Module 5

     There are many attributes that lead to our students lacking motivation, or feeling unsuccessful in school.  Some of those attributes are outside of our control.  There are many things that teachers can do or at least be aware of when we are engaging with our students to help them find success in school.

     Maslow’s hierarchy of needs suggest that humans range from lower level needs, which are our basic necessities to survive, to higher level needs like the ones necessary for intellectual achievement.  Maslow teaches us that when our basic needs are met we are able to focus on meeting some of those higher level needs.  In other words, it will be substantially harder to focus on reading, writing and social studies if we are feeling unsafe or worrying about food and shelter.  I struggle sometimes with some of the rules and regulations that are imposed in schools, some being so inflexible that they can’t take into consideration at least some of Maslow’s theory.

     Many inner- city schools, like mine, serve a full hot breakfast each morning and a full lunch in the afternoon.  I remember a particularly heart wrenching story years ago with a student of mine who would miss breakfast every day and then complain and cry from hunger until lunch time.  The lead teacher and myself reiterated to the parent and child each day that they needed to get to school in time to have breakfast.  Instruction started promptly at eight, so any students who came in afterwards would not have time to eat.  It would be extremely difficult to cater to each child and interrupt instruction if the tardy stragglers ate breakfast.  I was really concerned because the student couldn’t focus on anything but her hunger all day long, so she did pretty poorly in school.  I had a heart to heart with the parent and she told me that they took a 2 and ½ hour bus ride to school each day.  She traveled across the city because she wanted her child to attend a good school. She also told me that she’d been homeless for a year, and that they were living with a friend.  When they left the house her child would be asleep and would stay asleep until she reached school. Needless to say, we made her the exception to the rule; we held back graham crackers and juice from breakfast so that she could have a snack before class.   Of course, every student wanted to be the exception, so that was a short-lived solution.  I then went and asked our lunch room if we could donate cereal, crackers and bars to the family, which was also quickly shot down.  Although we eventually found a solution, I learned a lesson that I will keep with me forever.  We don’t always know the circumstances that our students will have.  As a teacher I want to be able to have the lines of communication open enough for my families to be able to share their obstacles that might lead to their children not being as successful as they can be. 

     Another facet that leads to lack of motivation is a low sense of self-efficacy.  I often told myself that I was bad at math.  That feeling of just, ‘not being able to do math,’ hindered me for a long time.  It wasn’t until having a teacher here at Trinity, Dr. Webster-Moore that I started to feel more confident in my math skills.  I realized that I had the tools to compute the problems, but lacked the confidence to do so.  Dr. Webster-Moore taught me something else that I will carry over into my teaching, hearing my students say, ‘they can’t,’ will motivate me to show them that they can.

Module Four

   I can remember sitting in lectures in college and listening to long, finite math lessons.  I would go to class and think to myself that I hated math for one hour, three days a week, and to this day, I can’t repeat one algorithm or theorem from the class.  The days spent sitting in that lecture hall before I ultimately dropped the class could not have been a bigger waste of time.  I wasn’t learning anything, I didn’t feel equipped for the challenge of the class, moreover the notes that I took meant nothing to me once I left through the lecture hall doors.  The experience of taking that math class taught me a few things. 

     My fear and failed past with math left me unmotivated to try to push myself to complete the class.  Although I remember being so pleased to tell my mother that I had tested into the  class, I was completely unprepared for the challenge.  I knew that no matter how much effort that I put into learning finite math, I was missing so many of the skills that had come before this level of mathematics that I knew that I would not be able to complete the course with any efficacy.

     I also realized that although I did all of the right things as far as note taking and highlighting important information while I was in class, those efforts really didn’t support my learning.  Note taking doesn’t work if you lack the prior knowledge to make connections with the information.  Although, I took time in class writing down problems, when I referred back to them I was disconnected with the things that I wrote because I didn’t understand them.

     Although I don’t know if the outcome of taking a finite class today would fair any differently then it did seventeen  years ago, I do understand the principles that would lead to a more productive experience.  The lecture style of this class did not allow for the acquisition phase of the transfer learning experience.  If I’d acquired the knowledge and then been able to practice the execution of the problems successfully multiple times I may have been able to move into the retention phase of transfer. 

