Blog #9

"Reflect on any after-school activity you attended."

Friday night was the annual "Mohawk Bowl" which is the football game between the Morgantown High School Mohigan's and the University High School Hawks.  Traditionally, the players from both schools shave their heads into mohawks as this is the "biggest rivalry in the state for high school football."  Although I disagree with this, because I know school's who have much bigger rivalries in West Virginia, it is still a very serious and important game.  My students asked me all week to attend, those who played football, played in the band, were on the majorette line, and others who were just going to be in attendance, as well.  Although I have already gone to two football games and a girls soccer game, this was one game I did not want to miss.  I wore my blue shirt and my best friend and the three other interns all wore either their blue or red, and we sat front row on the 40 yard line to cheer on our team.  Students from each of our classes came up and talked with us throughout the entire game and were so happy that we came to support.  Even several of the players waved, which is against the rules.  Other's who did not wave let me know in class that they saw me and were happy that I came.  They were happier, in fact, because MHS won the game!!!  The stands were packed, the weather was great, and everyone was there to support their teams.  I really feel like there is nothing like high school football.  Morgantown High's best player, Chazzy, got taken out and hurt pretty early in the game and had to be rushed out in an ambulance to have immediate surgery on his ankle.  Even though we were winning, I really thought Morgantown High would lose momentum because they lost one of their best players but luckily, they kept up the tempo and finished strong.  As I was leaving the game, I ran into one of Morgantown High's vice principal and talked for a little bit and then ran into the Principal, and smiled and said hello.  He isn't much of a talker but I was glad I could at least get him to say hello!  I am so glad I got to attend this game, it was really a great experience and this coming Friday is the last home game of the season according to some of the students so if the weather is good, I think I'm going to try to attend it as well! :-)

Blog #8

"Reflect on your professional relationships with school personnel other than your mentor teacher."

There are several teachers who I have formed a great working relationship with and one that I have become friends with as the year has progressed.  I am pretty excited about all of them.  Several teachers who I work with during our PLC's, which also include forming a better relationship with two of my previous mentor teachers at Morgantown High School, two of the special educations co-teachers who I work with, and finally the history teacher whose room is next door to mine.  I was already working well with the two mentor teachers who I worked with previously so I won't discuss those.  The two teachers I work with during our PLC are really fun to work with and we have all worked really well together.  Although, Susie and I (another intern) always get suckered into doing all of the work until this last PLC where we all worked together.  They are both really nice and very helpful and we have worked well together regarding out 10th grade classes.  There is only one 11th grade teacher who I've talk to about work but I have been friends with her for several years.  The history teacher has been awesome to befriend because we have discovered that we have many of the same students so we have been able to work together to get them to work better in both classes.  He also just comes in to talk sometimes throughout the day and we usually just discuss our days after school, too, which is nice to just get all of that out of my head and tell someone else, which I'm sure is similar for him, as well.  He has been teaching for 4 years now in history and we share a lot of history ideas which should be helpful in the future for both of us!  

The relationships I am happiest about building are those with the co-teachers.  There is one "autism aid" who works with me during 3rd period and she is a lifesaver in more ways than one.  She is one of the nicest co-teachers I have worked with and she is so helpful with giving me prior information on students regarding IEP's.  We have two students with autism in my 4th period class and without her as an aid, one of them would cause major disruptions in the class but thankfully, she sits with this student and stops the problem before it becomes a major issue.  She is working on an actual degree in special education currently so we discuss this a lot, too.  The special education teacher who co-teaches with me during 2nd and 4th period is the best.  He really doesn't do much co-teaching with me, but he is in the classroom and he helps me with reading aloud to students who want it, and prompting students to work when they are not working.  We have this problem frequently in 2nd and 4th and while I work with some students, he works with others.  He has actually taught me so much about IEP's and the processes that go along with those and we have already worked together with plans for my contract hours.  I am going to take his place as co-teacher for several days and he is going to sit down with me and show me how to work on IEP's and I'm going to go to several IEP, SAT, and 504 meetings with him next semester!  He has been extremely helpful as I really love my collaborative classes and hope to teach more of these in the future. :-)

Blog #7

"Without using last names, which child do you think you influenced most this week? In what way (academic, social, emotional)?"

Charles.  I am so happy with the progress he is making the effort he is showing and this has taken weeks to get from him!  This particular student is hands-down one of the laziest students I have ever worked with - but I have found out that he really liked working with scary stories and he likes to read aloud in class.  Once I found out this strength, I used it to my advantage by frequently involving him in this activity because is good at it and praising him for doing so well.  We also did a writing assignment and he was refusing to do the work more than writing a paragraph.  I said, "Charles, you are smart and very capable of writing more than a paragraph.  Let's see what we can work on together," and he scoffed immediately, laughed a little, and said, "smart... ha! yeah, right."  There was the problem.  I sat there, discussing all of his strengths as a student, and although he has weaknesses to, who doesn't?, we worked on his writing together.  That was the pivotal moment I needed with him because for the rest of the class period, he would call me over and ask how his writing looked, and how he could improve it.  He ended the assignment with a solid 3 paragraphs that, although had a few grammatical errors and needed to flow better, we could work on that later.  That was a week ago from yesterday and all throughout this week, although it still takes major prompting sometimes, he gets his work done and his journals have even been improving in length.  I have been writing back and forth with him a lot more, and he has even stopped by the classroom to say hello twice this week.  I'm really hopeful that this will continue throughout the rest of the semester, and hopefully next semester when I'm gone, as well.

Blog #6

"Reflect on what you have observed about the students’ learning styles/multiple intelligences."

