Chapter 3 Hannah Schreiber

Creative Connector
When I finished chapter 2 and saw the title of the next chapter, "TERRIBLEHORRIBLENOGOODVERYBAD" I knew it was going to be a good chapter. Though my experience is not nearly as stressful as Mr. Michie's is in the chapter, I am going to share my terrible horrible no good very bad day. I was in my 1st student teaching placement, and the day started off pretty horrible. My alarm didn't go off so I was late waking up, the hot water wasn't working properly in the shower, I ripped my tights trying to get dressed quickly, my hair was just NOT cooperating. And of course, this was a day that my supervisor was coming to observe my lesson. I finally made it to school (later than usual) and my cooperating teacher wasn't there. She called about 5 mins later and told me that she wouldn't be coming into school that day due to illness. At this point, my stress level was through the roof. I scrambled to get all of my supplies ready for the day (at that time I didn't have full control of the classroom). My cooperating teacher had told me that she wanted me to take over that day and do my best to get though the day. About 5 minutes after the phone call from my teacher, the substitute for the day informed me that from 11:30-2:00 she needed to be in another class. Of course my observation was smack dab in the middle of that time period. As soon as I had gotten settled (as much as I could have) I found the school counselor and specifically asked her for the book "Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day". I had probably 5 different teachers passing the word around that if anyone had the book I was having one of those days and would like to borrow it. The preschool teacher had it and let me borrow the book for the morning. As soon as the children came into school and got situated, I pulled them into circle and explained to them that their teacher wouldn't be here today. Then I told them that I was having a bad day and read them the book. They all seemed to feel sympathy for me because the regularly rambunctious class was actually rather mellow. I ended up doing fine for my observation (even though I was the only teacher in the room during the lesson and my meeting with my supervisor) and I kept the class running relatively smoothly for the rest of the day, but reading this chapter really made me feel sympathy for Mr. Michie.

"Our whole class is dumb", Armando told me one day... "Why do you think they put us all in this class?"
This passage from the book made me think about my first student teaching placement. Although once again, my experience was not nearly as severe, it had similarities. My cooperating teacher was known as the kind of teacher that really did well with troubled kids. She had such a mothering philosophy that her students from years and years ago would come back to visit her and thank her for showing them how much she cared for them. And she did. I have never met another teacher that was as loving and nurturing as Mrs. Smith. I think that's why everyone decided to give her all of the children with troubled home-lives... which brought along with them many behavioral problems. Out of the 18 children in our class, I would say that about half of them were the kinds of kids to be considered "trouble makers" and another quarter were the kind of children that could easily be pulled into mischief. When testing time came around, it was no surprise that our class had some of the lowest scores. My cooperating teacher did her best to make sure that the children felt safe and cared for at school while at the same time attempting to nix the bad behavior. Based on what we've read so far in the book, I truly think that Mr. Michie is a younger male version of my cooperating teacher.

Essence Extractor
We all have bad days every now and then, but eventually we get past them and grow from those experiences.

 Vocabulary Vitalizer
Foreboding-

a strong inner feeling or notion of a future misfortune, evil, etc.; presentiment.

fanfare-

an ostentatious display or flourish.

garbled- 
jumbled or unclear because of distortion or omissions
tedious- 
obsolete  progressing very slowly
credo-

any creed or formula of belief.

submissive-

of, tending towards, or indicating submission, humility, or servility

chaos-

a state of utter confusion or disorder; a total lack of organization or order.

protocol-

the customs and regulations dealing with diplomatic formality, precedence, and etiquette.

culminating- 
to reach the highest point, summit, or highest development
foray-

an initial venture: a successful foray into politics.

marginalization-

to place in a position of marginal importance, influence, or power: the government's attempts to marginalize criticism and restore public confidence.

 

Chapter 1&2 Hannah Schreiber

Creative Connector
One part of chapter one that stuck out to me was the part when Mr. Michie is thrown into a classroom without much preparation or and clue of what was available in his room. This reminds me of how I started my Pre-K job this fall. I was given the position on a Friday, 2 and a half weeks before the start of the school year. The whole first week after receiving the position, I was on vacation where I had no way of getting any preparation done. The following thursday was open house for parents and children and the room had to be set up how it was going to be for UPK. I also had to plan 3 activities for the children to do during the open house. No one gave me any curriculum for UPK (other than NYS Standards) no one showed me what resources I had available in the classroom, no one told me how the day was supposed to be run. When I read this part of the book, I knew exactly what Mr. Michie was feeling and it made me feel optimistic that if he could pull his class together with less than a week to prepare, I certainly could do it too.

