Chapter 10: Going Beyond the Classroom

Find ways for students to learn when they are at home or on summer break. Students are only at school 8 hours a day; continual learning must take place outside of school for continual growth to happen. By finding ways for students to learn outside of the classroom, the material also becomes more important.

Going beyond the classroom is one thing that daunts me a little. I worry that I will not be able to achieve this very well. Even just think about it now I feel like it will be a lot of work and don’t want to do it. I hope that as a teacher, I will find actually going beyond the classroom easier. I try to think of what Erin Grunwell did in Freedom Writers Diary. How can I do things like that or my students? I am sure I will eventually think up ways. Perhaps I can ask students to find a catchy phrase around town and write it down, then I will relate it to our unit on figures of speech. I still have no clue on what I could do in the summer months to keeps students thinking outside of the school year, and yet, I feel that is the most important thing of all. Student won’t truly learn until they try to learn for themselves under their own motivation. Hmmmmm, quite a challenge.

Chapter 9: When Things Go Wrong

First year teacher can find the balance between caring and authority hard to determine. Authority needs to come first.

I am amazed at how soft some beginning teachers can be, just to gain popularity with students! For a teacher to say: “Ok class, no homework today” is just wrong. Our job is to educate not become popular. I agree with the chapter that authority comes first. I know for certain that I will not be a softie. I want my students to learn, and giving them a free pass on homework when they may need the practice, just so they will like me better is not the way to do it. I think that along with authority, by being fair, listening to my students, and sticking to and following through with the rules and agendas that I set will gain me so much more popularity then being soft and friendly with my students.

Chapter 8: Teaching Teenagers Who are Still Learning English

Teach the language learning students more than just correcting their spelling mistakes. Teach the students by connecting to their own experiences; ask them “why?” and “how?”

Punishing language learners for many spelling and grammar mistakes is not fair to students who can’t fully grasp the English language yet. I think that it is better to have a rubric set up so that the students can only lose so many points from their grade. The biggest part of their grade will depend on if they answered the question or content. If they got 20 grammar errors, or 53 errors, they still would just lose 5 points, or how ever many assigned to that rubric, and no more. This way, a language learner can still get a good grade if they really messed up on the spelling. I feel that it is my responsibility to then work with those language errors to help improve the students, since I am the English teacher. If I taught science, then I wouldn’t worry about the errors at all, especially if the students were showing me they understood the concept and material being learned.

Chapter 7: Teaching Difficult Academic Material

To help students “get going” with new and hard material, find out what they already know and link the new material to something they already know well.

I loved this quote since I actually did this in my mentor’s classroom. I asked students to raise their hand if they knew and could use the 3 new terms that I was going to present to them. This allowed me to see what the students did, or didn’t know before I began teaching. If they had all, already known and felt confident with the 3 terms, then I could use more sophisticated terms and teach differently then if the students were clueless. I then tied the new terms to an old concept/ game they knew, rock paper scissors, when they were practicing how to use the new terms. I feel that this is a great way to teach difficult material and help make a smooth transition between content materials, by relating the old to the new. I also think this will help motivate students to try and learn the material faster if they have something to relate it to.

Chapter 6: Motivation and Boredom

Curriculum can engage students and help motivate them to learn when it is combined with how a teacher conducts the class and responds to students. Making sure students understand the material and allowing them to learn socially is important to motivating them.

Personally, I feel the number 1 reason students don’t try hard on a project is because they are not motivated. I think that is the hardest part of a teacher’s job. It is easy to sipt out information that the teacher learned themselves way back. But to truly teach students is to discover the ways to motivate and engage them. I don’t feel like many teachers can successfully do this. I will take into consideration and think about a couple ways this chapter suggested to help. Socializing with classmates on a project can really helps students learn as a group. Understanding the material is very important too, if a student has no idea what they are learning about, a light switch shuts off, even if the student doesn’t want it too. They feel so lost that they can’t keep up with the teacher and give up. I know this feel from my own experience.

Chapter 5: Teaching to the Individual, Working With the Group

Some schools track students all the way through high school by race. Certain groups of students stay in the same track no matter what, all the way through high school.

I still find myself amazed at what some adults do, as well as school administrators. It just baffles me to know that actually instances of “racism” still go on, and in schools none the less. School should be a place where students are getting the opportunity to learn to their fullest potential. Tracking, under no terms, allows for that and therefore I feel that it is wrong and not giving every child the right to learn as much as they can. What happened to the idea of No Child being Left Behind? Segregating does not solve this problem.

Chapter 4: Creating a Culture of Success

“Encourage our efforts even if we are having trouble.” If a presentation goes wrong, a teacher can ask some questions and help the individual understand where they went wrong before they sit back down and feel horrible about all the work they had done for this assignment.

I totally agree with the way the teacher handled the writer’s presentation in the passage on page 64. I believe that it is more important to see the learning in a person then to just tell them their whole project was wrong, go do it again. Not only are they not going to want to do it again, they have now embarrassed themselves in front of all their peers, and as the teacher I could be setting up a potential “bullying scene” if they other classmates decide to tease this individual. By asking the right questions in the right way as the writer described her teacher doing, I think students can proved to me whether they have or can figure out the correct information and still feel ok with their presentation when they are done.