Kevin's+Page

Here is my reflection. It is mainly about things that I have started to think about a lot more since we started this class:

I have never had extended thoughts about the students that I will be teaching in the future. When I applied for the Noyce Program I knew they would come from rough backgrounds but that is about as far as I had thought. After reading Danling Fu’s book and some of the other chapters in our other books, I will be more curious as to where students have come from and how they got to where they are. If I have an international student I will be interested to learn how they came to the United States. Were there circumstances that forced them to come or did they choose to? In general I think these readings are going to make me more curious about my students’ background than I would have thought. This includes whites, blacks, Hispanics, and any other group you can think of. I am starting to think this could be one of the more fascinating aspects of my job once I get my own classroom.

It will be interesting to see how the background that these students have plays into how they are prepared for the classroom. Will students from other countries be more prepared or less prepared? Will they only struggle because of language barriers or will it be that they are not used to American classrooms? Maybe a combination of both? Are African Americans not going to be worried about the classroom because they have more important things going on in their lives? These are all things that I think I am going to think about quite often while fulfilling my requirements of teaching in a high needs school for the Noyce Scholarship I received. I honestly almost feel like I will be fascinated by the stories of the students more than I had thought possible.

Honestly, the concept of literacy practices in every type of classroom is also new to me. I never really thought of the fact that students read math and science books and it takes a certain set of skills that they need to work on. It didn’t register that I could probably do things that would help them learn these skills so they could use and apply them to reading their text book. Thinking about it now, it makes sense that teachers should be able to support students in this way. When I was coming up through high school, I always chose not to read the textbook, partly because I thought classes were easy and partly because I didn’t know strategies of how to read them. If I had been given ways of reading textbooks so it would be helpful, I think I would have actually done it more. This is something I would like my students to be willing to do and somewhat excited to do.

The last thing that I never really thought about was ELL’s. At my high school, we would have a single student at most that was categorized as ELL. This caused me to kind of put it in the back of my mind and not worry about it. After reading Danling Fu’s book though, I get a sense that the way ELL students are taught the material and go through a typical day may need to change. Granted her examples were all from a single high school, but if more high schools across the country had ELL’s in the same type of program the students would never learn. I don’t have ideas or suggestions of how to make the classrooms more intriguing and effective for them but I feel like there has to be better way. All three of these things are intriguing to me and something that I will be dealing with on a daily basis when I am in a classroom. I look forward to facing these challenges and trying to come up with ways to help and engage these students. I would not have thought of any of these issues until they actually occurred in my classroom had we not discussed them in class.

-Kevin

I think it's great that you will be more likely to look at your students' backgrounds now when you become a teacher. I think this will be very beneficial for both you and your students. You will get a chance to learn from them, and also hopefully be able to better understand them. These students will also respect and trust you more because they will know that you care about them if you're willing to learn about their past experiences. I completely agree with your third paragraph about literacy practices. Before this class, I didn't think I would need to teach my students thing like this because I was a math teacher and kids should learn those types of things in an English classroom. But now, I see that learning how to read a math textbook is very different than reading a book in English class. I think teaching our students literacy techniques they can use in the math classroom will be very beneficial to their learning. I also think that the way we teach ELLs needs to change, especially if it is like it was for the Savang family. We, as educators, need to do our best to get these students involved at school and in their own education.
 * Sam's Response:**

Kevin, I have a lot of the same feelings when thinking about the Noyce program requirements. I know for me, I am completely excited about hearing the student's stories and about their backgrounds. I feel like my life growing up was pretty simple and not very exciting or eventful. Due to this I am so curious about other people's stories. This week, a lot of my nerves about students with more tough backgrounds has been calmed a little. I mean it will be difficult, but it is definitely something that will be worthwhile. I know that as I have talked with students my level of interest in their stories has exponentially increased. Students have so much more than we tend to acknowledge going on in their lives which needs to factor into our teaching styles. I also completely agree with your third paragraph, seeing where the importance of literacy practices in every classroom has been a huge lesson that I have learned thus far in the class.
 * Kendra's Response:**

Kevin, I think it's great you took the time to reflect on what you haven't really thought about before in terms of teaching, because I have been thinking the same thing. I always knew I'd take an interest in my students and their backgrounds, but I never thought about how much that can say about a teacher and how that can define your success in a classroom--student or teacher. I also can relate to your fourth paragraph about the ELL students. My high school never had any ELL students while I was there, and so I never had to think about how they learn and the kind of education they are receiving. Actually, I don't think I ever even heard of ELL until I came to college, and even then, I never thought about how teaching practices would have to be different from a regular English-speaking classroom. Now that I'm in this class, I understand how things need to be different and how disjointed everything can be. I think that you're absolutely right--things do need to change, and, like you, I'm not exactly sure what those changes should be. I'm sure most people don't have an answer for that other than what you've said. I think a starting point would be to get ELL teachers who are actually trained in that field, because as we know, the ELL teachers in //My Trouble is My English// were not trained to be ELL teachers.
 * Sienna's Response:**


