I am a science-Peter.

So, my sister drew me something for my blog, and I really like it. I have a few other sketches people have done, and eventually I want to set up a rotating banner, when I have a bit of free time to scan them and resize everything.


Commission, "Science Peter" by ~TheJung on deviantART

Things have been really busy lately. I am student teaching 3 days this week, which is also finals week. If I am not asleep, I am busy. I have very little time to myself, but hopefully once student teaching starts I will be able to cordon off a little bit more me-time. Student teaching starts next week, although I will miss a day due to a mandatory job fair. The following week, I finally student teach for an entire week, and then I have spring break to recuperate from everything. It will be hard going away from grad school, which has been my life for the past 9 months, my cohort, a small group of 17 that have become like family to me, and a lead professor who has been both a hard taskmaster and an insightful mentor, but student teaching will keep me busy.

I went to a job fair Monday, which was a lot of fun. I went to employers with the very directed question- "Do you have an online academy?" Against my expectations, about 50% of them said yes. I even met the principal of one, and he wrote "ischool" on my academy, and I will be emailing him soon.

Oh, wait, I haven't talked about online academies in depth yet, have I?

So, online academies. For one of my projects, I had to do a wiki article about a subject of my choice. I chose online academies, as having done IT work in the past and being a huge computer nerd, online anything generally equates to better anything in my book. So, in my research, I actually visited an online academy and got to geek out with the staff, who really reminded me of an amalgamation of IT people and teachers. The building itself was half classroom, half server room, and while a lot of things were still in development, I was very impressed with what I saw. I don't believe online learning is for all kids, but I do feel that a lot of kids benefit from that type of learning over general school learning, and that this online academy did a very good job at keeping the kids motivated by requiring usually one day at the bricks and mortar location per week, and using a vast array of software to help meet students learning needs.

So, going there was sort of like going to Disneyland. Then, I hooked up with the information literacy people, and realized that information literacy and online academies could work amazingly together. That grew to be my general spiel for talking with districts that had online academies. Other districts I just learned about, and there were some that were really interesting.

However, just today, I attended a site counsel meeting where they talked about the state budget. Even with my math and science endorsements, I really can't be certain if I'm going to get a job, much less find work at an online academy. I would go into a political rant about how they need to fund schools better, tax the wealthy, and give teachers free awesome cybernetic implants that allow them to see students brainwaves in real time, but that can come later.

In any case, I'll keep on trucking. I know my niche, and if I don't get there immediately, it's something I will continue to aspire towards, keeping up on the latest news and developments with.

In the mean time, I've been taking over more and more classes. Today, I taught 3 periods, and co-taught the final period, which I will be co-teaching for all of my student teaching, due to the heavy machinery in the classroom that I am not certified to oversee the operation of.

Things I've learned recently, negative first:
-Let students figure things out. Inquiry, inquiry, inquiry. Even in math. If it's an important concept, let it take a while longer to sink in. I had planned an inquiry activity to help students understand why you flip the inequality sign when you multiply or divide by a negative, but I ended up just giving them an example and showing exactly why the numbers didn't fit anymore, rather than letting them figure it out. I think I was so worried about time that I just lost out on a really good teaching opportunity.

-Be willing to discipline. If a student is disrupting learning by being a twerp, send him out.

-Learn how to deal with when students come up to do math equations. They might be confident in their work, but when they mess up, it's very embarrassing. A girl did that, so I had her identify what she did wrong, then had another girl come up and try it, but the girl who came up is very sensitive. I talked with her a bit after class, and she seemed fine, but I want to make sure she is still willing to come up in the future.

-Be careful with the caffeine. I've been drinking a LOT of it lately, and it's not doing good things to me. I'll just leave it at that. Part of it is having finals week along with 5am wake ups, but once I start student teaching, I will really have to work on figuring out a sleep schedule that keeps me going without having to drink a 5 hour energy (intense shot), a caffeine drink, a large cup of tea, and a cup of coffee in a day.

