It’s all over now

Well, I have come to the end of my pre-internship and, somehow, I have survived. It has been the most exhausting, exhilarating, exciting, and enriching experience I have had during my time as an education student. There were days when I just wanted to pre-internship to be over, and now that it is, I’m going to miss it.

For much of my time in the school, I didn’t know if what I was doing was actually getting to any of my students. In fact, I spent many days wondering if my students liked anything I did at all. So, on the last day I had the students give me feedback about how they thought I did. The comments that struck me the most were the comments I got from my Grade 9 class. This is mostly because this was the group of students that I taught by myself, I also taught Creative Writing with my partner. My Grade 9 class were my kids, and I got attached to them. So, seeing what they had to say about me meant a lot.

It was very impactful for me to read their comments, and each one of them really struck me. The part that surprised me the most was that they actually liked me, for the most part. It may have just been that I didn’t assign much homework, but most of the students had a lot of positive feedback for me. It seemed that they appreciated my more laid back attitude, and that I was willing to joke around with them a little bit. One of my favourite comments from a students was that I was able to make Romeo and Juliet fun for them. This was something I had worried a lot about going in to the class. I had not read the play since I was in Grade 9, and having to teach the play was a little intimidating. But, knowing that at least one kid had fun while I took then through Shakespeare made the experience rewarding for me. It let me know that I can take students through Shakespearean works, or any work for that matter, and let them have fun with it. And, in the end, isn’t that what we want from all of our classes? To let the kids have fun with it?

A truly powerful experience

As opposed to my last post, about the worst day of my pre-internship, this post will be about a more positive experience. Ironically, it also comes from Creative Writing 20, but doesn’t deal with writing at all. My partner had wished to do lessons with the class about oral literacy, and the importance of listening. She had begun to notice the week prior that students were not listening attentively when we were sharing pieces we had written, and she wanted to do something about this. So on Monday, she had a lesson about the historical importance of oral storytelling, and on Tuesday we had a guest come to speak about their tradition and we had a talking circle.

It was during the circle that we experienced one of the most powerful experiences of the pre-internship. It was a risk to do the circle; we didn’t know what the students were going to tell us. We didn’t know if the students were comfortable enough with us to tell us the stories from their lives, or even talk to us at all. But, the circle began, and it was very surprising.

I was the second person to tell a story, and I decided to tell an emotional story from my life. As a teacher, I have been told many times about the importance of modeling skills to students, and I decided to model telling an emotional story to the class. The story I decided to tell dealt with the night my father had a terrible injury, and how he spent the nest year in hospital recovering. This was a very emotional story for me to tell, and I even cried in front of the class. I don’t know if it was professional for me to do this, but I think my emotional outburst helped the class. I wanted the class to be comfortable with the idea of telling us more uncomfortable stories, and I believe that my crying I was able to tell the class it was ok if they wanted to share something more personal. And, some of the students did decide to tell the group a more personal story from their life, and it was a powerful experience because of it.

Later in the day, my partner and I were sitting in the faculty lounge when one of the teachers in the school came over and spoke with us. She told us how one of our students was in her homeroom, and he spent most of the class talking about how much he enjoyed the talking circle. Apparently, this student loved the circle, and the teacher wanted to tell us about the impact it had on him. I never imagined when we decided to do the talking circle that it would have an impact on anyone. Actually, I was worried that no one would want to talk. But, knowing that doing this activity actually spoke to some of the students was  the most rewarding part of the pre-internship, and that experience will stay with me for a long time.

A tough day at the office

I now it is a little bit strange to be writing about an experience I had two weeks ago now, but this is something that has stuck with me since it happened. Two Mondays ago, my partner and I had begun  to think we had got the flow of things as we team taught our Creative Writing 20 class. We had given the students an assignment where they would have to re imagine a famous story in a different setting, and had set aside that days class to give the students a chance to workshop their pieces. We were excited to hear about what some of the students had written, and thought we were prepared for a great class of workshops. Then the actual class started.

From the get go, things didn’t go well. We had an uneven set of students and our idea of pairing them off didn’t work anymore. Then, we wanted to have the students find their own workshopping groups, and that didn’t work either. But, this was not the biggest problem. This came when many of our students came to class without a completed draft. This is when I really started to get frustrated. I was disappointed in many of students at this point. We had made it clear that the class was expected to have a draft completed by Monday. We had given them ample class time to work on their drafts at school. Then, Monday came and many students were not done.

