Amy Marsh’s Edublog

This is a podcast of my final presentation.  I also have a feed address for my podcast. 

Teaching has always been my dream profession.  Ever since I was in elementary school, I have known that I wanted to be a teacher.  However, it wasn’t until my senior year in high school that I figured what I wanted to teach.  In fact, the idea to major in math came to me after working extensively as a math tutor in an algebra class and also as a teacher assistant in a lower-level high school math class during my senior year of high school.  I had always known that I liked math throughout elementary school, middle school, and high school, but it wasn’t until I began tutoring students that I figured out that I wanted to teach math.

Now that I am on the path of actually becoming a math teacher, there are many questions that I am faced with.  Who am I as a teacher?  What does it mean to be a good and effective teacher?  What are the best ways to help students understand what they need to know and be able to do?  And finally, how do I know that my efforts at teaching are working?  Over the course of this semester, I have thought about these questions, and while I have not had the experience of being a teacher yet, I have come up with some answers.

Unlike other jobs, where a worker is typically specialized in one area, a teacher must specialize in a variety of areas.  As a teacher, I am not only going to teach my students, but also be a counselor, who helps students figure out their problems.  I am also going to be a confidante, who listens to their concerns.  I will be a police officer, who enforces rules and maintains classroom discipline, and a preacher to remind students of their values when they may stray away from them. 

However, a teacher can be all of the things above and still not be a good and effective teacher.  To me, one of the top priorities of a good teacher is to provide an environment where students want to learn.  One way of accomplishing this task is by having a genuine enthusiasm for not only the material you teach but also the act of teaching itself.  From my experiences as a student, the material that a teacher is teaching almost always seems more interesting if the teacher presents it an interesting and enthusiastic way.  As a consequence, students usually become more engaged and put more effort into the material.  In contrast, the subject matter usually seems boring and uninteresting if the teacher doesn’t seem interested in it.  Another characteristic of a good teacher is being prepared for class.  Carol Weinstein writes in her book, Secondary Classroom Management, that the amount of “time available for instruction can be substantially less than mandated time,” so teachers must make the most of every minute that they have with students (p. 143).  Being prepared for class, both mentally and with a lesson plan, helps a teacher accomplish this task.  Yet another trait of a good teacher is providing students with a challenging, but reasonable, curriculum that maintains their confidence as learners and allows them to approach learning with productive goals and strategies.  In his book, Motivating Students to Learn, J. Brophy says, “The simplest way to ensure that students expect success is to make sure they achieve it consistently so that they can adjust to each new step without much confusion or frustration” (p. 66).  However, this doesn’t just mean that teachers should assign under-challenging busy work.  Instead, a good teacher will challenge their students within their zones of proximal development.  Along the same lines, good teachers also have high expectations for their students.  A teacher who conveys positive expectations will generally find that his/her students learn and perform better than a teacher who has little or no expectations for his/her students.  Again, relating to my own experiences as a high school student, I had a teacher during my senior year who virtually had no expectations for the students in his class.  As a result, almost all of the students in my class didn’t care about the material we were learning about and therefore didn’t care if they did good or bad on assignments and tests.  If students do seem to follow these expectations, a good teacher will motivate their students.  Motivating students goes beyond telling students that they need to work hard.  Instead, J. Brophy describes motivation as a process that begins with teaching students how to set goals and make a commitment to trying to reach their goals.  The next step is to monitor students’ performance and provide them with useful feedback.  Finally, teachers should periodically arrange for students to assess their own progress.  It is especially important for teachers to motivate apathetic students, who are “uninterested in or even alienated from school learning” so that they can learn to appreciate the value of learning, take pride in their accomplishments, and set goals (Brophy , 2004, p. 307).  A final characteristic of a good teacher is to realize that your students are people who have feelings, needs, obligations, and goals that go beyond your class.  Although some teachers like to think that their students’ lives should revolve around their class, the fact of the matter is that they don’t.  Teachers who realize this and show a genuine interest in their students’ lives will often have better relationships with their students.

