To the version of myself I'd like to forget about

To the version of myself I'd like to forget about,

Hey you, yes I’m talking to you. Sitting in that house, barely paying rent wasting time taking way too many extra-curricular classes at Butler.

That last statement probably made you angry – which is fair because that’s the stage of life you’re going through and let me tell you, it’s not going to end well… at first.

But you’ll move on and I promise, it gets better.

And even though you’re going to struggle, financially, academically, and emotionally, it’ll all be worth it because before you know it you’re going to graduate.

I know you hesitated to jump into the education profession. In fact you’re going to enroll in classes, get discouraged and drop those classes and eventually transfer back to Butler – again – because it’s your safe place. But you’ll come back to Wichita State and even meet with the Education department advisors and then you’ll chicken out because you’re afraid. You’re afraid of following in the wrong footsteps and you’re afraid of not living up to your potential because even in this dark phase of your life, you know that you are worth something. You’ll get rejected from the nursing program and your newfound best friend will get accepted. You’ll try the business school thing for a while but it won’t pan out because you’re just not interested – you know you love literature but you’re avoiding the obvious. Eventually, after a tiresome year of boring night classes and working full time, you’re going to make a decision and when you do, you’ll feel immediately relieved and stressed out all at the same time.

And then the day will come for your first education class. You’ll be overwhelmed and excited and eager to learn everything that you can about the profession and at the end of that semester you’ll discover that you LOVE your English classes and that you have learned absolutely nothing about the education program or the profession that you didn’t already know from previous information and outside research. You’re going to be disappointed.

But those English classes will keep you going and so you’ll stick with the program – partly because you can’t afford not to and partly because you’re not sure what else to do with an English degree – and you’ll enroll in Core I. I’m ashamed to say that you’ll tell yourself that it’s all about the literature – that the students are just a part of it until you get to the point where you can teach college. But then you’ll discover an amazing advisor, mentor, and teacher who will keep you motivated when you lose that spark and through your first field experience opportunity, you’ll start to develop a REAL passion for helping students learn.

By the way, you’re going to have to pay for this year out of pocket and so you’re going to have to heavily rely on the support of your fiancé (surprise! You know him but you two haven’t even started dating yet) and sometimes after he leaves your parent’s house (surprise again, you had to move back home) you cry a little in your room because you feel terrible accepting the financial help.

By the time Core II rolls around you’ll finally feel like you’ve got the hang of things for once. At this point you will have made some really awesome friends who will know the true struggles of being a pre-service teacher. You will laugh a lot and stress yourself out. But the best part, second only to the friends that you’ve made, is that you will start really believing in your teaching philosophy – and not just because it’s what you know you should believe.

Finally your last year as an undergrad will arrive – sneak up on you actually, and you’ll start your year-long placement. You’ll be assigned to a school that wasn’t on your list of choices and this will disappoint you greatly but it will turn out to be the best possible placement for you. You’ll really start to freak out because people start to mention PLT exams – that you knew absolutely nothing about – in passing as though you have been informed of this throughout the entire program. You knew you’d have to take a content exam but you had no idea there was a test for teaching skills and strategies – isn’t that what the field experience is for? You’ll start to panic because you will pour hours into research and still won’t be able to find the answers to your questions. You’ll lose sleep because you can’t turn your brain off at night (you’ll also come to accept that your anxiety is a part of your personality type).

You’ll freak out about your lesson planning and so you’ll put it off and then have a panic attack when you have to start showing your lesson planning to your ever-patient mentor. You’ll talk to her and she’ll calm you down and take extra time out of her schedule to help you figure out your lessons. You’ll talk to your teacher after class one day and completely break down in front of her and then you’ll leave thinking “why didn’t I say something sooner?”.  Core III will be your most difficult semester (just like your best friend’s third semester in nursing school was her most difficult semester).

You’ll learn to rely on your mentor teacher and you won’t hesitate to tell her when you’re starting to feel anxious and you’ll feel silly for not talking to her about your anxiety before your break down. You’ll start to remember all of the things from your previous core classes and you will realize that the majority of your assignments and assigned readings have guided you to this point. Your professor and university supervisor will require you to start blogging and get this – you’ll seriously enjoy it. In fact, from Core I on you’ll enjoy the majority of your assignments because as it turns out – you really wanted to do this teaching thing all along, you were just too stubborn to admit it. In fact, I’d venture to say that your stubbornness is part of the reason you stayed at Butler for so long.

