It felt as if it was a long time that we had had class. Two weeks. In a semester, that’s an eternity. But as noted in previous posts we kept in touch through the forum. I’m glad we did that. It was really informative to see what the students are thinking. Actually, more came out in the forum that it does in class. The one section is more talkative than the other class, so the forum was particularly good for the quiet class. This reinforces my belief in the need for multiple modes of communication and representation. Oral conversation sometimes just doesn’t get at what needs to be explored. By providing multiple venues for getting at the same thing, more voices can be heard. The forum was a new functionality made available by edublogs and it came at a great time. It worked out better than I anticipated. My next task is to go through the posts and categorize and identify themes. That will inform the last few classes.

I also shared two articles from NEA today with the students. One article was about teachers losing their jobs by posting personal information related to drugs, sex, etc. on the Internet. This raises the question of the separation of the private and the public, but the reality is, as public employees, teachers are under greater scrutiny than someone who works for a private corporation. We do live in a society of surviellance.

Danielle A, Kerri, and Kraig shared the digital stories they had put together out of their work in New Orleans. They did a good job of structuring the story, layering in sound and animation. The stories were evocative. What was more interesting to me though, was what they talked about afterward. What their intent was with the creation of the story. I’m always interested in the metacognitive piece. That’s really what a learner carries forth.

I then very quickly went through a miniworkshop on the certification process in response to the students’ request. It’s interesting, I didn’t share with them anything that isn’t already on the Internet through the NYSED website. It’s really something they could have done on their own. But – how would they even know to go there. What I tried to do was provide the basic information but also provide them with the links so that they can find the information on their own when they need it. It’s really tough walking the line between supporting students and doing it for students. It’s making me think more and more that we need a course or at least a minicourse in information seeking. I’m considering next year having the librarian do a session on it.

Which leads me to a consideration of what it is that I really wanted students to be doing this semester, but what I’m not really seeing them do. This came out quite clearly in two separate conversations I had with individual students. They basically said that they were confused because there aren’t set assignments and they don’t know what is expected of them. I told them that I want them to seek answers to their questions and bring those back to the class. I’m looking for students to step up as leaders and to be making the transition from students to professionals. But I’m not seeing it. And I’ve come to the realization that I need to be more direct about this expectation, and also to recognize that the students have been socialized in such as way that they expect heavy direction. I fear we’ve become a nation of direction followers.

I tried throughout the semester to set students up as information seekers. I gave the early assignment to ask a question, seek an answer, and summarize it. They did it as an exercise, but never really saw it as going beyond that. I had them set goals, but I don’t see them actively working to achieve those goals. I had them seek grants, I had them design their classrooms. I fear whenever I assign them something to do, they see it as a one shot thing, not an exploration of something that will be useful in the future. I’m hoping I will see evidence of the integration of some of what I’ve taught into their teaching identities in the end of the semester self-assessment and maybe the wiki.

We ended the class with a 40 minute lesson planning session. It’s interesting that one student referred to this as a “speed planning” session. What they’ll learn is that most lessons are actually planned in less time – once you have the materials in place. What actually takes time is planning collaboratively.

So here we go into another week. I feel as if we’re circling the airport these days. I’m looking forward to landing and I’m sure the students are too.

Anyway, I was so proud of the students in the afternoon class. Three delivered an integrated lesson on WWI. They integrated Math, Social Studies and used many literacy strategies. The lesson went smoothly, was well managed, well designed, and coherent. Each element worked toward the overall objective. What thrilled me the most was that the students were able to identify what they could do better the next time. That’s huge. It was so exciting to see them deliver such a well thought out lesson in such a calm and proficient manner.

I asked the evening class to post on the blog forum, and at this moment there are 17 posts. Not as many as there should be, but the posts that are there are good. A lot of excellent points and questions have been raised. It’s good for me to see that the students in the evening section have the same concerns as those in the afternoon session. I’m using what the students told me in the afternoon session, and now on the forum, to drive the curriculum for the rest of the semester. I’m excited about what we have planned and I hope it will be beneficial to the students.

Generative teaching is hard. It would be so much easier for me to have a paint-by-number curriculum and syllabus and move through it without change. I know it would, in many ways, make live less stressful for the students as well because they would know exactly what to expect. But, and this is a big but (no pun intended), I don’t think they would learn as much. Real learning is messy and difficult and often painful. It often sounds gratuitous when teachers say “I learn from my students,” but it’s true. I’m exhausted by teaching, but I every semester, no make that every class, I come away with a new understanding of the nature of teaching and learning and human nature in general.

So, as down as I was last week, I’m up this week. Thanks everyone for stepping up to the challenge.

We spent a far amount of time on assessing student writing. First I explained the protocol to the students, then I did it two different ways. In the first class, I did the fishbowl with me facilitating the group, then after modeling, I sent the students off to assess writing in their groups. It turns out that more than half of the students didn’t bring in any writing. This despite the fact that I had it posted in the syllabus and on the wiki for several weeks. Some said, well my SBE doesn’t do any writing. I had told them that if that wasn’t the case to figure out a way to get some writing (by asking to try it with the students). But nope. Nothing. I’m displeased. But we punted. The groups that didn’t have any writing I told to work on their grants. In the second group (the smaller class) more of the students brought in writing whichw was great. I also worked it differently. I first modeled it in a fishbowl, then had other students come in an fishbowl it. We continued to fishbowl it the whole time. As time went on, the students seemed more comfortable with the protocol, but they really weren’t pulling anything out of the writing. I tried to keep my mouth shut, but wasn’t always successful. I’m especially bothered by the focus on surface features. Few of the students seemed able to analyze the cognitive work going on or the abilities the students are bringing to the classroom. Maybe I’m expecting too much. The bottom line is that I’m going to have to do a better job scaffolding that in the future. One thing for sure, I’m going to share Milroy & Milroy’s historical research on the complaint tradition.

