Back to School (& Back to Blogging)

Our back-to-school "September Experience" officially came to a close on Friday and as I  must now also get back to blogging, that experience seems an appropriate thing to blog about.  I learned to put into practice so many things that we have been learning -- from backwards mapping a lesson (on latitude and longitude!) to building a classroom community from a group of 28 very diverse 4th and 5th graders.  

Borrowing from my Intro to Field Experience Final Reflection . . . September Experience was amazing, exhausting, enlightening, frustrating, humbling and inspiring.  I learned that 4th and 5th graders try to act older than they are but are really still kids at heart.  I learned that with 28 kids in a classroom, everything takes a lot longer than you think it will.  I learned that, more often than not, things do not go exactly as planned.  I learned that even the toughest kids have a soft side and even the quietest kids have amazing things to say.  I learned that what we say is often less important than how we say it.  I learned that special needs kids are not a burden, but a gift.  I learned how easy it is to inadvertently ignore the quiet, middle-of-the-road kids.  I learned that there are an amazing array of teaching styles and that I need to learn to better appreciate and work with and learn from all of them.  Most importantly, I learned that I cannot possibly learn all of the things that I want to learn in just one year of student teaching!

I wrote that reflection before my final day of September Experience when my cooperating teacher was out for planning meetings all day and I took control of the class (with a sub to assist, of course).  In so doing, I learned a few additional things among which are that it takes a lot longer to plan a lesson than to teach a lesson and that managing transitions is going to be a vital skill to master!!

Food Journal Reflection

Keeping a food journal for our Health & Fitness methods class was not hard for me as I have kept food and activity journals on and off for the last five or six years.  In 2006 I found myself weighing more than I ever had in my life and I became determined to turn it around.  I put myself on a 1200-1500 calorie per day diet and began a more regular exercise routine.  During this time I religiously kept a food and exercise log and I succeeded in losing 30 pounds in about six months.  Give or take five pounds, I’ve largely been able to keep it off.  Writing down food and exercise information each day really keeps my good (and bad) habits in the forefront of my mind.  It doesn’t prevent slips and lapses, but it helps me get back on track more quickly afterwards.  I think I am a pretty healthy role model as I subscribe to diet and exercise habits that are well balanced and allow for occasional splurges in eating as well as occasional rest days from exercise.  The most important thing is to eat a well-balanced diet (no crazy fads), to allow yourself small indulgences, and to not beat yourself up for having a bad day (or week) every once in a while. 

For this class, after one week we were asked to set a goal for the remainder of the class.  I set two goals for myself – to increase the intensity of my daily exercise at least three times a week and to get more sleep.  Sleep has been a big issue for me since starting this program and in particular this quarter with our classes all concentrated in the middle of the week.  I find myself wanting to spend time with my family during dinner and early evening and then end up “burning the midnight oil” trying to get my school work done later in the evening and well after they’ve gone to bed.  This not only makes me tired in general but also has a definite (and negative) impact on my eating and exercise habits.  The more tired I am, the less motivated I am to push myself when exercising and the more apt I am to snack between meals to keep my energy up.  Nevertheless, I did force myself to do less walking and more running when taking my 11-month old lab puppy for his morning exercise before school each day and once I got going it really did make me feel better.  I also learned that it was easier to stretch the length of my running intervals in manageable increments rather than setting overly ambitious goals for myself that set me up for failure.

I think keeping food/activity/sleep journals is a great way to increase students’ awareness of their health habits.  It’s amazing how I found myself giving second thought before taking a cookie or other not-so-healthy choice because I didn’t want to have to record it or how the guilt from skipping a day of exercise is multiplied by seeing that blank spot in the journal the following day.  Keeping a health journal is a great way of making us more aware of our choices and also accountable to ourselves for committing to goals and recording progress towards those goals.  This could easily be stretched into an interdisciplinary activity for our students.  Math can be incorporated by calculating things such as calories and BMI and also by graphing progress towards goals.  Science can be incorporated in learning about the body’s needs for a balanced diet, knowledge about the “quality” of calories (nutrient-rich vs. “empty”) and the physiological importance of exercise and sleep.  

Brains

I held a human brain in my hands today!  Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would ever utter that sentence.  I was not even looking forward to seeing it let alone touching it, but I'm glad I did.  It was about the size of a head of cauliflower but really much heavier than I expected.  I also learned a lot about the brain from our micro-teaching lesson today like, for instance, that it is made up largely of water and fat and that carbohydrates and hydration are important in keeping a healthy brain . . . who knew?!  

