Reflection from 4/13/15

Here it is, folks! Sorry for the delay!

Synthesis Post #3 (Written 4/9, Published 4/14)

This past week was a relatively short one for me at the middle school. I had to cash in on some extra hours on site from last week, because my allergies were driving me crazy when I woke up on Thursday morning. Instead, I only got to see the last class period of the day on Tuesday. While I was there, I got to do a little bit of work in the class, but I'm starting to worry that with the testing all next week it will be incredibly hard to actually get time in front of the class during this experience and to make any real connections with the students.

The teachers were conducting review sessions for their mini-lessons all week long, so I couldn't really get myself involved in the planning. They had too much to cover in the last week before the state tests, and it felt extremely uncomfortable and even slightly unprofessional to ask about inserting myself into the class more and more with testing coming up. These tests are always so high stakes for students and teachers alike, so I feel like I'm interfering more than helping or learning from the classroom experience. After much observing, I finally got up the gumption last week to ask if I could take on a larger role in the classroom and my mentor was very welcoming to that idea. However, when I actually got to help guide the review session, the training wheels were still very much in place. My bubbly, engaging personality in the classroom, which I believe to be one of my best assets, didn't really have an opportunity to shine through, because I felt like my mentor teacher would step in and take over every time there was a divergence between our styles. I greatly appreciate that she has so much care for her students learning, and I can totally see how stylistic stability is necessary with tests looming around the corner. It's just that such a context doesn't really allow me the comfort or freedom to make and subsequently learn from my own mistakes.

By no means do I blame the teacher or find it unwelcoming, though. That's an important point to make. My mentor teacher has gone above and beyond to make me feel as welcome as possible in the classroom. I just think the nature of the relationship between myself and  the middle school is too superficial, for lack of a better word. It's tough for me to describe; I just haven't been part of this class all year, so jumping in for 6 weeks in the middle of the last quarter seems so unnatural and strange. I'm only partly hopeful that I'll be able to break through the awkwardness of the situation and make a personal connection with some students in the next few days and weeks, but I'll be damned if I don't give it a shot. 

[Also, sidebar: one of the students I have been observing since the beginning wasn't there for the second class period in a row. I'll have to find out if she moved classes or if I've just been unlucky on that front as well.]

Reflexion

Today (April 7th), I spent an hour at the school for the last period of the day on the first day back from a long weekend and the first day of school-wide reviews for the Milestones. It was... interesting...

Week 2 Synthesis Post: A Few Concerns

After all my trips to the middle school this week there are two somewhat intertwined issues that have really been bothering me. First, the student apathy towards standardized testing (as intimated to me by the teachers during our planning session) worries me. It doesn't surprise me, but it worries me. I know that the students take way more high-stakes tests now than students of previous generations, and I know that the stakes for these standardized testing keep getting higher and higher and higher to the ridiculous extreme. Student scores can have profoundly negative affects on the lives of the students, the teachers, and (possibly soon) even the teachers' pre-service training programs. With all that on the line for the upcoming Milestone tests, it's very difficult even for me to maintain the practiced calm that I usually have. I'm extremely anxious to see how the next two weeks go in the ELA classrooms as the students review for and take the tests.

My second concern stems primarily from a place of care for the students and secondarily in the name of making classes flow more smoothly. After two weeks of seeing students at a middle school with one-to-one technology, I've seen more exhibitions of terrible typing techniques than I ever would have expected. Without exaggeration, I could count on one hand the number of students that I've seen across three different classes who could type correctly and expediently. When I was in middle school, typing was a mandatory connections class. My middle school had the prescient awareness to foresee that all students would need to be able to type quickly and accurately as technology became more and more heavily integrated into our lives. Based on what I've observed so far, this just doesn't appear to be a priority at the middle school here. Maybe I'm mistaken, and their is a mandatory typing class. If so, I just don't see the results. Now, with the high stakes tests all being taken online, students will be expected to brainstorm, organize, and type a 5-paragraph-or-more essay within 90 minutes. I have hope for all the students, but I'd be a fool to say that the cards aren't stacked against them in this scenario. It worries me to no end that the students might be getting the short shrift through no fault of their own. Even students who have the capability to answer the questions on the exam might run out of time, because they just haven't been adequately taught the skill of typing.

Beyond student performance on the state-mandated tests, skillful typing would minimize the amount of time spent inputting information onto the laptops. The little bits of time saved by eliminating the hunt-and-peck method from classrooms might not seem like much, but I'm sure it adds up quickly. With more time, comes more instructional opportunities, deeper discussions, extra reading and writing, etc. Computers are wonderfully powerful educational tools with amazing benefits, but, like any tool, they require a certain skill set in order to maximize their utility.

I really hope to find out more about the middle school's technology initiatives in the coming weeks.

Hey, guess what! Video reflection time!

This video is from my visit to the middle school today, Thursday, April 2. I sat in on the two-hour planning session with the 8th grade ELA teachers.