STUGART SENSE

I teach students who live in an inner-city community and, therefore, often have a different viewpoint than me. I want to share some insight into those viewpoints that I received during today’s lesson.

Today, I wanted to teach my students some film terms prior to watching Rear Window so they would have an understanding of Hitchcock’s choices in camera shots and angles. As a huge fan of experiential and group learning, I put my students into groups and gave each of them three film terms on a card. Their objective was to either create or re-enact a scene that demonstrated their terms so that they could teach them to the class. One person had to be the director, one person the cameraman, and the rest were actors.

The general tendency of the day was that the students frantically tried to think of a scene from their favorite movies that they could all agree on. Most of them inevitably could not and decided (rather last-minute) to come up with one on their own. I encouraged them to think of simple scenes that would best emphasize the terms they needed to show. The students really enjoyed this activity and I honestly feel they learned a lot from it. However, I was deeply saddened by the predominant violent content of almost every scene. In fact, only 1 out of 15 groups did not stage a fight of some kind…. (all fake, of course…no actually contact).

At first, I wasn’t so bothered by the violence. It is easy to write it off as a “part of their daily lives.” Violence characterizes the films they watch, the music they listen to, and the gangs they belong to. However, much later in the day, I was completely struck by how much violence these particular students are exposed to. It is eerie that only 4 of my 90 students were able to think outside of that particular box.

Violence is not just a part of my students’ daily lives; it is an actual lens that they look through. The worst part is that I’m not sure they even realize that it exists. Is it possible for them to remove those glasses? Do they really view the world as a terrible place through which they must fight to survive?

It reminds me of Rene Girard’s theory on violence and the sacred. He describes violence as a living thing: indestructible and regenerative….an entity that feeds on itself, traveling through all the veins of society. His entire theory doesn’t exactly match what I see in my school, but his vivid understanding of violence as a reality that can’t be escaped resonates with me very much in this moment.

I am going to try to make it my goal to help my students see beyond that lens in this coming year. I want to help them to see possibililty instead of despair….

Here’s one group that is trying to make a difference in Baltimore, MD…

Good day everyone!

So, today, I really wanted to plan a great lesson for my newspaper day. My students need to work both on their grammar and on their understanding of the various formats of newspaper articles. They have also expressed an interest in playing games in the classroom to make class time more entertaining (although we all know that it can’t always be…).

So, I decided to try to find a handy, dandy, already made, grammar based Jeopardy powerpoint online so I would have more time to work on finding articles to match all of my students’ assigned formats. The second part was going to require a lot of planning due to the complexity of the finding, cutting, and copying involved in finding specific articles for roughly 20 different groups. Therefore, I was pleased as punch to find a powerpoint online that met my grammar needs. I looked it over, tried a few links, and felt very happy with it.

By now you might be thinking that this is where I mention the hitch. And…you would be right. During my first block, I began to have problems with the powerpoint. Some of the links were bad and connected to the wrong slide and some of the questions were a little ambiguous and confused my students. I was more than a little embarrased at my presentation even though I felt that I had thoroughly checked the powerpoint out ahead of time.

The moral of this story is not to abandon borrowing from other educators (far from it!), but rather to say that if you do borrow, make sure you completely check out every facet (as time consuming as that is…) to make sure that you are presenting your students with the best possible presentation.

This week I have continued to use group work in my classroom because it seems to be the most successful way to keep my students awake and involved. However, some days have been more successful than others and I want to use this post to discuss the differences.

On Wednesday, I decided to go ‘old school’ and start with the basics all over again. So, I planned a really engaging lesson on nouns for my Journalism class. I activated prior knowledge using a BellRinger that informed them they were going on a trip and were required to bring items that started with every letter of the alphabet. They also had to take at least one Common, one Proper, one Concrete, and one Abstract noun. They were able to complete with task with general ease but did need some refreshers on the differences. Next, we reviewed 6 more types of nouns (plural, singular, collective, compound, singular possessive, and plural possessive). I then had them form their own groups and divide up 4 roles (finder, cutter, paster, labeler) while I handed out materials. Essentially, their task was to find examples of the 10 types of nouns in the newspaper sections I gave them, cut them out and paste them onto large sheets of paper to present to class.* My 12th graders needed a lot of guidance on finding the right forms of nouns but, for the most part, they all became actively engaged and helpful in the project. I left school feeling happy and proud of my lesson.

