Content Portfolio

Content Portfolio: Here it is!!

What a crazy semester this has been; but oh how incredibly rewarding it has been. Working on this portfolio has given me the opportunity to reflect on some of the mathematics that I was able to teach this semester and the wonderful students that I was so fortunate to work with! Although I did not feel comfortable providing an example for four of the standards that are listed, I am confident that I would be able to discuss these standards with proficiency or develop an exemplar in the future (Student Teaching).

So a theme of this blog (in the few posts that are available: to be continued) is to raise more questions than answers, thanks in particular to professors that stress the importance of continuing to grow and to reflect in this profession, I have begun to try and ask how I can improve more than I can advocate for how well I have done, so what about now? How am I ever going to ask more questions about my abilities as an instructor from artifacts that I have already reflected upon?

I accept this challenge and have actually had more difficulty writing the support for these artifacts because I feel more comfortable asking how I could improve them than tell why they support my proficiency in the standards. So lets get on to these questions!! To begin with, a question that has been in the back of my mind all semester is how are all of these artifacts going to look if I take them into another class? How will they look when the group of students I am working with is completely new? I think that a continuum of these artifacts is going to allow me to adapt particular pieces to fit the students I am working with or the setting I am in.

Additionally, I am ever more curious about what others are presenting. Do I want to copy them? Do I want to know what I should submit? No, absolutely not! I want to talk with these colleagues, I want to discuss what worked and what did not work. I want to see how we can work together to find new artifacts that have not been used before.

Wow, look at me go, I am like a super teacher over here! I've got all of these artifacts, I am ready to try and adapt them to new settings, and I want to collaborate to make new products to help students learn mathematics. But that's not how I feel. I know so many other people around me have the same feelings, so many others are willing to do the same things and more! I'm more excited about this profession than I have ever been before and am excited everyday about the new experiences or ideas I may encounter! This doesn't make me a super teacher, nor do I feel like I am completely ready to run my own classroom and leave this whole college thing behind. But I do feel like I am ready to work with those around me to make this a great profession, ready to work with students everyday to find solutions to problems, and incredibly excited to continue working with those that can give such great advise!!

In regards to this collaboration and coming up with new ideas, let's look to a great mind to help us see how incredibly detrimental it can be if this piece is not incorporated into our profession:

Last Observation

Observation: Questioning

What:

            During instruction, there are many dimensions to your teaching that can affect the learning and success of your students. One important dimension to consider is questioning. What types of questions are you asking and how can this questioning be improved?

            There are many questions asked throughout a lesson, so how do you begin to assess the nature of your questioning? I am fortunate enough to have an instructor come observe a lesson that I lead and examine the questioning that I use throughout a lesson. I am particularly interested in the dialogue that will occur after my lesson and the ways that I can improve my current level of questioning.

So what:

            So the lesson went seemingly well, with a dialogue throughout. I was trying to allow students to talk their way to understanding the concept of scientific notation and tried to use questions that would help this understanding. The dialogue after the lesson gave me the opportunity to see the questions I was asking and, in particular, the types of questions that I am using during a lesson. It is easy to fall in to a place where you ask knowledge level questions (eg. “what is…” or “how do I…”). The challenge and learning for students occurs when questioning moves into the unknown and students begin to formulate ideas of what happens “if” or “why” something happens. Without an outside observer, it may be difficult to personally reflect on all of the questions you ask throughout a lesson. Throughout this dialogue it became clear that reflecting on the questions I ask and working with students to hone my questioning skills gives me the opportunity to help students succeed in the future.

Now what:

            So now what can I do with this new understanding of my questioning skills and how to improve? I can use this knowledge to help move from asking simple recall questions. Since each lesson will present new and diverse challenges, it is important to plan ahead and incorporate effective questions into the plan before you begin instructing. This will also give a chance to reflect on these questions before they are asked. Unfortunately it can be much more difficult, or nearly impossible, to change a simple question into an inquiry question mid-lesson, or after a question has already been asked. Therefore this planning ahead is incredibly important!

