Motivating Students

Motivating Students

            The motivational technique that seems to be most effective in my clinical placement is to introduce the day’s lesson by reviewing the key terms and concepts that students have previously learned and will need to keep in mind for the lesson. This type of anticipatory set ensures that students are on the same page as the teacher, and helps provide a quick recap for anything students may have missed due to absences. After reviewing the key concepts my host teacher will lay out the activity in steps, starting with the first set of instructions and informing students about what the next phase of the lesson will be. Once students have begun the second part of an activity, she delivers the instruction for the third, and so on.

            By spacing out instruction it prevents her students from feeling overwhelmed and helps to “chunk” the information. Another important factor for this type of instruction is that my host teacher is very aware of the amount of time she gives students to work on certain parts of an assignment. Instead of giving students the entire lesson instruction in the beginning and risking them rushing through it she carefully paces out the lesson. She communicates with her students asking who has finished the portion of the lesson and who could use a few more minutes, which helps to keep students from becoming bored and veering off task and disrupting those that are not yet finished.

            Awareness of pacing a lesson and making expectations clear for students are two areas of instruction that I would like to make improvements in. During one of my lessons I made the mistake of providing students with too much time to complete the task and not enough instruction for the second part of the lesson. This resulted in many students choosing to not start the lesson right away, instead talking to their friends and veering off topic. For those that did start the lesson immediately, many finished early and quickly brought out their cell phones and iPods once they were done, assuming that instruction was over. This experience left me feeling very rattled, knowing that I had made a mistake that could cost me my lesson. Instead of allowing the disruptions to continue my host teacher helped me regain the focus of the students and continue on with the lesson. It was much more difficult to regain the attention and focus that I had lost than it would have been to maintain engagement throughout had I been more aware of my errors.

            Keeping my mistakes in mind, I conducted the same lesson for the following class, which went much more smoothly. My host teacher set the tone at the very beginning of class, stating that cell phones would be confiscated if they were not put away. I picked up on my host teacher’s strategies for maintaining an efficient pace with the lesson, and was relieved that students seemed to respond very well to it. We were able to complete all of the pieces of the lesson and still engage in a discussion of the lesson, ensuring that we were not simply “checking boxes” off of the lesson plan, but instead were aiding in the students’ overall comprehension of the material.

Bullying

Bullying

            On my first day at my clinical placement my host teacher had to run some quick errands during the lunch hour, leaving my fellow teacher candidate and I to debrief in the teacher’s lounge and compare notes. While in the lounge we were asked a variety of questions about our teacher education program, our plans for the future, etc. After the small talk wore off the other faculty slipped into their everyday conversation, and I was shocked at some of what we heard. Certain faculty members exchanged comments on students that were far from productive and were mostly negative in nature. It seemed like the adult equivalent to the high school gossip that when engaged in by students we refer to as bullying. This made me wonder, how gossip and bullying is dealt with when even some of the faculty participates in negative gossip about both students and colleagues?

            I brought the conversations I had overheard up to my host teacher, and she informed me that that is why she usually eats lunch in her room or with other teachers that she trusts and that speak positively about students and each other. She remarked that the “boys club” in her department can be a toxic environment to surround yourself with. I was relieved that not all of the faculty engage in that sort of activity, and really appreciated my host teacher allowing me to make my own decisions about that group of people. Not only does my host teacher not tolerate gossip from her colleagues, but she does not tolerate it in the classroom as well.

            My clinical placement has a “no tolerance” policy against bullying, but from my own experiences those policies are hard to enforce when bullying can take on many different forms. My clinical placement is a prime example of this. I never witnessed a fight in the halls, or even a loud argument between students, which upon first glance led me to wonder if miraculously this school didn’t have a bullying problem. I asked my host teacher about the lack of outright bullying that I had seen, and she informed me that it takes on a much less direct approach in the school. Students have taken to cyber-bullying, using Twitter and other outlets such as Ask.fm, a site where students create a profile for people to ask anonymous questions, opening the door for rude comments and rumors to be said without having to account for your actions. I did a quick search for my clinical placement by name on Twitter, and sure enough found dozens of tweets that were about classmates or faculty members at the school.