In addition to having all of the above characteristics, teachers should also know how to help students understand what they need to know and be able to do.  One of the best ways to do this is by telling them directly what they should know and be able to do.  As an example, at the end of every day, a teacher could briefly review with his/her students what topics were covered in class and how they might build into tomorrow’s topic.  Another way of accomplishing this task is by having a review session before tests or quizzes.  During this time, a teacher could highlight the important parts of a unit and answer any questions that students may have.  Finally, a teacher could include this information in a course syllabus so that students could look over this material during their own time. 

As a teacher, I will be faced with students from many different learning backgrounds.  Some will have the gift of learning new things quickly, while it may take others several days or even weeks to understand a simple concept.  Although it is important to know who you are as a teacher and what it takes to be a good and effective teacher, one of the most important questions that a teacher should be able to answer is how do I know that my efforts at teaching are working?  Teachers can answer this question through assessment of their students.  As J. Brophy said, “Even if it were not required for report card purposes, testing and other assessment of students’ progress would be necessary to provide needed feedback, both to you as the teacher and to your students as learners” (76).  Testing students is a very important tool for assessing the teaching methods of a teacher.  However, Brophy cautions that test results can give teachers misconstrued results.  For example, if a teacher gave a test that focused on a small portion of what was taught in a unit, then he/she may not be able to tell how well he/she was teaching based on the results of that test.  Another example is that teachers could give a test that was either too short or too long for the length of time that the class period was.  Finally, teachers may underestimate or overestimate the capabilities of their students and administer a test that is either too easy or too hard.  Another downfall of solely basing your assessment on testing is that students are likely to memorize and forget the material instead of learning it for long haul.  As a result, test scores may be high and a teacher may think that his/her methods are working well, but in actuality, his/her students may not know the material as well as they should.  Because tests don’t always give accurate results and students may just memorize and forget the material, teachers must rely on other forms of assessment and evaluation of their students.  Some other forms of assessment that teachers may use include: daily lesson participation, work on assignments and/or projects, and portfolio assessments. 

Over the course of the semester, each of the questions that I have answered has really made me think about my future role as an educator.  Although I have answered these questions, they will undoubtedly change to some extent by the time that I actually become a teacher.  But answering them now has given me some direction about who I want to be and what I want to accomplish as a teacher. 

Works Cited

Brophy, J. (2004).  Socializing uninterested or alienated students.  In Motivating students to learn (2^nd ed., pp. 307-334).  Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 

Brophy, J. (2004).  Supporting students’ confidence as learners.  In Motivating students to learn (2^nd ed., pp. 55-86).  Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 

Weinstein, C. S.  Making the most of classroom time.  In Secondary Classroom Management: Lessons from research and practice (2^nd ed., pp. 142-170).  Boston: McGraw-Hill. 

In Public Goods, Private Goods: The American Struggle over Educational Goals, I think the author, David Labaree, was correct in saying that “the central problems with American education are not pedagogical or organizational or social or cultural in nature but are fundamentally political” (40).   In today’s educational system, it seems like all of the decisions that are made are centered around politics.  Furthermore, it seems like politicians care more about how their tax money is being used than what the nation’s children are learning about in school.  All in all, I think that this is a poor way to run the United States education system, but unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like it will ever change. 

Anyways, Labaree discussed three educational goals in his book: democratic equality, social efficiency, and social mobility.  He states that all three of these goals are political in that they “all are efforts to establish the purposes and functions of an essential social institution,” but they all have different viewpoints on the purpose of education. 

To begin, democratic equality places a strong emphasis on citizenship.  It believes that American schools should promote effective citizenship and relative equality to prepare the next generation of Americans for political roles in the future.  Although I don’t necessarily agree that the sole purpose of schools is to prepare students for politics, I think that it teaches students one of the most basic responsibilities that all Americans should have: to be an active and responsible citizen in the American society so that it runs properly. 

