When It's Okay To Teach

As someone who loves the rewards of facilitation and open dialogues, this week quickly taught me that direct teaching can be just as rewarding and at moments, more important than an open dialogue. I spent the first half of the week introducing wow words (or more descriptive language) that students could use in their writing. I had (what I thought!) an exciting interactive mini-unit on the use and practice of these words. While the lessons never failed miserably I was forced to think on my feet and often quickly change my original plans. At the beginning of some of the lessons I would ask open-ended questions to the students, which never seemed to guide the class to the purpose of the lesson. For example, during the first lesson where I had written out my weekend story with some “boring” words, I asked students, “What words do you think I used too much?” The students, eager to participate, replied with a list of words that although I had said them a number of times, were not the words I was focusing on for this lesson. In that moment, I changed my teaching style and said clearly, even underlining, the words that I used too much. By the final lesson I had a handful of sentences written on large poster paper where the class decided how to rewrite/replace the boring word (said, good, bad) in the sentence with a wow word. This was much more direct teaching than I had been previously comfortable with, but the students (and I) felt more organized and clear about the expectations and how to use the skill I was teaching them. I know there are times when a facilitation style of teaching is more useful for students or for the objective on a lesson, but recognizing that direct-teaching is actually an essential part of schooling was an important lesson for me to learn.

Parent-teacher conferences were held during the afternoon for three days. I sat in on a handful of these meetings observing how my teacher addresses parent concerns and maneuvers balancing her concerns with honoring the strengths of the child. Sometimes I wondered why concerns that the teacher has expressed to me throughout the day, were not addressed during the meeting. During the meeting with the parents of one of the ELL students, I wondered what the legal obligations of the school are to have translators for the parents. It was clear how much parents want to know what to do to help their son or daughter be successful when the parents of a student with some behavior and academic challenges had their meeting with the teacher.

When I first learned how teachers recognize (and memorize!) the strengths and weakness of each child, through formal and informal assessment, it quickly became one of the skills I was most afraid I would not be able to “do” as a teacher. Throughout my time in classrooms, it becomes clearer how much teachers can learn about their students. I know what to observe, how to observe, and the usefulness of jotting down a few notes about each child at the end of every few days. I know what questions to ask students when they are struggling with a topic or have quickly finished an assignment to assess their real understanding of the situation or problem. After only 3 or so weeks, I feel comfortable talking about the academic and social issues of each of the students in the classroom.

Migration

Due to some complications I'm now in another school--a rural school in a second grade classroom. Instead of driving past tall buildings, malls, hotels---I take long, winding roads pass farmland and trees collecting sap for the syrup-making season. Instead of having 20 + students and teaching in a classroom full of mostly Puerto Rican children, there are 14 students (with now three adults in the classroom) who are mostly white. My cooperating teacher writes a beautiful blog about her classroom and you might even be able to see some photos of me working with kids (http://sunderlandgrade2.blogspot.com/). While there are a few English Language Learners, most of them are born in the U.S. and are highly proficient (academically and socially) in English so instruction looks a lot different than it did in the urban school where many students were literally learning English in school. I make these statements not as judgments, but as observations of differences.

I'm excited to be a teacher for many reasons--but mainly because I think it's brilliant to attempt to understand how the minds of children work--how do they learn to care about the world, how do they learn to become citizens of the world. As part of my student teaching requirements, I am designing (and implementing) an integrated unit. Based on what the kids have already been taught--my unit (which I'll start in a few weeks) is titled "Measuring our stories: using geography and measurement to learn about our location and histories." I am using the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks of second grade to combine learning expectations for geography (social studies) and measurement (math). There are definitely ways to integrate literature and writing components. Students will explore their personal histories of migration--by learning about measurement tools (rulers, weights, etc.) and maps to understand key geographic elements of the world. Based on the reading I've done about English Language Learners having units that integrate many similar themes across disciplines helps, especially, ELL students develop the key language in one area (instead of having to learn many different sets of vocabulary for disconnected units). The ELL students in this class, while proficient and can easily "pass" as learning the material, I'm noticing the ways in which they are struggling with understanding (really understanding the content) because learning is so "language-based." I'm sure an integrated unit won't just help the ELL students--often accommodations for one group, is ultimately useful for everyone (it's why having students with different needs, I think, is so helpful as a teacher--it challenges teachers to make sure they are reaching all of their students).

Okay back to the unit. I ultimately want students to know that there are specific measurement tools that are helpful when creating relationships between one thing and another thing (this is what we call the "big idea") and I root some of this in immigration stories (the other part of the unit involves creating maps of their school/classroom and exploring ways to use measurement tools). Students will share their immigration stories--but I'm struggling with this. I want students to understand that some people find the U.S. home--and have always found it as home--even if they have moved within the U.S. (or been forced to moved). I want students to understand that even though the label might imply migration from one continent to another place (i.e. African American) some folks don't feel any connection to the "original home" and thus that place might not be "home" at all. I want student to understand that migration is still happening. I want students to understand that some people don't know where their biological families "came from," but that doesn't mean they don't have a history. I want to present the idea of disabled folks leaving nursing homes and into their communities as migration, too. (If you have any thoughts on good children's literature that might address some of these questions--please let me know). I want students to know that stories of immigration are fluid and there is no "right" way to answer these questions, but it's important to explore our personal histories to get a sense of how we got to where we are now. I think it's a tangible way to give second graders a sense of history and time.

I hope ultimately there is a respectful balance between giving students time to share their stories (and learn about key geographical features from these continents and using map keys to measure distance!) and exposing them to other stories of migration. By holding multiple stories, I hope students learn who is "not" in their classroom and community, but who is present in the world. I hope students learn to think critically about why this might be and whether it's good or bad or just is. And this is why teaching is so exciting for me.