"If my lessons aren't learned
I hope they remember respect
rules I broke by hugging
an emphasis on laughter
and questions not answered
but asked"

This quote from Pamela Sneed really struck a note with me. I personally feel that in pre-school, academic topics can be learned later, if children can't read going into kindergarten it isn't the end of the world, if children leave knowing only how to write the letters in their name it's okay, they have time, if children can't yet count to 30 they will survive. All of these things I believe come secondary to the social and emotional lessons that children learn. Children have the rest of kindergarten to learn how to read. If they have learned school-readiness skills (such as active listening and how to appropriately interact with other children and adults) as well as respect for and trust in their teachers, they will be in a much better situation where they will be capable of learning much quicker. My main goal for my children in pre-k is for my students to know that they are loved by their teachers, that they are capable of anything they put their mind to, and that its okay to try new things. 

 Essence Extractor
The teacher must know his/her students, respect their differences, and be empathetic towards them before any learning can begin to take place.

Rigorous Researcher
Since Mr. Michie's stories come from the early 1990's in the City School District of Chicago, I decided to do a little research on some facts about drop-out rates and student make-up during that time.

•  From 1991 to 1999, an average of 1,400 youth each year left Chicago’s public schools in the sixth, seventh or eighth grade.

•   Sixteen of every 1,000 elementary students dropped out during the 1999-2000 school year, compared to nine in 1991-1992.  

•  By law, children under 16 can return after being dropped from school rolls. But 73 percent of those who left between 1991 and 1995 did not return to the Chicago Public Schools within four years.

• Until 1991, the schools had truancy officers in every elementary school. The officers were trained by the schools and the Chicago Police Department to visit homes and talk to parents. They also had legal authority to take children to school or families to court.
• The board eliminated the positions to save $4 million, according to a 1992 report by CATALYST magazine. In the following school year, 1,408 elementary school children dropped out, up from 825 in 1991, the biggest one-year increase in the 1990s.

• During the 1990s, thousands of teenagers dropped out of the Chicago public schools before reaching ninth grade, and most of them were African American. The dropout rate rose from nine to 16 of every 1,000 students between 1991 and 1999.
• Since 1991, dropout rates for sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders have risen citywide. The rate among African Americans has doubled.

Chapter 3 - Kathleen White

Creative Connector

“… he is the Picasso/ of your western states/ but he will die/ with one thousand masterpieces/ hanging only from his hand” pg. 43

This quote killed me before I even read the chapter. As an art teacher I believe that everyone can create art, not only in my classroom and in his or her general education classroom but in life as well. Not just physical art but success in life. I don’t mean to sound trite or naïve, but I fundamentally believe that each kid can do amazing things. These chapters show how a large number of students are sold short by the very system that supposed to be their stepping-stones into the world.

“When other sixth-grade rooms went on field trips, Ferguson’s class stayed behind… If the school had really wanted to help the kids in 307, why hadn’t they assigned them their best, most creative, most enthusiastic educator?” pg. 53

This past summer I was SCIP-R (Strategies for Crisis Intervention and Prevention – Revised) trained, and one of the things we talked about was our response to negative behaviors. When you or I have a bad day what do we do? Yell at ourselves? Take away things that comfort us or make us happy? No! We treat ourselves well, go to our comfort items and do things that make us happy. When individuals are having behaviors, or when our students are misbehaving/not performing as they should we take them away from their peers, remove things that will help make their experience fun, memorable and enjoyable. Yes, I believe in consequences for individual actions, but I don’t think its right when we deprive people of what is rightly theirs and the things that could help them succeed.

“Raise those test scores or you can kiss your jobs good-bye.” (and this whole passage)Pg. 56

Two days ago I had a discussion with one of my professors about the No Child Left Behind Act. I hate what the act has done, creating a school system where test scores are seemingly more important than student learning. Where schools that are underperforming get their funding reduced. It seems like a downward cycle. I do know, however, that the intention was good. I hate to admit it but I can see where administration was coming from. The goal was to find a way educate every child, regardless of circumstance, and it just turned into equal testing for all. It just makes me think of the trouble our educational system is in right now and that no matter how passionate I am there is a set of numbers that could erase something that is so important to me and so beneficial to my students.

Essence Extractor

The very students we should be giving every resource to so that they can succeed are the ones we punish by removing resources.

Idea Illustrator

This is an image of a fabulous flow chart of the situation in class 307, the "low performing" class Mr. Michie had been working with after school. It also shows my thoughts on what could happen if the situation was changed. (check out the "key" for clarity!)

