It's unfortunate that one of the first things I heard from an experienced teacher was " just remember that you can't solve all of their problems." Children have certain needs that need to be met, and I consider it my personal mission to meet those needs as best as possible. However, I had no idea the emotional toll it would take on me until today. Principles of Classroom Management (Levin & Nolan 2014, chapter 3) says, in summary, that undesired behavior is a result of a student's psychological needs not being met. Children have a need to belong, be loved, to achieve academically and socially. If these needs are not met, then children tend to act out, or even worse have a low self esteem that results in thoughts of worthlessness. Unfortunately I got to experience this first hand today and it really took a toll on me. In order to protect the privacy of the student I will attempt to convey the events of the day without giving any recognizable details. Lets just say, that this particular student did not achieve the results that he desired on an assignment. Because of this lack of desired achievement, he expressed feelings of worthlessness, and anger, and his behavior for the rest of the day was completely unacceptable. And as confused as I was about why such a simple thing as a low grade could cause such extreme behavior, I had to stop and ask my self two things. First, what could he NEED, that he didn't have? Second, could something be going on at home or in class that we as teachers are not aware of? Of course I left out a lot of details to maintain confidentiality, however I assure you that this was a very severe situation. So severe in fact that the classroom teacher had to seek out an alternative resource to assist. Some of the things that the student said about feeling useless and unwanted made me hurt so deeply that the mother inside me wanted nothing more than to hug him and tell him that he really was soooooo important, but the professional in me knew that he needed some professional help. His needs were something more than what we could provide in the classroom. Now I understand what it means by " you can't solve all of their problems." It's not that you have to become emotionally numb or hard hearted. It means that you literally cannot always solve their problems and that you have to know when to ask for help, in order to provide the needs of that student.
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This week was really exciting for me. I got to see so many new things and I'm so excited to be able to share them with you.
On Monday I was asked by a fellow resident to come and film her performing a mini lesson for her thrid grade class. This was really exciting for me because I was able to observe her teaching style and how she interacted with her students. This was an awesome experience. Also on Monday I learned about a little program that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers put on, called BUCSCARE. The picture at your left shows you the worksheet that students need to participate in BUCSCARE. Each student writes down the number of pages that they read daily; at home or during independent reading at school. At the end of the month, the class with the most pages read total, gets to take a field trip to One Bucs Place to tour the facility, see locker rooms, equiptment, the practice field and much more. On Tuesday, at my partnership elementary school, we had an awesome anti-bullying assembly, put on by one of the memebers of the Harlem Globetrotters. He gave the kids a lot of important information about bullying and how to put a stop to it in our schools. He performed some tricks, and let some of the kids participate in activities. The kids were really pumped and they really received a good message about bullying. On Wednesday, we put our tattle monster in the classroom. If you read my blog from last week, then you know what I'm talking about. This was a truly effective tool because we have less tattling and more working going on in the classroom, and the kids are still able to feel like their tattles are important, even though they don't get the same kind of attention that they used to. If you wish to see a picture of our tattle monster, you can view it in the photo gallery. Also on Wednesday, myself and 2 other of my resident friends were responsible for morning meeting in our classroom management class. We rocked it, if I might say so myself. Our community building activity included a mummy wrapping contest. It was a great deal of fun, everyone got involved (including the teacher), and there are also pictures of this in the photo gallery. On Thursday, we did some group work in my CT's classroom. Turns out that I really got to see some of the flaws of group work. We had instances where some students dominated the group conversations, while others were completely left out. And then they all spent more time fighting over whether or not they got to participate than they actually did working. After observing this behavior, I wondered what would be some good strategies to help ensure that all members of a group got equal participation rights? I will make surfe to ask my CT how she usually resolves these situations. Friday was supposed to be my first day responsible for an entire teaching block. My CT had the day off and she planned to allow me to teach the RTI group that day. There would be a substitute in the classroom of course, but she wanted me to take the lead in the phonics lesson. However, when I arrived on Friday, my dreams were shattered. They were unable to find a substitute for her class, so we had to split the students up between the pod, and I got to sit in on one of my fellow resident's classes. This was a blessing in disguise! My friend's CT has such a