By this time, I was panicking. What were we supposed to do now? How were we supposed to have a workshopping class without having anyone ready to workshop? I begun to pace around the class and worried that the students were going to start questioning me on what we were doing, because I didn’t know.

It got so bad, that my co-op came over with some of the writing challenges she was going to use with the class. We decided to use one of them, and the class ended. This was without a doubt the worst class I taught, but it was also probably the best learning experience I had about my own teaching. Through this class, I saw how I have to prepare for any scenario that can happen in a class. I assumed, because it was a Creative Writing class, that my students would have their drafts done. It didn’t cross my mind that the wouldn’t have their drafts done, and I had no plans for what to do if they didn’t. This is what caused my biggest problem of the day. It was my lack of preparation that caused my panic, and it was my laziness that created the worst day of my pre-internship.

I had always heard people say “prepare for the worst, and only the best can happen.” It was my bad day in Creative Writing that made me take these words to heart.

The most exhausting day of my life

When I decided that I wanted to try my hand at teaching, I had a feeling it was going to be hard. I knew that it would be a mentally challenging profession, which would lead to a series of late nights preparing lessons, and marking papers. However, I never would have thought about how physically demanding it can be.

This past week was my first week of teaching as a pre-intern. For the first two days, I did not teach. Instead, I had a series of meetings and opportunities to observe professional teachers in their element. Then, on Wednesday, I thought my first lesson of this three-week block. It was a Creative Writing 20 class, and overall I believe it went pretty well. Since this was an elective class, the students want to be there, and have a genuine interest in creative writing. In that way it was different from teaching a core English class, which students have to take in order to graduate. I was also assisted by team-teaching this class with my partner. I must say, I am blessed to have a fantastic partner who has a great interest in the field of writing. So, all in all, I believe the Creative Writing classes have went well for the first couple of day, and I look forward to what the next two weeks will bring.

However, my week took a turn on Thursday. It was on this day that I picked up my co-operating teachers ELA 9 class. This class came right after the Creative Writing 20 class, so that means, for the first time in my experience as an Education student, I have to teach back-to-back classes. In my mind, this did not sound like a big problem. I don’t believe it would be controversial to say that many, if not all, teachers have to teach many class in a row. So, how hard could it really be? Well, I can now say, it is really difficult. This is especially true of my first day teaching two classes.

On my first day teaching ELA 9, I made one major mistake. I forgot to being water. When I was leaving home that morning, for some reason, I did not want to bring a water bottle with me. It would just take my extra room, and I would probably look like a bigger dork than I already do if I was carrying a water bottle with me. So, I go to school with no water, and two classes about to be taught. I started the day with Creative Writing, and I believe it went pretty well. The students were working on re-imagined versions of fairy tales, and I think I was able to give the kids a good amount of advice on how they can progress their ideas. However, things took a bit of turn as the second period came around. As I got halfway through the period, my throat began to get very dry. I was finding it difficult to talk and I was rushing through what I wanted to say. I believe some of these problems may have come from not having anything to drink all morning.

By the end of that second period, I was exhausted. For the rest of the day, all I wanted to do was sit and try to recover. I was pretty happy by the time third period started. Then I was able to take time to observe my partner and reflect on what I did in my lesson. It is far to say, I have never thought of teaching as a physical act, but it really is. My weariness was not helped by the fact that when I got home I was not really able to relax. My time had to be spent planning the next lessons. However, I have not a such a good sleep in a long time.

So the first day of school is the most important thing ever

This week in ECS 350, the class was focused on classroom management. It should be easy to assume why. Management is key for a teacher to actually teach students. Obviously, it would probably be difficult to learn in a classroom where students never stay on topic, or where students are constantly talking and never do any work that is assigned. That is why teachers need to utilize strategies to properly manage their classroom. As well, for these classroom management strategies to take hold they need to be apparent in the classroom from day one. For this reason, a lot of literature makes the case that the first day of school is key for a successful semester.

From the perspective of a student, I can never remember the first day of school being very, well, memorable. The opening day, during my time in high school, would always follow basically the same format : we would be separated into our homerooms for the morning where the school standards would be set and we would hear a talk from the principle; then, in the afternoon, we would have a half-day version of our schedule. In this schedule, we would go to class, our teacher would hand out the class syllabus and talk about what we would be doing that semester.

