Posting on behalf of Caroline…

The opportunity to complete a service learning component has brought new meaning to the outcomes of working within a classroom. Even after just two, relatively simple work sessions with students, I have begun to get a feel for what my peers say when they discuss how different it really is when you leave the college classroom and enter the one where you become the teacher. Forty minutes really does feel like ten when you have goals you wish to accomplish, and there is never enough time.
I witnessed five different styles of learning in my five students, and the idea of differentiation of assessment and instruction has never felt more relevant to me. Ideas that were one paragraph in a textbook are now critical to real-life application, and I had found myself digging through notes to remind myself of WHY these things mattered. It’s one thing to do a presentations on visual learners, and another to sit down with a student who requests you draw them a diagram.
There was an extreme sense of responsibility to these students who I had never met; to use their time productively, and walk in the room prepared to be a resource. These are experiences and revelations that can only come from direct contact with students and being thrown into the role of teacher, and this service learning project has done just that.

My first hands on teaching experience in York was a learning experience for my students, but it was also definitely a learning experience for myself. My two lessons in York were my first two lessons ever, and I have to admit that it’s a relieving feeling to cast away the weight of speculation and now possess a better understanding of what a real teaching experience is like. As I anticipated, the smaller group structure definitely made the experience more manageable and was a good way to ease into actually teaching a lesson. Overall, I found the experience very beneficial and it has me eager to continue the pursuit of my career in education.

Teaching my first real lesson allowed me hands on experience to actually exercise some of the strategies and practices learned in Block II. The skills and knowledge I gained from Block II definitely helped me in the planning and execution of my lesson, and it was an interesting experience to actually employ certain practices in a classroom setting. I feel that after using certain strategies and practices learned in Block II, such as cold calling and group work, I now have a better understanding of how they work and the effect they have in the classroom.

One aspect of teaching that I faced difficulty with early on in my lesson was accommodating the learning styles of my students. Not only did I have to account for each student’s individual learning style, but I also had to account for the differences between their learning style and my own. After taking college courses and participating in college level discourse, it took me a while to start, in a sense, thinking like a 9th grader. My anticipatory set for my first lesson involved a group activity where the students and I created a thesis statement about dogs and cats, analogous to the thesis statement they were writing about their two different religions. I felt this activity engaged the students, and also made the process of creating their own thesis statement about religion relatable to something. After the first lesson, I had a better understanding of the learning styles of each student and was able to use this knowledge to assist in the one on one conferences I had with the students. For example, one student enjoyed football and hunting, so I used those two examples to help him relate to the essay topic by explaining how to include common information about the two subjects.

My experience in York was a valuable one, and although I gained a lot from the experience, it was not without some adversity. The group of students I had came into the first lesson with little knowledge of how to write a thesis statement. Speaking to other classmates, I gathered that at least a couple of students per group could write a sound thesis statement, but my group struggled. Therefore, I ended up spending a lot more time than I planned focusing on thesis statement writing. Although this hindered the overall implementation of my lesson, I felt it was the most important part of my lesson. This experience allowed me to realize that my lesson plans will not always be perfectly implemented, and sometimes I need to improvise. These difficulties, though, proved to be valuable within themselves.

Teaching in York this past week has been an incredibly value experience, both for myself and hopefully for the students as well. I haven’t been in a classroom formally for a while, and though I’ve never doubted my decision to become an educator, the past few days have reminded me that I’ve absolutely made the right career choice. I enjoyed working with the 9th graders so much!

Visiting York helped to reinforce both ELA content and School of Education pedagogy for me, so I feel that it was the perfect exercise for an English course with education components. For example, I made a handout about how to write a thesis statement and how to organize an essay that I feel was helpful for students, and the creation of this material required me to reflect on both my knowledge of language skills and my experience with effective teaching strategies. This project allowed me to use my understanding of teaching English in a practical way, and certainly helped to give me relevant classroom experience related to the pertinent topic of essay writing. For these reasons, I feel this exercise perfectly bridged the gap between English and hands-on educational experience.

Additionally, I relied on some of the lessons I learned from the School of Education during this process, such as how to accommodate for different learning styles and how to interact with people of diverse cultures. The materials I made provided scaffolding for students who have a very wide range of abilities, and the lesson plan I created allowed some students to move ahead when they were ready, while others were able to receive additional support at the same time. Also, the students I worked with were certainly of diverse lifestyles. For instance, access to relevant technologies such as computers and printers might signify a different lifestyle than one where these luxuries are nonexistent; half of my students (two out of four) said they had a computer at home, while the other two did not. I was able to accommodate all of my students by allowing those who had computers to type their final drafts and print them, while I allowed my students without computers to hand write their essays, asking them to double space. Interestingly, but I suppose not surprisingly, the two students who struggled the most with this assignment and who needed additional support were the two without personal computers, which might lead to any number of conclusions, but is perhaps one of the reasons these particular students were further behind their peers.

Being in the classroom again definitely improved my sense of self-efficacy and professional development in both smaller and more significant ways. Even the simple act of waking up early, dressing in teaching attire, and walking through the hallways abundant with lockers and student artwork helped focus me in terms of adopting the role of “teacher.” Having a sense of my purpose in York’s environment allowed me to easily flip the switch from “Geneseo student” to “instructor,” allowing me to have a more authentic experience than if, say, the York students were to travel to SUNY Geneseo for tutoring.