different teaching style from mine and it really was a good experience to be able to see a different teacher in action. Although I love my CT and her teaching style, I also loved this teacher's style. I feel like my classroom one day will be a blend of both of these. I took lots of notes on things that she did that I either liked, or disliked. It was really good for me to be able to gain a different perspective. Overall, this was a great week. I really got to see how some of the "Big Names" like the Bucs and the Harlem Globetrotters, make community participation a priority. The kids really have respect for those who take time to show that they care. This week proved to me that teaching really is the most rewarding profession, and I'm so glad to be a part of it. Barbara Ehrenreich made a valiant attempt to in this book to expose the hardships of the low wage work force. Although I don't agree that she was able to completely experience the difficulties of life as a low-wager, she was still able to make her point clear. The majority of the low wage work force are forced to maintain jobs in horrid conditions, earning very little respect, very little wages, unfair treatment, troublesome hours and less than acceptable living conditions due to their lack of acceptable wages. Now you might ask, "What does this have to do with education?". Well I'll tell you. You may not realize that there is a tremendous possibility that these very same low wage, struggling employees are the parents of our students. They struggle to provide for their families in such a way that sometimes the students suffer, despite the best efforts of these parents. Many times as teachers we will experience a lack of attendance at open house, or conference night. A fellow resident, Natasha Weber wrote in her blog, "Some parents can't make it to open house, parent-teacher conference night, or
school events because they are catching up on sleep between their two jobs." I completely agree. The author has proved just by her experience alone that it is almost impossible to maintain housing on less than two jobs. So imagine throwing kids in the mix. There is a possibility that both parents, if the child lives in a 2 parent home, may have to work 2 jobs just to put a roof over their heads and food on their table. And what does this mean for our students? It means that they may not have help with their homework because their parents can't be home to help them. Or in more severe cases, that they were responsible for caring for other siblings while mom or dad had to work. There is a chance that students will come to work sick, because they don't have medical coverage to go to the doctor. Or because their parents can't afford to take a day off to let them stay home and recover. So what have I learned from all this? That we can't assume that our parents don't care just because they can't return a phone call, or come to open house. And we can assume that every student who falls asleep at their desk is just lazy, or stayed up all night playing video games. The only thing we can assume is that each one of our students will have a different situation at home and it is our job as teachers to be aware and provide any accomodation possible to help these students achieve greatness. Question #7- Ehrenreich found that she could not survive on $7 per hour-not if she wanted to live indoors. Consider how her experience would have played out in your community: limiting yourself to $7 per hour earnings, create a hypothetical monthly budget for your part of the country. If this situation played out where I live, there would be several factors to contribute to the undeniable poverty she would have encountered. The first issue would be transportation. Where I live, it is a small community. You must own a car if you wish to get to anywhere of value. So hypothetically, if you were actually able to obtain a job, you'd be looking at approximately $60 dollars a week in gas, plus a car payment (unless your car is payed off). If you choose to use public transportation, there is one park and ride in my town that goes into Tampa, but you must buy a bus pass, have transportation to the bus stop, and obtain a job who's hours allow you to be promt to the bus stop because it only has 2 departure and return times all day long. If you're a mother of 2, like myself, even with extreme couponing, we spend at least $100 per week on groceries and toiletries. We spend $200 per week on childcare for 2 kids, and this is the discounted rate. We pay approximately $190 per month for electricity, and we own our home, so we pay $2400 per year in homeowner's insurance and $1500 per year in property taxes. If you were to rent, which I helped a friend do some research recently, the cheapest apartment in town is going for $575 per month and requires first and last months rent up front plus a $50 security deposit. So, if we imagine that you are in good health, and require no more than the occasional over the counter medicines, we can assume that you will need approximately $495 per week, which means you would have to make at least $12.38 per hour. Good luck there, the average starting pay in this area is about $8 per hour. So I think regardless of geographical location, if you're at the bottom of the socioeconomic food chain, you're bound to remain there for a very long time. I personally find it difficult, with the influx of information I have to process each week, to write a reflection at the end of the week. To be honest, except for the thousands of sticky notes placed inside each of my textbooks, I can't remember on Friday what I did on Monday. So, to keep myself organized, I have broken down this reflection by taking notes daily and I will try my best to link the days and concepts together by the end.