The second goal, social efficiency, places an emphasis on human capital.  It believes that students should be taught how to carry out useful economic roles with competence so that they can one day be functional and productive workers in society.  Again, I don’t necessarily agree with this goal that the primary purpose of schools is to prepare students for their future jobs, but I do think that it teaches students an important lesson about the economic importance of working. 

The last goal that Labaree discussed was social mobility.  It places an emphasis on individual opportunity and believes that schools are a commodity to be used by students who want a competitive edge.  Again, I think that this goal is not entirely correct in saying that individuality is the key, but I do think that students need to look out for their best interest sometime.

All in all, I don’t think that any one of these should be used alone in the classroom.  Although they somewhat contradict each other, I think that a combination of all three would work the best because it teaches students all of the different roles that they will face in society instead of just focusing on one. 

Here is a link to my test MP3 file

This week I listened to a podcast called Bit By Bit, which is done by Bob Sprankle.  Bob is a elementary school teacher in Maine and has created a podcast for teachers that reflects about the use of technology in instruction and the changing classroom environment in the twenty-first century.  The particular podcast that I listened to was posted on January 29, 2006 and had three guests from different school districts discussing some of the new technology that can be used in the classroom such as RSS feeds, blogging, and podcasts.  One of the guests, called “the Computer Boy” was actually the technology coordinator of a school district in Maine.  What surprised me was that even though he knew a lot about computers, he knew very little about some of the new technology such as blogging and podcasts.  But I guess this isn’t uncommon because a lot of adults have minimal knowledge about some of the new technology. 

I enjoyed listening to this podcast because it gave me different ideas about how to use this new technology in the classroom and as a part of extracurricular activities.  Although some of the ideas didn’t really apply to me, they all sounded like really good ideas that could help students learn about technology in a fun way.  One example that I thought was really neat was how a classroom in a middle school used the program GarageBand to create a music podcast.  Basically, the classroom was set up with several different schools around the world, and each school was responsible for adding something new to the podcast.  For example, the middle school classroom was responsible for the drums.  Once they had completed their part, they podcasted it, and the next school would download it and add their part, such as guitars, to it.  After the podcast had literally made its way around the world, each school could listen to the final version of the composition.  Another example that I liked was how a school podcasted its daily announcements and weekly newspaper so that students and parents could listen to it at home.  After listening to this podcast, I hope that I can in some way incorporate this new technology in my classroom when I become a teacher. 

On a final note, Bob Sprankle talked about how his school district sends an “internet release form” home with each student at the beginning of the year to get the parents’ permission that their child or children can use the internet at school.  Although they haven’t had any parents refuse to sign the release form, I think it is a good idea because it makes parents aware of what their children are going to be doing and learning about in school. 

It was interesting to read Ian’s take on grading papers this week since I haven’t thought about this topic in quite some time.  In my opinion, unless you are having students correct a multiple choice or true/false assignment, I don’t think that students should grade other students’ assignments for several reasons.  For one, as Ian said, “Some students are very lenient graders, while other graders where very critical.  This causes a discrepancy between grades, as some similar answers might get graded differently by different people.”  I can remember this happening numerous times in my middle school and high school classrooms.  As a result, the teacher would have to stop often to answer questions about what answers were acceptable and how much (if any) partial credit a student should get.  Not only does this take away from learning time, but students aren’t benefiting at all from this process.  The only thing that might students might be taught by grading other students’ assignments is to grade fairly, but that sometimes that doesn’t even happen. 

Another problem I see with this is that it is a teacher’s job to grade assignments and tests.  Yes, it might cut down the amount of assignments that a teacher has to grade, but that is what a teacher is getting paid for.  In my opinion, teachers are pretty darn lazy if they have their students grade most or all of the assignments.  One of my middle school math teachers would have my classmates and I grade every assignment and test that we took in that class.  Not only did my peers and I think she was lazy, but we also lost a lot of respect we had for her.  Furthermore, because she never checked the assignments herself, a lot of students would cheat by not marking problems wrong if they were grading a friend’s assignment or test. 

