2. Read: “One Teacher’s Story”
3. Journal Writing 5:
Respond to the following prompts:
• Looking back at your teaching last semester, what did you
discover about the needs of students in your classes? What kinds of “needs” surfaced that surprised
you?
• To what degree do you think you really understand the needs
of your students? How wide is the “gap” between
them and you?
• What might have surfaced in the reading or in your teaching
(about the realities of students’ needs) that triggered a negative response in
you? Try to identify why this response
was triggered and how it relates to your biases
When I was CL high school last semester, I discovered that my students need a lot more
guidance and organization than I had expected.
Students as a whole where unable to organize themselves, and needed my
authority to insure they organized themselves.
At this age (9th grade) I had expected students to be able to
form their own groups. On multiple occasions,
outside a classroom as well as our normal settings outside, students could not
form their own groups that where larger than five. Simple instructions on where to go needed to
be repeated and slowly drawn out. If I asked
team 5 and 6 to go to the farthest west field next to the only red cones (while
pointing in that direction), I learned I had to wait for that group to get up
and be half way if not completely there until I gave the next teams’
field. If I did not wait, students would
mix themselves up and no one would remember where they were supposed to be
going. It fascinated me! I also tried color coding the teams (which were
always the same teams for the unit as well) but even then I had to stop and use
that waiting period time for students to travel. It was frustrating, I would have a full day
of activities but so much time needed to be spent organizing students because they
could not do anything on their own.
I have a lot to learn
when it comes to the understanding the needs of my students. In my first clinical practice I had overestimated
their ability to organize themselves and follow slightly more complicated
instructions. Prior to this clinical
practice, most of my organization practice getting my bachelors was organizing
and teaching college students. They were
self motivated, didn’t care about image or who they were grouped with, and
wanted to get the instruction part over so they could go play. I had expected a similar level of correspondence
from my high schoolers (minus the image subject). The needs of my high schoolers was to
motivate them. Simply getting to go out
and play wasn’t enough. This is where
the gap was. I as a student can think analytically,
and can get organized faster in a group setting. My students were not there yet.
I did not have a negative
trigger that responded when I read A Teacher’s Story. She saw a law and didn’t know why it could
have been important. If she had no acted
on this law or look into it, which would have triggered something negative, but
she didn’t. She took initiative to learn
about Native Americans and teach it to her class. She learned of Native American students she
had not previously identified them as such.
She learned a lot more about her surrounding and why it’s important to
teach to the aspects of social justice.
It was awesome! I was not frustrated;
I thought it was really cool to read about a teacher who stepped out of het
comfort zone to become a better teacher.
The only thing I found that saddened me during that read was that for
some of these Native American students, it could have been the first time their
culture had ever been a part of the classroom.
My question, and my bias, I wonder how many other cultures go
unrecognized in our school system. In
Montana, here were the Native Americans, the original dwellers of this land,
and they had never been recognized. This
makes me wonder about all the other teaching opportunities are being missed in
school from other cultures that are in our system but never heard. My bias is not knowing all these unheard
voices in the system, students that I will be teaching whose identity and
background has not been acknowledged.
That, makes me frustrated.
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