Reflective Journal
My reflective journal is going to start back to when I had taken on the guardianship of my present class 12.
We were in yr8 2002, I had a large class of, predominately boys
and this day happened to be one of their “big” days. I couldn’t seem to bring them in to a working atmosphere in the classroom. It was afternoon, they had been playing sport at lunchtime and they were red in the face, hot and sweaty. I yelled at them. Not your average voice raising but a full bodied yell! I felt something inside my head shift and to be honest, it stopped the students and they quietened down but I realised that I had just been incredibly aggressive. To them, yes, but to myself also. I continued teaching the lesson but I remember reflecting afterwards that if I didn’t discover different strategies soon to work with this “big picture” that the boys often brought into any class that they were in I would have to rethink teaching as a vocation.
Margaret Wheatley’s article on “Solving problems free from aggression” reminded me of this situation and the dilemma I faced. Wheatley talks of this in conflict resolution and even though I didn’t have a situation of students directly attacking one another, I did have strong conflict of interests where there were students who were ready to come in and wanted the lesson to start, wanted to learn and students who were still acting like they were screaming around on the ball court. I quickly came to realise that the quieter students were also intimidated by their “out of it” peers. This created an incredibly stressful and unstable working environment for all of my students. I also realised that my class needed a learning atmosphere where a strong sense of form predominated. This form needed to have clear lesson outline ie. the students needed to know what was expected of them in every lesson. Humour, humility and creativity were also key ingredients as these students were smart, wild and very good with their practical making skills.
Our high school was very young at this stage. We had our first yr 12 in their final year, new teachers who had never taught secondary students before (they were teachers of adults) and we had very inadequate facilities in the school.
We had only 8 computers in the library so when computer lessons were on three quarters of my class were “hanging around” without any other lesson structure being provided for them.
I decided that if I talked to my collegues and we found a strategy that could be used in all classes from computer studies to textiles to English then the students could come to be familiar and safe within this form or routine.
The lessons where the teachers could naturally adopt this strategy started to work really well. My class enjoyed working and achieving. That was a good start. The lessons where this didn’t happen were something else.
I was the textiles and food tech D&T teacher and all of my students loved to make things so I drew up a Major Design Project outline for them. We looked at the design process and the outcomes I wanted them to achieve and we discussed the “why” of doing what they first looked at as an extra lesson. I worked with them most mornings doing a quick evaluation of where they were with their chosen project and any free time ie lessons without a teacher turning up, rainy lunchtimes or sports afternoons was spent working on their chosen personal project.
The students came up with an amazing assortment of projects from a huge bird aviary, a timber bed and a game not only invented by the student but the board and players were beautifully constructed out of wood.
For myself, I looked at every lesson I was teaching and realised that the D&T subjects I taught were great as in, the students worked well individually, collaboratively and their level of achievement was very high. Quite often we would be working well into lunchtime, only because they wanted to. I needed to work on the main lesson subjects where more academic demand was put on the students.
The lessons that worked provided me with an arena to teach to the students different strengths (Gardner’s M.I.). In the textiles room I would physically point out and name the parts of the sewing machine, demonstrate its basic functions on a swatch of material and draw on the board different stitches and techniques that each student had to execute to achieve their sewing license. Students were given a book where they copied the basic sewing/O.H&S rules into and once they could demonstrate competence on the machine they could put their swatch into their books where their design work would also go and experiment further or move in to the smaller groups being show the use of an overlocker. Competent students naturally moved into teacher/assistant mode as they helped less capable students and as the class progressed there were different stations of activity operating at any given time and with students assisting each other in the process. The group would stop and come together when a new skill or stage of the design process needed to be outlined to the group. We had an extremely small room and I had up to 15 students working in there at any given time, some wanting to stay and work on at lunchtime. Why did this work with such difficult facilities? After reading Wheatly, Gardner and Blooms Taxonomy I can now say that the harmonious and collaborative environment free of stress where everyone was able to learn something new and fun and useful, a situation where the lesson “breathed” ie we all came in together and focused on the next part of the scaffold that would get them to their final outcome and an arena where socialising and helping each other became an integral part of the lesson was obviously a win win situation for all of us. The students also could see that as they grasped the fundamental skills and understood the process of the what and why of the lesson they were then able to evaluate their work and make decisions that would influence the process and outcome of their personal design . They analysed designs and techniques and had a say in the extent of their application of their skills beyond meeting the lesson outline. I tried this plan in other classes I taught and have found that this is the best model for me to work with . The aspect of the D&T lessons that I failed to mention earlier was that I felt very comfortable, knowledgeable and passionate about this subject, particularly the creative, sculptural aspect of textiles which made it easy for me to turn the students on to it and also for me to be comfortable/excited about them wanting to explore a new idea within the lesson content.