Core IV will arrive and disappear in the blink of an eye. During this time you will form a strong bond with your mentor (which is funny because at first, it seemed a little like a dance) and you will learn to appreciate observations and feedback. You’ll start to find your teaching style – which is a little different from that of your mentor— and you’ll absolutely LOVE being at the front of the classroom every day. Eventually your mentor will start stepping out of the classroom for increasing periods of time as the semester goes on and this will help your confidence immensely. In fact, when you have to have a sub, you are thankful because you get an entire day with each class and you truly feel accomplished and at home in the classroom.

You should know that you need to continue to work on your organizational skills – I say this because as I write this, I know I still struggle. You’ll be better than you ever were but you – I – still need to find a system for your own classroom.

So there you have it. There are two weeks until graduation and you’ve passed all of your exams, jumped through all of the flaming hoops, and made some amazing friends along the way. Be hopeful because while you’re in a dark place right now, it’s going to get better.  You’re going to make it and you’re going to find your passion. I promise. 

Strategies and Activities for Discussion

Strategies and Activities for Discussion:

At the end of my last blog post, my goal for myself was to come up with strategies and activities for discussion. While I can’t honestly say that I found any new and innovating ideas, I can say that I found a few things that work (most of the time); things that I knew about but wasn’t implementing.

One thing that I noticed, with the help of both my Mentor Teacher and Penny Kittle’s “Book Love” is that students do a lot of retelling. When you ask them to write about their day or more specifically, what they are reading, you generally get a lot of information regurgitation which is great because, you know, they are taking in what they read but I have always been more interested in what people are thinking about. So that’s what I asked them: what were you thinking about as you were reading today? At first the question threw off even my seniors. It was, once again, as though I was speaking a different language. However, after giving them plenty of time to write – and allowing them to “write to think” (completely informal) – they started to get the hang of things. 

So how is this related to discussion? I’m glad you asked. My mentor teacher and I have asked each class, from our literacy strategies class, to our sophomores, to our seniors about their thought process and each time, the writing has improved - gone are the days of retelling. And with better writing and being cognizant of the reading process, came better discussions. (Why didn’t I think of this before?)

Of course they are going to have better discussions. My sophomores are in small groups for literature circles and they are all reading the same book within that small group. If you ask them to talk about the book, even if it has to do with the major conflicts of the book, they’re going to look at you funny because they all just read the same part of the same book. I think they feel like it is redundant to read and then talk about it but if you pry a little, and try to find their thought process, they have more to talk about because no one thinks about or processes information in the same way. 

My seniors are in the middle of a unique unit because of the AP exam: they are picking their own books to read, writing about their thought process, and then discussing their individual books with their peers. It doesn’t seem like it would work but because the common factor between all of these different books is how they think about and process the books, it really does come together – and they seem more excited about writing and discussion.

Through this unit with our seniors, we have also had the opportunity to implement individual conferences. While students share with their neighbors, we can select a few students per class period – each ( sometimes everyone in my smaller class) and check up on how they’re feeling about their books as well as what questions and ideas they have or what connections they are making.

Another contributing factor to great discussion is the arrangement of desks. It makes since to put students into pods of 4 or 5 for literature circle groups but what about when they’re all reading different books? Or what about when they’re all reading the same book? I have been using my time in the classroom to arrange the desks in various ways and gauging the level of engagement for each layout. After testing out an arrangement where all of the desks are pushed together in one continuous line (two desks facing each other and repeat the formation until you get to the end, allowing for one desk on each end much like a large dining room table setting) my smaller class of seniors has taken it upon themselves to keep this arrangement.

TLDR: (Too long don’t read): Try asking students about their thought process rather than comprehension questions and play around with your learning space.

I sincerely hope all of you are enjoying our final few weeks and I hope you are finding some strategies that will help you in our coming years as teachers.

Note: Josh, if you’re reading this, I started opening windows and blinds after lunch in my classroom and it seems to have helped my students focus a little more. Thanks for the suggestion!

-         -  Ms. Dawson

Spring Fever and Senioritis: Combatting Seasonal Apathy

Spring Fever and Senioritis: Combatting Seasonal Apathy

Whether you have freshman, seniors, or the grades in between, you know that it’s that time of year. The temperatures are rising – comparatively– and the days are flying by. Summer is drawing nearer and your kids, our kids, are over it (we might be just a little “over it” some days too). So how do we deal with it?

