Blog Post #4

Overall, I believe my clinical teacher can benefit tremendously from reading the "An Educator's Guide to Teacher Reflection" article and implementing it within her classroom. If my clinical teacher were to take a closer look and self-reflect on her teaching practices, her classroom dynamic would alter tremendously which would, ultimately, designate a new classroom climate. My clinical teacher should find more ways to organize for cooperative learning and conduct her own research of her students to decipher this. By doing her own research, she will be able to: 

• Plan group work specifically assigned with particular learning goals of the lesson
• Provide a structure for the kind of social interaction she intends to observe among each group
• Identify each of the group discussions to determine whether learning is being achieved
• Practice ways in which to not intrude the group dynamics 

I strongly believe that if my clinical teacher adheres to these guidelines, she can change the way she approaches and structures group time with her class. She can also make a plan to collect data to make sure these changes promote the type of cooperative climate she wants for her classroom.

The video I have chosen discusses ways in which a teacher can improve teaching through reflective practices. I hope you all enjoy it and find it useful as I have.

Enjoy! :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgrFx_gE89g

blog #4

In my final trip to my field experience, the students were working on centers again.  The Mrs. Brown was working at the science station, while other kids were working on the computers, looking up their vocabulary words in the dictionary, and finally students were making cards for a students who was in an accident.  The class today was more hyper than on other days that I have been there.  Many of the students could not stop talking and Mrs. Brown told me to just sit and not help them for the first hour that I was there.  Due to their unproductive behavior, there was a lot of yelling happening.

One student was called out for something and he began to cry.  Mrs. Brown threatened to send this student across the hall to another teacher, but this only made the student cry more.  For the next two hours, the student did not stop crying.  Others would tell him to stop, or they would glare at him from different places in the room, but he continued to cry.  This child has anger problems (although he is not diagnosed with EBD, the teacher says he could be), therefore while he was sitting for this time, his body was extremely tense, his hands were in fists, and he was breathing heavily.  I was nervous that he was going to start hurting himself, or another student.  Eventually a student went up to Mrs. Brown and said that she could not concentrate due to the crying behind her.  This statement made Mrs. Brown frustrated.  She stood up from the center she was at and yelled at the class that they are so loud that she could barely hear herself think, therefore they can deal with one student who was upset.

When it was time for lunch, Mrs. Brown went up to the crying student and whispered that she was not mad at him for being upset, she was only upset that he was causing other students to become distracted.  She told him that when they got back from lunch, he would  be allowed to take some time for himself and calm himself down.

When the kids returned from lunch, this student was still crying.  He decided to accept the offer of not doing the work right now, and therefore he just sat at the desk and cried.  Eventually he got a warning that said that he needed to start his work or else it will become homework.  This provoked the student to cry even more.  Mrs. Brown was finally finished with the crying and said that he belonged with the kindergarteners because thats how he was behaving.  She ended up walking over to the student and giving him a dictionary in order for him to start working.

If I were the teacher in this classroom, I would have handled this situation differently.  I know that students behave a certain way for a reason; either their needs aren't being met or they want something from you whether it is attention, control, or revenge.  I think that this student was trying to get the attention of the classmates and the teacher.  Therefore, I would have pulled the student aside in the beginning of the crying and would have tried to figure out what was wrong.  By doing this, I would be able to change some things in my days lesson in order to make the student feel more comfortable and happy in the classroom.  I also would not have threatened to send him to the kindergarten classrooms.  This is something that could happen if the student understood the teachers humor, but this is not one of those situations.  I would have told the student that he is not behaving appropriately and that he should go to the bathroom and take a break before coming back into the room to complete the work.  By giving the student the power of not doing work, it teaches them that if you cry enough you don't have to do anything.  This is not the message I want to send my students.  I would rather my students come up to me when they are upset and try to explain why, than have them cry for the entire day and not understand where my student is coming from with this sadness.

Blog 4- Peri Green

On April 14, 2015 I observed two students, Student X and Student Y, arguing about who’s highlighter was whose. Student Y became fed up with Student Y and proceeded to interrupt the teacher as she was on the phone with the front office to tell her about the incident. The teacher dismissed Student Y saying, “Can’t you see I am having an important conversation?” Student Y returns to his seat and knocks Student X’s notebook off of her desk. The teacher gets off of the phone and yells at Student Y saying, “You can’t tell on people if you’re always the one acting out!” She then proceeds to tell him to pack up his stuff because she is taking him to his older brother who works as a janitor at the school. I am not sure how this was an effective punishment because Student Y is now missing valuable instruction time and his brother has to carry the burden of his younger brother following him around for the remainder of the day while he is trying to do his job. Normally, when a student acts out my mentor teacher either yells at the student, moves the student’s desk in the class, or puts the student in timeout. When I later asked my mentor teacher why she sent that particular student out of the classroom; she responded with “He only listens to his brother. No one else. Timeout doesn’t work for him. He is hardheaded!”