Some of the other classes I have been asked to teach I have not been able to digest the amount of foundation information that I would have liked and so I have found that, even though I have a love of the subject, I am hesitant in case I give the students the wrong information.
An example of this was an English class I was asked to teach to year 6 at the beginning of this year. I wasn’t sure of the content that was required, I had a brief discussion with the head teacher of the English department, wrote out the information she gave me and then attempted to make it my own. I found that when I went into that class I was still unsure of myself. None the less, I delivered the lesson. I wasn’t happy with it because it felt dead to me. The class seemed to understand the content and were able to apply the information/concepts to their tasks but for me the lesson didn’t breathe and the discussions that took place within that lesson were very dry.
I check in with the English “head” as often as I can to discuss with her what I have been doing and what I propose to do to ensure that I have the syllabus and lesson content in order and to look for clues/strategies to help me to help the students so that they can not only be more than adequately prepared for the increased work load in secondary school but they will begin to develop a love for it. I am hoping that techniques such as brainstorming, essay writing, sentence sequencing, using a dictionary, and descriptive/creative writing are becoming second nature to them therefore freeing them up to explore and hopefully embrace the other aspects of the English curriculum.
I realised very quickly that no-one likes to be yelled at which suites me just fine. If that was the way to deal with a class, even if it did work, I would not be teaching because that is not the way I am comfortable relating to anyone. I have found that to address a student by their name or to approach them and talk quietly to them are examples of much more respectful and harmonious ways to reach an unsettled student
It is wonderful to see that the more a student is learning the more comfortable they become which helps to create a safer and more productive and creative learning environment.
Note: Some of my reflections have been stimulated by Glassers writings.
We were in yr8 2002, I had a large class of, predominately boys
and this day happened to be one of their “big” days. I couldn’t seem to bring them in to a working atmosphere in the classroom. It was afternoon, they had been playing sport at lunchtime and they were red in the face, hot and sweaty. I yelled at them. Not your average voice raising but a full bodied yell! I felt something inside my head shift and to be honest, it stopped the students and they quietened down but I realised that I had just been incredibly aggressive. To them, yes, but to myself also. I continued teaching the lesson but I remember reflecting afterwards that if I didn’t discover different strategies soon to work with this “big picture” that the boys often brought into any class that they were in I would have to rethink teaching as a vocation.
Margaret Wheatley’s article on “Solving problems free from aggression” reminded me of this situation and the dilemma I faced. Wheatley talks of this in conflict resolution and even though I didn’t have a situation of students directly attacking one another, I did have strong conflict of interests where there were students who were ready to come in and wanted the lesson to start, wanted to learn and students who were still acting like they were screaming around on the ball court. I quickly came to realise that the quieter students were also intimidated by their “out of it” peers. This created an incredibly stressful and unstable working environment for all of my students. I also realised that my class needed a learning atmosphere where a strong sense of form predominated. This form needed to have clear lesson outline ie. the students needed to know what was expected of them in every lesson. Humour, humility and creativity were also key ingredients as these students were smart, wild and very good with their practical making skills.
Our high school was very young at this stage. We had our first yr 12 in their final year, new teachers who had never taught secondary students before (they were teachers of adults) and we had very inadequate facilities in the school.
We had only 8 computers in the library so when computer lessons were on three quarters of my class were “hanging around” without any other lesson structure being provided for them.
I decided that if I talked to my collegues and we found a strategy that could be used in all classes from computer studies to textiles to English then the students could come to be familiar and safe within this form or routine.
The lessons where the teachers could naturally adopt this strategy started to work really well. My class enjoyed working and achieving. That was a good start. The lessons where this didn’t happen were something else.