 * End of Semester Reflection:**

At the beginning of this semester I knew that everyone had their own identity. Even though I knew this was the case, I still thought that a lot of the things that I found easy would come for them easy as well. After all thing things we have done in this course, I now realize that this is definitely not the case. For instance, tutoring at Houghton High School made me realize that not everyone understands even basic math principles as well and as easily as I did. This was kind of a shocker to me considering everyone I knew in high school did since we had “tracking.”

I also thought that literacy was not something needed for every classroom. I remember the first day of class Evie said that literacy needs to be taught in every classroom, not just the English classroom, and I just chuckled underneath my breath and thought yeah right. After fourteen weeks of intensive reading, projects, and deep conversations in class I have come to realize that literacy is indeed something that is needed in every classroom. This doesn’t mean that it is the same type of literacy but there is a specific type of literacy for every classroom that is useful and if students don’t have it, they will struggle. From being able to read history books to find the important facts, math books in a way that makes the procedure you are learning make sense, or in the general sense of literacy in an English classroom, they are all just as important as the next. This is definitely something I never thought I would be saying though.

There is another viewpoint that has changed for me as well. I originally thought that teaching students was really about getting them to understand the material. While this is an important part of teaching students, it isn’t the most important. After reading some of the assigned readings and my extra book on the side, “Clock Watchers,” I have come to realize that motivating and engaging students is the most important thing that needs to be done for kids to succeed in school and learn the most that they can. If students are engaged and motivated they will retain a lot more information than if they are just there to learn the material. I think the fact that there is a whole book written on how to motivate and engage students’ kind of shows how important it really is.

The last major viewpoint that has changed for me is the different strategies that can be used to enhance literacy within content areas. I used to think there were very limited methods for how to accomplish this. I believe this may be due to the fact that I had the same English teacher for three and a half years out of four years of English in high school. I really only ever learned her way of teaching literacy in the English classroom. This doesn’t even cover the other teachers I had. I honestly can’t remember a single time that I had a teacher outside of English teach anything about the literacy in that content area specifically. It could just be my memory is failing me or I don’t realize that it was being taught, but I am pretty sure my teachers outside of English never made a conscious effort to teach literacy in their content area. I now realize, due to “Improving Adolescent Literacy: Content Strategies at Work” by Fisher and Frey, that there are indeed a lot of different strategies that teachers can use to teach literacy in any content area.

I think all of the things that I have mentioned so far will play a big part in my teaching styles and how my classroom is run. I’ll definitely pay more attention about making sure the students in my math classes (and physics classes) have a strong grasp on literacy within each area respectively. If I am able to properly use the techniques that I have been taught in this class, both my students and I will benefit from the strategies. While students may seem reluctant like I was at first, I think they will benefit and after a while they will realize that they are actually benefiting from the literacy practices that are being used.

Also, because of reading Danling Fu’s book “My Trouble is My English,” I have realized that diversity and culture play a lot larger role in education that I originally thought. Students that are not native English speakers tend to struggle for different reasons than I originally imagined. While I always new there was a language boundary there, I didn’t know they were hesitant to do somethings because it is considered rude in their culture for instance. There are a lot of other things that they will not do or are hesitant to do because it is not accepted in their culture. I think this will cause me to be more aware of where my students are from and what their backgrounds are. If anything it helped me realize just how different every student is and how you have to treat them that way. If you get to know the students, you are helping them have the best chance to succeed possible and will benefit them in the long run. This means I will be a lot more “quizzical” than I originally thought I would be when it came to their backgrounds. This could include anything about their heritage, if they have lived in the area their whole life, what sports do they play, or whatever else I can think of that might help me get to know the students a little bit better.

Intertwined in all of this is the fact that I have to know who I am by being able to objectively self assess myself while remaining open to criticism from my peers. This is something that I may be a little defensive about at first, or now, but will hopefully get better over time. After the readings from class I realize that this is a very important part of being a good teacher. It is something that I will strive for every time I have a classroom that I can call my own. All of these things put together means that I have learned a lot of new information this semester. Using it successfully will be a challenge but in the end, I think all of it will be worth it when my students are enjoying themselves in my classroom while learning a lot of information.