Student Y has a history of acting out and therefore I chose him to be the student in which I create a behavior plan for. He also has dyslexia and anxiety and is bilingual. I identified that Student Y normally misbehaves when he is unable to get his point across or when another student makes fun of him for being unable to write notes or finish his assignments as quickly as his peers. The problem behavior that Student Y exhibits is throwing his pencils down or slamming his notebook when he is frustrated, he also has a habit of yelling inappropriate things such as “Shut up punk” to his classmates when they tease him. He acted out usually once every time I came to observe the class. The teacher tells me that he usually acts out on a daily-basis while in her classroom. However, she told me that the other teacher, whom he goes to for Reading and English, never complains about Student Y, which leads her to believe he just doesn’t like math or science. I believe that Student Y would behave better if he weren’t placed so far away from the teacher. All of the students with IEPs are placed the furthest from the teacher and the closest to the door. I brought this idea up to my mentor teacher, and she moved Student Y’s desk closest to hers immediately. 

I then observed his behavior in particular for a week following his move. He seemed to be more engaged in the lessons and my mentor teacher said that he had not acted out once since he was moved. On April 22, 2015 I observed Student Y actively engaged in a human anatomy lesson. I believe a huge part of the reason he was engaged is because the teacher was showing them a video about bones. It has been proven that students with dyslexia perform better with tasks that involve technology. Student Y asked, “If you didn’t have bones your fingers would just stay straight like this?” My mentor teacher nodded and said, “Yes that is correct.” 

That was a great moment for me to see because Student Y was so elated that he was finally able to understand something and not get picked on by his classmates. And it was at that moment that I realized why I want to be a teacher. I appreciated my experiences in my field experience classroom and they’ve taught me more than a textbook could ever have. I am grateful for all that I’ve learned from it and this class for allowing me to be able to understand Student Y’s need and introduce a behavior change plan. 

Blog #3- Peri Green

           Other than the classroom rules written on a poster and placed in the front of the classroom, I had only seen my mentor teacher discuss classroom procedures to the students once before March 3, 2015. She had a strict procedure on how to sharpen ones pencil. If a student wanted to sharpen his or her pencil they were expected to raise their hand and wait to be acknowledge by the teacher. They would then hand their pencil to the teacher and she would sharpen their pencil for them. Basically, students were not allowed to sharpen their own pencils while in the classroom. On March 3rd, the students who are normally well behaved were very off task. I observed my mentor teacher asking her morning class to put their pencils down. After some students don’t listen, she tells the entire class to put their index fingers together, by saying “Fingers!” All the students follow my mentor teacher's directions. She then asks for every one to show her “Code 1” and “Code 2”. Code 1 means to sit straight up in their seats. Code 2 means to be quiet. One student violates the code by continuing to talk and she puts him in timeout. She makes the student stand facing the door for about 4 minutes while she continues moving onto the next lesson and then tells him that he can return to his seat.

            Later that day I asked my mentor teacher how she went about creating the rules for the class. She explained to me that at the beginning of the school year she explains what “Code 1” and “Code 2” mean and then demonstrates it to the class and has them demonstrate it back to her. She also says that right after the students learn the codes, she says “Code 1. Code 2,” much more than usual as a way to reinforce it and make sure that they understand the purpose behind the codes. When I asked, “How do you teach new students the codes considering that they were not present when the codes were first presented to the class?” my mentor teacher responds by saying, “They usually can pick up on them after a while.” However on April 25, 2015, I observed a new student in my mentor teacher's afternoon class unable to pick up on what “Code 1” and “Code 2” meant. This particular student, Student C, has an IEP and is labeled as having ADHD. The class was becoming very disruptive and as a result, Mrs. Rodriguez says, “Code 1! Code 2!” All the students respond accordingly, except for Student C who was clearly unaware of the procedure. Once my mentor teacher realized that Student C wasn’t following instructions, instead of yelling at her, she asks for the class to demonstrate to Student C what code 1 and 2 mean. After the demonstration, my mentor teacher repeats herself by saying, “Class! Code 1! Code 2!” Student C and her classmates respond accordingly andmy mentor teacher moves on with her lesson.

       It was refreshing to see my mentor teacher demonstrate the codes to the student because the student could've easily felt embarrassed because she didn't understand what was going on. But instead my mentor teacher turned it into a teaching moment and did not spend a lot of time on it. 