* Thanks to Janet Olsen for the idea

Yesterday, I planned (what I thought would be) a fun lesson in which we listened to (and read) song lyrics about cheating spouses/significant others and evaluated them for content and character in particular. We listened to “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” and “Guess Who I saw Today?” Once we were finished discussing, the students were asked to form groups and complete characters maps (graphic organizer provided by me) and Venn diagrams on the two narrators. The third part of the project was to create their own song (either in groups or individually…and I actually also ended up telling them they may also write a poem). The song was required to have two verses and a chorus. On this day, however, my students were not all actively engaged and several of them griped. Additionally, my 4th block lost all sense of control. I thought I was going to have a fight at more than one point. I left school feeling frazzled and frustrated with my classroom management skills.

So why did the one class work and the other not work?

1) The most obvious factor was that on Wednesday, I assigned specific roles that students should have, and on Thursday, I did not. I underestimated the importance of job duties and how they relate to classroom management. I am now going to make sure that every group work assignment is broken down into job duties! I will keep you posted on how that works from now on.

2) The two lessons varied in their levels of abstraction. My students are not used to thinking theoretically about ideas and concepts. Even though my lesson yesterday consisted of graphic organizers, I might have included too many parts that were a little fuzzy. The song really gave them trouble, for example. What exactly qualified as a verse? I had not specified because I took it for granted that these students would understand how to write a song. I should never have made that assumption. Students want specifics! Wednesday’s lesson asked them to accomplish very specific and concrete tasks. “Find” “Cut” “Paste” “Label” “Present” Hopefully, as the year progresses, I can move towards more abstract lessons, but for now, I think it is best to make sure all my lessons are specific!

That’s all for now! Today we are mostly just going to finish up work from this past week and get job assignments for the newspaper. We’ll begin writing our first articles next week. Stay tuned!

Hello all. This week has started off fairly well. My troubling students are tapering off and accepting me as their teacher. These students have had so many teachers leave after a few days that they take a while to welcome a new teacher into their lives. It makes me very happy that my students are demonstrating their opinion that I am here to stay. I couldn’t ask for a bigger compliment.

As far as what is working this week…the main thing is MY PROJECTOR!. I can now use power points to move my students through the day’s activities. It is super helpful for those of us on block schedules to be able to quickly explain what the next activity will be. It works so well that I am not sure if my students are more sedate because they are getting cozy in the class or if it mellows them out to have a very large TV screen in the room!

Monday, we learned about learning styles and completed a practice ACT test, which isn’t very exciting to write about. And today, the students did some creative writing based on Sandra Cisneros’ “My Name” and discussed point of view in a short section from Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club.

I have just registered to participate in Blog Action Day 2008 and am pretty stoked about it. Essentially, the purpose of the event (which will take place on October 15th) is to engage bloggers and blog-readers everywhere in a global discussion of one topic that will result in the accumulation of multiple perspectives and possibly change. This year the topic is “poverty.”

I am excited about the prospect of getting my students involved in this discussion as most of them face the issue everyday and have very strong view points. Additionally, my students are currently working through a thematic unit entitled, “Perception is Everything” in which I am asking them to really delve deeply into the concept of point of view.

Here’s a video from their website that sheds some more light on the project!

Blog Action Day 2008 Poverty from Blog Action Day on Vimeo.

I have made it bravely through the first week at a new school. I am of the opinion that I need to slow all my lessons down, make less assumptions about what my students know, and try to get through less content in my 90 minute sessions. Additionally, my projector is now up and running so I will be creating powerpoints for my lessons to help give more visual data to my students. They are definitely not an auditory group and it is diffuclt to write everything on an old school dry erase board! I don’t know how teachers ever managed to get anything done with just chalk boards!

Below I am going to list some things that have helped me this week and then some things that I need to work on.

What Has Worked:

1) My folder system has been successful so far. On the first day of school, I had folders for every student (15 cents per at Wally World on tax free weekend). Each folder had a number on it that corresponded with a numbered seat in the class. Students chose random folders on the first day as they entered class. For the most part, students have kept the same seats. I had to move a few for chattiness and some who wanted to be closer to the board. Each row in my class has a different color folder, so I only have to look around to see that everone is in the correct row.