Although relevant to all of my classes, this is especially relevant to my 11th grade classes.  I have so many 11th graders with IEP's who need many different teaching styles and methods and on top of that, each student has different learning styles, obviously.  So many of my 11th graders are creative and artistic and do extremely well with work where I have use art and writing together.  They love anything creative.  I also have a lot of students who are great with hands-on activities so I have done the best I could integrating this into the curriculum, for example, when we read "Nature" by Emerson, we went outside and had class in nature.  What better way to learn about nature than to be in it?  I had them use their 5 sense, as Emerson does in his writing, and they had to write about their experience and later about the place that they go in their lives that relaxes them the most, or their favorite place where they go to escape from the world, just as Emerson did in his writing.  They loved it, and some of the students who I have a really hard time getting them to be produtive worked really hard on this assignment.  With 10th and 11th graders, I try to give them multiple assignments throughout each unit, using writing, art, media, and verbal assignments and thus far I have been extremely happy with the results and I am learning which students need to work on their skills in some areas and where students already have major strengths!

Blog #5

"Reflect on your participation in a parent-teacher conference."

At this point I have participated in both parent-teacher conferences and an open-house night for all parents come by and discuss the plans for the semester.  The open-house night was first and I had just taken over full responsibility with the 10th graders, although I had been teaching the 11th graders full-time since the beginning of the year.  Very few parents came to the 11th grade open-house, we had 2 sets of parents total and I have 75+ students.  I was actually really disappointed because there were several parents who I really wanted to meet from each class.  The 10th graders had a few more parents show up for each class and I was able to share with them my plans for their students for the rest of the semester.  Most of them just listened to what I had to say and left it at that, a few had questions about the final project (a multigenre project) because they had never heard of one before.  I explained the basic process and that I had actually completed two myself, and they thought it was going to be a really cool idea.  I felt that it was a pretty successful first open-house!  

A week later we had parent-teacher conferences (this week), and I only had THREE conferences!  I was again very disappointed as I want so badly to have parent involvement, though I am very used to having no parental support from my jobs at Boys and Girls Club in Charleston.  One student's mother came in and asked what his grade was, and we told her an A, and I thought was going to faint.  She was so happy and relieved.  Her son has an IEP and is extremely unorganized, however because I already knew this, I have really tried to help his organization and work with him when he wants it as far as reading assignments aloud, and he has not needed nor wanted the help most of the time.  He has been succeeding in our class, and once given this information, she couldn't have been happier.  I have another student who has autism and his mother came with him and had a few questions about the class as a whole and her major question was regarding whether or not I could read her sons handwriting, and although sometimes difficult, I have yet to be unable to read it.  I had one 10th grade mother come in and that was very interesting because her son had a 100% in class and is one of my best students out of the 150 or so that I have.  She was so kind and it was apparent to me why her son is such as good person.  Again, these were a success but I am still disappointed that I did not have more parents.

Blog #4

"Reflect on your use of alternative forms of assessment: journals."

I use journals almost daily.  I say almost because there have been approximately 3-5 days that I have not had the students do some form of a journal, even though almost all classwork is completed in the journals.  The journals I have been using have been great.  I give students a choice each day: 1) free write (about anything), 2) respond to a prompt that I provide, or 3) respond to the quote on the board (which I post each day under my "Daily Inspiration" section).  Students have been writing more and more throughout the semester and when given a short survey about the journals and their writing, almost every students said that they feel more comfortable in their writing skills and they look forward to doing their journals when they get to class, even those students who used to hate writing.  I have learned so much about my students through their journals, many have told me things that have been bothering them and even discussed more serious matters that I have had to take to the counselor.  Although this makes things stressful for me as well, I know that it's really helping them to discuss these things and I am so happy that they trust me enough to do so.  I once heard a quote that read: "people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care" and I absolutely believe this is true.  The students have been getting more and more motivated to complete their work in the journals and outside of the journals and the work has been of better quality overall regarding grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, and the like as time has gone by.  I also have several ESL students who have written on several occasions that they feel the communication in the journals has helped their English and grammar over the course of the semester!  :-)

Blog #3

"Reflect on your school’s or mentor teacher’s classroom management system."

The management system at Morgantown High School is strong in some aspects and not strong in others.  Most of the time, it is dependent upon the teachers who are implementing the intended rules.  Regarding truancy, MHS is strict.  They turn in students after 5-6 absences, but the system outside of MHS is slow.  Regarding small rules, such as the dress code, MHS definitely has an issue with following policy, and after being at my high school in Charleston, where it is dealt with very strictly, it's very different being in the Morgantown High community and seeing students walking around in cut-off shirts, short skirts, and dresses that would normally be seen at the clubs in downtown Morgantown.  

There are also rules such as not bring backpacks to class and not wearing hats.  Most teachers allow both of these things, but my mentor does not allow either.  Backpacks must be kept in lockers and hats must not be worn.  Students come in each day grumbling when they are forced to return their backpacks to their lockers, but finally, they are getting more used to it.  I honestly could care less about backpacks because I know I carried mine in high school and if teachers had not allowed me to carry it, I would have been pretty upset because my locker was so far away from my classes.  Hats are also the least of my worries during class unless there is a test, in which I would make them take them off.  My teacher thinks that wearing hats is disrespectful so the students are not allowed to wear them.  Sometimes the girls wear toboggan's that sit on the back of their head's but she doesn't make them take them off.  It creates frustration with the students and given the students that we have in our classes, I prefer to pick and choose my battles and this is one I'd rather not even worry about, however, I just keep my mouth shut for this.  My only thoughts are, if one student must take off their hats, all students should have to.  Other teachers also allow students to wear them anytime so my teacher hears a lot of complaints.

My teacher and I also have very different management styles in the classroom.  I am a lot more vivacious and I am very enthusiastic and therefore, my students usually are, too.  My teacher is somewhat opposite in that she is more low-key.