I was the textiles and food tech D&T teacher and all of my students loved to make things so I drew up a Major Design Project outline for them. We looked at the design process and the outcomes I wanted them to achieve and we discussed the “why” of doing what they first looked at as an extra lesson. I worked with them most mornings doing a quick evaluation of where they were with their chosen project and any free time ie lessons without a teacher turning up, rainy lunchtimes or sports afternoons was spent working on their chosen personal project.
The students came up with an amazing assortment of projects from a huge bird aviary, a timber bed and a game not only invented by the student but the board and players were beautifully constructed out of wood.
For myself, I looked at every lesson I was teaching and realised that the D&T subjects I taught were great as in, the students worked well individually, collaboratively and their level of achievement was very high. Quite often we would be working well into lunchtime, only because they wanted to. I needed to work on the main lesson subjects where more academic demand was put on the students.
The lessons that worked provided me with an arena to teach to the students different strengths (Gardner’s M.I.). In the textiles room I would physically point out and name the parts of the sewing machine, demonstrate its basic functions on a swatch of material and draw on the board different stitches and techniques that each student had to execute to achieve their sewing license. Students were given a book where they copied the basic sewing/O.H&S rules into and once they could demonstrate competence on the machine they could put their swatch into their books where their design work would also go and experiment further or move in to the smaller groups being show the use of an overlocker. Competent students naturally moved into teacher/assistant mode as they helped less capable students and as the class progressed there were different stations of activity operating at any given time and with students assisting each other in the process. The group would stop and come together when a new skill or stage of the design process needed to be outlined to the group. We had an extremely small room and I had up to 15 students working in there at any given time, some wanting to stay and work on at lunchtime. Why did this work with such difficult facilities? After reading Wheatly, Gardner and Blooms Taxonomy I can now say that the harmonious and collaborative environment free of stress where everyone was able to learn something new and fun and useful, a situation where the lesson “breathed” ie we all came in together and focused on the next part of the scaffold that would get them to their final outcome and an arena where socialising and helping each other became an integral part of the lesson was obviously a win win situation for all of us. The students also could see that as they grasped the fundamental skills and understood the process of the what and why of the lesson they were then able to evaluate their work and make decisions that would influence the process and outcome of their personal design . They analysed designs and techniques and had a say in the extent of their application of their skills beyond meeting the lesson outline. I tried this plan in other classes I taught and have found that this is the best model for me to work with . The aspect of the D&T lessons that I failed to mention earlier was that I felt very comfortable, knowledgeable and passionate about this subject, particularly the creative, sculptural aspect of textiles which made it easy for me to turn the students on to it and also for me to be comfortable/excited about them wanting to explore a new idea within the lesson content.
Some of the other classes I have been asked to teach I have not been able to digest the amount of foundation information that I would have liked and so I have found that, even though I have a love of the subject, I am hesitant in case I give the students the wrong information.
An example of this was an English class I was asked to teach to year 6 at the beginning of this year. I wasn’t sure of the content that was required, I had a brief discussion with the head teacher of the English department, wrote out the information she gave me and then attempted to make it my own. I found that when I went into that class I was still unsure of myself. None the less, I delivered the lesson. I wasn’t happy with it because it felt dead to me. The class seemed to understand the content and were able to apply the information/concepts to their tasks but for me the lesson didn’t breathe and the discussions that took place within that lesson were very dry.
I check in with the English “head” as often as I can to discuss with her what I have been doing and what I propose to do to ensure that I have the syllabus and lesson content in order and to look for clues/strategies to help me to help the students so that they can not only be more than adequately prepared for the increased work load in secondary school but they will begin to develop a love for it. I am hoping that techniques such as brainstorming, essay writing, sentence sequencing, using a dictionary, and descriptive/creative writing are becoming second nature to them therefore freeing them up to explore and hopefully embrace the other aspects of the English curriculum.
I realised very quickly that no-one likes to be yelled at which suites me just fine. If that was the way to deal with a class, even if it did work, I would not be teaching because that is not the way I am comfortable relating to anyone. I have found that to address a student by their name or to approach them and talk quietly to them are examples of much more respectful and harmonious ways to reach an unsettled student
It is wonderful to see that the more a student is learning the more comfortable they become which helps to create a safer and more productive and creative learning environment.
Note: Some of my reflections have been stimulated by Glassers writings.
posted by vicki Castles @ 3:04 AM
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