Becoming a teacher

I originally signed up for this class because it would give me some points needed in order to renew my inactive Utah Educator License. Although I didn't think that I would learn anything new from the course, I was hoping that it would direct me as to whether I should go back into teaching or not. I have to admit that all of the lessons, videos, readings, assignments and experiences taught me something new and answered questions I had about managing a classroom, relating to students, and developing a purposeful curriculum.

The Service Learning experience was particularly beneficial in helping me to gently get back into the classroom and interact with students and teachers again. Substitute teaching also helped me picture myself in front of a classroom as a full-time teacher. With these experiences, I learned more about myself--strengths and weaknesses--that I needed to fully inspect before making the decision to return to the teaching profession.


I was both surprised and delighted to conclude that I can return to teaching and be a successful and useful teacher and student advocate. I learned that I am much more confident, knowledgeable and wise than I was 25 years ago. The most important thing I learned is that a teacher is more likely to be a great teacher if she puts students' learning and well-being as the primary focus instead of worrying about how to manage students and a classroom.

My next step is to look for a teaching job that will best meet the needs of my family and accentuate my strengths. Although my certification is in secondary education, I found that interacting with elementary students gave me a fresh perspective that I wouldn't have had if I took a secondary ed class. I am surprised to realize that my strength would be to teach Spanish to junior high students. I guess my years of raising seven children and doing a lot of online teaching has given me a better perspective of this age group and I think that I would have the needed patience,compassion and skills that a less experienced teacher might have.

Course Topics and Service Learning

I am learning a lot in this class and I am able to see how it relates to real-life experiences in the classroom by participating in Service Learning. For instance, I saw a cooperating teacher coordinating with a student teacher about the social studies standards that they would be teaching. That taught me how important Standards are and how they are implemented in the classroom.

Blogging has encouraged me to consider how I could implement what I am learning in my Service Learning experience. It has helped me make connections to important concepts such as classroom environment and teacher-student interactions that I may not have remembered if I had not recorded them.

When I wrote my first blog I hadn't spent any time with the cooperating teacher in the classroom. I didn't know what to expect with the experience. I was very rusty working with kids in the classroom and was hoping that I would learn a lot that would help me when I went back to teaching. The experience was invaluable. I discovered that I really enjoy working with kids and have a knack for connecting with them. I learned so many new techniques for teaching, setting up a classroom, using a variety of resources, classroom management, testing and using technology.

Standards

I spoke with my cooperating teacher about standards and which subjects get the most attention. She believes that math and science are the ones that are getting the most attention because they are two of the subjects being evaluated for the standardized testing done at the end of the year. I have seen how math is a high priority in my cooperating classrooms because it is taught for the biggest chunk of time during the day. It is the first subject taught in one of my cooperating classrooms and taught right after lunch in the other classroom. I believe that it is meant to be done when students are best able to pay attention and learn. With science, I have seen the team of 4th grade teachers work together to teach the various standards of their science curriculum. The teachers specialize in a particular standard of a science unit and rotate students so that they learn from the teacher who is specialized in that standard. 

I have also seen the teachers put a lot of effort into helping students improve their reading skills. The English Language Arts standards expect the students in each grade to be able to comprehend certain things as they read, such as identifying the narrator's point of view . I have seen the teachers have the students read many texts as they practice identifying these literary elements. 

My cooperating teacher believes that social studies is a subject that gets pushed aside a little because of the time needed to focus on math, science and reading. She believes that standardize tests are fundamentally good because they give students and teachers standards to work for and can be measured at the end of the year. 

English Learners

Lau v. Nichols (1974) was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Supreme Court decided that the lack of additional language instruction for students with limited English proficiency in public schools violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin in any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance. Schools are required to give sufficient language instruction to students with limited English so that they receive equal educational opportunities.

I have encountered many English Language Learners in the school where I have done my Service Learning hours and as I have substitute taught this school year. I have been particularly interested in the progress of these students because my teaching experience has been in foreign language learning and because I currently teach online English to non-English speaking students. In addition, I have experienced the stress of living in a country where the language is foreign to me.

