Week 2
What I feel most after my second day of field experience is fatigue. I wonder, would I be able to find the energy to be “on” with a group of kids all day, five days a week? I did try to be present as much as possible today,though I only taught a single lesson. If this is how I feel after having taught one lesson, how will I feel after teaching four or five lessons? This is one of the main questions running through my mind. (Another is: how can I get engagement from thirteen-year-old boys who have decided that they don’t care about anything except video games?)
My health lesson went quite well. I had a class of grade seven and eight girls and, having met them the previous week, I had a sense that they’d be game to try the role-playing activity I had planned. I’m not sure I managed to get in much valuable formative assessment, and the students probably could have used some more time exploring the concepts before the activity began (never enough time!), but other than that I felt good about how things proceeded.
The only nervousness I felt was during my “hook” piece. I had decided to step out of my comfort zone and use a puppet to present a scene depicting a conflict in a relationship. I think ultimately it was well received. Students were talking about the puppet afterwards, and some wanted to include him as a character in their role plays. But I felt I had to work hard to get the students on board, and I didn’t feel comfortable of confident during that portion of the lesson. I’m not sure what to take away from this experience. On one hand, I could have committed more fully to the puppet idea – gone “all in” – and that might have made me more comfortable. On the other hand, I could have chosen a set piece closer to my comfort zone, and carried it out in a confident and self-assured manner. I’m not sure what might have been the better choice. But for now I’ll be grateful for the experience I had,that students were receptive to my plan, and that I made it through my first-ever lesson without any major snags.
Weeks 3 and 4
There is never enough time. This is my prevailing sentiment after my third and fourth field experiences. Have a great idea for a whole-class instruction that’s going bring everybody up to speed on a topic? Too bad: half the class will be away for a band clinic, the remaining students will just want to goof off, and you’ll have to start the whole thing over next week anyway. Have a super idea for asking critical questions of non-fiction writing? Too bad: at least fifty per cent of students can’t remember what “non-fiction” means, you’ll spend 10 minutes sorting that out followed by 5 more minutes getting side-tracked by thoughts about books, and an additional 3 minutes (cumulative) asking people to put away their phones/stop eating paper/refrain from any of a thousand other strange and distracting behaviours. Your lesson is now officially derailed, and you have to squeeze thirty minutes of content into 12 remaining minutes. Oh, and by the way there was a conflict at recess so three students are out of the class and will need to have the whole thing explained to them again later.
My plan for week three was to teach a Grade 7 science lesson on separating mixtures and solutions. My set piece worked almost exactly as planned. Students were intrigued by the items I had placed at the front of the room (three types of mixtures), and enthusiastically attempted to guess what they had in common. They watched with interest as I used various tools to separate each of the mixtures using. And then I moved to the development…
My understanding was that first two columns of a KWL chart are supposed to be filled in at the start of a lesson without much difficulty. To my surprise and chagrin, in spite of my attempts encourage, coax, and cajole (and despite having been assured that this content had been covered), our K column remained glaringly incomplete. On the fly, I decided to change course. I would review the concepts of mixtures and solutions, and, through a gradual process of guided inquiry, inch toward the idea that mixtures can be separated. I began to lecture about different types of mixtures. At the mention of crude oil, a hand shot up. Perfect, a student-led inquiry. “My big cousin works at the refinery. There was an explosion there one time.” The class erupts into chatter about the explosion at the refinery. First thought: what have I gotten myself into. Second thought: Ok, there excited about something; use this. I began to explain the process by which crude oil is separated, and the danger associated with the heat and pressure. People seemed to be tracking. Then, another hand. “There was this one place one time where this nuclear thing happened and spread and wiped out a whole town.”
Needless to say, I didn’t accomplish everything laid out in my lesson plan. Part of the problem here is that I only see this students once a week. I can’t create any flow between lessons, I can’t make sure that we’re all focused on common guiding question, and I can’t even be sure of what knowledge students have coming into my lesson. But I really do wonder if another part of this isn’t just everything takes way more time than you think it should. Learning is messy and slow. I get that. But I do have a curriculum to get through. Is it possible to get through it in a single school year? Unless I can always be working interdisciplinarily, covering multiple outcomes at once (and maybe that is the key), I don’t see how it ever would be.
Week 6
In the field this week I presented a follow-up Social Studies lesson meant to engender critical thinking about relationships among Canadian cultural identity, immigration, and indigeneity. I am undecided as to whether or not the lesson should be deemed a success. On one hand, there was some peer-to-peer and classroom conversation on themes related to the lesson, students were attentive to the video clips and generally seemed able to follow the content, and my instructional strategies functioned more or less as planned. On the other hand, student questions about the content were almost all surface-level comprehension questions, I had to repeat my instructions many, many times, and I spent an inordinate amount of time and energy re-capturing the lost attention of distracted, chatting, or bickering students. I didn’t feel intentionally disrespected, and yet somehow I left the lesson with a feeling of having been disrespected, or at least with a feeling of sadness at a missed opportunity to engage deeply with an important theme.
Is it possible that when I have my own classroom I will be able to effectively establish a sense of community in which all people,including the teacher, are respected, and in which the desire to learn is shown through focus and co-operation? Or is it the case that, no matter how much work has been done on community and classroom environment, grade sevens and eights will always be only half-engaged; always distracted by their phones, their playground squabbles, their strange behaviours; always a little bit too cool to give the teacher their full attention? If it is the latter, then I’m not sure I want to work with grades sevens and eights. I want someone to prove to me that it is possible to create a healthy learning environment for students of this age. Because the things I want to do as a teacher depend upon that environment. I don’t want to spend a significant portion on my instructional time trying to convince a student to stop chewing a bottle cap. I don’t want to use up class time each week trying to find a seating arrangement that will work for all the conflicting personalities in the room. I don’t want to play mindless videos or enforce silent reading just because I’m too exasperated attempt engagement.
I do want to take students on a journey of exploration and discovery. I want to learn alongside them and get excited about searching out truth and getting to the bottom of things. I want to go deep on issues that matter to all of us. I want to find the joy that’s intrinsic to learning new things. I want to use critical literacy as a gateway into meaningful conversation. I want to show respect and receive it in return. Are these realistic hopes, or fantasies? For me this is the critical question right now. In the grade seven and eight classroom, I haven’t seen enough glimpses of meaningful engagement to make me feel inspired. I don’t mean any disrespect to my co-operating teacher, who works hard and cares deeply for her students, but mostly I’ve seen long work periods to finish up past-due assignments and large amounts of time and energy spent managing difficult personalities and minor conflicts. Is there another way?
Glenn's Education Portfolio 