College Ready by the Common Core

[This post is in lieu to the usual unit-update post.  Since that particular unit update post was tied our 10/30/13 class, I’ll respond to the reading from that week: the Common Core Standards.]

While I feel comfortable navigating the Common Core (literally and, in an ethical sense, pragmatically), I’m uncomfortable with the way its supporting documents  use the term college ready.

The Standards seem to be using the words to mean  "able to succeed in entry-level, credit-bearing academic college courses". While reading that, I began wondering whether every member of the International Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers is “college ready” according to the standards, or (if one of them is not) whether that would undermine her credibility in a college classroom.  Their curriculum vitae are (tellingly perhaps) narratively embedded in their bios.  Upon my review of them, I became very concerned about these women's academic deficits.  Clearly, the ones who don't have proper citation skills need to be rescued them from their ignorance via education that conforms to the Common Core Standards.

Progressing on my Unit

[This blog responds to the 10/02/13 questions: what’s your conceptual framing?; what texts are you thinking about bringing in?; why?]

The unit’s essential question:  Why do good people do bad things?

The unit’s conceptual framing: by exploring research into the psychology of cruelty, and reflecting on instances of cruelty, the class may come to a better understanding of the following: how to avoid being cruel; how to contextualize the cruelty we face from others; and how to cultivate approaches to our social and political lives that reduce cruelty on and micro and macro levels.

Texts to be included in the unit (and why, i.e. the questions attached to the unit's essential question, the former of which directly inform the inclusion of their respective texts): “Girl” (Why does the person who’s talking to the narrator call her a slut?); “Smell and Envy” (Why would someone be jealous of the smells someone else is experiencing?  Do you think that’s fair?); “No country club for old men” + “As For Empathy, the Haves Have Not” (Do you think you are empathetic?  Why or why not?); “In Simili Materia” (Why do you think the little girl slaps her doll?); and “The Fall of the House of Usher” (Why do you think the brother buries his sister if he thinks she is alive?).

Home Printers for Urban Education

[This is the blog entry in response to the teacher panel.]

As we discussed with practicing teachers in our classroom forum, urban educators face hurdles regarding printing that their generally better funded suburban counterparts often don't.  Things like school offices running out of paper.  Things like teachers being annoyed at their colleagues who are willing to bring in their own paper because when you bring your own paper you’re propping up a broken system (in which teachers have to use their own money if they want paper).  I share those teachers’ disgust at this serious flaw in our society, but if the education of my students is what’s being held hostage I’ll buckle and print my own material.  Still, as one of the teachers in our forum pointed out—if we want to keep printing once the office runs dry (and also want to avoid the politics involved in propping up a broken system) it’s safest to do our printing outside of the school building.  The conversation quickly turned to cost, and I see why.  I printed nine different worksheets for my observed lesson (to allow students to choose their own sheets).  I wanted enough copies of each sheet to accommodate the possibility that every student would choose it.  The sticker price for copies?  $185.37.  Ouch!  And that's not including the portable file cases I bought to carry them around.  My hardest lesson learned in the EdTPA was that, pragmatically (and tragically), one can over-differentiate.

Even if I cut down on differentiation, my interest in differentiation (when combined with the issues we saw facing the implementation of technology in many of the neediest urban classrooms) will require significant printing.  The question becomes: what are the most cost effiencient home printers?

As I looked into this issue, I ended up here.  Since I'm planning to print in bulk, I want a printer that will print fast, so I focused on laser printers.  Now, last year's CPS calendar was 180 days.  I'm not sure of this year's numbers, so for an easy number I'll assume it went up to 200 student school days.  If I print about 100 sheets a day, we have an easy number: this $250 printer with a 2¢ per page running cost is $1 more expensive per day than this $1320 printer with a 1¢ per page running cost.   At a 200 days year, we’re looking at $200 a year.  Seems like a pretty big difference.  But it also means I’d have to use the more expensive printer for 5.35 years before it paid off the difference (not including tax and possible shipping fees).  I think there’s a good chance that within 5 years the technology will have advanced enough to have even cheaper printing (or paper elimination), so right now I’m thinking the $250 model wins despite the extra cent per page.  Having said that, I came across a printer one of the reviews that isn't listed on the chart.  It's $300 with a 1.8¢ per page running cost.  It can also print on both sides of the page and has wifi!  So right now my front runner is that one, the Brother HL-6180DW.

