Ryan O

This summer I was hired to work with the Upward Bound program here on the U of R campus to teach either their chemistry or their engineering course. Upward Bound, for everyone who doesn’t know, is a program for high school students in RCSD to come and take classes at the U of R over the summer, and to work on college preparation. The courses they take during the summer are project-based as well, and I get to create my own course, which should be an awesome experience.

My friend Ben from the math program at Warner, is going to be teaching math with them over the summer too. Being the good Warner students that we are, we’ve been talking about how we could make our courses really interdisciplinary and have what we’re learning in science relate to what’s going on in math and vice versa. We’re both really excited about it and have already started coming up with some ideas for the summer and how we could have them focus on science and math. But the more we brainstormed ideas though, I began asking myself questions like, “Well, what should we have them focus on?”, “What kind of skills do we want them to develop?”, “What goals do we want them to accomplish?”.

BAM right there, the lightbulb for backward design finally turned on.

Now up until this point, I’ve been able to describe and talk about what backward design is, and whatnot, but this was the moment, where I actually clearly saw why we did everything we did for the innovative unit. I only wish I could have been able to see this before I started my innovative unit, but better late than never.

I love these “lightbulb” moments (who doesn’t?), and they can be very gratifying when they do happen. I know we’ve all had a lot of them this year. So now it’s your turn, to share a moment or two where the light went on this past year during your teaching.

So we finally made it! I feel like a big weight has been lifted now. We’ve finished our 8 week placement and we’ve finished our innovative unit. Granted, we still have some work to but nothing compared to the significance of what we’ve done (well at least until we have to do our portfolio). But we’re almost done!

I did find that completing the innovative unit was very helpful at informing my practice. Completing such a large reflection on 2 weeks of teaching, has really allowed me to see a lot of areas that I need to improve on, or just what I would want to do differently in my own classroom. Things like creating even more structure in my classroom, especially since classroom management was the biggest thing I thought about throughout this placement. I also found a lot of areas in my lesson planning that need improving, and have thought a lot about what I would do differently next time.

And here’s a little bit of sharing resources for everyone. I found this youtube channel of a lot of science demos. I’ve spent the last 15 minutes or so watching them, and I’ll probably keep watching them and procrastinating. Enjoy

Demos!

So at this point in the year we’ve all had the opportunity to work with well over 100 students this year, and we’ve had probably over a thousand different conversations, some that were 30 seconds long and some that were 30 minutes long, and like it or not those conversations had some sort of impact. Some might have had more of an impact than others. Hopefully our impact has been positive. And sometimes the we might think the conversation was inconsequential, and it actually made an impact, whether it was about life or something teaching related.

I’ve been volunteering with the Upward Bound program once a month for the last couple months now. This morning during the lunch break, one student that I spent 20 minutes tutoring way back in January while he was getting ready for his regents chemistry test, called me over today.  He called me over because he wanted to tell me about how he had taken the front off of the thermostat in his house and he had seen mercury inside of it. I said “oh cool” and wondered what sparked him to tell me this. Being a teacher who just finished teaching a unit of the properties of matter, I of course asked him how he knew it was mercury. He said that he remembered me talking about it and showing him some videos on my phone of liquid metal (GALLIUM SPOON!) to help him study for his test. Suddenly it all came back to me. It was really great to hear that what I said and did made such an impact, and got him to learn something. Obviously though the conversation in my mind was one of just thousands, but in just 20 minutes working with this student once, it had made an impact that he didn’t forget. We affect the students more than we could realize. We play a big role in their lives each year and it’s so important that we realize the effect that we have, and the impression we leave. Hopefully it’s a good one.

So like most of the people who finished this week, I’ll be blogging about the end of my placement. But it definitely is something we should all be blogging about. I feel like out of everything we’ve had to do during our time at Warner, this is probably the greatest thing we’ve accomplished. We did spend more time at our 4 week placement schools, but with our 8 week, we’re just showing up halfway through the year, and we have to try to establish ourselves in this new classroom culture we’re being immersed in. And if you’re going from high school to middle school, try to learn how to deal with the energy of middle schoolers is an even bigger challenge. But we did it!