My seniors (yes, I claim them) already have one foot out the door, well beyond ready to leave high school behind and my sophomores (I claim them too) are longing for the days of all-night Netflix binge watching and sleeping well into the late afternoon.

However, we as teachers need to find the energy to kick it into high gear. Hopefully the routine has already been well established and our kids know what is expected of them. Now is the time to tap into those resources you’ve been pinning for months that you forgot about; it is the time to pull out new ideas and try new things. We need to do our best to keep our kids engaged until that very last day. Who said rigor had to be routine? Now is the time to take that chance and try that Socratic Seminar with your regular level sophomores (note to self) or maybe it’s just time to shake up a routine a bit, throw a new activity their way.

I know that if you’re anything like me, you’re almost rushing to get your kids through the unit that should have been completed a week ago, but that doesn’t mean every day has to be filled with the same activities every day has to be filled with the same activities every day has to filled with the same activities (you get my point).

I have been thinking about this for a while but between the reading for last week and the level of engagement this week, I figured it was finally time to do something about it. So for my action research, I want to tackle engagement, specifically regarding discussion. First I’d like to pose a question, then I’ll tell you a story.

How are you combatting this seasonal apathy? What new things have you tried to keep your kids engaged or what do you want to try?

Today, my seniors fell asleep watching Hamlet (*gasp* I know, it hurt me a little too. It was even the Branagh version). Not every single student, but over half of my class. I thought that maybe when we stopped for discussion they’d perk up because they were just sitting comfortably but when I paused for discussion, not a single sleepy, hooded head moved. Frustrated but empathetic, I made a split second decision and pulled in an activity I had experienced in one of my college classes. I had them each pick a line from Hamlet’s soliloquy then each student had to share it. My students were confused but complied.  Some students had the same line but I asked them to share it anyway which, after three students in a row had the same line, made them giggle. I explained that, though they had only taken a few minutes to find a line, they had discovered some of the most important lines of the soliloquy which was reflected in the repetition of the same lines. This activity was no show stopper but it was different from the regular routine of pausing for discussion and my students were awake and engaged for the rest of the class period.

I’ve found that even in higher level discussion with advanced students, accountability is still an issue. Each student still needs a part.

My goal for myself is to find different strategies and activities for discussion: some more complicated and involved for my seniors, and some more structured but just as rigorous for my sophomores.

Keep going strong out there!

Best,

Ms. Dawson 

Breathe.

Breathe.

It is going to feel impossible.

You’re not going to feel ready. In fact,

You’re going to feel like a complete and total fraud.

Everyone will confuse you for a student and

One of the administrators will nonverbally shame you for

Entering the teacher’s lounge during lunch – how dare you? You look sixteen.

You can’t possibly be a student teacher.

There will be stress.

Stress so overwhelming that your acne will flare up so badly

That your students will interrupt your lesson to tell you about it.

Great ideas will come to you but you won’t be able to explain them.

Your mentor teacher will look at you with kind, understanding eyes

But will still have no idea what you’re talking about.

When you plan your lesson you’ll be sure you thought of everything

And then you will forget all of it and the clearly printed English on your lesson plans

Will translate themselves into French – a language in which you are clearly not fluent.

Why aren’t you fluent in French?

Your students will act like you’re speaking in French.

You’ll hear crickets.

Everyone will tell you that it will all work out. They don’t know what you know.

They don’t understand. No one understands.

You haven’t done enough.

You didn’t volunteer. You never went for that co-op job. You have no experience.

You took too long in college. You took too long to decide to become a teacher.

You’re not going to get that job. It’s going to go to someone else.

Someone more qualified. Someone who won’t actually like that job – your dream job.

Someone who will leave after they’ve taken your spot.

But you won’t even make it that far

Because your KPTP score was abysmal. You weren’t thorough enough.

You provided too much detail. The schedule you mapped out overwhelmed you

And so you just sat in bed staring at your schedule until it was too late.

You won’t be able to work enough. You won’t be able to pay all of your bills.

You can’t make work your priority. School has to come first.

But you have to work and you have to work enough because

It’s hard to write lesson plans in the dark.

You are facing the impossible. You tell yourself it’s all going to be okay.

You tell yourself you are going to fail.