Finally, I feel a greater sense of responsibility for the achievement of the students at York because I view them as my neighbors now (literally, they are so close!), more so than I did before this experience. My belief is that when teacher candidates learn out of context of an actual classroom, and instead encounter content and pedagogy within the confines of a college campus, something is lost. In a college classroom, we don’t create, implement, and modify our lessons for real people, but for hypothetical students who we are told we’ll meet sometime in the future; the motivation to achieve mastery is much less when it is clear that the only person who will ever see the materials we create is our professor. In the case with York, I feel as though I spent much more time and energy thinking about how to get my lesson just right, so that the real students I would be sharing it with could get as much as possible out of my teaching. The difference between these two scenarios is the people, and the community which is created through entering into their classroom has proved to be a powerful motivator.

After being made aware of the specific needs York has, I feel drawn to the district, and hope that I might be able to contribute to the students’ growth in a greater way after partaking in the service learning component of my class. I hope to reach out to Amy Ivers again in the future and perhaps offer a tutoring service for her students who wish to improve their writing, because I am no longer operating with the idea of hypothetical students in a room I can’t imagine. Instead, I am picturing the actual faces of the students who need my help, inside a room that I’ve already been. This is what stands out to me the most about our service learning experience, and what I am most grateful for having a chance to experience.

After going into York High School today, I really got a sense of what it’s like to be in a classroom.  My experience working with students is fairly limited, and I really enjoyed working in these small groups.  I think that having only three students in my group made my own transition from student to teacher easier, as I wasn’t expected to get up in front of an entire class and lecture them about writing.  Working with these students, I felt that I used a lot of what we discussed in class, not only in terms of teaching them strategies, but our emphasis on learning each other’s names and listening intently about the subjects we discuss.  I think that these interactions were really useful, because the students seemed to want to talk about what they were planning on writing and sharing their work so far because I tried to be more conversational with them.  I tried to pay attention to each of them, and while I couldn’t exactly get a sense of their learning styles, being able to see what they were struggling with in in that first class period gave me a good idea of what to say about writing.

Now, working on giving feedback on the assignment we did in class, I feel that I am developing a much greater understanding of how to respond to students.  Knowing how sensitive teenagers in high school can be, I think it’s important to really take the time to write out the good and the bad in their work, so that they can see what they have done write and feel good about it instead of feeling dejected with the bad marks on their papers.  I want to be as attentive as possible to their development, and make sure that the feedback I am giving them is going to be useful to them not just for this particular paper, but the rest of the year (and further into the future).  I think that working with these students has given me a better perspective on what it means to truly work with a student, and adapt not only to get them to understand your method of thinking, but to look at how they think and use that to help them improve.

When Amy Ivers visited my English 488 class to discuss the logistics of our classroom teaching, she mentioned that her students were very much involved in farming and football. Because of this, I ruminated on a way to make learning a thesis statement more relevant to a student who had this type of background. I decided to draw a parallel between a thesis statement and to a quarterback as well as to a John Deere tractor. In the outline I handed out to the students, I  wrote, “A good thesis is like a quarterback. The team needs him in order to make touchdowns, but he can’t do it without the support of his team. In the same way, in order to answer the question (or make touchdowns), you need to support your answer (the team supports the quarterback).  The other example I used was that “A good thesis is like a John Deere tractor. This powerful tractor can plow a field, but it can’t do it without diesel. In the same way, in order to answer the question (or plow fields, you need to support your answer (the way diesel supports the tractor). These parallels worked very well. When I handed out the outlines, I asked my group of 4 students how many lived on a farm. Two students replied that they did. I then asked how many of the students were involved in football. One student played football, while another two students played soccer (one student was involved in both farming and soccer).  When the students saw the link between thesis writing and an extracurricular that they enjoyed, they seemed to perk an interest in the subject. They readily volunteered to read out loud and were quick to fill out the organizer in a cogent and clear manner. I am very happy in this because the students’ disinterest  in writing was something I worried about.

Having never been in a classroom as a teacher, I am pretty nervous about going into York tomorrow.  I feel prepared, and I’m happy that we will be working in small groups as opposed to one 488 student in front of the entire class.  I have been tutoring since the summer, and while the groups are three or four students instead of one, I see it more like working with my student as opposed to working with an entire class, which is much more comforting.  I’m expecting that the students will be able to do the assignment, and I really hope that what I plan to say will make sense to them.  I think that’s probably my biggest concern, but I think that the materials we have prepared both individually and as a class are pretty clear.

I’m expecting the period to go by very quickly, just because I have gotten so used to the amount of time we spend in our college classes, and this is almost half the time.  I hope that we will be able to finish the lesson we have planned, so we will be able to give the students constructive criticism when we return on Thursday. I am thinking that when they write their outline, it might make it easier for them to write a paragraph or introduction, and hopefully the will have at least one finished by the time we have to leave.

Whether or not we get everything done tomorrow, I think the experience is a good introduction to working in a classroom.  I think that just having the experience is worthwhile, because we are actually preparing a lesson and applying it, instead of just observing.