Now I don’t know about everyone else, but I ended up having a really great time at my placement, I really enjoyed working with the students that were in my class, the cooperating teacher that I had, and a lot of the things the students and I got to do during class.

Things really started to come together a little more during my innovative unit. I could see myself improving on a day to day basis, not just a week to week sort of thing, which is kind of where I was at when I started my placement, and even then, not really knowing if I was improving at all. But during the last 3 weeks of my placement I really worked very hard to try to organize activities, labs, and demos that would really get the students involved and interested. I did a lab where the students had to figure out a way to separate a mixture of 4 substances, and then a lab where we mined copper from a rock. The students really got into it and I really felt energized and excited about what I was doing in school again for the first time in a long time. So I am kind of sad to leave my placement, especially after the way the last 3 weeks went during my placement.

Oh yeah, here’s a video of one of the physical/chemical change demos that I did that my students posted on youtube. Special thanks to Jim for telling me about the demo

A little bit of fire

Ask me about it in class

So I’m really enjoying the fact that we’ve only got 1 week left in our placements, and I am looking forward to getting to take a break. But at the same time though, I’ve really began to enjoy my placement. Everyday I’m really enjoying what I’m doing in school and the experiences I’m having.

When I think about how 7 weeks have passed since I started, it feels like almost no time has passed at all. But when I think about where I was at the beginning of the placement vs. where I’m at now there is almost no comparison. I feel like I’ve learned so much about my practice as a teacher. I love those epiphanies that when they happen, they make a difference right away.

A couple weeks ago in topics when we had the speaker on coaching and teaching. He said something that really helped to improve my classroom management right away the next day. He was talking about students trying to argue with the teacher, and he said he would tell them, “never argue with the teacher, you’ll never win”. We all have students who are going to complain about things to us, but to just remember that no matter what, we’re right, and that we should not engage the students. Trusting that in the classroom, I’m the one who knows whats best, and never questioning it,  immediately improved my practice the next day. Whenever I would hesitate or start to question what I was doing because a students was complaining, I would just remember that it’s my plan, I know why I’m doing it, and that I’m right. As a management technique this has really helped. Obviously we are not always right, but not questioning what we’re doing because one student is complaining has really helped.

There have a number of other moments where I’ve learned a new technique for classroom management, or a new planning technique, and the more I learn, the more confident I feel, and the more fun I’m having too in my placement. It’s been a lot of fun learning how to teach lately, and I’m almost a little sad that I’m leaving soon.

But getting to sleep again will be nice too…

I had a really great day on Friday. I’m doing a separation of a mixture lab and Friday was the first day of the lab where. I made the first day an exploration of the mixture day. The mixture is mostly sand with somd iron filings, salt and sulfur chunks. What’s great about the mixture it is that it looks like only 2 substances. So when I told them there were 4 substances it really got them talking about what the other substances could be. I let them talk about it for about 5 minutes and then I walked around the room and passed out magnets. It really created the “wow” effect when they pulled a big clump of iron filings out of their beaker. When they finished the report sheets on their mixture and when they had figured out the 4 substances, I had them start brainstorming ways so that they could separate it. I could really see the students begin to get into the lab when they began brainstorming ways that they could separate it. I could also see some students become more engaged than I had ever seen them in class. I have about a week and a half of lab planned and I really think these students are going to get to do something that they don’t usually get to so in science, which is engage in something hands on.

For their separating a mixture lab they need to know that salt is soluble in water and how to separate it from water. Then we had a great discussion on how to separate it. The interactive dialogic approach we talked about last Monday was in full effect, and I could sense the students getting into it. Needless to say I’m excited about my innovative unit.

It seems like everyday after I finish my last class, I look back on the day and just feel terrible about it, like nothing good happened. It’s in my nature to focus on the negative aspects of things and barely ever think about the positive. Thankfully, when I end up looking back on each of my teaching experiences in the long run, I’ll usually only focus on the good parts of it. But in my current placement working with middle school students, it’s so easy to look back on the day and focus on all of the moments where someone was being disruptive, being disrespectful, or getting sent out of the classroom, and in middle school especially, there are so many of these moments. I don’t want to readjust my expectations and just assume these things will happen, because I feel like if I do that then it will be very easy for me to let a lot more of it go in the classroom, and more of those negative things will happen as a result.