    As I think about learning strategies and how I can support the students in my classroom I think I will need to reflect on that young undergrad student sitting in a finite math class.  My students will need to be cognitively engaged in the material that I’m teaching.  I won’t be able to stand in front of my classroom lecturing without ensuring that my students are connected to the information that I’m giving.  My students will need to invest the effort in the things that I teach.  They will need to make connections and think deeply about activities, and activities cannot be designed so far above where they are academically that they aren’t able to translate the information.  I will also need to help my students organize information in a way that allows them to effectively store and retain knowledge, so that they can use this knowledge in the future.

Classroom Management Blog Post

      I have created two examples of common behaviors that happen in the classroom.  The first is an example of students who are sitting together in a row.  We have one student who is talking, the other is daydreaming and one student who is on task. The teacher focuses on all of the negative behaviors in the classroom, and offers some unrealistic group consequences.  If the teacher continues to offer idle threats, such as, “I will take away physical education for the entire year,” the students will begin to learn that their actions have no real consequences (Woolfolk, 252).  This process is known as cueing (Woolfolk, 255).  The teacher is reminding the students about inappropriate behaviors that have taken place throughout the day.

      The students who are off task , race each other to get into line when it is time to go to gym.  The teacher once again only acknowledges disruptive behavior, which further reinforces the behavior.  The teacher attention fueled the continuation of disruptive inappropriate behavior, and the students may or may not know the classroom expectation that the teacher is setting(Woolfolk, 256).  She reinforces the behaviors by accentuating them with her yelling. 
Classroom Management: Scenario A

   In this next video you will see the exact same scenario, with children being disruptive in the front row.  This time the teacher acknowledges how well another student is listening attentively, and rewards that behavior with being able to line up first for gym.  The students who were not behaving take notice of the student who is now being rewarded for attentively listening.  The students took part in observational learning (Woolfolk, 272).  The students learned from another student who was modeling the behavior that the teacher wanted.  The young lady who was talking turned around and began to focus on the teacher.

     When the teacher asks the other students to join the line, they begin to run.  The teacher calmly tells the students to return to their seats and repeat the process of lining up again. The teacher is using positive practice(Woolfolk, 259).   Instead of scolding the students for running, she gave them a reminder of the classroom expectation of walking inside.   The students then practiced the correct behavior of walking into line.
Classroom Management: Scenario B

Effective Instruction and Classroom Management

     There are many different theories and pedagogy that schools follow as it pertains to behavior and classroom discipline.  Learning about the thinking that influences that pedagogy is extremely beneficial.  In my own experiences in the classroom I have seen many different methods implemented.  Some teachers choose to be incredibly strict or shockingly lenient, but I think as a whole we are all trying to reach a middle ground that allows us to maintain order in the classroom while still trying to impart a level of fun.  In reading this week's materials I learned a lot about who I am and the teacher that I’d like to become.  What science and strategy will go into becoming a teacher that students respect, feel loved by, and can listen to and grow from so that they will succeed, not only in my class, but also throughout their educational career and life.

     Anita Woolfolk’s chapter on behavioral views of learning has made me realize that we condition the students in our classroom to behave in a certain way.  We condition kids to sit and read quietly for a block of time, we condition our students to know that certain signals and words will require a certain action, such as raising your hand to get your teacher’s attention or a stern glare at a talkative student during a test means to stop talking.  In those scenarios our nonverbal cues illicit the behaviors that we want to continue.  In reading about operant conditioning, I now understand that certain cues that we give our students will also elicit the behaviors that we do not want.  If we are known to laugh at untimely jokes from our students during our teaching, we can expect untimely jokes while we’re teaching.  If we always send the disruptive student out of the classroom, we could be telling our kids that if you want to get out of a big test, they should cause a major disruption right before you pass them out. 

     I think that another major factor to successful classroom management is effective instruction delivery.  Working in preschool for a year really allowed me to work on giving clear and concise directions to students.  Preschoolers do exactly what you tell them to do, almost exactly how you’ve said it.  The small details can be just as important as your major objective.  I learned that it was much more effective to give instructions in steps. For example, I might tell students that they were going to cut out circles  and leave all of their scraps on the table until I ring the bell.  I would go on to tell them that the ‘garbage collector,’ would come by each table after we were done.   This prevented twenty four year olds from walking around the classroom looking for the garbage can,  and all of the behaviors that would have come as the consequence of saying, “cut out circles.”  I believe that giving clear, step-by-step instructions, are important for any grade that you teach.  I would rather prevent the behaviors that come along with students being  unclear, then correct and redirect multiple kids after instructions have been given.

