Confident

“I don’t know if I am right but I am going to be confident! I don’t know if I am right but I am going to be confident! I think it might be the wrong answer, but I will share. I am going to be confident”.

These were the phrases that Jorge (pseudonym) said to himself over and over again while we did math today. He often says these words and I wonder if that is what makes the difference between the students that struggles and admit not knowing, than the ones that don’t understand and mask the inability to comprehend. I wonder how much of that kind of attitude is taught in school. I wonder how confident are we to admit mistakes and learn from them?

Education is Politics

While reading Sonia Nieto’s first chapters of What Keeps Teachers Going? I have all this thoughts that are going through my head. I cannot believe how much of her own curiosities as a young teacher, I can relate to.

So far I am a little scared about what I already know is true and what I need to work on, which is collaboration. Sonia Nieteo (2003) argues that, if we want to make a difference it will have to be in “combination of personal, collective, and institutional action.” It is more than I am ready to think about at this point nonetheless it is something for me to think about.

I am also wondering about this idea that “education is politics”. She quotes Paulo Freire and say, “”education is politics!” And he added, “[T]he teacher has to ask, What kind of politics am I doing in the classroom? That is, in favor of whom am I being a teacher?”” (Nieto, 2003, pg.15). Nieto again seem like is talking about big ideas, but I wonder what is it that I must already be doing? I am curious also about what others are doing especially when I think of multicultural education.

Writing a Vignette

“Writing a first draft is very much like watching a Polaroid develop. You can’t – and, in fact, you’re not supposed to – know exactly what the picture is going to look like until it has finished developing” (Lamott 39).

After finishing my vignette a culminating project for my Writing and Methods class, I realize how long it still takes me to gather my ideas and write them down. I was reminded about the long process before getting to the final draft. First you write then you write some more then you revise. You read it to others and then you revise again. 

Learning from Lessson

This week I co-taught a lesson with my Dyad partner on Academic Conversation to three blocks of 8^th graders. It was a very interesting and helpful experience. We worked really hard to plan out the lesson and we thought about mostly everything. At least that is what we thought until we taught it.

We decided that for two blocks we would each have a bigger part to take over. For the first block I lead the conversation the second time my partners did it. By the third time we figured what we each did best and co-taught the lesson. Having the opportunity to observe and listen to each other was very valuable.

By the end of the experience I learned that my level of enthusiasm for the topic we teach is supper important. I was definitely not into H.P. Lovecraft’s dark style of writing or our other choice Edgar Allen Poe. Among the things that we did not plan for was that students would read the poem completely wrong and make the story more evil than it really was. Also we did not think about the chaos it would be to have 8^th graders sit in a circle for academic conversation.

In the end, the students did demonstrate that they could have Academic Conversation without too much drama. Yet it took quite a bit to get them focused enough to do so.

I guess the thing that I struggled with the most was dealing with a genre that I did not like, what could I have done to not fixate on what I did not like?

Una llamada positiva a casa/ A Positive Phone Call Home

Several weeks ago I was in a classroom and my Cooperating Teacher was discussing heroes and heroines. I walked by a student and said to him in Spanish that he might want to listen to the lecture. Later I overheard another student ask him what I had said and he said “she was speaking Mexican.” I did not think of saying anything and I sort of ignored it. However later the teacher was describing Mulan and she said she was from China, that same student mocked a person speaking Chinese. The teacher sent him to a buddy room, and then I felt the need to go and talk to him. We talked for a little bit about how he was doing in school and then about how it was not ok to put anybody else’s culture down and that it was not ok to do it with his own. I told him that we spoke Spanish not Mexican. I also continued telling him that his teacher thought he was capable of doing good work in class and I asked him if he could go back and be a part of his group, he said “yes.” He went back to class and worked with his group without getting in any more trouble.

After getting to know the student a little bit, I became interested in helping him out. I found out that he was the biggest bully in school and that he had gotten expelled more than once. I asked the CT if phone calls had been made home, she said that not many phone calls had been made because the parents don’t speak English and that they usually don’t pick up the phone. Two weeks ago I had the opportunity to do something positive for that same student. The CT gave me a possible name to contact his parents and instructed me to say that he was a bright student but that his attitude was sometimes a bit of a problem. I was very happy to make the phone call. In the beginning I was afraid it was just going to be an answering machine or that it was going to be an angry parent.  To my surprise it was not a machine and it was a work phone number of a very nice mom. I introduced myself and then asked her if I had her name correctly, she laughed and said no then she told me her correct name. I continued to tell her that I was very delighted to work with her son, that even though I was in her sons class for a little while it was nice to get to know him and help him in class. I also said that he was a very bright student and briefly mentioned that he had difficulties focusing in class. I also said that the teachers thought that he would do great in a challenge class. The parent responded very happy and thanked me for making the phone call. She also said that she was afraid it was just going to be another bad phone call to say how terrible her son was doing in school and laughed for a little bit. It was the best feeling ever to share something positive.

