Final Summarized Field Blog

Throughout the year I have been trying to observe how teachers generate productivity and activity within the classroom, and I have found out quite a lot. One of the most simple ways that I have seen that have helped teachers generate productivity is by arranging the desks in the classroom into groups or pods, or by working in groups. This system worked at all levels of education, those being early childhood education and elementary school, middle school, high school, and I have noticed my college professors use it as well to help stimulate the class’s productivity if no one is participating in class.

Another strategy that I have noticed that teachers use to generate productivity and activity in a classroom is to do group work. Many students struggle a little bit to do work on their own, or do not like to participate in class because they are too shy or are scared to be wrong if they answer or comment on the conversation during class. Working with a group of peers makes it easier for those students to come out of their shells and work with the rest of the class. This type of activity with other students in the classroom helps student’s learn. Class participation and activity helps not only the one student but the whole class learn. 

Clinical Reflection

The clinical teaching experience was a fun, but also stressful experience. I enjoyed doing it but i do not believe that our group was fully prepared for the task. Which is when i learned that the phrase "It is always better to be over prepared", the phrase i have heard from countless teachers is almost too true. To teach a lesson you must know what you are going to do inside and out, and must have plans for emergencies or if something just doesn't work out. Going in i thought that our group was prepared to do the lesson and get all the way through the fifty minutes of class that we were responsible to teach, but i think that we found out very quick that we were not fully prepared to teach the class. I was not ready for what i experienced. I was very stressed out about the lesson. I was worried about doing a good job teaching and hoping that people would participate in class, and etc. I believe that the students we had in class were ready to learn, and that they had read in preparation for the class, which really helped with getting through the lesson. I know this because they came in and participated in the class discussion without hesitation.

This is believe proposal

I believe that creating a safe learning environment is imperative to having a good classroom

where everyone can learn. If a child does not feel safe in a classroom or school then they are not going to learn as well. There are different extremes to it, but it ranges as serious as a child is being bullied in a school so bad that they will not even come to school anymore. Even something as little as being too little scared to participate in class can make a large difference in the education a student will receive, and it will effecting that student for the rest of his or her life.

There are countless differences in race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and more in schools all over the world. I believe that the first and one of the most important steps in the right direction for our schools is to teach our students to accept everybody else for who they are. It will not only help students get a better education, but it will help society as a whole.

There are many issues, hopes, and dreams that my personal beliefs respond to. One of my biggest problems with society today is that we do not accept people for who they are. I believe that a person should be able to do whatever they want that makes them happy without having to worry about other peoples judging them for their choices. I believe that you should always do what makes you happy, and it bothers me that people in the world do not accept others because of some of their choices. The prior experiences that form the interests on topic of my research paper come from my childhood. Some of my family’s closest friends are two lesbian women named Shelly and Molly, and I also have an aunt that is a lesbian as well. I grew up with them around me all the time and I didn’t think anything of it. I knew that Shelly and Molly were a couple, and it just seemed completely normal to me, but when I started growing up I realized that not everyone felt the same way that I did about gay relationships, or people that identify as LGBTQ in general. Many people think that is wrong to be a part of any part of the LGBTQ community. It bothers me that people think this way, and cannot be accepting of other peoples views. Other topics that I will make connections with/ study will be bulling, discrimination, or just simply the non-acceptance of other people’s life styles in general. The big questions that I have to ask on the topic are, what kind of improvements would be made in our education system if everybody was accepting? How to create a safe learning environment in a school and classroom? And, how do we teach people to be accepting of other people’s life styles?  I want to know what kind of cultures are not accepted by others and how this effects the learning environment of students.

References

Herback, J. (2005). Creating a Safer Learning Environment. Book Links. 14(3). 30.

Gayle, B. M., Cortez, D., & Preiss, R. W. (2013). Safe Spaces, Difficult Dialogues, and Critical   Thinking. International Journal For The Scholarship Of Teaching & Learning. 7(2), 1-8.

Creating a safe Learning Environment to Improve Student Success. (cover story). (2013). Internet@Schools, 20(5), 8-13.

Creating a safe Learning Environment to Improve Student Success. (cover story). (2013). Internet@Schools, 20(5), 8-13.

FieldBlog: Shaker Middle School

In the first classroom that my group observed at Shaker Middle school the teacher had the students working on a project when we walked in. It was a seventh grade class and had about twenty kids in it. Each of the students had a computer to work with. The teacher told us about all of the other projects that she had her students do and it seemed like a lot of fun projects that would create not only productivity in the classroom, but it would also spark a lot of creativity as well. The second classroom we went to was a mix of sixth and seventh graders and had eighteen students in it, they are both relativly small classrooms.The second one had two sides of desks with an isle going down the middle so there was no back of the room. Mrs. Roth was the teacher in this room and she had been teaching for seventeen years. She had the students working i small groups or with partners on a project to write a rap about events that they were working on in the chapter that they were reading. It was a good way to connect the students to subjects that they may not have been interested in while connecting them to something that they already relate to in rap. We were not in either of the classes very long, and in the second classroom there was not much to observe because the students were finishing up a project. She did answer many questions about being a teacher though and she was very helpful.

BlogPost 10

From what I have learned in class, and what I personally believe from my past experiences in education, I think that to have a good education you need to have a few things. The first thing that you need to have a good education is to have a safe learning environment. A safe learning environment is crucial, if a student feels uncomfortable in a classroom, and is too scared to participate in class because they are afraid that they are going to be wrong then the student is not going learn very well. A student should also not have to be worried about being bullied or discriminated against for any reason in a classroom. Everybody should be accepting of others no matter what their beliefs, sexual orientation, race, etc. I believe that everybody should do whatever makes them happy, and that they should not have to be worried about what others think of them. But even better than that i think that people should just accept others for who they are. We are all human beings so we should all respect each other for who we are, no matter if it contradicts what we personally believe or not. Everyone is equal and should be treated that wayAnother key component to having a good education, is for the teacher to know all of its students very well. A teacher needs to know how the students learns to be able to teach them. If they do not know the best way their students learn then how are they going to teach them to the best of their abilities.

Observation Hours: Hours 6-10

I was with Mr. Joseph again. He continued the project from the day before in class. During these periods the classes were just finishing up what they had started the day before. Since they were almost near the end he just watched most of the time and let the students work until they needed help. He also added another part of the project, he made the students find a pop culture reference that related to the section that they were assigned to summarize. To help them out he gave them an example of a song that had lyrics about war in them. If they needed help with this he would give them more examples of what they needed that led them towards something that was relatable to the subject.

Observation Hours: Hours 1-5

For my ten observational hours, I decided to observe a teacher at my former high school, Mr. Joseph. He is a freshman world history teacher at Kirtland High School.
Observation:
For his lesson on the first day he posed a situation for all of his classes where his students had to write summaries of sections of the chapter. He broke the students into seven different groups where they were each assigned a section of the chapter. Mr. Joseph explained the project to the students and then let them go on their way. After a few minutes of letting the students get set up and beginning to work, he went around to each group and helped them out if they had any questions. He did not simply give them the answers, he gave them help and guided them to the correct responses he was looking for.
What Happened:
This lesson was very useful for many reasons, instead of standing at the front of class lecturing the entire class period he broke them into groups and sort of delegated the power and productivity to the students. The students had to do the learning and work themselves instead of it being spoon fed to them. Some of the students struggled with parts of the sections and would ask questions. Some of the students were just being lazy and wanted an easy way out so he would push them to figure it out themselves. Other times there were students where he knew that they needed a little more guidance to get to the right conclusion so he would give them a little more help.