Blog #4

So for this last blog post I am going to reflect and narrate the best I can on what lead to an interesting conversation I had with Mrs. Garcia about one of her students, Madelyn, situations. This past Friday I went into the class and after about an hour of being there the principal came in to have a talk with the class. I was very excited to experience something out of the ordinary happening in the classroom environment. Mainly because I was curious about how the dynamic in the classroom would change after the principal walked in for both the teacher and students. I got to witness firsthand that it definitely did, you could almost feel the tension.
The principals speech turned out to be a very serious talk about bullying because of a certain incident that happened among three students in art class a week prior. Of course I had no idea what had happened but her talk was a bit off for me as an outsider. Mrs. Sanchez (the principal) had a strange focus in her speech. She stressed that the students had to be careful about who they called a bully. She kept stating that the definition of a bully is someone who consistently picks at someone else not someone who picks at you one time. I did not really see a point in her speech at all. All I would have gotten out of it, as a 5th grader would be, "I can be mean to someone one time and that does not make me a bully". So basically as long as they do it once it is okay and they are not a bad person. I was completely confused about everything she was stating until Mrs. Garcia cleared it up for me.
It turns out that 2 students were basically cyber bullying another student. These 2 students were photo shopping pictures of Madelyn onto  cows and other disturbing pictures and posting them on twitter for other classmates to see. This was a one time occurrence and the problem was addressed quickly. Other classmates found out and were all protecting Madelyn by calling the other 2 students bullies. After this whole incident one of the two students went home crying because she was being called a bully. The parent came in upset that students were calling her daughter a bully because she had only picked on Madelyn once. This situation was so strange because it seemed like administration decided to be on both sides. They reprimanded the 2 students but still had the principal talk to the students about loosely throwing around the word bully. Mrs. Garcia and I had a whole discussion about what lead to this situation and whether we agreed how it was being handled. We both agreed that principals speech was not completely efficient and that she should have focused on everyone just being  nice to each other. This way she would have avoided instilling in the children heads' that it is okay to be bad once.
After more conversation Mrs. Garcia began to tell me that this never would have happened if Madelyn's' parents would just test her.  Mrs. Garcia keeps referring her and the parents refuse  to listen, she thinks Madelyn has a mild form of autism. Apparently Madelyn's social interactions are off therefore, she gets picked on often. Mrs. Garcia does not know what to do because she can not have a discussion with the class about Madelyn's' unique ways without the label being assured. She really worries for Madelyn's future because without the IEP she needs and continuing school un-diagnosed she predicts there will be much more trouble her way.

Blog Post #4 - Joshua Lugo

During my final observation of Mr. Mayo's class, I noticed something completely extraordinary. Something so great happened, that changed the way I viewed teaching. I wish I could say something along those lines, but I can't. There wasn't an extravagant last day. Nothing out of the ordinary happened. Mr. Mayo commanded his class as expected. He joked with them, engaged them, and then went straight into review mode as the class is preparing for their AP exams, which are coming up soon. 

If there's one thing that I took in and wanted to share with you all, it's to stay consistent. There's nothing wrong with assimilating new information and changing some things in your teaching style that you think will improve it, but I mean to create a classroom environment where your actions towards all your students is consistent and where your class knows what it can expect. This creates a sense of comfort as well as fairness, since you'll be treating everyone consistently. 

I can't stress it enough. Classroom environment has to be one of the biggest factors I've noticed to elicit the most change possible. A positive, warm, and engaging classroom environment will make your students feel at home and will make the teaching process a lot easier. If your students feel that you care then they will be more inclined to care and pay attention. I noticed this in our class as well. Although we may have had digressions every once in a while, I felt really comfortable in the class and, as a result, participating in class was a lot easier for me. This all starts with educator. So for my final post, I just ask that you keep these words in mind: consistent actions and a positive classroom environment lead to positive student growth.

Blog #4 Nicole Gonzalez

I enjoyed my time doing my field experience at Blue Lakes Elementary School. In my last field experience I was placed in an average classroom as for this time around I was in a pull out class. Being able to observe Ms. Machado gave me an idea of what to expect if I was a pull out teacher. Compared to the average classroom setting a pull out class has its differences.

 In a pull out class students are having difficulties in a specific subject area. Ms. Machado told me that most of the time students that go to pull out classrooms have a learning disability. With her class most of the students have ADHD and only one with a mental disability. She explained that it is challenging but patience is key. All her students have IEP’s that she must look at and follow so that her students learn and reach their full potential. I got to see her teach her students, perform assessments, and give them exams.

Though some of it I was unable to physically see in action such as the assessments. I was given that time to read to the students and then be able to talk and get to know them. During the time I was able to observe exams I got to see how she modified the test for the student that has a mental disability. The students really like their teacher and say they understand it better when she breaks things down to them. Teaching students with disabilities is a challenge but Ms. Machado makes it look easy. I learned a lot from her by talking about what a pull out teacher does and what I can expect for when I have my own classroom. I enjoyed my time at Blue Lakes and I hope to be able to go again.