Week 4: Snowed In

Before the morning announcements finally began at 8:45 on Monday morning, there had already been eight announcements on the loud speaker. These announcements ranged from "Bus 2 is running late" to "we need a teacher in so-and-so's room" to "can we get a teacher at the back door to help the students in?" After driving through snow and rolling into school around 7:45, I not only arrived to these numerous announcements, but I also arrived only to find that my cooperating teacher (and many others) were not at school yet. As the clocked ticked towards 8:15, my mind jumped ahead and thought, Oh boy, full takeover is about to have a whole new meaning. Fortunately, it did not come to that (and it probably would not have come to that) because my cooperating teacher got there in the knick of time. It ended up that eight out of our twenty-two homeroom students were absent. Classes also ended up being delayed and even switched because of other teachers' absences.

This hectic Monday morning only boded an impending weather-filled week.

Tuesday went as normal, but throughout the day, there was chatter about the imminent Polar Vortex that was to arrive within the next day, and then stay a few days. That's when I first heard the term eLearning. Before this week, eLearning was an unfamiliar concept to me (and one that I am still skeptical of). To sum it up, a law was passed as of January 1st that allows schools to assign school work on snow days which then exempts the school from having to make up that day later on in the school year. Students must complete at least one assignment during the day, or else they would be counted absent. On Tuesday, the school decided that we would be piloting these eLearning days on both Wednesday and Thursday. Leading up to this, we had confirm that both the students and parents understood what eLearning was, and what their role in it was. On Tuesday, we opened up the dividing wall and had the entire sixth grade class come into the conjoined rooms for a big conference about eLearning to clear up some of the confusion. The sixth grade teacher team explained how the next few days would go, and the students asked questions. This conference was also helpful for me in coming to understand the upcoming eLearning days.

After school on Tuesday, my CT and I were hard at work discussing what to assign for the coming days of eLearning. This was interesting for me, as I am technically in full-takeover mode now. During these eLearning days, the students will most likely have questions that need to be answered throughout the day, so I would be the primary teacher that they should direct their questions towards. After leaving school on Tuesday, I felt as ready as I'd ever be to be in the role of teacher while being snowed in.

On Wednesday morning, I woke up to subzero temperatures and lots of emails from confused students. However, as the day went on, we got things figured out, and Thursday ended up going a lot smoother. I ended up spending most of those two days staying in and grading tests, which was a completely separate learning experience in and of itself.

On Friday, we returned from our snow days and jumped back into our usual learning routines. After having those two days off, the students surprising had way more missing work than two days ago. Overall, the eLearning days had some benefit, but I am still critical as to how effective they are. We got more behind in the curriculum for Math, because we were not able to assign any learning that would be even slightly intensive. Instead, we assigned problems that were more of a review, and now those are two days that will never be made up. As for science, all the students had to do was their vocabulary homework, which would have taken 20 minutes at the most during a regular class period. The rest of that time is lost time in which the students were not learning, and it is time that will never be made up. I think that these days of eLearning days have a lot of potential, especially when students are at home and snowed in anyways, but there is still so much work that needs to be done before these days will be effective.

A few weeks ago, I made the goal of speaking up and gaining confidence in my own classroom management. Much of the reasoning behind this was classroom management. My class is not the most well-behaved, so I think I have come further in being able to manage them, but I still have a long way to go.

Goals for next week:
-Teach a full five day week (weather dependent, of course).
-Film activities for my showcase.
-Find ways to make the reading curriculum more engaging.

Classroom Confidential: Teachers are Curiosity Seekers
Describe how your understanding of culture was enhanced or changed by your reading of chapter 4

When I first began to read this chapter, I was captured by the description of the classroom in which the author was teaching in her first year. This diverse group of students sounded like such a rich environment of cultural diversity, and an environment in which I would love to teach. Being an ESL minor, I have been taught a lot about diversity in the classroom, but this chapter from Schmidt added some perceptive insights. I love the phrase that was used on page 68 as an overall approach to teaching any student, no matter the culture: "See your students as capable learners, tap into their world, then link school learning to who they are and what they know." This quotation shows how students all possess potential that is just waiting to be tapped into. Teachers just have to take that step. By teaching kids "what they're not supposed to know," you are already recognizing their capability for learning and growing and understanding.

As teachers, we cannot claim to be color blind, and we cannot claim that we are just "one big happy family." This overlooks the differences that we all possess and the unique qualities that we all bring to the table. Our students have differences, and we need to recognize that. We can do so by possessing the intentionality and curiosity to get to know them-- their strengths, their weaknesses, their likes, their loves, their quirks, and their rhythms. Rather than viewing these things as things that need to be fixed (as recognized in the deficit model) we view them as starting ground for real education to occur. When this happens, the environment becomes culture-colored rather than color-blind.