For me, the first day of school was simply a sign that summer was over and it was time to get back to work. This idea stayed with me as I entered university. One reason for this may be because, for the most part, every first class in university follows a similar format to what I experienced in high school (minus the going to homeroom to hear a speech from the school principal). However, my thinking on the subject has changed since I entered into the Faculty of Eduction (actually, my thinking on a lot of things about school has changed since coming into this faculty). There have been a few times where I have heard that the first day of school is key for the entire semester. Basically, I have  heard that if “you lose the students on the first day, you cannot get them back.” I disagree with this idea, I could see any good teacher being able to overcome a bad first day and still having a successful semester, but I do think there is some merit to it. As teachers, we are in the business of building relationships with our students; and, as the old saying goes, you can never get a second first impression. If we leave a bad first impression on a student, it may take us a long time to have come around to trusting us to teach them, and the student suffers because of that.

To try and learn a little bit more about first days of school I turned to the most reliable research tool of my generation, Google. To my surprise there are a lot of articles on this topic. To save myself some time, I clicked on the article “7 Keys to the First Day of School”  by Michael Linsin. As I am sure you can assume, the article provides a basic outline of what a teacher should do on that first day of school to make it the best it can be. These keys balance the relationship building I touched on earlier, with the hard routines we also talked about in class. In the article, Linsin talks about how teachers should smile, and tell their students funny anecdotes about their life, but also set the routines and practices that will be present throughout the semester. These are ideas that I agree with. The first day of school should be characterized, in my opinion, by talking to students about what they want from the class. What are their expectations, and what do they think they are going to learn? Also, I think telling stories about yourself way be kind of weird for some of us, but this is a way for us to model this skill to our students. How can we expect our students to share their stories with us if we don’t do the same for them?

While if a teacher may not have a complete failure of a semester if their first day of school is bad and a good first day does not mean an automatic success, it still has a great deal of importance. This is where standards are set, practices are put in, and the relationships we want to build with students begin. I just hope the first days of school when I am a teacher is not the beginning of the end of my students’ learning.

Why are we doing this anyway?

Our discussion yesterday in ECS 350 sparked one question in my head: Why do we want to become teachers anyway? I’m pretty sure a lot of us have the same reasons. These reasons include, we want to inspire the youth of the country; to give back to the community that gave so much to us; and to be the one person in a child’s life that is there for them. I’m pretty sure a lot of these reasons are valid. We have all had at least one teacher who has been there for us and inspired us to become better people. Or, maybe there was a coach who took you under their wing and was able to transform you into the person you are today. Though these reasons are valid, are they really why we all wanted to go into education?

Like one of my classmates said in the discussion, the prospect of a job was some of the inspiration for me going into this field. Though many say that teachers don’t make much money, the average teachers salary may be the same as the average journalist earns in a decade. When I got into education, a lot of people I knew from journalism school told me how lucky I was to be going into a field where the money is good. You have to remember, the average journalist in  Saskatchewan makes around $25,000 a year. And that is only if you are able to get a job at one of the major outlets, like the Leader Post or one of the exceedingly rare full time jobs at the CBC. So, to the people I went to J school with, teachers felt millionaires.

But, I went into journalism for the same reason I went into education. I know it sounds cheesy, but I really want to help people. I wanted to become a journalist because I wanted to help people tell their stories to a wider audience. Then during my internship, I was able to see the relationship teachers had with their students and wanted to be a part of this relationship as well. I loved seeing how teaching was a career that gives you the opportunity to do something different every day and to be creative in how you teach your students.

Though I didn’t what to expect when I first went into education, I know that I made the right decision my entering this field. For me, teaching has everything someone could want in a job. It provides a dynamic workplace where you have some control over what you do everyday, and lets you work with an interesting and eclectic group of people. But remember, I am saying this as someone who has never actually been a teacher. Check back with me in a few years to see if I’m still singing the same song.

Are Grades Really Important?

After yesterday’s discussion about grading policies, I decided to look into the idea of the importance of grades in the school system. This interest came from being in the group that, extremely idealistically, suggested that we would have no grades in our school. After hearing the outcry from other students about why grades are important, I wanted to  look for research that could show that grades has a positive impact on student achievement. The interesting thing I found was there is not a lot of research that shows this. However, there is research that shows the importance of grade in other areas.

