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.

Blog #2

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

There are two students in particular with whom I am working in my 4th period class, Andre and Raheem.  These two students remind me a lot of the kids I work with back home at Boys and Girls Club.  I have heard stories from other teachers about these students regarding classroom misbehavior and disrespect.  I was shocked by this because these two students are some of the most polite young men I've ever taught.  Each day they walk in, greet me upon arrival, they both participate a great deal in class, and as they leave, they always tell me goodbye and to have a great day.  These students lack motivation at times, especially Raheem, but they both told me that they thought it was "awesome" that we were going to be doing a lot of work in class that catered to them.  They loved the interest inventories we did, and also really loved the "coat of arms: activity because it gave them a chance to express themselves artistically and through writing in order to tell me a little bit about themselves.  Raheem took this activity to heart and his coat of arms was outstanding in both writing and artistically - he even took it home to finish it.  One aspect of both students' lives is music - they love it, and enjoy listening to a wide variety of it.  Raheem especially loves rap and hip-hop and he even has his own mixtape (meaning, he raps and has it recorded to a cd and sells his CDs).  When I talked to period 4 about mixing rap and hip-hop with American literature, his eyes lit up.  He and Andre both probed me with questions about what songs, which artists, what stories, how we were going to do the assignments, and I knew then that I had gotten them excited for English for the first time since high school, given the lack of enthusiasm they showed for English in their journals and on the interest surveys, reading autobiography, and coat of arms.

I have the students do daily journals, mostly free writes to give them an opportunity to express themselves, but I also assign them different writing prompts on occasion as well. Raheem is less into the journals than Andre, but they both really enjoy them and I have learned s much about them.  Andre has gone above and beyond this week in his journal writing - twice he has taken his journal with him and done extra free writes when the time has permitted, just to get things off his chest.  When I asked the students to do a quick write to explain their opinions on the dialogue aspect of the dialogue journals, Andre's response was that he loved them because he loved that I took the time to read his journals and actually cared enough to respond.  He also said it helps him get his thoughts out of his head so that he can focus on what's going on in school that day.  Raheem also stated that he loved the journals, loved the music, and "loved everything that I have done in this class, honestly!!!"  Raheem also gave me 3 songs to listen to off of his mixtape, which I of course listened to, and gave him notes about them.  He could not believe that I listened to the songs in the first place, and that I took the time to actually write down the lyrics that were good and my comments on them.  He thanked me about 10 times in class for caring enough to actually listen, and I can tell that just that small action has impacted him in a positive way - he is trying harder on his assignments, and his class participation has increased even more in the past week.  Andre is the same way, especially with journaling, but emotionally I think the journals and my comments back have really helped him a lot in the past week and will hopefully continue to do so!

Blog #1

"Reflect on your rapport with the students."

Having been in my classroom for 2 full weeks, I feel that I have already developed a good rapport with the 11th graders who I have been teaching full-time.  I have three 11th grade classes, two of which are collaborative (with an aid), and I have implemented the use of journals, student interest surveys, and various writing assignments to better get to know my students.  Several of my students remind me a lot of my kids back home at my Boys and Girls Club job which is very refreshing considering how different most of the students in Morgantown are from my kids in Charleston.  The common theme between most of the students in my collaborative classes and my kids from BGC back home are their backgrounds.  Most of them do not come from homes that are very supportive and who strongly encourage academics.  That is not to say that all of the families are like this, but it is an all too common theme amongst many of these students, and that along makes these students ones with whom I can easily build a strong rapport.

The interest surveys and writing assignments that I have implemented thus far have been fairly simple and easy for the students to fill out when determining things like their goals, favorite things, responsibilities inside and outside of school and home, learning styles, what they enjoy about school and what they dislike about school, who they admire, what makes them unique, a motto for their lives, and finally, a self portrait for how they see themselves.  They were allowed to decorate some of these activities because I wanted to get an idea of who they were as students and individuals.  They were also asked to do a "reading autobiography" so I could get a sense of who they were as readers, and how they have seen their past experiences with reading and English classes.  Finally, I have been having them complete "free writes" for completion grades in their journals, and as a free write suggests, they can write about whatever they want and can even illustrate instead if that's how they need to express themselves.  Even after the first week of doing free writes, I have learned so much about my students, their hopes and dreams, their lives, and some of their fears and worries.  They have a choice for whether or not they want me to read their entries, and they can put their journal on the shelf where it says "READ" or the shelf that says "DO NOT READ" and all of them have placed them on the 'READ' shelf.  This tells me that they want me to know them.  Developing this trust with my students has really helped in teaching, as well, because they are respectful and have thus far enjoyed doing their work.  The rapport that I've been building and will continue to build is great and I'm excited for the rest of the semester because these students can relate to me and yet still see me as a teacher.