Official Response 1

Last week was as action-packed as it could get as a college student/pre-student teacher.  This blog-post will encompass the highlights of my week and will also consist of my reflections in conjunction with my Instructional Strategies and Methods course (ISAM or methods).  The information and ideas that I will include to supplement my experience will be from Building Adolescent Literacy in Today’s English Classrooms by Randy Bomer and Teaching English By Design by Peter Smagorinksy.  These readings will be referenced in future posts. 

So far we have read the preface through chapter one to Smagorinksy’s book and Chapter one of Bomer’s book.  Each of these books provides up-to-date tips and guides for student teacher candidates beginning their careers in the digital age.  Teaching English By Design mostly focuses on the design of lessons, units, and the entire course, whereas, Building Adolescent Literacy in Today’s English Classrooms focuses on content, environment, relationships and a plethora of other helpful guidelines and metaphors for beginning teachers. 

Reflection on the Fight and Classroom Structure

Mondays are usually filled with your cliché “Oh just a case of the Mondays,” “Just another Monday in paradise,” or “Another day closer to Friday.”  I chose the optimistic route and arrived early at my Co-op. My Monday was your typical Monday; rowdy middle-schoolers recapping the weekend, causing headaches for the teachers, but this is where you can judge the teachers that care to understand and keep order for the sake of learning.  I don’t mean the kind of totalitarian order that should be ruled with an iron fist, but the kind that creates an environment that is dedicated to learning, which can be difficult on a Monday for middle school students.  I bring up the chaotic element because it leads to the highlight of my Monday: a fight. 

 I had never experienced a fight where I was supervising so this was a bit of a shocking experience but it also called for reflection.  Attention, especially for middle school students, is a volatile trait.  At their age, and especially in today’s digital age, attention is their very enemy.  Bomer says “It’s not really a matter of attention deficits resulting from misfires in the brain; it’s a matter of an attention economy in supply.  Everyone wants our attention but it is in limited supply” (Bomer 4).  Bomer is referring to technology but I make this reference because it is true for middle school students. A classroom environment  that lacks the structure or relevance, among other important elements, will lose the attention of the students, thus creating distractions, and potential environments that will hinder the learning of students. 

Falcon Day

Friday was parent swap day at my placement, which is in conjunction with my methods course.  I had never experienced a parent-swap day at a high school before in my life.  I was very excited to meet the student’s parents but with excitement, came nervousness.  I was nervous because I didn’t know what to expect from meeting the students parents, but it ended up being a great experience for everybody!! 

This was a shortened day where the parents got to come in to every classroom and experience a falcon day in their student’s metaphorical “shoes.” I had the pleasure of meeting two class-full of parents.  My Cooperating Teacher (CT) and I got the opportunity to introduce ourselves and also interact with the parents.  There were several students who came to school because their parents could not attend.

The Activity that my CT had prepared was a creative writing activity.  This activity generated from the RAFT method, which stands for Role, Audience, Format, and Topic.  Though it was only one class period, the parents and students were engaged in the beginning process of a workshop which Bomer explains that “in a workshop, whether in an English classroom or a woodshop, the work is still there waiting when the maker walks in” (Bomer 13).  The brainstorming process in which the students and parents engaged in is an primary stages of exploratory talk.  This is the kind of speeches, which a student has assembled prior knowledge, but is making sense of their thoughts and processes through talking. 

Bomer, Randy. Building Adolescent Literacy in Today's English Classrooms. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2011. Print.

Smagorinsky, Peter. Teaching English by Design: How to Create and Carry out Instructional Units. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2008. Print.