I will admit, I was not exactly thorough in my research quest. But, most of what I found about the importance of grades was based on the idea that grades help students for after school. If a student has good grades, it will help them to stand out after school when they are applying for university or a job. On such article is “The Surprising Importance of Grades”, an article written by Chris Mims that was based on research from Northwestern University School of Management. The article begins by stating “aside from learning and self-improvement, … the primary reason we go to school is to prove to potential employers that we would be good employees, mostly by getting as much education as possible” (para. 1). The researchers then go into the premise that “in the real world, grades matter, or at least they do to the extent that they accurately measure a student’s ability” (Sending Signals section, para. 3). This accurate measure of student performance provides potential employers with “additional assessment of a candidates value (grades), the high quality students do not have to spend as much time and energy earning graduate degrees or participating in extracurricular activities to distinguish themselves from low-quality students” (Sending Signals section, para. 4).

The study also looked at the idea of grade concealment. What was found was “such behavior reduces student welfare, leads to overall inefficiency, and in general suggests that grades are a good thing because they enhance transparency in a market” (The Upside of Grades section, para. 2). This is a statement I do agree with. If we are using grades in the classroom, I believe students have the right to know where they stand in that class at anytime they wish. It should be a goal for all teachers to have transparency in the classroom and not to conceal information from our students. This concealment of information could make us appear untrustworthy in the eyes of our students, and cause dysfunction in the classroom.

Overall, I feel this article did not make a good argument for why grades are important. I understand that the article was written from an economic point of view, and in that way it makes a strong case. The article talks  about students maximizing their time and effort, not wasting time on outside activities and to only focus on getting a job. While this way be true, is the only reason students participate in extracurricular activities is to put it on a resume? Is every decision that is made in our lives made only in the pursuit of a career? I understand that one goal of teachers should be to prepare their students to enter the job market. But, aren’t there other parts of education that matter? I guess that is what happens when you read articles about education that are written by economists.

Below I will provide a URL to the article if there is anyone interested in reading the article.

http://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/the_surprising_importance_of_grades/

Differentiation in the classroom

This week’s discussion on differentiation was tremendously eyeopening for me. The reason for this is because when I was in school, differentiation was not really a part of the conversation. In the high school I attended, I only saw teachers presenting one way to demonstrate knowledge. This was usually through tests, in subjects such as science or math, and final essays, in subjects like English and history. Classes were always organized with desks in rows, and students were usually expected to sit still and pay attention to the teacher at the front of the class. This process was only elevated in university, where final exams and essays became the ultimate way of evaluating knowledge and lectures were the preferred form of teaching. I never thought to question this method, it was all I knew and believed it was right. If it didn’t work then why would I be sitting in a university classroom.

However, this week ( and for much of my time in the education program) has opened my eyes to the idea of differentiation in the classroom. To be a hundred percent honest, during my time as a student something like differentiation was not even on my radar. I was concerned about myself and the results I was getting. I didn’t really care about whether or not a kid who had a learning disorder, or if a student in the class had a great knowledge or English or not. I was worried about myself, and for me the model of education I was in worked. Yet, once I entered in to the education program here at the U of R that changed. This is more than likely because of my shift in perspective from student to teacher.

Now that I have a better perspective of what differentiation is, through the reading we did this week and our in class activity, I think I have been able to get a slight understanding of what the concept is. But, I also think this is the aspect of being a teacher that scares me the most. I’m still very afraid of the great variety of student’s, both in term of culture and learning style, that make up the Saskatchewan classroom. How can I make sure that every student in the class is getting the education they deserve in the face of all the pressures I will face? What happens if the pressure gets to be too much, and I begin to lose hope that I can handle this type of job? These are questions that I cannot answer know, and I probably won’t be able to until I am an actual teacher. I hope the pressure that I will have to endure with this job will turn me into a diamond and will not leave me crushed.

Is Violence Against Teachers a Problem?

As I was driving to the University this morning, there was a story on the radio that truly shocked me. The CBC’s news program The Current was doing a story about violence in Manitoba schools. However, the story was not about violence which occurred between students, but the story detailed violence students asserted on their teachers.