I was really disturbed by the low energy and interest level of the students, so on Thursday I asked the students for their feedback. We spent a long time on it. As usual there were a handful of students who contributed a lot and a few who said absolutely nothing. That’s discouraging. I’m really discouraged with some of the math students. I feel as if I’m jumping through hoops to provide materials related to their content area, but I feel as if I just can’t win.

What keeps me going is that there are enough students who are engaged and interested and willing and wanting to try things out.

Anyway, the student feedback was really helpful even if it was just a small vocal group. I did also collect index cards with feedback from everyone, so that’s really helpful. At least I get to hear the quieter people that way. I really want to hear everyone’s ideas.

So, I have some ideas for the rest of the semester. There is only one class next week. Three students will be co-teaching a lesson. Then I’ll be at AERA. I do have an online discussion forum set up on this blog. For April I’ll be having the students create lesson plans with materials I find. I have lots of things that I want to share with the students in terms of writing activities. I backed off on a lot of what I had originally planned because I wanted to be responsive to their needs, but now I think I’m going to go back to some of those plans. They also requested time spent on talk about the cert exams and behavior/classroom management. So we’ll do that as well. We’ll see how it goes. I’ll keep trying and I hope the students will too.

Finally, in the second class, three students taught a lesson using the materials on WWI that I gave them. I selected their lesson from all the ones that were handed in because it did the best job of drawing on English, Social Studies, and Math to support the overall issues raised within the text. The students, however, struggled a bit when it came to actually delivering the lesson. It wasn’t as integrated as it appeared on paper, and the students didn’t do as much with the text as they could have. The good part was that following the lesson they discussed what went well and what changes they would make if they did it again, and they were able to identify areas they could have improved. So that is good and that is really what I want them to achieve. I’m really not looking for perfect lessons (as if there is such as thing). What I’m really looking for is the ability to reflect on their teaching and use that to improve their teaching. Maybe I need to do a minilesson reflexivity and praxis. Hmm.

My goal was to have students use an article I found in Newsweek to develop lesson plans that fit with their content. I wanted them to experience how one text can be used across content areas. It was the article, How Math Warps Elections. I provided each content area group with a prompt to create a lesson specific to their area. For the math preservice teachers, I asked them to create a lesson that taught the students how to turn the text in the article into mathematical notation. I asked the social studies preservice teachers to create lesson to support teaching the electoral process being discussed, and the English preservice teachers to develop a lesson for teaching the rhetorical structure of the essay. I wasn’t particularly pleased with what the students came up with. The majority of them thought of simulations. They missed the idea of looking at the text and helping students make sense of the text. They just wanted to teach the concept. I don’t blame the students. I needed to do a better job of scaffolding the activity I guess. What it’s telling me is that the students still have quite a ways to go in terms of really understanding how to structure a lesson that teaches strategic thinking rather than just content. I think maybe I need to shift my teaching methods. A few of the students did come up with some strategic tools, but they still are operating at the level of generalities, and not really thinking of the nuts and bolts of teaching. Is it really realistic to expect preservice teachers to be thinking at that level? Do they have the classroom experience to understand what needs to be in a lesson. Does that come with time in the classroom.

I’ve come to realize that I’m really not teaching literacy strategies, I’m teaching thinking strategies. Literacy is a way into those thinking strategies. It’s about engaging in the world of ideas.

After they came up with their pseudolessons, I asked them to use either the cohesion links strategy or the academic language strategy from the 50 Strategies for ELL book. I’m not pleased with that book. I’ve been searching and searching for a decent text to use for helping content area teachers support second language learners and I haven’t found one yet. I’ll keep looking. It was interesting though that in their blogs, the students wrote all sorts of positive things, yet when it came to applying the strategies to the lessons they had developed, they struggled. There was even one student (a very bright young woman) who was visibly angry at the task. She just didn’t get it. The other interesting thing is that when I ask students to try these strategies, they fall back into the “what do you want” mindset. I need to work harder to move them back into the mindset of being teachers and not students.

I ended the class with looking at their one paragraph descriptions of an event they have seen in their field placements. I asked them to analyze their writing using cohesion links to identify any patterns they may have and then to rewrite it to make it clearer. I did that as a way to teach a revision strategy. I didn’t go much beyond that though, and now that I think about it, I need to revisit it or at least have the students debrief about revision. Not quite sure how yet.

I then asked them to exchange paragraphs, select one, and use that as a basis for role playing via written communication. That didn’t go as smoothly as I had hoped – there was a fair amount of talking and the written conversation was pretty superficial, but it was a start. We then discussed the issues. That’s where the behavior management piece came up.

I’m not quite sure what to do with that. I understand that’s a big issue that preservice and novice teachers have to deal with. I know I was very poorly prepared for behavior management issues. We get repeatedly told, and I repeatedly hear, that behavior isn’t an issue in an engaging class, but I think that’s a simplistic answer. As I expressed to the students (and I admitted this is the cynic in me), a large part of the problem is due to the system. We are set up to be antagonistic. It’s an us versus them situation. It’s a miracle that schools work at all and really is a testament to the inherent goodness of the students.

I don’t want to drop the issue, because it’s obviously one that’s important to the students, but at the same time I don’t want to turn my class into a behavior management class. I’m considering making some adjustments to the upcoming grant writing activity and fold in a research aspect.

Five weeks in and things are complicated.