My Monday was very exciting. Our readings from Making Sense of Phonics by Beck &Beck helped me to create my very first mini lesson for my individual learner. After speaking with my Emergent Literacy instructor, I was able to compile information about his assessments and translate the results into information that I could use for instruction. It was very exciting for me to be able to go home and custom make a lesson especially for this student. On Tuesday, my CT allowed me to use independent reading time to conduct my mini lesson with my individual learner. He was so excited that I had planned a lesson for him. He really enjoyed the one on one time and I think that even though he had to do work, that extra attention was very special for him because it made him feel like I cared about how well he reads. And I do care! He gets so frustrated when he reads, and I think that my lesson was mostly effective in helping him improve some phonics basics, which should over time help improve his overall reading and writing skills. On Wednesday I got what I like to call a classroom management wake up call, which translates into a FIRE DRILL. Students are really good at following procedures on lining up on any regular occasion, but when you through in a fire drill it's like they forget everything they know and run amok. When we had our fire drill on Wednesday, I really got a good opportunity to observe my CT and take notes on how she reacted to the students complete disregard for the rules and procedures. Although watching it from afar it may have looked like a comlete disater, I saw it as an amazing opportunity to observe and learn. Thursday brought on an influx of information. As a class, we were responsible for creating a study guide for our upcoming test. We got to break up into groups and go through each module and choose what we thought was important and should be included in the test. I actually recorded this in my journal, on my list of strategies, as something I might like to do in my own classroom one day. This was an opportunity for students to have input on what material they think is important and test worthy, and it also creates an opportunity for the student to review the material. And as we've learned in our child development course, you must review information approixmately 5 times in order to commit it to memory. This approach was very helpful for me in studying for the test, and also gave me good ideas for how to conduct a test review with my own students. In addition to what happened for my course, I would like to mention that I spent most of the day standing between two students in the 3rd grade who couldn't complete any classwork because they were too busy picking at each other and taddling on each other. I asked my CT her advise on how to handle the situation. She said that the easiest thing to do would be to move their seats, but she wanted to make sure that they understood that what they were doing to each other was wrong. She suggested that we talk to them each individually about their behavior, and them bring them together for a conference. Then I asked about how she handled all the taddle telling, and she said that she didn't really have a strategy. This is when I suggested a taddle monster. One of my fellow residents gave us a great project idea this week and I wanted to share it with our class. It's called a taddle monster, When the kids have something that they want to taddle about, they write it on an index card and feed it to the taddle monster. The taddle monster is a decorated tissue box for kids to put their taddles so that they don't disrupt class all day long with them, then the teacher can read them all at the end of the day to determine the severity of the offense. My CT said that I could make one and bring it in next week:) And then there is Friday!!!!! My students were on a field trip this Friday, and since level 1 interns were not permitted to go, I sort of had the morning off. I say sort of, because I actually was at school, just not with my 3rd grade class. Something that I've observed since starting this program is that, as a teacher, there is never enough TIME. So, to prepare myself for future years of strict time management, I took the opportunity to study and move ahead in some coursework. This time was very productive and beneficial for me and I feel the need to pat myself on the back for making this a productive use of time, instead of sleeping till noon! But don't worry, Friday wasn't all about homework, I also got to attend one of my most looked forward to courses, ESOL. This class gives us such opportunity for discussion and debate, and this is exactly the kind of classroom environment I want to create one day. I want my students to be able to discuss and debate, and feel like my class is a safe place to agree or disagree. Friday was the icing on the cake for the week. And back to the grind on Monday..................... This week I have really struggled with discipline in the classroom. I'm not yet responsible for maintaining order and function for all activities at all times, but I will be honest, I was getting slightly frustrated with the lack of authority that I had in the classroom. So instead of trying to evaluate what the students might be doing wrong, I decided to evaluate myself and what I was doing wrong. This seems to be the better approach. We read a chapter this week about Linda Albert's Cooperative Discipline, which I loved! Making students your partners instead of your pawns is much more productive. They are little people with little voices and they just want someone to make sure they are heard. Cooperative Discipline does this for them. This method allows the students to connect with others, feel that they belong in a classroom, and most importantly, they get to participate in creating a code of conduct. I think their participation in creating this code of conduct really gives them a sense of responsibility to be their best and to monitor the behaviors of their classmates as well. I learned from this piece of text (I would love to reference the text, but we were sent a copy to read which has no information on it other than Chapter 5) that students act out because they have a need that isn't being met. And then I remembered why I decided on this career path, because I want to meet the needs of children. Because I want to be that rock for some kids who may not have a support system to go home too. Behind every act of defiance is a story, and when I take this approach to viewing how difficult it is to line up my class for lunch, I can say to myself " what am I doing wrong, and what needs of the students aren't being met?" So in preparation for next week, I'm going to try to keep in mind a few thinks. First, Cooperative Discipline; I'm going to ask the students how they think the correct way to line up should look and what rules can they come up with as a class. Second, social cognitive learning theory from our child development class; learning can occur by observing others, so maybe I will pick one student who is behaving appropraitely and offer them praise, and then the class can observe and mimic that behavior and also receive praise. Third, account for cultural differences; until this weeks ESOL class, I had no idea how cultural differences could affect a child's behavior. In some homes or cultures, listening to authority is considered a sign of weekness and it's important that I recognise where these kids come from so that I can make my expectation clear. I'm so glad I was able to reflect on what went wrong this week and construct a plan for next week. In the future, in my own classroom, I hope I can remember how much I truly love the concept of Cooperative Discipline and can use it from the get go!
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