 

The Best Houseplants for Urban Education

[I’m catching up with my blog posts for this semester.  Since I used one long post (instead of many shorter ones) to address where I was with my unit, I thought a good use of this post would be to look into what plants are the best fit for the urban classroom.]

Plants in a classroom can improve attendance and well being while increasing attentiveness and cleaning indoor pollution.  These are benefits to any class, but those of us who have seen what urban classrooms face first hand know how much we need to use any tool we can to raise the level of student health, attendance, attentiveness and well being.  Of course, urban classrooms have needs that aren’t always the same as suburban and rural ones.  There’s a much higher ratio of students who haven’t been to class as regularly as the better funded suburban schools’ students.  These urban students bring great energy and powerful insights, but their relative inexperience with normative classroom behavior means an urban classroom plant may take a fall now and again.  Beside that, I’ve seen desks and tables propped up with books to stop them from wobbling so much—since the school lacked the funds to fix them.  Again, all the more reason to consider plants that can take a spill without getting killed.

So in this post I explore which houseplants are best suited to bring the benefits of classroom plants to students in urban settings. 

The first two we can rule out right away are areca palms and majesty palms.  These plants grow fast and easy in greenhouses and are cynically sold to ignorant buyers.  They’re almost impossible for the laymen to keep alive indoors.  They're sold as disposable plants, which is good for Home Depot’s profits but bad for your wallet and the environment.  Unless you are experienced with houseplants and willing to take on a project, keep away from these plants.

The quick plant for a lot of people who think they have no green thumb is a cactus.  I’m reluctant to have cacti in urban classrooms since I would be so nervous that the kids would touch them and get hurt and since cacti, when damaged, can take decades to regrow.

The things I looked for in the plants I’m recommending are:

1)   How easy is it to take care of?

2)   How fast does it grow back if a piece gets broken off in the controlled chaos of the classroom?

3)   How many common indoor toxins does it remove?

4)   Is it poisonous?

When all things are considered, my list narrows to three.  The plant that reduces the most airborne toxins is the The Peace Lily.  This is great because it’s also super easy to care for.  It doesn’t need a ton of light (don’t stick it right in the window, indirect light is better and won't burn the leaves) and it is very hard to overwater (since it’s a swamp plant).  Here’s the catch: they are poisonous if eaten.  So is my other favorite, devil's ivy.  So if you need a plant that is nontoxic but also cleans the air and is easy to care for, I think the spider plant is your best bet.

Here's Wikipedia's List  of more options if you wanted a good starting point for your own search.

The struggle is real

IF YOU DON'T FEEL LIKE READING, TOTALLY UNDERSTANDABLE. SCROLL DOWN AND WATCH THE VIDEO BELOW! :)

Hey guys, I just wanted to say that this semester has been real...and getting to see the people who just finished student teaching was terrifying and exciting at the same time, talk about emotionally confused!

On the panel... it was so cool to hear about teachers who went through the same program as us, what their expectations were, what the realities were, and their plentiful advice about teaching. What I found very interesting is how political the profession of teaching is, what we "should do" or "shouldn't do".

On this semester... I've learned so much about the process of teaching and planning. The 3 golden questions to ask: What are students interested in? What do they already know and how am I going to know this? And finally, what do they need to know and how am I going to get them there. My experiences this semester really showed me all of the roles that a teacher plays; researcher, observer, counselor, parent, entertainer, and of course, teacher. I feel that my views on teaching have become more realistic. This reality is nerve wracking yet exciting at the same time!

On that note, my parting thoughts are these...Stay true to your teaching philosophy (after all, it's what got you to start this program in the first place!) but stay true to it in a way that allows you to take in every experience flying your way, every encounter with a student, and use that to adapt and evolve for the better.