~Kathleen

Ch. 3

Creative Connector

The beginning of chapter 3 reminds me of a very bad experience I had student teaching.  I think pretty much everyone has a story from teaching of a really bad experience they had in the classroom.  This is my story: it was probably half-way through student teaching when I had my really bad day.  It was 9^th period, my hardest period.  The students in this class always gave me a hard time, but that day it really got to me.  They were constantly getting me off-track and once I was on track one student made some comment and I retorted without thinking, “I’m going to k-.“  I was impulsively going to say, “I’m going to kill you,” as I do when I’m frustrated with my friends, but luckily I caught myself.  My student wasn’t dumb though; he knew exactly what I was going to say.  Luckily I was able to diffuse the situation by convincing the class I was going to say, “I’m going to kick you out of class.”  Things got out of control this day and it almost got even worse than it already was.  Luckily I was able to start over the next day and regain control of that class.

            At the end of this chapter there is a piece written by one of Gregory Michie’s students, Alfonso.  He mentions in his writing that he wishes that teachers would call his parents to report the good things sometimes, too.  I had a student named Ben who said the exact same thing.  So one day when he did well on a quiz I called home to his mom and told her his accomplishment.  The next day he came in so pleased that I called his mom and after that he started to consistently do well on his work.  Sometimes positive feedback works wonders.

Essence Extractor

Everyone has bad days in the classroom, you have to stay strong.

Rigorous Researcher

It seems that a problem Gregory Michie comes across in this chapter is poor classroom management.  I did some research and found some sites that gives tips for good classroom management. 

http://www.4faculty.org/includes/108r2.jsp

http://www.nea.org/tools/ClassroomManagement.html

This last page is a list of books on classroom management:

http://www.google.com/search?q=classroom+management&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=mH9&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=ivb&source=univ&tbs=bks:1&tbo=u&ei=WYShTJr4K4KclgeOstCqBA&sa=X&oi=book_group&ct=title&cad=bottom-3results&resnum=16&ved=0CGwQsAMwDw

-Stephanie

Ch. 1 & 2

 Creative Connecter

A part in chapter one that really stuck out to me was when Gregory Michie was having a hard time getting through to his students.  They showed no interest in learning what he was teaching and often tried to get him side-tracked.  Then one day he came up with a plan on how to get them interested: relate it to their lives.  Once he did this many of his students got thoroughly involved and the material sunk in.  This reminds me of when I was student teaching and trying to teach a unit in German on music.  Instead of just giving them vocabulary and lectures about German music, I gave them chances to talk about what music they listened to, why they liked it, etc.  This kept most of the students interested because they were passionate about their music.

In the second chapter there is a passage where Gregory Michie has to make a decision about whether he should cross a certain line with a student.  He wanted to comfort a student by giving a hug but was unsure of what repercussions that will have.  This sort of reminds me of a time during student teaching when I had a student that persistent on wanting to be my friend outside of the classroom.  While I thought he was a very nice kid, I didn’t want to cross that line ever.  I made it clear to him that we weren’t going to be friends, but I would still help and listen if he ever needed it.

Idea Illustrator

Essence Extractor

Students need to know that teachers really do care about them.

-Stephanie

Chapter 3!

I am the Discussion Director this week:)

Creative Connector:

One of the passages that hit home for me this most from chapter 3 was Mr. Michie's struggle with the afterschool self-contained classroom at the end of the day. The kids all know that they were placed in this class because they are "lower-level learners" and on this particular day, everything that could go wrong is going wrong! I was substitute teaching for a special education teacher at the end of the school year in May, and I was asked to pull 4 of the "troubled" students in the class and put them in a room together to work on a math packet so that the general education teacher could focus on the other students in the class. Part of me was frustrated with their behavior through that session and part of me felt terrible for them. Like the students in Mr. Michie's self-contained class, these students knew why they were pulled and just added to their frustrated behaviors. Another passage from the chapter that struck me was Armando's story. He explains that he wants to graduate and wants to be a better student and is very bright but at the very end of the chapter he is sitting in a parent-teacher conference and feels that he can't say anything to defend himself because the teacher is always right and will always win. This broke my heart because when I think back on my own experiences, how many times do I just think to sit back and let the students talk, instead of myself doing all the talking all the time? It made me think a lot about the students that frustrate me who honestly just need an adult to hear them out instead of shutting them down.

Essence Extractor:

Teacher's would learn much more about their student's personal health if they spent more time listening rather than talking.

First Impressions of Chapters 1 & 2!