-Do not use the word 'lecture' with middle schoolers. I informed them that I would be giving them a quick lecture on something, and they flipped out. I explained that it was just a discussion, and that calmed them, but now I know that using the 'l word' is not okay with that grade.

The good!

-Note student's skills and interests. A few cheerleaders were in the back of class, practicing a cheer. We had just studied blood, so I asked if this was 'the blood dance.' They proceeded to put together a quick 'b-l-o-o-d!' hand motion cheer. When I saw them again in 6th period, I asked them to do more, so I let them get their science notebooks and start using the vocab words to put together a cheer which they will get to perform before the exam. They are not getting any grades for this, but they are so psyched.

-Let kids know that you care about their learning, and that you want them in your class. That means a lot to them.

-Talk about stuff you're passionate about. Today was a more relaxed worksheet day, so a few kids finished early. They wanted to throw a ball around class, and I told them to mention areas of science they were interested in. Minutes later, I was explaining the Large Hadron Collider with them. I later overheard my cooperating teacher saying, "Wow... I could learn stuff from him." The few students I had were completely engaged, and wanted to learn more. I told them to start reading Scientific American online. It was a really great moment, and I want to make more moments like it. With 8th grade, the standards don't cover a lot of really amazing stuff unfortunately, but if you can find time to bring it up, it's totally worth it. In fact, that cool technology-modern applications bit is something I want to incorporate as much as possible, even if it does occasionally require more standing and delivering, which is not in vogue right now.

-Let students into your life a bit. Don't be afraid to tell them little tidbits of your life, so long as they are appropriate. They want to know you, so let them know you, so long as it doesn't interfere with learning.

AND

-Keep student learning as your bottom line. If something is helping learning, great. If not, it has to go.

So, that's where I am. On the horizon, I have lesson planning to learn, classroom management to master, and assessment to acquire. And always, I could be better. That's what's fun about it. I told my cooperating teacher, that is one of the things I like the most about teaching, is that it's challenging. I tend to learn things very quickly, and gain some degree of competency at them with ease. Academic work is rarely challenging, and if I take it at my own pace, it is usually very quickly digested. Teaching is a completely different realm, one that is molding me slowly as I try to master it. I love it.

-P.

Lessons learned

So, I have bombed a few times, but every time I bomb, I learn something new. Here is a quick list of things I've found myself doing that other student teachers should try to avoid.

-Be aware of what students know. If you're only coming in a few days a week, and the teacher entrusts you with a lesson, don't assume to know what the students know and don't know. I tried to run an activity where students had to answer some questions. Turns out, they hadn't covered any of the material previously, so they were floundering, and I was so busy doing one on one help I didn't notice the entire class falling apart. So, figure out what they know. Formative assessment and unit context.
-Don't get distracted when you have the class's attention. I did that a few times today, where I used the attention-getting signal, then completely blew it by seeing a student raise their hand asking for help, and forgetting that, hey, I need to remind them to finish in 5 minutes.
-In math, if the students need to write out all their work, so do you. I was trying to do systems of equations in my head, and while I can do that to some extent, I still make mistakes. Better to write it out instead of making a fool of yourself.
-This is more geared towards middle schoolers, but applies to everyone: Don't assume they know what to do, because they don't. You need to be painfully explicit with directions. The really amazing thing is, they listen and obey most of the time.
-Learn when to ask for help, or when to separate students. Don't be afraid to ask students if they need to move. Often, they will say they do. If they aren't doing the work, move them. If they're making some noise, but the work is getting done, it's your call.