If a teacher is having a really hard time keeping up with grading assignments and tests, then he/she should adjust how often they collect assignments.  I think I have mentioned this before, but one of the best methods that I know of is to assign students homework every night and then randomly collect it one or two times a week and only grade certain problems from the assignment that you collect.  My high school calculus teacher, who had no planning hour because he taught all six hours of the day, used this method and he said that it worked great because he wasn’t swamped with grading a lot of assignments every night.  What’s more, I know for a fact that almost all of his students made sure to do their homework every night because they weren’t sure if it would have to be handed in the next day. 

Before I started reading Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy, I thought it would be boring and hard to understand.  Even though it was long, I enjoyed reading about the two literatures that have “shaped much of the writing in the educational foundations over the past two decades” (45).  It was definitely interesting to read about how they were alike and different, and really made me think about what type is better to teach in a classroom. 

After reading the article, I think that critical thinking is the best method to use in a classroom.  In my opinion, students need to not only have the capacity and skills to seek reasons, truth, and evidence, but also the drive to seek them.  Students can be smart and think critically without this drive, but the drive ultimately allows them to learn more.  Furthermore, teaching students to think critically allows them to come to their own conclusions, which is a great skill to have.  In a time when many students just think and do like their friends, teaching critical thinking allows them to come up with their own views about certain things.   

While I think critical pedagogy has good intentions, I don’t think that it should be taught in a school setting.  One of the reasons I believe this is because critical pedagogy teaches students to challenge and transform institutions, ideologies, and relations.  In a school, this would be catastrophic.  High school students already question adults and authoritative figures and think they know everything, so why teach them something that would make it worse?  I understand that students need to be willing and able to act to change something that they don’t believe is just, but at this age, teenagers believe that a lot of things are unjust.  Another reason I don’t believe in teaching critical pedagogy is that it “seems to come dangerously close to prejudging what conclusions must be” (54).  Finally, critically pedagogy teaches students to think politically, and while this can be good, the school is not a setting in which this should be taught.  Students should do this on their own time when they will not be affected by the opinions of other students. 

Since I’m not a teacher yet, these opinions just apply to what I think right now.  Perhaps when I am a teacher, my ideas about critical thinking and critical pedagogy will change, but for right now, I think that critical thinking is the better of the two to teach in school

Today was my last day tutoring at Hillside Middle School.  Even though I didn’t get to do any one-on-one tutoring with a student in Ms. Clark’s classroom, I was still sad to leave today because I felt like I built a relationship with some of the students.  I was really touched when Ms. Clark gave me a big hug at the end of her first hour class and thanked me for all the work I had done in her classroom.  One of the students in the classroom also gave me a hug, which I thought was really nice too. 

Despite the fact that I didn’t tutor an individual student, I have learned a lot from my experience in Ms. Clark’s class, and today was a prime example.  Through the seven times that I have been in her classroom, I have learned that Ms. Clark uses a lot of activities to teach her students instead of just lecturing everyday.  For example, today the students traced different polygons and used a ruler to extend the sides of their polygons so they could figure out the how the interior angles were related to the exterior angles.  Although the activity was only supposed to take about twenty minutes, the students weren’t able to finish the activity by the end of the hour due to a lack of basic multiplication and division skills, confusion about what to do, and not following directions.  As a result of observing activities such as today’s, I have noticed that there are several pros and cons of using activities in the classroom. 

There were many positive things that happened as a result of Ms. Clark using activities in her class.  One of the pros of doing activities is that students are less likely to get bored with the material because activities almost always force them to be actively engaged.  Another pro is that because they are actively engaged, students may learn the material better than if they were just listening to a lecture.  Additionally, activities like the ones that Ms. Clark used forced the students to use their problem solving skills.  Finally, the last pro is that teachers may get a break from lecturing by letting the students teach themselves through the activity. 

