiz does not mean hadning out the sheets and sitting down. Not with seniors who could care less about vocabulary. With those students giving a quiz means: sneakily walking up and down each aisle looking for cheat sheets, watching them all to make sure they aren't talking to each other, and in the case of last Friday, running to the back of the room while pretending to see a bug on the wall.
Now that I have retold this story multiple times, I realize how crazy it makes me sound, but I don't care. I don't know where to draw the line on talking to the students about cheating. I did walk up and down the aisles with the purpose of catching cheaters and I found one cheat sheet. This was fairly obvious, but I didn't feel comfortable camping out in the back of the room behind the students. I didn't want to make them feel uncomfortable or to think I was suspicious of them.
So I told them I saw a bug on the back wall. Yep. LIE. I walked back there every couple of minutes and pretended to look at the shelf while really looking at all of them to see if they were cheating or not. I felt really good about this choice. I have no idea if it worked or not.
Cheating pisses me off like few other things. Particularly when the students get 10 minutes to study in class right before the quiz and there are only 15 vocab words on the test. I want to slap 0's on assignments that I think students cheated on and send them to ISS ("the Hut" at my school). But proving that a student cheated is really hard unless you actually catch a cheat sheet on them.
Other than that, it just looks like you are accusing them of not being smart enough to make the grades that they make. And that sucks for everyone.
When I have my own classroom and can arrange the desks in any way I want, I will probably have them arranged in a way that allows me to circle the room constantly. That way I can monitor students during tests, quizzes, activities, and I can move during lecture. It would also prevent me from clearly being in their area to make sure they aren't cheating.
In the other class I had to give a quiz and teach. Giving a quiz does not mean hadning out the sheets and sitting down. Not with seniors who could care less about vocabulary. With those students giving a quiz means: sneakily walking up and down each aisle looking for cheat sheets, watching them all to make sure they aren't talking to each other, and in the case of last Friday, running to the back of the room while pretending to see a bug on the wall.
Now that I have retold this story multiple times, I realize how crazy it makes me sound, but I don't care. I don't know where to draw the line on talking to the students about cheating. I did walk up and down the aisles with the purpose of catching cheaters and I found one cheat sheet. This was fairly obvious, but I didn't feel comfortable camping out in the back of the room behind the students. I didn't want to make them feel uncomfortable or to think I was suspicious of them.
So I told them I saw a bug on the back wall. Yep. LIE. I walked back there every couple of minutes and pretended to look at the shelf while really looking at all of them to see if they were cheating or not. I felt really good about this choice. I have no idea if it worked or not.
Cheating pisses me off like few other things. Particularly when the students get 10 minutes to study in class right before the quiz and there are only 15 vocab words on the test. I want to slap 0's on assignments that I think students cheated on and send them to ISS ("the Hut" at my school). But proving that a student cheated is really hard unless you actually catch a cheat sheet on them.
Other than that, it just looks like you are accusing them of not being smart enough to make the grades that they make. And that sucks for everyone.
When I have my own classroom and can arrange the desks in any way I want, I will probably have them arranged in a way that allows me to circle the room constantly. That way I can monitor students during tests, quizzes, activities, and I can move during lecture. It would also prevent me from clearly being in their area to make sure they aren't cheating.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)