            From my own experiences and discussions with students I have found that cyber-bullying is easily the most emotionally damaging form of bullying because students are unable to escape from it. Every time a student checks their cell phone or social media accounts they are exposed to this form of harassment, which undoubtedly causes disruptions in the classroom. One student in my host teacher’s classroom faces a high amount of Internet harassment from one particular individual. This led to the two students being placed into separate classes by administration, but due to the public nature of the bullying the student still faces the repercussions of being “ganged up on.” This student is particularly unwilling to open up in class discussion or work in groups and seems unsure of whom she can trust and who will turn against her.

            This type of undercover bullying places added emphasis on knowing one’s students and the struggles they are facing. If my host teacher did not have a relationship of trust with her students this particular student likely would not have opened up about her struggles with her peers, causing her to be labeled a “problem student,” or one that just simply wouldn’t cooperate. The Internet has created new and extremely dangerous outlets for bullying that seem to have contributed to the rise in teen suicide, especially considering that many of the news stories cite bullying as the primary cause for the students depression. I believe that it is imperative that students not be taught that “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” It simply is not true. Words can hurt far longer than physical pain and students need to be made aware and accountable for the consequences of “harmless gossip.”

Observation and Feedback

Observation and Feedback

            After my first lesson in my placement I was made aware that my classroom instruction can be rather static, sticking to one particular place in the room to speak from as a sort of comfort zone. In doing this, I lacked the comfort to utilize proximity in addressing classroom management. Another consequence of feeling “stuck” at the front of the room was the feeling of discomfort with projecting my voice and learning the proper volume of a “teaching voice.” The third place of improvement that my host teach brought my attention to was to introduce the lesson in smaller pieces, explaining a handout as it is being passed out so that students are aware of what the task is and what is expected of them.

            Throughout my second lesson I was aware of the advice I was given previously and worked to put that advice into practice. I was much more comfortable circulating the room, despite one class of students taking my time “leading” instruction as an opportunity to use their cell phones and hold side conversations during instruction. Instead of coming to my rescue, my host teacher allowed me to address these issues myself, greatly increasing my confidence in adhering to the behavior policies that are in place in the classroom. To curb side conversations I was able to utilize proximity to particular students, conducting a large portion of the instruction from the back of the classroom instead of the front.

            This opportunity greatly increased my awareness that classroom behavior must be assessed and built from the very first days in a classroom. Despite knowing and for the most part following the rules during my host teacher’s lessons, the students took the opportunity of a new leader in the classroom to test my boundaries and push limits that they ordinarily would not. I was surprised at how rattled the students’ use of cell phones made me. Seeing the pile of fourteen confiscated cell phones on the front table led me to the realization that the students, for whatever reason, were not listening, were not engaged, and I needed to address the issue quickly in order to salvage the learning activity that was planned for the day. I took a minute to regain my thoughts and take a few deep breaths, and then did my best to rebound back into the lesson. After the lesson was over my host teacher reassured me that I had done the best that I could, and that it is in students’ nature to push the limits of “fresh meat.” It was a relief to know that the students’ actions should not be taken personally and that despite the hiccups in the lesson it was not viewed as a failure.

            The hiccups and struggles of this second lesson would have been entirely overwhelming if I did not have the advice from the previous lesson to keep in mind and draw solutions from. I realized very quickly that proximity is an incredibly useful tool and that projecting my voice is not only necessary for instruction, but also a key aspect of establishing authority in a classroom as a beginning teacher. Another lesson I learned from this experience was that timing is key when allowing students to work on an activity in groups. If the students are offered too little time they are unable to engage in group discussion because they are not finished preparing their responses, and if students are offered too much time they are too susceptible to veering off task.

            While leading the instruction for this learning activity in the next class period I was able to keep all of these key elements in mind, causing the lesson to be much more fluid and productive. To start off the class on a firm note, my host teacher very sternly informed students not to be on their cell phones, or risk them being confiscated for the rest of the school day. This immediately set the tone that any disruptions would not be tolerated. In order to keep the flow of the class moving along I was much more aware of my timing, asking students who needed more time and who was finished, ensuring that the students stayed on task and were neither left behind or left waiting for others to catch up. By utilizing all of the hiccups of the first lesson as learning experiences I was much more confident in my abilities for the second lesson. Had those students not pushed my limits I do not believe I would have felt as confident in my last lesson. They provided me with the mentality that it could only get better from there instead of leaving me feeling defeated on my last day in my clinical placement.