Thanks to Sarah Rutter for all the motivation, support, and time.

Thanks to Brenda for all of the helpful conferences and being an awesome partner.

Thanks to the whole class for being supportively critical about each others' work.

And thanks for all the great posts, bloggers! Here's a gift for you:

"The Struggle is Real" by Ramina and Natalia AKA RAMBO AND NATTY ICE.

A pre/post observation struggle:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9ZKAkBK08I

What a humbling experience to have 5 guest speakers share their insight and experiences teaching. Throughout the course of this class I have always wondered about planning for a classroom of students that I do not know about. Thanks to Allison, who qwas a big breath of fresh air, I can assure myself that I don't have to plan for students I don't know cold turkey, rather ill have time to observe the students and pick my cooperating teacher's mind.  More of my personal fears of student teacher were slightly diminished and I feel I can moveforward with confidence.

Moving on to Rich and Jason, I picked their brain about  differentiation in teaching reading and writing. However, as I read Beach and Smago this semester, I thought of reading as something that can easily be implemented in different activities. Thanks to these guys, I was convinced that students NEED to be taught how to read, then read with them A LOT, and practice comprehension, and finally start writing. In my unit specifically, I did not focus on reading the whole play of Romeo and Juliet; only certain scenes relevant to my conceptual unit. I plan on having them watch clips of scenes, but I think having them listen to audio books will be helpful as well just to ensure they are reading. I implement a few reading strategies in my unit and I am following the advice that it is crucial to break down paragraphs and focus on what the main idea is, what the author is saying, and important vocabulary. Also, how important it is to do a lot of activities while reading a book to make the process 1.more enjoyable 2. Helpful to understanding central concepts

Last, but not least, the absolute most helpful thing that was clarified for me was the differece between unit goals and objectives. I have been struggling with this before  Cynthia  explained that goals are contextual and philosophical and require exploring. While objectives are tied to skill and standards, they should include a verb from Blooms taxonomy. And when I asked about differentiation in unit planning they suggested asking the mentor/cooperating teacher and asking the SPED  teacher, which will be bonus points and a good look for me. Also important questions that I should ask are:

Where do you want kids to be at at the end of the year?
Ask aboht verticle allignment.
How far should I plan to best prepare thrm?

Talking to them was extremly helpful and motivating!

Panel Discussion - Working outward from student skill sets, planning, and pressures of meeting common core

One of our guest speakers noted the importance of finding what students can do first and working from there. This is one key part of my 432 lesson that I would focus on more if I could go back and change. There was a clear gap in understanding between what I felt students were capable of doing and what their skills actually were in terms of their abilities to analyze texts (in this case, dialogue from The Crucible). This taught me the importance of paying close attention to what skills students DO have, and where they might improve. In turn, this should inform, in part, how assessments are designed so that students have opportunities to apply their skills, yet are also faced with challenges appropriate to their zones of proximal development. (sorry Vygotsky)

I appreciated one of Ryan Dolan's insights on planning. He shared ways in which he has gone from using backwards planning to another form called boomerang planning (I think he invented the name). As deadly as this sounds, I liked it because it seems to give more malleability to the end product in that the minutia of the unit, such as individual lessons and methods, may shape the overlying concepts and essential questions differently than they may have originally been perceived when the planning process began. In short, the end product is not just informing how lessons, methods, rationales are constructed, but these components may also influence and change the end product as well.

One of the scarier sides of teaching, for me, remains how well I will be able to help students meet whatever standards my school's English department seeks to reach through its curriculum. Cynthia's insights helped me realize that I will not be the only one fighting this battle, but that every other teacher I am working with will be concerned with this. Meeting standards is one area in which I will HAVE to collaborate with other teachers, so as to make the task more manageable. One single teacher should not have to feel like he or she is held to meeting ALL of the standards on their own. The Common Core has sets of standards that apply over two years (9-10 and 11-12), which gives teachers more time to help students meet them and enables teachers to work amongst each other to share the work load this comes with.

