Seminar Makeup Assignment 1

Martinez 1 Angelia Martinez Mr. Watkins Student Teaching Seminar 21 February 2019 Student Teaching Experience I could not be more happy with how my student teaching experience is going. I am fully embracing the school that I have been placed at, my cooperating teacher, the classes I teach and the students I have been assigned. I am lucky to have an excellent cooperating teacher who has mentored me and constantly given me advice with every little thing during this experience. I have grown close with the staff and have even been invited to social events that have been held outside of school, which has made me feel more welcome and that I am accepted as a teacher at the school. I am currently student teaching at Blevins Middle School and teach three sections of pre-AP 7th grade English. Going into student teaching, I knew that classroom management would be my greatest struggle. One reason for this is that I have a hard time disciplining students because I almost feel as if I am “being mean.” I quickly got over this when I realized just how disrespectful students can behave during my instruction and class time. My cooperating teacher actually told me that my students needed to see me “snap”and practice disciplining students as examples in front of the whole class, such as calling students out or giving redirects. This was helpful because students hadn’t seen me this way before and didn’t want to see me that way again (well, this worked with most of them). There is a small handful of students that continue to test be daily and put on a facade, especially when my mentor teacher leaves the room, which I was not expecting.

Martinez 2 I have also had a few serious hallway conversations with some of these students, which have mostly been effective. I would say this is a huge step for me in learning to be more confrontational in this profession. I have also very recently gotten sick with strep throat, which I was not expecting this semester (I never get sick)! With that, I have also learned to take better care of myself while balancing teaching.

Interview Questions: ● What would you label your classroom management style as? ○ Would you say this changes depending on the subject/grade level you are teaching? ● How do you react in heated situations/confrontations? ● How do you handle a student that talks back after you have given an order after several warnings? ● How effective are redirects? ● How do you separate your pet peeves from the reality of the behavior that students exhibit? ● How and when do you build relationships with students? (I feel I was able to do this well as a student teacher because there was another adult in the room; how do you do this when you are alone and responsible for an entire class?) ● How far do you allow students to go in disputes with other students? (e.i. Zero tolerance, let it die down, it depends…)

Martinez 3 ● How important do you believe the social aspect is during class time and when do you allow opportunities for this? ● Does classroom management ever discourage your content instruction? ● Can you share a time with me when a student went too far? What happened and what would you have done differently? ● How do you not take incidents personally/let them get to you? How do you keep these incidents from affecting your day or even mood? ○ How do you rebuild relationships with students after this?

★ Interview #1: The first teacher I interviewed here at Blevins Middle School teaches quite a few classes, including pre-AP science, health and AVID. This teacher is well-known for her high-energy (although strict) teaching. She has the reputation of using a lot of humor in the classroom and building strong relationships with students. Coming from a school in Greeley, she explained to me that she worked with tough students there, thus actually enjoys working with the more challenging students more here at BMS. The students here are so incredibly privileged and they don’t even realize it compared to her last school, she explained to me. One thing she always ensures she does at the beginning of the school year is establishes classroom norms with her students. I liked how she called this the “honeymoon period” because this is when everyone is on their best behavior. Students at this age are very aware of their behavior, and for almost all students, behavior is a choice. This teacher told me that a line she will often use towards

Martinez 4 disrespectful students is, “You must have mistaken me for someone else-” and the students know what this means and quickly apologize. My favorite quote by her was, “I am very relational. Make them fall in love with you and you can get them to do anything.” This teacher often attends the students extracurricular activities/competitions and sporting events to support her students whenever she can. One of her biggest pet peeves in her classroom is when students are being mean and not kind to one another. She said that she tells her students that her classroom is always a place of guaranteed safety and that she will always have their back in that room, so unnecessary rudeness towards others is something that she has zero tolerance for. Although this teacher is very loud (the complete opposite of me) and uses many classroom management strategies that would personally not work for my own teaching style, I greatly respect this teacher and had so much fun interviewing her.

★ Interview #2: The second teacher I interviewed has the complete opposite teaching style of the first teacher I interviewed, and she is much more like myself. She has a quieter persona and is very calm, yet firm. This teacher teaches 6th grade math. Out of curiosity, I asked her what some of her go-to strategies are on classroom management. She explained that she uses the clapping strategy most often because when the 6th graders come from 5th grade, this is second nature to them already because their previous teachers used this. This usually works well for her, even when not all kids clap, a few still do and she gains attention. When this strategy does not work, her backup plan is to use a whistle, but when students see her going to grab this, they usually

Martinez 5 quiet each other down pretty quickly. I learned that these strategies may not be for me, but that there are some things that will always grasp student attention when needed. Some consequences that students face for unacceptable behavior in this classroom are simply being sent out in the hall to calm down, or to rewrite a sentence over and over again of the teacher’s choice related to the student’s behavior. One thought I have about this is that it would definitely work for this teacher because students have something to keep busy doing while they calm down; however, I do not believe this would work for me personally as an English teacher (using reading/writing as a punishment). Adding onto their reading and writing workload could result in them loathing the subject and myself, which I would want to avoid. One strategy I am going to steal is rather than asking students if they need help (they will likely say no sometimes), is switching up phrasing and saying, “Let’s talk about your thinking here…” because students are more likely to do this than admit they want help. Another example this teacher described was rather than threatening consequences to those that cross the line too many times, let students know that you will be “documenting behavior” (such as a refocus form), that way the student’s behavior/consequences become more real to them. A final line I will steal from this teacher is, “Sorry only matters if you change your behavior,” and when I do receive an apology state, “I acknowledge your apology, now you need to change your behavior.” Although this teacher is much more quiet, her words are powerful, which I greatly respect and will take with me.