Just Dewey It

I'm a little frustrated, because I haven't been able to attend my field placement for the past two weeks due to being sick, and then the students having a Friday off (which I wasn't told about!). I'm choosing an event from my French teaching assistant (TA) work from a week ago that I still remember well.

1. and 2.: Collect stories/What happened?

The TA sessions that I lead for intermediate French students are meant to be conversation-based. I have nine students this semester. The professor who organizes TA meetings is mostly responsible for the content of our sessions (activities, lesson ideas, etc). We have quite a bit of freedom with timing and pacing of the lesson, which I like.

We are usually given way more activities than the students are capable of completing in any given weekly hour-long session. The activities are not completed for a grade--it's just extra practice. This week, the professor gave me specific activities scanned from a workbook on the subject of film/cinema in France, since this was the focus of vocabulary for the students that week.

The book that Erica was reading, titled “Smile,” is a graphic novel. It is set in San Francisco. The main character is a white, brown haired girl. She wears her hair in a ponytail, and has to get “on again off again” braces. This girl is in middle school – by around page 60, she has transitioned into 7^th grade and is worried about what other students will think about her braces and pimples.

Mariah, the director, went upstairs to check whether Erica had a tutor with her. Since Erica was on her own, I offered to go sit with her. Erica is 11 years old, and in 5th grade. She is black, and appears to be tall for her age. She was wearing a school uniform - a maroon, short sleeved polo shirt and khaki pants. 

When I got upstairs, Erica had her legs stretched across the couch. I asked her if she wanted to read out loud with me, but she shook her head from side to side. I went to the bookshelf and found a book that I had already read – The truth about forever, by Sarah Dessen. I went back to the couch and asked her to move so that I could sit on the couch too. I got two rectangular ottomans for us to put our feet on.

“This is one of my favorites,” I told Erica. “Do you know Sarah Dessen?”

“Who?”

“Sarah Dessen – she’s the author of this book.”

Initial Findings: Before visiting Wordsmiths’ physical site, I was able to access a great deal of information about the organization through other sources. My initial research about the organization was online. Wordsmiths has a stable online presence– a quick Google search brings up their Facebook page, LinkedIn, Twitter, Wikipedia page, and Vimeo site. To me, their constant output of information suggests an air of both transparency and playfulness. The organization is constantly sharing its goings-on with the online community. For example, a tweet from February 12 reads, “Dorsey Dog visited tutoring today, but despite Erica’s very enthusiastic urging, he did not eat anyone’s homework.” Further, this statement provides a glimpse of the kinds of relationships that are possible within this organization – good-natured, sometimes silly, and friendly. On the Facebook page, photos of daily activities or events, invitations to workshops, and many paragraph-long excerpts of students’ writing, are posted every 2-4 days. Wordsmiths’ website also includes students’ writing, with “Student Work” as the first tabbed section on the website; this page contains stories, magazines, and other projects that have been published/formatted online through sites like Scribd. 

I really appreciate reading McEntee et al.'s At the Heart of Teaching--I really appreciate getting a more pragmatic point of view on teaching to coincide with the more theoretical pedagogical discussions we've had on Dewey and Freire (which I also deeply appreciate). I really like how much the writers mention the importance of dialogue among teachers (as well as with individual practice) to take the time to reflect on what happened in the classroom--to really question every action taken, even (especially?) if it was a spur-of-the-moment decision made. From personal experience as a growing educator, this reflection practice has always been invaluable to me to help me focus on specific elements of my practice that need improvement. When I have reflected on these specific things I want to work on, it's almost like I have a new toolbox in my head full of specific tactics I can draw on when I find myself falling back on habits I want to break.