So what I started doing this week is writing a page about all of the good things that happened during the day in my notebook right after I finish teaching my last period. I’ve only done it a couple times so far, but each time, my mood immediately improves. Considering how worn out we’ve all no doubt been feeling, this is a great pick me up. And if you tend to focus on the negative like I do, it really helps us to get a little bit of that instant gratification that I know we’ve all been deprived of.

Everyday teaching is a roller coaster of emotion, one minute something awesome will happen and then the next minute something terrible might happen. Doing this reflection though really helped me to not get stuck on those negative moments at the end of the day, and I really suggest that everyone try it.

So throughout my placement I have been doing a lot of formative assessments every single day, and I’ve been in the middle of a grading marathon for the last couple days (along with planning out my lessons for the week as well….) trying to give the students credit for completing each assessment. Every day we start off with what’s called a “pre-game” for our bellwork, which is essentially a question of the day. The students write this on a scrap sheet of paper. I’ve found it to be an excellent tool to see where their at with something like the previous day’s lesson, or the topic we’re going to begin to cover that day. But my god, inputting a grade for them into the system, which is what my CT wants me to do, is just so tedious and time consuming.

The bright side to all of this grading and formative assessment however is that I am definitely seeing the benefit of it. Usually I walk around the room and collect the questions of the day from students and quickly read them as I get them. This process is wonderful because it really lets me know where the students are at very quickly. I can’t imagine just starting class that day, and moving forward with the lesson and having no idea where the students are at with the material.

I also know that there are methods for doing formative assessment that won’t kill hundreds of trees in the process, and I use those as well in the class. The daily pre-game warm-up has become a big part of the daily routine for us though. But in order to save paper, I cut up the leftover copies of assignments and have the students write their bellwork on those.

All in all, I can’t see how teaching and learning happen without some formative assessment. It just seems like the grading will never end….

One thing of the things that has been bothering throughout both of my placements has been the fact that I am such an outsider in the school. Every time I hear a teacher mention something about a student’s home life, or one of their interests, it really makes me feel so out of the loop of the classroom. This has been especially difficult in the 8 week placement. At least in the 4 week placement, we were there in the classroom for the entire year up until that point, but with the 8 week, we’re just kind of thrown into the mix, which creates what I’ve found to be a difficult dynamic to have to work through at first. The students know that we’re only there for a short time and then we leave them. I think a lot of them feel as though, “well he’s only teaching us for a little while, why bother warming up to him?” I guess the only thing we can do is just keep trying our hardest to get around this, and do our best to get to know the students as fast as possible in the classroom so that we can start building that mutual respect between us. When we get back to the classroom on Monday, I’m actually starting off by having my students fill out an “about me” sheet, which I’m going to use to just try to get to know my students a little better, and try to make myself feel like less of an outsider in the classroom. Going along with my classroom management post from last week, one piece of advice that we were given was that we should get to know our students as fast as possible and talk to them respectfully like they’re human beings, and then they’ll be less likely to test you as much. Hopefully this sheet should help me get to know them a little better, a little faster.

I don’t know how everyone else feels about this, but something I think about more than anything else, like lesson planning, big ideas, objectives, etc. is classroom management. The transition from the high school to the middle school has been a big one. Most of my classes in high school were with 11th and 12th grade students. Sure they were talkative, but they have nowhere near as much energy as middle school students, the challenge with high school was getting them to wake up instead.

It’s been a big challenge to try to immerse myself into the classroom culture when I haven’t been in the classroom all year, and they know that I’m only there for a short time. What most concerns me however is the fact that I think about classroom management more than my lesson planning. We’ve heard people say “good instruction leads to good classroom management”, and the other night in topics we heard from one of the panelists that “good classroom management leads to good instruction”, and right now I’m feeling that both are kind of true. I’m still in favor of the “good instruction leads to good classroom management approach, but I still can’t help myself from thinking about how to keep my classes under control so things don’t completely derail all of the time.

I know the Get Real! Science program is meant to model the type of learning experiences we should be creating for our students. And I know that one of the parts of this type of learning is to create some cognitive dissonance amongst the students. And right now I’m feeling a whole lot of cognitive dissonance. (My head just exploded from meta-cognition overload)

What are all of your thoughts on this?