2) Bellringers have been successful. It has taken a little goading to get students to get their papers out to begin but I am giving grades for them and they now recognize that these are easy grades. It has helped to get students seated and working (at least somewhat quietly) while I do some housekeeping.

3) Group work has gone surprisingly well. I have a lot of students who take a lot of effort to get to work so I was nervous about group work. I was afraid they wouldn’t do any work in groups but they actually did much better that way….particularly when I allowed them to choose their own groups.

4) Tennis balls on the desks. Group work movement is so silent and non-irritating. Also, the floors will stay so nice and non-scratched! (Although, I have to admit that I have a bet going with my custodian that the students won’t throw the balls out the window…but he doesn’t know that my kids are in on it )

What Hasn’t Worked

1) Being nice . Actually, this isn’t completely true. I have three blocks and being nice has worked for two of them. However, one of my blocks is very difficult to handle and I received some feedback from a student who told me the only way they would listen to me is if I screamed at them like a drill sargent. I am saddened by this fact but I promised I would try it. So, I’ll let you know about that on Monday. I have even been researching how to be a “mean” teacher.

2) Making assumptions about what they know or how much they can accomplish in a period.

Well that’s about it for now. Overall, I would rank my week an 8/10…so I am feeling pretty good. Next week, my goal is to have a 9/10!

Yesterday, we had a great day in class. We learned about critical lenses and how they effect the way we investigate text. The students did very well with their group work assignments. I believe allowing them to select their own groups was helpful in getting them to participate. I told the students to form 6 groups and then assigned each one of our critical lenses. They had to decide on a Disney movie they had all seen and then use their lens to evaluate the non-print text. Afterwards, they presented what they had learned. Then, we discussed the concept of perception while evaluating some quotes about perception. We finished the day paraphrasing our favorite quotes.

Today went less well. It was newspaper day. This project is so inchoate and I am so confused that I know it is confusing my students. I think the biggest challenge was getting them to write. They aren’t confident enough in their abilities to feel good about writing. I hope to change that this year.

Today’s basic task was to divy up the types of articles each class is going to write into three categories so that each class has ownership of their own section. Most of them bickered about not liking their choices. It is actually occuring to me now that I could have opened all the topics up to everyone and might change it on the next round after seeing how it goes with this 6 weeks period. I had each of the students write an article in style they desired as a way of applying for the job. Most of them complied but I felt that none of them really was feeling it.  Hopefully we can get some kinks worked out for next Monday.

Today I introduced the idea of journalism to my class. To get you all up to speed, the basic scenario is that I have been handed the newspaper as an English elective. All of my English classes are on A-Days and then I have the same students on B-Days for newspaper…so I have three classes of newspaper writers. My school is considered to be an “inner city school,” where the students are a little behind in their reading and writing, so we have added ways to allow them more time in the English classroom.

In “Journalism,” we are going to be actually producing a school paper based on the content ideas that the students have. Today we made concept maps of our ideas for the content on our paper. I will take their suggestions and break them down into three categories. Each class will have each category twice over the course of the year because we will switch them off every six weeks.

I am starting to realize the complications this will all cause when it comes to actually getting submissions, etc. and am nervous. However, today went well. In addition to making the concept maps and thinking about the direction of the paper, we also went through some actual newspapers and found vocabulary words in groups. I feel the students enjoyed this activity for the most part, although a few had a difficult time staying on task in groups (what else is new?).

That’s all for now! I should have my projector up and running by tomorrow…so here’s hoping I will have blog posts about technology from now on.

Hello all! The first day was great. I would give it an 8 out of 10. I was not without issue but overall, I feel confident for the year to begin. I basically used the day as a intro to my class, to me, and to the rules. The one thing I am hoping will happen soon is that the district will give me a log in for my email and the attendance program. As of now, I have a laptop I can’t log into, an email address that isn’t receiving mail, and a ceiling projector I can’t even use….(not the end of the world….but very irritating…:))

Tomorrow we begin with the newspaper. This will be the first year in many that the school will be producing a newspaper but they haven’t given me any budget. So, we are completely winging this and hoping for the best. I will try to write about this as much as possible because I know there aren’t many Journalism blogs out there.