Going so fast

Everything is going so fast and it seems like the end of this teacher assisting semester is coming to a close right before my eyes! I feel weeks behind: not in the work I need to do for class, or in sleep (which would be nice to get a little more of), but in the learning that I get from being in the classroom. I've learned more in this semester from the students and colleagues I work with than I could've ever imagined teaching them. So how do I feel behind? I feel like the lessons are slowly coming in to focus. I can't see the way that students may effect me on a particular day (usually), but over time, I see how much I've changed and how much my views can be altered!

With that said (and I know I haven't been able to post lately), I want to continue from where I left off in the last post. I realize that as much as I learn everyday, it is the questions that are raised for me that can be much more beneficial than the facts that I am told. The more educated I become, the more questions I have. So how does testing (brought up previously) tie into this sense of confusion, or struggle, or better yet: growth! Students become disinterested in questions they can raise, and more interested in the questions that the teacher has to raise. It has become this environment where the intelligence of any given student is measured solely by the questions raised by the teacher that they can answer, rather than their ability to think critically and ask questions themselves. How can we teach students to problem solve for themselves if all day we expect them to only answer questions we ask, not ask us questions.

We all benefit from being tested with questions: if we can not answer questions about what we are trying to teach, then we may not completely understand the topic. So how is it not beneficial for students to see this process? Why do we insist on asking questions that we already know the answer to, instead of allowing students to push the lesson in a direction that we may not even feel comfortable with? Granted, as I've insisted in past posts: this is a delicate balance. If the lesson goes so far that no one knows what's going on, the learning opportunity may be lost and even worse, students may be discouraged. Instead of thinking of teaching students as a purely procedural activity, I think that we could gain more understanding, more problem solving abilities, more creativity, more learners instead of students if we begin to think of our career as a flexible, fluid, ever-changing, almost experimental (I hesitate to use that word...I think many people will disagree with me on this. It's scary, but stick with me...) process. Not experimental in the terms of "let's just go in to the class today and see what happens". No, I think that every day there needs to be preparation, there needs to be a purpose, there needs to be a reason for students to be there. However, why can this not change a little throughout the day? What if students ask a question we hadn't thought about? I see too often how these questions will be disregarded or deemed unworthy of attention. What if our perfect lesson we have planned out goes completely in the wrong direction? Why can't we use the years of education that we have to formulate a new way to bring in the content: quickly! If we want students to be problem solvers, to use all of the information they've learned to gain insight, to analyze situations, to evaluate their understanding, to create new things, why don't we model this?

Now I want to make sure that I note that I am nowhere near understanding this completely. This is why I feel weeks behind: my mind is trying to process this information while constantly being bombarded with new information. Everyday is a chance to reflect and analyze these ideas from experiences in and out of the classroom. I would love for this process to never end; we've all heard it before: once we stop learning, we are no longer living. I do not expect for these answers to become clear tomorrow, or next week, or in the next ten years. I think that they may slowly come into focus, but I also believe that too many teachers can become stuck in the idea that they have it figured out, that they are doing everything the right way. Or, in the case of some teachers to be, I think that they believe a more experienced educator can give them the answer and the cycle starts all over: these students are expecting to be able to answer the questions that their professors ask them in regards to these topics instead of raising more questions and experimenting. However cynical this may sound, I also believe that the colleagues that I work with on a daily basis are some of the most intelligent, creative, and thoughtful people I have ever had the pleasure of working with. Without them, I would never be able to talk about these topics and this struggle that we call educating would be an impossible endeavor. For that, I thank all of you around me: thank you for the help, thank you for the support, and thank you for everything you do!

Now that we're all a little happier, and a little more excited to get out there and have students challenge us, ask us questions, let's make sure that when students are bringing these new ideas to the table we are able to help with misconceptions. If we deliver a lesson that is based on information that is not correct, we may have sent students in a bad direction, but if we can help students see why or how information can be skewed, their understanding may be even greater! So what if students insist they are correct? What if you can't figure out how to show them something is a little off? To that, I wish you luck:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLprXHbn19I

Day Away From School

So it's been about a week since I have posted last, and due to only a 3 day week last week and two of those days involving my students taking their unit test, not much has come of instructional insights. However I have found that I can point to two developing insights in my teacher education: the use and implications of summative assessments and the incorporation of technology into the classroom.

