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Isaac, what a wonderful and insightful response you shared. I’m so glad to hear this experience you noticed. Wow. That is also an incredible picture. My blog response and conclusion that I am drawing from the tutoring experience is very similar to yours which is why I am so drawn to your response. I completely agree with the notion of teaching to a test or to please administration limits students’ engagement. On the other hand, spontaneous teaching and the ability to adapt a lesson plan on the fly promotes engagement! Michele did not plan on using this beautiful natural occurrence in her lesson but I am sure she is glad it occurred because it is clear students learn more from natural engagement than forced or rote learning.
Logan, thank you for sharing your very insightful reflection on diversity in the classroom you are tutoring. This blog brought up a lot of important questions we have been reading about in our readings, as well as discussing in the classroom. One thing I want to touch on is your experience with asking that student with parents whom have accents a question. Breaching someone’s personal identity is a very sensitive and fragile idea especially when it involves cultural differences between you and the student. It seems very difficult to find a question that is not too intrusive but will allow the student to open up and you managed to do just that which was very impressive. I wonder if in some of the diversity trainings/counseling teachers have to do these days to prep for being a teacher if they instruct on the types of questions they should ask students about their cultural background without being too intrusive or asking in a way that breaches personal space or makes the student uncomfortable.
Clarissa thank you for your very insightful blog. I really enjoyed reading about the activities in class that you observed and helped out in. What an interesting photo you included as well. A couple takeaways that I want to touch on after reading your piece involves the abstract outline and the warm up activity. It always helped me as a student learning to write to use templates that I could visually see how paragraphs connect. I wonder what it is about these templates that seem to help most students because it is a visual trigger but most kids, like me struggle with visual learning. Why is this an exception? Also, the warm up activity you mentioned where the students write about a character in their book every day to get the juices flowing. Does this warm up activity ever connect directly to something later in the day plan or is it just a way to get the kids in writing mode? I wonder if it would be more effective to make the students warm up by writing their goals of the day? That could get the students focused on the days work and warm up their brains.
Thomas, thank you for your very insightful and engaging response. I very much enjoyed reading what you had to say. I was fascinated by your decision as you were tutoring to work on your own work while they were working on theirs till they had questions for you. It would have been easier for you to just sit on your phone but you made a great decision to role model doing work. This example aligns right up with what we discussed in class the other day in terms of free reading time in elementary classes and how teachers are obligated to read their own book of choice instead of doing something else. Role modeling is very important and effective and you did a great job. I am curious, though, as to why the teacher let them finish their video game? Do you think she did that to keep the students interested? Perhaps she was using some positive reinforcement of her own by allowing them to finish their game they would be in a better mood and will be more likely to finish their work? What is the motive here? I might worry that it reinforces the wrong thing–granting primacy to a phone game. Perhaps the reverse is better (“finish your work and I will give you phone time at the end”} I completely agree with you as well on being more of a cognitivist when it comes to student learning. I agree that it seems behavioral learning sets up effective cognitive learning.
Lauren, thank you for the insightful and engaging response. I enjoyed reading what you had to say and can tell you are making some great observations in these classes. Your post took me back to thinking about my days in middle school, high school and even lower school when I took French for a bit. I was strictly in Spanish classes starting with the 6th grade, though. I did notice, however, that the majority of the girls in my grade, friends of mine or not, were choosing French as their language elective. I always found this interesting and wondered why? I know French is a romance language but so were other languages offered as electives at my high school, including Spanish. I think there is some sort of connotation that French is the most beautiful language there is and that is appealing to teenage women. I remember a couple instances in high school where I overheard some girls making fun of another girl for having a “gross” or “ugly” accent in French. They were talking about this in a way that it felt as if they were calling her “ugly” or not “cool” because her French accent is “gross.” This could just be a mean teenage girl thing that happens in High School but I find this really appalling in terms of a development perspective because if this girl feels uncomfortable in her language class because she talks funny how can she feel comfortable in any of her classes. What would these mean girls think of classmates who would choose another language other than the most beautiful language in the world, French? I also want to point out that I think your experience in French does have as much to do with class size as gender. I think in a small, conversational class it really allows for students to interact in a way that they really get to know each other and get more comfortable with each other – regardless of gender identity. I see this in my lab classes – we all get very close and get to know each other well and have a great mix of gender identity.
Molly, thank you for your very insightful response. Mr. DuBe’s class sounds fascinating and has a lot to take away from in terms of how his class structure affects the students’ identity development. One thought I had reading your blog is that I presume (based on what I’ve seen in my own class observation) that there is a syllabus (and maybe also state testing requirements) that the teacher must abide by. This raises the issue of attention to moral development and identity development versus a teacher’s flexibility or room to veer from a syllabus and that is something that is very interesting to me. It’s possible that the syllabus which Mr. DuBe teaches off of leaves little room and that he must follow (basically agreeing that a big portion of the class is teaching towards a test–why he is so strict on finishing all these assignments). Maybe this contrasts with his own belief or preference that the students should participate in more free learning. More free learning may make students more self-motivated to study things they are themselves interested in–a type of learning that facilitates identity development and counters teaching toward the test. I wonder if Mr. DuBe is torn or frustrated. This is a moral development and identity development versus specific skill requirements at the hands of the teacher and is something that may require a cost benefit analysis in its resolution.
Thomas, thank you for your very insightful post. I really enjoyed reading about the current experiences you have tutoring and how you personally find yourself feeling as you interact with these students. I should note that we share much of the same experiences with these students. One thing that I am always thinking about that you noted which I find very interesting is the fact that solely based on the similar ages we have to these students, there is a sense of awkwardness that is brought upon trying to instruct these kids. I wonder why that is. My best guess is that our physical appearances are very similar so it feels odd trying to teach someone that looks just like us. I also think we may be uncomfortable in the role of a more knowledgeable other because there is a condescending feeling about it that doesn’t feel right with such little experience in this role.
Izzy thank you for your very insightful and engaging blog description. I enjoyed reading about your experience and had many of the same thoughts as I spent my first class session observing students engage in lab activity. Though my class was biology, a saw a lot of the same scientific components and concepts raised. I also observed my biology class in the morning and the students were tired but as the day went on they were more awake and livelier. I am in a much more different position than Clarissa with my preference of scientific activities. I dreaded lab days and really enjoyed science lectures. I was never great at constructing things growing up so lab was not easy for me and I felt I was very dependent on others to get through certain experiments which was frustrating for me. I wonder about how important lab exposure is at such a young age and if we really need lab activities in high school to really grasp scientific concepts or thinking. I would argue yes, but I always felt teachers did a poor job stating the significance and importance of lab work. I have always found teachers struggle to guide students to really connect the more tactile activities with the theoretical concepts in a helpful way. I do not know in my class if Mr. Johnson touched on this before the lab started because the lab started a day prior, but I was impressed with his ability to discuss future directions with the class as this is an advanced concept and highlights the relevance and importance behind the lab. It seems like the students in my class were more vocally engaged than yours and I will be interested to see if you observe more verbal discussion in your classroom outside of lab activity.