This was my second visit to my independent school placement in center city with Teacher P's second grade classroom. We had morning meeting again where we played an interactive game discussing what we were going to do during the weekend. During the student's half hour at PE, Teacher P and I discussed the upcoming math lesson, and how one student struggles to work independently with his math work. She told me that this student, T, will be starting during this coming week to take medication for ADD symptoms. I am not sure if he has been diagnosed for ADD--I assume so since he is starting medication. She expressed some concern about never having taught a student on this medication before. She also mentioned that the adjustment process may be a difficult one, and that she was anticipating that. I am curious to see how T is doing this week since he started taking the medication--updates to come.

The reflections on pedagogy of both Dewey and Freire, read in tandem, show some interesting parallels, but also show some surprising differences in terms of conversations surrounding class, race, entitlement, and power. While both Dewey's "Pedagogic Creed" as well as Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed mention that education accounts for the individual as well as the "collective" (for example, Dewey: psychological and sociological aspects of ed), Dewey does not seem to account for the inherent entitlement to power and agency of mainstream (American?) students. While I think Dewey and Freire's pedagogies run parallel in many ways, Freire takes ideas of Dewey--the importance of self awareness; education as an engagement with the world around us; the importance of action/experience--and runs further with them to address what Dewey only hints at when he writes at the end, that the teacher "is engaged, not simply in the training of individuals, but in the formation of the proper social life" (12). Freire helps us learn how to teach from within a problematic societal structure, which Dewey doesn't do as explicitly. 

Field Notes – Week 7

More than a week away and the students are really excited about Winter Break – making them somewhat distracted at doing work.            - I wonder if there is a way to involve holiday festivities in student assignments/work? Maybe if the break was acknowledge in class rather than ignored it might make the students more excited about some of their work?

Students are working more on grammar – reading from packets together as a class  - These workbook packets always kind of bother me. I realize that they are necessary but I wonder if maybe they could just be graded to see how the students are doing rather than have them as the driving activity because students ere clearly bored going through this and didn’t seem to really be learning so much as just reciting things. 

Only the same student keeps raising his hand to answer. Mrs. Smith keeps calling on him asking, “how come no one else is awake today?” - I think this also speaks to the set up of the packet and the student’s interest. I talked with the student who was really excited to answer later in the class and he said that he wanted to impress Mrs. Smith. He didn’t talk about his love or enjoyment of the class material.

During a Curriculum and Pedagogy Seminar last semester we were required to teach a lesson in our field placement. I was placed in a first grade classroom at Bayside School with fifty first graders and two teachers. These are my field notes from that experience. 

Lesson Objectives: To teach students how to write a list, why lists are used, and to provide them with prompts to write lists of their own 

Number of students: Four

Four students gather at a table towards the back of the room while the rest of the class is split up into other stations that they will be working at for the next twenty minutes. Behind our table is the computer cluster where stuents are working quietly on reading and math activities. Next to us is a group of three students reading a large poetry picture book outloud to each other. There are not enough teachers for each station to have a supervisor so the computer cluster and the poetry cluster are working independently. On the other side of the room, two separate groups of students (about 6 kids each) work with each of the head teachers on writing and vocabulary. There is another group of four students in the library nook doing independent reading. 

Setting: A private, independent second grade elementary classroom in center city

Today was my first day at this new placement. The first day is always an unpredictable one, because I, as well as the teacher and students, are figuring out what role I will have in the classroom during my visits. In past field placements, it has been clear that I will have an observational role only, but in this placement, it seems as if the teacher (referred to as Teacher P) is open to me taking an active role in the classroom--participating in group activities, talking and interacting with the students, helping out with setup for activities.

In-Class activity: Writing reflections about a group project

Last year, I observed a class taught by two teachers. Teacher M was the primary teacher for this 6^th grade class, and Teacher L was a support for students with language learning needs. Just to preface this excerpt – the students had just finished working on a multi-day group project, and the teachers were explaining their expectations for the reflections.

I was struck by this lesson, because I think it clearly demonstrated the focus of the school, and the values that teachers intentionally incorporate into their actions and expectations every day. I was really impressed that teachers could work together this efficiently, without a weird power hierarchy. Also, students, at least by this point in the year, seemed to be very responsive to the high standards and methods used for self-reflection.