Stacey Barber's bPortfolio

The last week of my internship has been a wake-up call for how important it is to stay organized throughout the year. The last two weeks have consisted of students pouring into the classroom before and after school with needing to make up quizzes, tests, and get assignment sheets. My mentor teacher allows this to happen, but at a point cost for the student. Students have late passes to use, but if they turn in late work it is only worth a full sixty-four percent of their grade. It is stressed to the students that taking a sixty-four is better than a zero. Most students have one or two missing assignments. Since some of these missing assignments were done during my internship I was frantic the first few times a student came to me asking to do an assignment they missed. I have all of my assignment are in three different places, since I have two teacher desktops and my own laptop to shuffle through. This was a great lesson to learn early in the week: have all assignment easily accessible for later use.

Another lesson I have learned to do during the last week of school is to take final papers home in chunks, not to try and cram all papers within the last three days. It is just a matter of planning in advance so that all final paper, from different preps, are not all due on the same day, or remembering ahead of time to schedule a week to grade student papers. It seems that the last week of school is not only a mad dash for students but for teachers as well to wrap up last minute units, turn in books, tear down assignments from walls to pass back to students, grade last minute missing or late assignments, and say goodbyes. I have enjoyed watching and being a part of the week’s ensuing chaos.

This week’s prompt fits perfectly with my last week’s interesting experience. This last week I had multiple students who were going to be gone on school and family trips for at the least three days and absences due to the HSPE Math testing. The three days that these students were going to be out of school were the most crucial to a section of our Newspaper Unit we have been working on. Those three days were going to be spent getting to know Microsoft Publisher where they were going to implant the four news articles we had written, create a masthead, a dateline, a journalist profile, and an ad. There was no way for the students to fulfill the points they were going to miss those three days since most of them don’t have Publisher at home nor internet access. So, I had to create an alternate assignment for them to do on their own.  This was great practice for me to be aware that students get pulled out of the class for important and unimportant reasons, but to always be prepared with alternate assignments that can be done independently.

Another issue I came across this week was a student who has failed or missed most of the test and quizzes I have given. He had three to make up and was worried about failing all three. I had to question myself on why this student was failing these quizzes. He is bright and has done the reading, yet he struggles with writing and has major ADHD. I modified the quiz from written to oral. This quiz was a summative assessment where students had to trace five points in the novel where the two main characters’ relationship develops deeper or changes. When I gave this quiz to the student he passed with flying colors, which was very interesting to me. He seems inhibited by his nervousness to write conventionally. He also asks if he can write on blank paper without lines. This modification showed me that he did understand and could follow and recall the novel. I wonder if he would benefit from receiving all his tests and quizzes orally while getting one-on-one tutoring with his writing abilities.

On a Monday morning in June, during second period,W I had a chance to observe Mr. Nickerson. Mr. Nickerson’s second period class was filled with junior honors students, who were in the middle of reading The Great Gatsby. Mr. Nickerson is a master teacher, who had taught for over twenty years. His classroom walls very bare besides a few pieces of student work and a few grammar tips.

The class began with student putting their chairs into a small inner-circle and a larger outer-circle. This Monday was a Socratic Seminar discussion day. Students were prepared, after reading Chapter 8, with notes from Friday and questions they answered over the weekend, which would spring-board their graded discussion. This discussion set up was a well-oiled wheel for this classroom. Students already knew the expectations, the directions, and they started discussing the first question–“Defend your character”–right away.

Mr. Nickerson sat outside the circle and interrupted when students needed a subject change, or he wanted to hear from someone in specific. There were only six people in the inner circle discussing and the rest of the class sat quietly and took notes on their answers and opinions, which were due for credit at the end of the day. The inner circle switched half-way through the period. Mr. Nickerson graded with a “check plus or check minus” system, which he completed after they were done discussing. While they discussed he took notes of specific quotes he liked from students, which he then repeated back to the group as spring-board comments. This proved very useful to these honors students. At the end of the discussion, which lasted the whole period, Mr. Nickerson explained the goal for tomorrow’s class and what to look forward too during the week.

During my k-12 school career, I moved to eight different schools, but stayed in my high school all four years. Our family never moved homes, but our school district was undergoing major issues and changing for the worse. So, my mother and father wanted me in the best school possible and that meant being involved in the co-op program, which is parents involved, higher learning. This program jumped from school to school and so I inevitably followed. Each transition was at the beginning of the school year, besides one. In first grade I moved from a reservation school to a Catholic elementary. This move was the most awkward because I was the new girl, in the new school, and the nuns were very strict and, from what I remember, not very tender about me coming into their classroom more than half way through the year. Another move that I recall that had a great effect on me was after my eighth grade year in one town to my ninth grade year in another town. I was extremely upset to have stayed in a school for two years, where I had many friends, to move to the high school in another town where I knew one or two people.

Being in ninth grade is overwhelming for most students, but coming into ninth grade not knowing anyone from the middle schools is, what seems, devastating. Reflecting on this experience I know I will have transfer students many times over my future career. A few things that could help new students is while getting to know the student I could placing him/her in work groups with kids that are welcoming and friendly, seat them by students who they could get help from, and let them know that my classroom is open at any time for help. I have had two students come into my classroom while I was student teaching. I met with them a discussed where they came from, what they like to do, and all the “get to know you” questions, after I shook their hand and introduced myself. This little gesture seemed to help them be comfortable with me in the classroom. At some points I had to stop and ask them if they had learned a concept my mentor teacher had already covered with my classes. Catching them up to speed also helped them academically in my classroom. With new students it seems important to let them bloom in the new school for a few days and then start asking them to participate and share knowledge and experiences from their old school. Each new student will have different needs. So, it is important to pay attention to them to make sure you can step along side where they struggle from the school transition.