Creative Connector

One of the first passages I felt that I could personally relate to was in the 1^st chapter on pages 4 and 5 when the author is referring to jumping headfirst into a job as the reading lab director with only a few days to prepare on a topic he hardly knew anything about. I felt extreme admiration for the author when even though he had several doubts if he could ever do the job well, he still went for it and did his best to make it an interesting and engaging class for his students. I was recently in a position where I was almost given the teaching job in Greenville, South Carolina this summer as a middle school social studies and English teacher. The author also mentions having to be prepared the following Monday. The school year had also already started in Greenville two weeks before my interview and if I had gotten the job, I would have had to move and start teaching in 3 days! I wonder to this day if I had gotten the job, whether I would have accepted it or not because of all of these major changes in my life. I feel that in the end, I would have felt like Mr. Michie; it’s a job and there aren’t many available out there right now so I would have taken it and done my best.

            Another passage that struck me was the author’s constant struggle with Hector in chapter 2. I have been substitute teaching recently in the same classroom and as I read about Hector I was constantly reminded of a similar student I was struggling with in that classroom. When the author walks outside the cabin with Hector and he starts to cry, I felt extreme sadness for the student in my classroom who probably feels the same way as Hector on the inside, but with a tough exterior. I need to remind myself that even though I’m frustrated with this student, he is fighting his own battle on the inside and just needs to feel safe and welcome in the classroom.

Essence Extractor

As teachers we may fail daily, but the rare successes override our failures in the end.

Vocabulary Vitalizer

biracial - consisting of, representing, or combining members of two separate races

ramshackle - loosely made or held together; rickety; shaky

euphemistic - the substitution of a mild, indirect, or vague expression for one thought to be offensive, harsh, or blunt.

jovial - endowed with or characterized by a hearty, joyous humor or a spirit of good-fellowship

floundering - to struggle clumsily or helplessly

*Sentence: He floundered helplessly on the first day of his new job.

shenanigans - mischief; prankishness

*Sentence: We had fun participating in the Halloween shenanigans.

microbiology - the branch of biology dealing with the structure, function, uses, and modes of existence of microscopic organisms.

exploitative - to use selfishly for one's own ends

brash - impertinent; impudent; tactless

punitive - serving for, concerned with, or inflicting punishment

archaic - marked by the characteristics of an earlier period; antiquated

*Sentence: He behaved in an archaic manner.

methodically - performed, disposed, or acting in a systematic way; systematic; orderly

shoddy - intentionally rude or inconsiderate; shabby

unadorned - to make more pleasing, attractive, impressive, etc.

           

First Post! Ch. 1&2

I'll be the Director this week - :)

A little over 200 words... but here it is.

Creative Connector:

            The first passage I really connected with was the bottom of page 5 to the middle of 6 where he’s talking to the students about what they read on their own (“nothing”). The author goes on to describe the texts he used in order to help the students take an interest in reading, texts that would connect to things the kids were interested in. In art education at Naz we subscribe to the “Big Idea” concept in unit and lesson development, basically it says that there needs to be an element of relevance to student experiences in everything you do or they won’t care. Reading this section I could picture these kids engaged and not realizing the information or reading skills they were acquiring. The passage then says that these days were few and far between, that he was just struggling to keep his head above water most days. This passage felt a little like my high school student teaching experience. I felt I did a great job incorporating relevant information and fun activities that students were, on good days, really engaged in. I had a few classes that felt to me like chaos and no matter how cool the lesson was my pride for the day would come from helping one student, or just getting out of class without writing a referral. I understand the frustration all too well.

            The other thing that stuck me was that through the introduction and the first few chapters the author keeps referring back to the movie Freedom Writers, and how he doesn’t intend this book to come off like that, that he is some “white savior” there giving everything to these kids and turning their lives around. I laugh because after I read that portion of the book I turned on the TV only to have Freedom Writers flicker back at me. I cry like a baby whenever I watch that movie. It’s a tearjerker and a beautiful story. As a viewer I like it.  As a teacher it makes me a little angry, its not my job to “save” kids – who’s to say they need saving? It is my job to give them the resources, namely education, to let them help themselves. Also, I already have guilt because I have a life outside of the classroom, now I have guilt because I don’t spend my own money on my students like Hillary Swank does. There are all of these images of us as saviors in Special Education classrooms and in under funded programs. It’s refreshing for the author to admit to us that, no, he didn’t fund their way through college. Yes, he failed in some areas. Yes, the students failed in some things. No, not all of them are magically lifted out of poverty by his hand. Most do, however, remember something from his class because they made it connect to their lives.

Essence Extractor:

Students need legitimate power in the classroom; if learning isn’t applicable their real lives take precedence.