You can only do so much. It won’t be enough.

So you get into your car, lock your doors, and buckle your seatbelt.

You put your car in reverse, back out of the parking space and wipe away your tears

Before you put the car into drive. You pull out of the campus parking lot

And then it starts. That perfect song. The familiar first notes and the comforting lyrics

Fill your car, softly at first. You increase the volume so that it no longer fills your car

But it fills your ears. It fills your head.  It drowns out your thoughts – the noise and disapproval.

And when that song is followed by another familiar song, you’ll turn the volume up then too. 

Genre Reflection: Ms. Dawson and the Halls of Hogwarts Part 2

Professor Dawson awoke from her troubled sleep. She sat up, pulling her blanket around her, and gazed out the window as she tried to recall the fading dream that had disturbed her. It was still dark. The Hogwarts grounds seemed to be blanketed by blackness. She shivered beneath her blanket.

“Accio lesson plans,” she mumbled. If she was up, she might as well be working. Her notebook full of lesson plans rattled on the shelf and started their way toward her.

She had hit the point in the term where things weren’t quite new anymore. Although they most certainly weren’t any less exciting, the excitement wasn’t always paired with a positive connotation.

*Thud* notebook hit the ground. “Lumos, “she whispered. The room brightened.

Sighing, Professor Dawson climbed out of her four poster bed and picked up her lesson plans.  She flipped through her notes and squinted at her messy print.

She still struggled with her magic. It was new to her, newer than the curriculum she had begun teaching. She was always interested in magical creatures, that part was second nature to her. But magic itself was a completely different beast.

“Accio glasses.” Her glasses too started toward her and then dropped to the ground. However, this time she had anticipated the fall and was able to catch them. After sliding her glasses over her ears she found her way to the right page in her notebook. She thought to herself: ‘Will they like it? Is it too much? How many times will I trip over my own feet during that lesson?’

Her students could see right through her when she struggled to control her powers. Some were sympathetic, others fed off of it. Either way, she couldn’t blame them. She was still trying to figure out how to merge her love for Magical Creatures and her newfound magic therefore, her lessons didn’t always go as planned – something she had anticipated, but living the experience, well that was similar to the difference between reading about a blast ended skrewt and being stung by one.

She had been over the lesson plans at least four times and practiced them out loud, like she used to when she pretended to be a Hogwarts professor as a child. She had no idea that she would actually end up here but she had always imagined what it would be like.  It wasn’t quite the same as she had pictured. ‘Is anything though?’ Some days were even more fantastical than she could imagine. Others were more difficult and sometimes even tedious. It wasn’t as though she didn’t know she’d have bad days, off days -- days where she literally dropped absolutely everything she touched and then proceeded to trip over the Malfoy kids’ school bag and then pretended not to see him laughing hysterically at her while she picked herself up off of the classroom floor. No, she knew that she could get lost in a paper bag, or fall up the changing staircase. She didn’t however, anticipate Moaning Myrtle moving from the first-floor girls’ bathroom to the bathroom inside the Professor’s common room – a surprise that led to teaching her first class in soaked robes. But more importantly, she couldn’t envision the extent to which she would connect to her students – a realization that made everything more difficult and at the same time, more rewarding.

Accountability, Participation, and Bonding with Students

Accountability, Participation, and Bonding with Students 

I want to start off this post by saying that I had the BEST day at my placement on Wednesday and to be honest, I needed it. I needed to have a really good day to remind me that I’m still doing the right thing; that I’m not always a complete failure.

Don’t get me wrong. I love what I do. But I am also extremely self-critical and if you can’t tell (by the mention of anxiety in practically all of my previous posts – I know you’re tired of it), I’m basically a picnic basket full of anxiety filled baked goods (you know, like the chocolate chip cookies that are a little crispy around the outside but have the gooey, almost under done center. Or is that just me? Anxiety = gooey center). And like everyone in every job, I struggle. There are of course good and bad days. But Wednesday was wonderful.