Information from Anonymity

An interesting takeaway from class today for me was the power of using anonymity to increase the accuracy of information garnered from a group.  This strategy was used by both a micro-teaching team and by our teacher.  In the first instance we were simulating a sixth grade sex education class and the tool was to offer slips of paper that could be filled out anonymously with questions and placed in a box for the teacher to address during the following day's class.  It seems there would still be a glitch in that students might look around and see who is filling out slips and who isn't.  I would solve this by asking everyone in the class to take a slip and write something -- even if it is just "Have a good weekend" -- so that no one feels self-conscious about taking a slip and no one knows who wrote the questions that are discussed in the following class session.  In the second instance our teacher asked us to fill out an anonymous survey about our level of comfort with our preparation to teach various aspects of sex education.  There were ten questions each of which was answered on a scale of one to ten.  She then collected the surveys, mixed them up and redistributed them.  She placed the numbers one through ten on the floor and as each question was read we stood on/near the number reported on the survey (not our own) that we were now holding.  We were able to quickly see how the class was feeling without putting individuals on the spot.  Both were great uses of anonymity to overcome reluctance to honestly share one's opinion or to ask sensitive or embarrassing questions.

Having a Growth Mindset

It was a big day in BEDUC423 yesterday.  We did our micro-teaching unit on bullying (which I think went reasonably well) and at the end of class got our first glimpse (gulp!) of the new TPA that we will need to pass in order to be certified next spring.  Most meaningful to me however was our discussion of our reading from Carol Dweck's Mindset.  The introductory anagram activity really drove home the point about how we can actually teach/learn helplessness which in turn can lead to a habit of giving up when the going gets tough and continuing to give up even when conditions improve.  Dweck refers to this condition as having a "fixed mindset".  With a fixed mindset, risk and effort can lead to failure -- an 'Eeyore' point of view (remembering Jean's reading of Winnie-the-Pooh yesterday), pessimistic at its heart.  On the other hand a "growth mindset" focuses on the means more than the ends.  Success is found within the effort and the risk-taking rather than as a result of it -- more of a 'Tigger' or 'Roo' perspective although there really isn't a good Pooh comparison  for this one.  Instead of the fixed mindset focus on limitations, the growth mindset allows one to see opportunity for growth in every challenge.  I was most encouraged to learn that by choosing our words and modeling actions carefully that we can actually teach children who are stuck in the fixed mindset to learn to have a growth mindset!   On a personal note, I will strive to keep a growth mindset myself as I face the challenges I encounter in this program (with respect to the TPA in particular!).  

Assessment Revelations

I was blown away by the list of assessment possibilities in the Abell & Volkmann article we read in class today.  Prior to today I would have said that being in this program has really stretched my thinking on assessment beyond the traditional paper and pencil test to include projects, portfolios, digital stories, etc., but that stretching was taken to a whole new level with this reading.  I am in awe of the array of creative assessment tools that are available to us as teachers.  It is also gratifying to know that the utilization of  various types of assessment is also leading to greater equity in education as different assessments lend themselves to different learning styles.  As we discussed in class, however, any assessment must be constructed carefully to yield both validity and reliability of results.  So I have learned that there is not just one time (the end of a lesson) for assessment, there is not just one type of assessment but I also learned today that there is not just one level of assessment.  Looking at Bloom's taxonomy (a pyramid of levels of thinking) adds another interesting layer of constructing assessment and that is by the level of thinking that it is measuring in our students.  We must be careful not to hang at the bottom of the pyramid, only testing our students' knowledge and comprehension.  Instead we must stretch ourselves to assess in creative ways their ability to apply, analyze, evaluate and create new ways of thinking about and applying what they have learned.

Hula Hoop Fun

Today we started out with some fun activities using pool noodles, hula hoops and jump ropes -- germ tag, a relay race and composing jump rope rhymes on a specified topic.  It's neat to see how easy it is to weave academic content and physical activity.  What was most interesting though was the continued interest shown in the hula hoops throughout the rest of the day (they were left at the back of our classroom).  People picked them up to use during breaks and lunch and we even used them to create a human Venn diagram in the afternoon.  It never would have occurred to me to have hula hoops in my classroom but now I can see how they can be used in lots of engaging ways!