However, there are some drawbacks of using activities.  First, although activities are intended for students to learn, some students will just end up asking their neighbor or friend for the answers instead of doing it on their own.  Another con is that students can get louder and rowdier while they participate in classroom activities.  In addition, even though activities allow the students to teach themselves, it can take more time to teach the students the material.  From my observations, I think that teachers are able to teach a lot more by lecturing as opposed to giving the students an activity to do in the same amount of time.  Finally, the last con is that teachers may have to spend more time than normal preparing for an activity than preparing for a lecture. 

While I’m not entirely sure if the pros outweigh the cons, I think students learn the most from teachers who use a combination of lectures and activities.  Furthermore, students seem to enjoy having a break from lecture from time to time to do an activity because it breaks up the monotony that classrooms can often get stuck in. 

This week, I read an article on CNN’s Education website about a bill that was recently passed in Florida by their House of Representatives.  The bill, if passed by the Senate, would require incoming high school freshmen to declare a major and minor, just as college students are required.  Educators who support this bill believe that students would get a more tailored education under this plan.  Furthermore, Governor Jeb Bush believes that this plan would help prepare students for the real world and reduce the dropout rate.  Finally, students who support this bill think that they won’t get as bored in their classes if it is something that they think pertains to their future.

However, I don’t agree with this bill.  In my opinion, many thirteen and fourteen year olds are not mature enough to make a decision about their life plan.  Moreover, many incoming high school freshmen don’t even know what they want to do next year, let alone five or ten years down the road.  For example, when I was a freshman in high school, one of my best friends thought she wanted to be an aeronautical engineer for NASA when she grew up.

To pursue her dream, she even went to space camp for two years during high school.  Now, as a junior at Albion College, she is majoring in Psychology and minoring in Business.  Although this is just one example, it just goes to show that young students may think they want to go into a certain field, but they commonly end up changing their minds and decide to go into a different field.  Although majors and minors could be changed while in high school, I think this would create an utter headache for high school counselors who would have to adjust schedules every time a student decided to switch.  Another downside to this bill is that having to make a decision like this would put a lot of pressure on young teenagers in a time when they are already feeling a lot of peer pressure from students.  Finally, if this bill is passed, students would not get as broad of an education that would allow them to explore different areas because they would be stuck in a particular track.

All in all, I think that mandating incoming high school freshmen to pick a major and minor is a bad idea, and I hope that similar legislation does not get passed in Michigan.

“Florida High School Students May Pick Up Majors.”  CNN Education website.  24 Mar. 2006. 

I can relate to Jenny’s March 17th tutoring reflection, in which she discussed how she wanted to do the work for the students she was working with instead of letting them do it.  I have run into the same situation a few times while tutoring students in the hometown that I live in.  Several times while tutoring math, I have caught myself doing a math problem for the student while talking to them about it, instead of letting them try to do it themselves.  However, I have realized that this is not an effective way to teach students.  For one, students will often say that they understand even if they don’t.  For example, while working through a math problem with a student, I will simultaneously explain what I am doing and then ask the student, “Does this make sense?”  The student’s response is almost always “yes,” even if they don’t really understand.  Another reason why this is not effective is because it doesn’t allow the student to figure the problem out by themselves.  As a result, students rely on your skills instead of their own problem solving skills.  Therefore, students may end up learning that if they don’t try, then the teacher or tutor will end up doing the problem for them.

As a tutor and a future teacher, I really need to make myself aware of this potentially harmful problem.  As Jenny said, a teacher’s job is to teach NOT do.  It is okay to help students with problems they are struggling with, but you should not do them yourself.  I hope that in my next two years, I can discover an effective way of teaching that will allow me to help students when they are struggling in a way that is beneficial to them and will not simply give them the correct answer.