What did we do? I’m glad you asked! We were working on one pagers which I’m sure at this point in our careers sounds a little tired and played out or as some of my students put it “bunk”. But there was a twist! They worked in groups. Each person at the table got to choose one of the tasks presented for the one pager: What is the theme? Draw a picture that represents the theme, Find two quotes (evidence) that support your theme, Write the title and author of the book and draw an illustration, Write a question pertaining to the novel, then answer it, etc. Tables with less people had more work, tables with more people had less work (this is still something I’m figuring out how to adjust point-wise) but each task got its own piece of paper! (I had a total a-ha moment. DING! Accountability!!) And even though they groaned and complained, my students LOVED it. After each piece was done, they taped them all together and they were PROUD of their work. They were able to collectively create a summative representation of their knowledge of the book.

Now, this may seem a bit ordinary but the best part for me was, they asked for my help, and I was actually able to help them. (Selfish, I know.) I helped them but I also bonded with them. We made small talk as they hunted for the right quote to represent their theme. They asked intelligent and informed questions and then answered them… get this: WITH EVIDENCE FROM THE TEXT (without being asked to provide that evidence)! – can you tell how excited I am? I was so proud (and a tiny bit sad that I hadn’t thought of the activity myself, but it’s not about me. It’s about them).

It was the ideal win-win situation. They were productive and we were able to laugh. We talked about non-school related things. They asked me life questions, silly questions, and text relevant questions. And the girls who normally looked at their cell phones once every five minutes didn’t check their phones as often. And the boys who play video games during class weren’t playing video games. And the girls who use class time to freshen their makeup didn’t have their makeup out. It was glorious. BEST DAY EVER. And I hope that someday I’ll be able to recreate that in my own classroom.

As a further extension of the topic of accountability, I’ve been pondering the idea of participation points. I like the idea of having a small portion of student grades allotted for participation and behavior. Should they start with a certain number of points and lose them for misbehavior or lack of participation? Should they earn them as extra credit? What happens when a student is absent? As far as I’m concerned, if they’re not in class, the situation is beyond their (and my) control. There should be an opportunity for students to make up those points. What does participation look like? Is it always contributing an answer?

Maybe this is a topic that has been addressed in the last few cores but I’m finally at the point where I can actually see it. I can see how it could help behavior. I can picture it in my placement.

For the most part, I want to leave this open as I’m still figuring it out (And I’m sure I’ll never have the perfect answer that never needs revision). But I will say, I think trying out participation grades is a good thing. I think that students should have some opportunity to make up points. And I know that participation isn’t always contributing to discussion. Sometimes being on task and listening are more than enough. 

What does it mean to be human?

What does it mean to be human?

I couldn’t possibly articulate all of the things that I learned at the KATE conference. It was absolutely an invaluable experience for me as a future teacher, as a student, and also as an individual.

From Laura Packer’s workshops on storytelling to Mrs. Harrison’s lesson on how authors build empathy, to Mrs. Tolbert’s presentation on integrating art into the classroom, much of what I absorbed will (hopefully) be forever in my mind when it comes time to build my own curriculum. (In fact, both Mrs. Harrison and Mrs. Tolbert’s presentations have already influenced changes in my unit plan.)

While the best thing I took away from the KATE conference was an idea that was fostered throughout my two days of workshops and presentations, this idea was not a teaching practice that I graciously copied into my notebook, or a new perspective on an ordinary assignment that I scribbled a messy star next to on a handout. This idea is that connections are an important part of being human. 

I’m not talking about connections that lead to a job interview (although those most certainly have their place). I’m talking about the connections that two humans make when they really let those barriers down and are open and vulnerable with one another. The connections that were reinforced within the cramped space of my tiny two door car, on our way to lunch or to the social gathering. The unexpected conversations that occurred across a small wooden table in the back of a dimly lit restaurant, full of chatter. This conference gave me the opportunity to get close to people. People I see fairly frequently but talk to on sometimes no more than a surface level. The opportunity to really listen and to be heard.  And although we may never again speak of the stories that were told or may never open up in such away again, a bond has been strengthened and I have gained a new respect for these people.

Through all of this, I find myself at peace with the struggles that exist in the very near future. We all connected.

We connected on a deeper level.

I was reminded how to be human. I was reminded of what it is like to exist outside of myself.

If I could only take one thing away from this conference, it would be that connections are crucial to the human experience. I think that this is something we can (read: need to) use in our classrooms as teachers. It is important for our students to see us as people but it is just as important (if not more important) for us to see our students as people. As individuals. As humans. Humans with stories to tell. Stories that don’t necessarily require any more of a response than a simple acknowledgement.

We need to remember how to be human. We need to remember what it is like to exist outside of ourselves.