The Current story included an interview with Janice Wilson, a teacher  in the northern community of  La Loche, Saskatchewan, and her experience when a Grade 10 student attempted to stab her with a pair of scissors. Wilson claims this experience, which occurred almost nine years ago, still haunts her to this day.

After hearing the interview with Wilson I was compelled to seek out a report from Winnipeg that inspired the radio story. CBC Winnipeg’s investigative team obtained documents that stated one in seven assaults in the city’s schools are against teachers. Specifically, of 931 assaults that occurred between 2012 and 2014, 137 were against teachers. The story also includes the story of Ron East, a former teacher who incurred a major brain injury after being head-butted by a 15 year old boy in 2001. Though the physical scars are gone, East says the event has left him with a case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, making it impossible for him to re-enter a classroom.

Once I finished watching the CBC Winnipeg story, I was shocked and little disappointed in what the Corporation produced. First of all, I was extremely disappointed in the quality of story the journalist here filled. The jest of the story ended up being ‘students are crazing and attacking and our teachers are not safe!!’ Along that same line, the journalist involved did not try to seek out anyone who is trying to find solutions that would stop the cycle of violence in Winnipeg schools aside form suspending students. There must be reasons that these students have such disrespect for authority figures, but the story does not attempt to make any links here.

As well, I did not like how the story treated the central teacher, Ron East. The story makes East out to be a heroic figure who sacrificed his health and well-being for one of his students. This continues the story’s simple narrative  of defenceless teachers against their out of control students. However, I am sure most of the audience is able to tell that these students did not just decide one day to go out and start attacking their teachers out of the blue. This violence is the climax of years of problems these students have dealt with, problems the school system and the society at large have not noticed up to that point.

I will provide links to the stories for any one interested:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/iteam/dozens-of-school-staff-teachers-assaulted-in-winnipeg-in-past-2-years-1.2901178

http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/episode/2015/01/16/students-assaulting-teachers-in-class-a-common-occurrence-in-canada/

Entering the Blogosphere

As you may have gathered if you read my first blog post, I have not always been a fan of the medium of the blog. During my time as a journalism student, I can say I really looked down on blogs and the people who wrote them. I questioned the legitimacy of blogs, and if I could really take them seriously. In fact, this May when a friend of mine moved overseas to teach English, he wished to document his journey and potentially try to make some money through freelance work. When I heard this, I urged him not to start a blog as he would just become another member of the seemingly endless sea of bloggers, sending out posts to the endless nothingness of the Internet.

So, it is more than a little ironic that I am writing a blog post now. Also, as someone who has been staunchly anit-blog in the past, it was interesting to read the blog post “Should students teachers blog?” The author lays out six reasons why she believes blogging is am important tool for teachers such as creating a digital records of their past ideas, improving writing, and expanding one’s professional network.

There were two pro-blog arguments the post’s author made that I believe are the most persuasive for why blogs are an important tool for student teachers. The first is how a blog can aid in reflection. During my time in the education program at the U of R, I cannot count how many times I have heard the word ‘reflect’ and how teaching is a constant process of reflection and application of these reflections on our teaching. It appears the blog can be a good way for teachers to release their reflections from the cage of their mind and put them on the page. Also, once these reflections are on the page there is potential that other teachers can read a reflection and create a discussion through the Internet.

The other important factor blogs can give teachers are how they can expand a teacher’s social network beyond the doors of their school and their city. The Internet can provide teachers with a forum to speak with other members of the fraternity of educators that stretches from Unity to Ulaanbaatar. I remember during my time as a reporter in Weyburn there was a story I wrote about how a teacher in town planned a unit with another teacher who was located in North Carolina. The two teachers connected over the Internet and then planned a book study where their students would interact with each other through both text and by Skyping with the other class. Though I was not an education student at the time, it was inspiring to see the lengths these teachers went to provide their students with a unique experience that never would have been possible during my time as a student.

Though I may not have been a long time fan of blogging, I can admit that it may have some strengths for student teachers. It gives students teacher an opportunity to interact with others in the field and gain knowledge that would be unattainable otherwise. Also, it can provide a good space to reflect on work, and to look back at ideas we may have had in the past. But, I would have to caution any potential teacher to be very careful about what they put on the Internet. It doesn’t take a genius to know that what goes on the Internet is then out of your control. Once you have posted something, you have let the word know that you stand behind what you say, and that you want other people to read it. And you never know who that reader may be.