Because of these personal experiences, I have watched to see how English learners are being supported in the classroom. Although I have seen students identified as English Language Learners leave the classroom to receive additional help learning English, I have also observed that many English learners are not receiving the support they need. One student in my Service Learning classroom illustrates the problem that I have observed in other classrooms. This student speaks English, but it is obvious that English isn't her first language. She tries to hind behind other students so that she is not noticed and called on by the teacher. She whispers her questions when a teacher or aide is nearby because she doesn't want to make a mistake in speaking. She often gets behind on assignments because she doesn't understand the instructions and doesn't want to ask for help. I have seen this behavior frequently in other schools and in other classrooms.

With the influx of more and more ELL students in our schools, there is an increasing demand for teachers and resources to help these students and meet the demands of our laws requiring equal educational opportunities. I am not sure what the best solutions are to this dilemma, but I believe that it is an issue that administrators and teachers will increasingly struggle to resolve in their schools.

Diversity

I have observed that there is a wide range of reading abilities in the service learning classroom where I volunteer each week. Some of the students in the class are able to read very quickly and have a high level of reading comprehension. Other students are able to read fluently but have a more difficult time understanding what they read. There are a few students who have probable reading disorders and have a very difficult time keeping pace with their peers in completing assignments because of their low reading levels.

The teacher that I work with does an excellent job helping students of all reading levels make progress. She makes sure that students with reading disorders are referred to specialists that can determine what strategies need to be implemented to help them with their disability. She works with slower readers in small groups each day reading books on their level. She frequently dissects words phonetically to help low level readers sound out words and practices sight words with flash cards. The teacher uses her aides to work with students with reading delays on assignments that require more reading time. Students with reading disabilities are sometimes given accommodations to help them finish assignments at home or modified requirements to help them keep up with their peers. 

I am happy to report that I have seen a lot of progress in the reading ability of all the students that I have observed in the past two months. I am frequently asked to have the students do a timed reading with me at the beginning and end of the week. They are required to do the specific reading alone, with another student, or in a small group several times during the week. With practice, the students are almost always able to read more fluently as the week goes on.

Engaged Learning

Our Service Learning classroom uses a variety of methods to get students focused, eager and ready to learn. One of these methods is to get students to move by having them sing and clap songs to learn multiplication facts. I have noticed that the students are able to recall multiplication lists by learning these songs. When they have to do multiplication problems or long division, they first write a list of multiples on the side of their papers. Most of the time they write the list while they are singing the song to themselves.

The cooperating teach is skilled at helping the student develop independent problem-solving skills by encouraging them to find various ways to solve problems. I have noticed this the most when they work out long division problems. Long division is a new skill for the fourth graders and many students struggle with these math concepts. To test their understanding, the teacher will give them a division problem and ask them to solve it any way they choose. Many students can find a way to solve the problem with a few clues and by following the examples other students show them. The objective is to have them use any technique that they are learning to solve the problem.

Another method the teacher uses to engage the students is to encourage them to discuss with each other the things that they are learning. The class has recently read a series of passages about various activists who made a difference in their communities by organizing protests, promoting charity causes and educating the public about important issues. The students discussed how these people helped improve the lives of others. The students think about heroes in their own lives and discuss how these people make a difference in their families or communities. 

Cooperating Teacher

The cooperating teacher that I observe and help in the classroom uses many techniques to create a positive classroom environment, establish routines and offer choices to students. These techniques help the students be happy and productive in the classroom.

The teacher offers some interesting choices to her students. One of the choices is where each student chooses to sit each week. When the students come into the classroom on Monday morning they have a wide variety of seating choices. There are desks, short desks and tables that the students can choose to sit by for the week. In addition, there are chairs, cushions, balls and stools that each student can choose to use. I noticed that all of the seating options give the children a feeling of freedom, autonomy and individual choice.

Another technique that the teacher uses to support a positive learning environment is displaying the daily schedule on the board. This enables the students to see exactly what the routine will be throughout the day. I have noticed that this helps them finish tasks on time because they know when they will move on to the next activity. It also helps them work through subjects that they don't enjoy as much because they can see when the next activity will begin.

The cooperating teacher uses various rewards to encourage a positive classroom environment. She has a chart with each student’s name on a tag. The student can remove his name and move it up or down on the chart at the teacher’s request. The teacher will call out a student at any moment during the day and request that he move his name up on the chart for good behavior or down on the chart for bad behavior. Students can receive "dots" when they move up the chart and for other positive behavior throughout the day. They can trade their dots for classroom rewards such as candy or free time. I have noticed that this fourth grade class is highly motivated to earn rewards and the result has been a very positive classroom.