     Effective classroom management is critical to the academic success of students.  I have seen kids suffer tremendously academically because the teacher was overwhelmed with disruptive behaviors in the classroom.  I think that many times when teachers are overwhelmed they will forget the strategies and revert to what is instinctual, which is perhaps frustration and yelling. I want to have firm grasp on all of the best practices that teachers use so that my classroom has a culture of respect for one another, where there is no yelling at each other, from student or teacher.

Classroom Management: Cueing, Positive Practice, Effective Instruction HOW-NOT VIDEO A
Classroom Management: Cueing, Positive Practice, Effective Instruction HOW-TO VIDEO A

Classroom Management: Effective Instruction Delivery  HOW_NOT VIDEO B
Classroom Management: Effective Instruction Delivery HOW TO VIDEO B

Psychology Blog 2

     In studying culture and diversity, in chapter six of the Woolfolk text, I wondered if some sort of disclaimer or ‘proceed with caution,’ sign should have been placed meticulously across the chapter.  I have always wondered if there was any data that displayed the cultural implications of students in the classroom.  I have worked in schools that were predominantly Caucasian and I currently work in a school that is predominantly African American.   What I have learned in both settings is that there can be stereotype threats apparent in every classroom if we don’t first ascertain what our judgments are about people of our own race and others. 

     While working in a school where 99% of the teachers were Caucasian  a few things stood out.  Sometimes when I spoke with other teachers, even one’s I’d never met, they would consistently use slang or speak to me in an informal way, even if I’d just seen them have conversations with teachers that they knew very well that were very professional. 

     I also noticed that there were times when Caucasian teachers would set different expectations for the African American students than they did the children of different races.  They made assumptions about their home life and economic status  that influenced the way they spoke to them or even their classroom expectations. The teacher was in her second year teaching, she was from a predominantly Caucasian area, had gone to a predominantly Caucasian high school, and went on to attend a predominantly Caucasian university.  She confessed to me that she had never had an African American friend, and had very little experience with other cultures.  I realized that we’d both made some assumptions that weren’t true.  I assumed that everyone has had diverse experiences in their lives.  I assume that when you are of a certain age, that you’ve met and mingled with all sorts of people in all sorts of environments.  This is not the case.  The young teachers that I’d encountered had a very limited worldview.  This group of teachers and myself did something that I find profound and it’s something that I hope to bring to my own teaching.  We talked openly about race and culture and assumed good intentions on all of our behalf.  They were experiencing a sense of cultural fear, but they were open to hearing and reflecting on the way they taught their African American boys and make changes if necessary.  I talked openly about the way that I felt when they talked to me, and I asked them to think about how they made their students feel when they didn’t set the same expectation, or ‘dumbed’ down their language when they spoke one on one to those students.  To this day, I remain friends with many of these ladies and our relationship has evolved into true friendships, I believe because of the courage that we had to have those early conversations.

     I see similar circumstances in my current school setting.  Students who have never had any interactions with people of different races are slow to warm to their teachers.  Some of the students will become extremely defensive when a teacher of another race redirects them.  I’ve even had conversations with students about teachers, ‘not liking them, because they don’t like Black people.’  The most successful teachers at my school, no matter what the race, have confidence and self-awareness.  They don’t let race or culture interfere with the goal of seeing our students achieve.  Our most successful teachers don’t seem to care whether or not they are seen as White, Black, Hispanic or Asian, they treat the students with respect and expect the same in return. They don’t shy away from cultural questions.  I remember having a conversation with one of my colleagues about how obsessed the female students were with her hair.  I told her that they thought that she and her hair were beautiful, but she might want to bring in some diverse magazines that the students could look through in their down time so that they could see how beautiful that their own hair was.   I think that it is so important to be aware of the ethnic cultures of our students because there are so many teachable moments that we can take advantage of when we least expect it.

     I think that it’s very difficult to define an individual.  As I read through Chapter six on culture and diversity, you notice you don’t find a chapter called, “ how to teach working class African American students, or “how to teach, lower class, Catholic, Asian students”.   This week we studied the connections between poverty and school achievement, how are biases effect our teaching and developing culturally relevant pedagogy.  Establishing cultural competence as a teacher helps us and our students grow inside and outside of our classrooms.