The student is still struggling in school and keeps getting suspended for bad behavior in others classes. I guess it is not as great as I thought it would be. I am not one of his teachers and I don’t see him every day, so I can only be like the outside observer occasionally looking in. I only wish I could do more. I also realize that to reverse a behavior that is already settled it might take years to undo.

To Be a Great Teacher

The last few weeks or months I have been thinking about myself as an Educator. Becoming Una Maestra has been my childhood dream but the journey has been long and grueling. At this point it would be silly to give up. However, I have really begun to fear that I don’t have what it takes to be a great teacher. I have fought hard not to give up but this is hard.

It takes great skill and courage to go out into a school and be the great teacher I envision myself to be.

Do I have the skills? Am I brave enough to face the challenges ahead of me? Can I be professional, speak up and collaborate?

These questions have been giving me nightmares and have made me freeze in my tracks. Absolutely, I have opinions and yes I want to contribute to my community but I have also let fears creep back in about who I am. I can’t possibly represent so many voices that are not heard, how am I suppose to do that?

I could take it a step at a time and also recognize that everything we do takes time to learn and hopefully this will be enough to begin with.

Reflection #8

For our final class, I really liked looking at the posters that we made at the beginning of our eight days together revisiting the information. It was also nice to see where we were as a class with our confidence to talk about Health and Fitness with our students. When looking back at our charts, I was surprised at how little we focused on how to organize our information and focused more on content. I think that there is nothing wrong with what we want to teach but that we need to have the right balance of content and organization, in order for us to be able to talk about any subject.
Food Journal
The food journals made me realize how little I take care of my body. I have stopped taking care of my body the way that I use to because I always see others more important than taking care of myself. I think it is really hard to honestly say that I will start working out and eating the right things if I am not going to be consistent. The hardest part for me will be to accept another way of life that is less stressed out and relaxed for my well being and for the people I love.

Reflection #7

I taught my micro-lesson and it was a great experience. Although I thought it was a terrible feeling during the lesson. I appreciate that we were recorded while teaching our lesson because we are our hardest critics. I usually do not get to see myself in a presentation and I always assume that I do extremely terrible talking in front of others, but it is not as bad as I think it is. However I also did notice that my ability to think up questions in the spot was difficult for me to do. It might be possible that if I pace myself I might be able to come up with clear thoughts to articulate in class. From the lesson itself I think that I could have done better if we would have integrated one activity into the other like getting to talk about words as we played the video and then writing them on the board as we went along.
We also did some discussion about The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, one of the thoughts that I had during the discussion was about our disconnect with cultures other than our own, I think that there is little tolerances and without it we are not able to discuss and solve issues. There is great divide and disparity in how people feel about other cultures and I can see it reflected in how we interact with each other. It makes me scared for how we will present ourselves to families. We truly are afraid of knowing or admitting that we don’t know because the assumption is that we do we know everything. The thought that comes to my mind is that as adults taking college level classes we are given blank maps to fill out and for the most part we would fail to know where anything is. My point is that if we are not able to even pinpoint it on a map how can we even begin to understand others.

Reflection #6

Today the first half of class was micro-teaching and I think that the groups did a great job at handling the space and adjusting to what we had. I think that they did great in the small classroom we were in.
For the second half of class we got to do extremely fun activities with words and looking at objects while also looking and holding a human brain and heart, it was really interactive. I thought it was a great way to get our mind to think about what is going on with the body. Getting our brains to do things and process information is even more enhanced by the experience of getting to actually hold human organs. I imagine that doing something similar with students would be an experience that they would not forget.

Reflection #5

After we had another great microteaching group presented today, we headed over to the dance studio and we did several fun activities. All of the activities we did in class today are great to pair with a lesson. The jump rope rhymes is a great way to add physical activity to a literacy lesson. The germ transmission activity could be a helpful add on to a lesson, a fun way to visually demonstrate how fast germs spread. I had a great time doing these activities and learning about how to incorporate them to our class activities. They are all great to increase physical activity in our students and also help with collaboration. What I may get stuck with though is finding ways to keep everyone engaged if children in a classroom are not able or willing to participate.