It just got real.
I am going to be a High School English teacher. I decided
that some months ago, trying to tie my various education and experience into a
fulfilling career on Long Island. But, it was all so highly conceptual, so
abstract, until I walked, with a bustling crowd of adults and adolescents, into
Bumppo Middle School. I hoped I looked a lot calmer on the outside than I felt
on the inside.
Sign in. Navigate.
My first stop was the classroom of our faculty host for the
day, Ms. Coorain. Big smile, warm greetings, personality for days. Settling in,
she explained that my fellow preservice teachers and I were there early enough
to see (I forget what this was officially called) period zero. The students
bustled around the classroom discussing the upcoming snow storm, the school
play that would be cancelled because of said storm, and myriad minutia. Ms.
Coorain handled an assortment of students taking make up quizzes, paying for a
field trip, etc. But the real action wouldn’t start until first period.
Bell out. Bell in.
Ms. Coorain had explained that the first class of the day
was an inclusion class. This was my first experience with such a class, and, to
be honest, I felt it was completely indistinct beyond the three professional
instructors in the room—Ms. Coorain, her co-teacher, and a paraprofessional. Ms.
Coorain met every student at the door (as all teachers at the school did, I
noticed throughout the day), and once every student had found their seat, class
begin and did not stop moving until the bell rang forty minutes later.
Breathe.
I was certainly impressed by the speed and motion of the
class. I have gotten so used to the longer college course length that I forgot
what it was like to pack an entire lesson into forty minutes or less. Looks
like I am going to have to cry the pardon of some long-ago teachers with whom I
acted a fool and ate up so much valuable time. Ms. Coorain never stopped
moving; she moved around the classroom, and she moved directly from one
activity to the next. Although the class moved at a considerably slower pace
than honors classes later that day, it never felt as though it was dragging.
Students had no real chance to check out.
Ain’t I a Woman…
The class was discussing and reviewing a speech by Sojourner
Truth, “Ain’t I a Woman.” (Oh, yeah, Sojourner, you are some kind of woman…)
The two co-teachers and the paraprofessional broke the class into small groups
of three to four students and had them work on a guided activity sheet. As the
students worked, the instructors moved around the classroom, checking in with
each group, prodding with questions, and sustaining a momentum which would see
the work done. One distinct advantage of having a triumvirate was apparent when one student was having difficulty understanding the
task as he had not been present the prior day. The paraprofessional took this
student, with two other students who were behind, across the hall to an empty
class to watch a video of Kerry Washington bring the speech to life. Hmmm, I
thought… wasn’t that a perfect example of the Anchor Standard for Reading 7:
“Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse formats and media,
including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words.” Ain’t that a
standard.
Get it together.
Ms. Coorain and her co-teacher also conducted a class
discussion on the speech by Sojourner Truth. Having already read and discussed
the basics the day before, they spent their time analyzing and interpreting
sections of the work. But the teachers never simply gave answers; they drew out
answers from the students, even letting them struggle to organize the expression
they were working to get out. At certain times, the two teachers seemed to
engage in a call and response from across the room that caught students in a
whirlwind of engagement. They were immersed in the discussion, not watching it
from afar as a teacher lecture them from behind a desk (the setup was
reflective of Making the Journey’s
room arrangement suggestions on p.66-67). Words, evidence, half-formed thoughts, and
glimpses of bright ideas saturated the classroom. No, not every student was
involved, but no student was left to feel excluded (from my limited
perspective.)
Bell out. And the day moves on. Bell in.
It's really cool that you recognized the reading standard and the one really specific section of "Making the Journey," it's nice to see how specific factors that can easily get lost in the flurry of all elements that contribute to teaching can have a transparent relationship to their outcomes. Did you pick up on the class layout because it's something you've thought about for your classroom? Frankly, even when reading that section I didn't think much about the affect of seating because I've been in so many different classrooms with different arrangements and I can't think of any that stick out as being better or worse.
ReplyDeleteAndrew, Its interesting to see that the class that you observed was studying Aint I a Woman because the class that I was observing did the same text. I'm glad to hear that you also felt that the pace of the class moved quickly. It was one of the things that surprised me when I observed myself. Whatever energy level the kids had, the teachers had to double it. I think its pretty interesting that you picked up on anchor 7 about involving different types of media. I think this was a cool way to get the kids that missed class up to par pretty fast. Also, plus points for adding the video for emphasis. It sounds like your observation went quite well.
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