Wrapping Up the Semester

The week before Thanksgiving we participated in a panel discussion with teachers from Foreman High School, Calvin Park High School and Team Englewood. I learned so much from those discussions which I feel were way too short. Honestly, anytime I come into contact with an educator I try to absorb all the information I can from them. I feel that they are our most valuable resource. The fact that the panel was comprised of graduates from UIC was even more amazing! They were once in our shoes, they have completed the program and are now full time teachers. They offered so many helpful tips and ideas that I will carry with me during student teaching and beyond. What I appreciated the most was their brutal honesty. They offered a glimpse of what it is like to be a UIC graduate working in the “real world;” this unique experience was different from my fieldwork. Yes I have received wonderful and meaningful advice from my cooperating teachers but what made the panel’s contribute more prominent was that fact that they graduated from UIC, they learned how to teach from the same courses I have taken, so in some weird way I found their words more comforting and especially significant. Their success stories felt comforting in that, with our shared education background, I TOO would have similar successes. Now, I understand that this is somewhat irrational but honestly, it did ease some of my nerves about student teaching. It felt sort of like, “Hey we survived the gauntlet, we were armed with the same tools that you are armed with so you’ll be just fine!” Feel free to call me crazy though!  :p

That new-found sense of encouragement also came from one of the panel member’s reflection on his educational career. The question (which I can vaguely remember) was, “What parts of your education did you find to be untrue or unhelpful in a real classroom setting?” To which he replied (something along the lines of) “I was surprised how often I turned to my course materials for guidance during student teaching.” It was comforting to know that every sleepless night (many people can attest to this), those countless cups of coffee, the enormous bags under my eyes, and my hard work will eventually pay off. That everything I have done up until this point was not in vain, thought at times, I will admit I have questioned the validity and importance of some tasks. It is nice to know that I can rely on my coursework to guide my future instruction!! <3

One interesting moment from the panel came from my discussion with the teacher from Calvin Park, when talking about the CCSS she mentioned that her school required her to attend a training seminar about the standards. Being that she is a fairly new teacher her administration sent her to the training, along with other newbies. While at the training she mentioned that it felt like one whole review to her, largely due to the fact that UIC preps us to teach in urban settings. She mentioned that she was surprised that more than half of the teachers participating in the seminar were seeing this material for the first time! She said she was shocked that many of these new teachers had very little knowledge of the CCSS. She told us that our educational background and all the work we have done at UIC has given us an “advantage” of sorts over other teachers. This of course was music to my ears considering the fact that in my spare time I hold mock interviews in my head where I envision how I would conduct myself in an interview. Hey, I’ll take any advantage I can get! :D

The next big take away from the panel came from my discussion with the duo from Foreman High School. They offered us some amazing advice about job interviews. They advised us to keep archives of student work throughout student teaching to use in our interviews. They suggested keeping work that demonstrated the students’ growth over the semester. Another tip they gave was to be able to discuss standards in depth. During interviews many administrators may test your knowledge of the CCSS so be sure to know at least a handful of “go-to” standards that you can discuss, create lessons for, and differentiate on the spot.

Here is a list of some of the other helpful tips the panel offered:

• Be the best dressed person in the building (because ST is a three month interview)
• Ask about “copy rations” in your first meeting with your mentor teacher
• Establish rapport with the staff (front desk, copy person, security)
• Don’t be too hard on yourself, teachers are human too and they make mistakes. It’s okay as long as you reflect and learn from them. Acknowledge your mistakes so that the kids know you’re human too. Learning never stops, you grow as a person and as an educator everyday!

As this semester draws to an end, I can’t help but look back at what I've learned in my last semester of undergrad. I truly feel that this semester has prepared me for student teaching… or at least, I hope. J I am so excited about student teaching. The thought of having my own classroom serves as the constant motivator as I wrap up my final projects and my final semester of undergrad classes. I want to wish everyone good luck on their units. You guys have been awesome!

P.s. Special shout out to Sam, you were the best partner J

P.S.S. Summer, thanks for putting me back together when I fall apart, luv yah gurl!