In light of my students taking the summative assessment on the unit that I taught over the past 3 weeks, it made me think about how well this test assessed the learning that actually happened. I was given the test from my cooperating teacher, and tried to make sure my students were prepared for the exam. Surely there was plenty of content that we covered that was not on the test: it will be important in the future, either in school or in their own life. But what about beyond that? What about skills that students need to, or at least should, be learning from their instructors? This includes problem solving skills, social skills, behavioral skills, and beyond! None of this was addressed in the test, it was purely content.

Some may argue that students may use their problem solving skills on an exam, but to what extent? Is it to the extent that they could then use those skills in their own life? Developing strong problem solvers is what we need to be doing as educators, and unfortunately teaching to the test and telling students that the answer is the most important part of mathematics is incredibly disastrous to their problem solving skills and their outlook on life. I think that this mindset brings forward a generation of students that want an answer....and they want it right away. I think I will think abut this issue for a few days and add to this post, I feel strongly about this. In one of my classes I have even told students that when they get an answer, they have to wait 30 seconds before they can tell me what they found. I've found that some students go back into their work and correct mistakes since 30 seconds is a long time to sit there...which some students do just sit there and squirm uncomfortably, but i think this is a good thing: sometimes the gratification needs to be delayed or they get bored or disinterested very quickly. There is a fine line with this tactic, appropriate for one class will not be appropriate for another. To be continued...

The second piece I have been working on is technology in the classroom. Before getting into the classroom, I thought that possibly it could be a hindrance. Now this may be true, but I was also completely naive to the incredible resources that are out there. Creating usable content online, developing incredible lessons with resources online, posting online for students to access, and reflecting with others are all examples of incredible tools that I was not very familiar with. However after jumping head first into these technologies, I have fallen in love. I can see how students could become so interested in these materials and they can be so readily edited and adapted, it's fantastic, and so user friendly! After knowing how versatile these technologies can be, and how many technologies there are, I have completely changed my outlook on them and am striving to understand what is out there to assist instructors and students for alternative educational experiences.

With everything going on, sometimes I find myself in the following predicament...and I've come to realize that that is okay and can sometimes be much more beneficial than always knowing the answer!

Support

So I've thought about posting everyday, but then life happens and I completely forget so I devised a very clever plan: post once a week or so.

With that said, it has been a crazy week! Teacher assisting is going well, almost done with my first unit and am kind of excited to have a few days to rest when I won't be teaching. Everyday is a new adventure and any plans I have of how I think the day is going to go usually change as the day progresses.

The week of teaching culminated on Friday with one of the most amazing lunches I've ever had and I have been inspired and humbled ever since! It's nice to have colleagues that support you and can relate to you in so many ways. Knowing the community that surrounds me makes it that much easier for me to try and help others; it's never bad to try and pass along the good feeling that someone gets when they know that somebody out there cares about them or is willing to help them.

Related to school, it is becoming more and more apparent how much of an influence you have on students AND how much of an influence that they have on you! Everyone has an off day or has a tough time or makes a bad decision, but the most important part of these situations is the way that an individual handles the outcome and the consequences. If a student is having an off day, wait to talk to them and see what they will do to prevent it from happening again. Instead of punishing so quickly in the classroom, why don't we discuss with students what is going on: they're people too!!

So how about the other way around? This has been about how we can support our students. How can our students support us? Why this question is even asked is crazy, it should be obvious!!! The students that I work with on a daily basis can bring a smile to your face at any second! Can make you realize that in some way, you can always do more good than harm, and that someone out there really counts on you! For some students, you may be the only support they receive in their life, and they will try as hard as they possibly can to reciprocate! They will talk to you, they will ask you questions, they will tell you jokes, they will try to influence your life in as many ways as you influence them, and they may not even know it!

This whole teaching thing is amazing. I had a conversation with someone who did not understand why I would want to be around kids all day: kids don't know anything! This is so upsetting to me, how could you think that? Kids are creative, innovative, think outside of the box! Just because they don't have the same experience that I do in life, in many ways they prove to be smarter than any of us!

So let's learn from each other, let's stop dwelling on why things are so bad and start looking for what we can do about it, and let's start showing those around us how much we really care! Let's start acting like we're on the same team:

Starting!

Now I can finally get my thoughts online...it started with google docs and now it spills over into explaining my thoughts and life online. Can't wait to be able to look back and see how I change over the craziest semester I've ever been involved with.