Also, after class, I visited a local online academy within my district. I've become acquainted with two of the staff there, and we enjoy talking. The bricks and mortar location is a strange mix between a server room and a classroom, and one of the teachers reminds me of an amalgamation of an IT guy and a teacher. The more I learn about these types of schools, the more I want to get hired in one. The idea of using web based education to create that hard focus on content matter is amazing, plus the idea of cutting out the classroom management and simply focus on curriculum design and personal motivation, that really appeals to me. With that in mind, I've decided to make that one of my ideal jobs, and steer towards district placements as much as possible. On the bright side, the connections I made at the online academy seemed very happy to help, as they really like to see someone who is there because they are passionate about that type of learning, not just because they got RIF'd. They also gave me some really good suggestions on how to enhance my resume, which I will probably pursue over student teaching if there's time, and if not, over summer.

Also, I'm meeting with some social justice educators about internet literacy tomorrow. I've been holding off my social justice post for a while, but once I've had that conversation, I'll probably have a cool post ready.

-P.

Teaching tools.

So, here are a few teaching tools I've observed, things that I really like and want to use in my teaching.

QoDs: Question of the days are great. They get students to get out their notebooks and start writing right away, and it gives you time to take roll. If they are occupied from the moment they step in from the hall, that definitely helps in keeping you from losing control right away.

Science journals: I can't emphasize how important these have been to students. Each student has a class journal that they use to put all their work in. It gives them a central location for all their notes, worksheets, project information, and everything else they may collect.

Flip books: These go inside the science journal. I can't really describe them well without a picture, but they consist of construction paper folded... hamburger/taco style, with one side cut into small tags. Another way to do it is to cut it in two along the hamburger line, then fold one, then scaffold the other along it, and staple it. The end result is a flip book of sorts where you can write a name, then pull away and see a definition. This is AWESOME for people who need hands on learning, and really feeds into that multiple modalities thing. Plus, it's explicit, and good for quizzing yourself. Very cool method for science stuff that requires a lot of memorization, such as cell organelles.

An attention getter: My teacher uses 5... 4... 3... 2... 1... The kids are conditioned to be quiet when they hear that. Whenever I teach, I use it, and it works wonders. Once I start teaching, that's going to be one of the first things I do, get that early conditioning, as it makes running a class so much easier when you have the ability to make it quiet in 10 seconds.

Standards based grading: Just grade to the standard. My school does this, and enforces mandatory retakes for failing grades. While this causes a lot of problems, I definitely like that students can be explicitly tested on standards knowledge. It makes things just... A lot easier. It's a bit hard to implement initially, but once you get the hang of it, it saves time. An example of this is, if you only grade tests, have each section of 3-4 questions based on one standard, and explicitly state what standard that is. Then, when you are grading, break up the test into the standard parts, so you know what areas the student needs to improve on. It's not perfect, but it makes a lot of sense.

Now, for something that we discussed in class, and by and large, we disagree with. In my practicum class, the teacher pointed out that, if we don't know, offer to have the student figure it out on their own, and reward them if they found out.

We all disagreed, for the most part. Students don't really want to do the work to find out something they don't know- that's the teacher's job. While it is a good idea for students to try to figure things out on their own, they are most likely going to either A: Go straight to their parents, who might not know, and then B: Go straight to google, which will probably give them an incomplete or completely wrong answer. They then report an answer that is not quite correct to you, who might not have had the time to do the research yourself, and you say, 'okay, here's your candy bar.'

Instead, what I heard some teachers do, and I agree with this, is write the question on the board. That might inspire other students to ask tough questions. Then, that night, take a bit of time to try to find out the answer. As science teachers, we are quite capable of determining good information and making sense of complex concepts. If the concepts are things we don't actually know and beyond our comprehension, then that's okay too. But I feel that teachers should put in a good effort to figure out the answer, then, the next day, report it to the class. That way, you retain your position as the teacher, the expert, while students get some degree of ownership over their learning. I'm not saying that I am going to let students derail me every day with questions like, "What does the edge of the universe look like?" or something, but if a student asks, during an anatomy lesson, 'how do neurons talk to muscles?' that would definitely be something I'd take a little bit to learn.

Thoughts? Any other cool teaching tools?

-P.