SCBenson001
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Provide rich teaching for students ...
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Week 3 of 3
SCBenson001 commits to:
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My Commitment Journal
 SCBenson001
October 12, 2023, 1:33 PM
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A: Graduation Mindset B: Self-Assessment High school graduation almost seems like a guaranteed accomplishment, but it is not. I know Dorman High School has an issue in which some students will attend R.D. Anderson classes, but they will not come to Dorman. R.D. Anderson is absolutely important, but they do not give high school diplomas to students. Even if a student opts for a trade for the rest of their lives, I think a well-balanced education can still benefit them. For example, they may need to read contracts. A high school English class may help them with the critical thinking to recognize that they maybe shouldn’t sign a particular contract. I think relevance can help students stay in high school even when a high school diploma seems unnecessary for them. Some of the artistic activities I did in my secondary English classes are the ones that stand out to me, so I can see myself including artistic activities. For example, one of my English teachers set up an art gallery in the classroom, and we walked around to look at art. We then did a creative writing exercise based on a painting we picked. I also like that this activity included physical movement. C: Insights/Questions Based on my experience, I find that teachers in the arts hold onto their positions for a long time. They tend to enjoy their jobs the most of any other content area teachers, especially since their students tend to be better behaved and more engaged. This retainment in a career often known for being short-lasting should be a selling point for the arts in schools. I recently heard that England has a surprising amount of jobs that do not require a college degree. Instead, they tend to offer more apprenticeships, which widens the field for people of all backgrounds. I think the US would benefit from this model of career preparation. I think the shift towards college and career readiness instead of just college readiness is a positive one, especially for students who may not have the opportunity to go to college or do not need college to accomplish their career goals. D: Implement Strategy Linking the content seems like a good strategy to implement in a secondary English class. I can think of numerous ways to include content and lessons that emphasize college and career readiness. I could reference various occupations in the texts I select. They may be exposed to new careers or careers they had not even considered. In some cases, the students may recognize the work ethic or skills it took to obtain the position. Students could even do the classic “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?” assignment, which generally includes plans for going to college or joining a career. I took a Business Writing class in college, and I learned a lot even though it was derailed by Covid in Spring 2020. A lot of those lessons should be implemented in a regular secondary English class. We worked on proposals and emails. If Covid had not ruined that semester, we would have also had time for things such as resumes. A lot of these writing assignments apply to students’ lives after high school. They still help them with English lessons such as formulating an argument and supporting their argument. Learning how to effectively write a work email could also encourage professionalism in their communication with teachers, administrators, and bosses. I like to think that linking the content would also prevent students from saying, “When am I going to use this?” English class is not just reading stories and writing papers. It is so relevant to an array of life paths. |
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SCBenson001
October 12, 2023, 12:48 PM
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A: Engagement Mindset B: Self-Assessment I do not feel like this segment taught me new things about engagement strategies. If I were to edit the book, I think a chapter about technology would be helpful. Engagement has become challenging in recent years due to technology offering quick boosts of dopamine. It’s not just students. The school district I work for has had to remind teachers to put down their phones during class. Billions of dollars are spent on making people constantly engaged on our phones and computers, and I am wondering how to combat that technology craving. We are told to not take phones, so teachers may not even have the option of removing the temptation. It would be simpler to boost engagement. When it comes to secondary English, I imagine it is one of the easier subjects to incorporate engagement strategies, especially when it comes to relevance. When I did a long-term sub with English, I had a lot of students be invested in a discussion about feminism. It was a relevant topic, and it allowed them to include their own interests, such as talking about women depicted in media. I can also pick relevant/interesting works for them to study. C: Insights/Questions The stress management chapter did not reference a teacher’s stress. I would think being able to regulate yourself would also be an effective way to regulate your students’ stress. How do teachers compete with the dopamine from smartphones? I would have been interested in more concrete examples geared towards secondary teachers. D: Implement Strategy I like the idea of reciprocal teaching. I once heard that knowing a concept well means that you can effectively explain it to someone else. It forces students to be able to articulate what they were taught. If they do not understand it, then they can potentially learn from it from a peer who did understand the lesson. I imagine reciprocal teaching also helps students who lack the prior knowledge that their other classmates may have. As a teacher, you cannot truly comprehend the entirety of each individual’s prior knowledge, and sometimes things that should not be new may be brand new to them. A classmate may be able to recognize that their friend may not have had the same background as they did, and they can offer that background knowledge to make a concept easier to grasp. If a classmate is familiar with the peer, they could also immediately draw a connection to something they learned in the past, and it would then click with them. Reciprocal teaching could also be helpful for some English language learners. They may feel lost as the teacher teaches, but a classmate who speaks the same language could immediately translate the lesson to them. |
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SCBenson001
October 8, 2023, 11:28 PM
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A: Enrichment Mindset B: Self-Assessment Truthfully, balancing a student’s cognitive load seems like an overwhelming task for me. As teachers, we have very little control over our students’ home lives. As a secondary teacher, I know I will only be with these students for a relatively small part of their day. There’s a balance between encouraging students to tune out their distractions while offering grace for their struggles, and it will be hard to strike that balance. I imagine the chunking strategy and the retrieval strategies will be tools I use more than the stretching content one. With the chunking strategy, the outline seems especially useful for lesson planning since lesson plan templates do not always include a timeframe. I taught a geometry class once, and I essentially had to chunk the material for myself each day even though it was relearning for me. Some of the students will be learning brand new information, so chunking seems like a good strategy to avoid information overload. The retrieval tools seem like a critical tool as memory and attention spans seem to not be as strong. I feel like the retrieval tools could be implemented as bellringers, such as the self-quizzing time or asking students to recall what they learned the previous day. Using visual organizers also seems like a helpful tool for students to recall information as well as organize their thoughts on what they have learned. C: Insights/Questions The parts about cognitive control and metacognition seemed more like neurodivergence than some poverty-specific trait. I assume poor neurodivergent students are less likely to receive resources than rich neurodivergent students. I am interested in learning more about strategies that support neurodivergent students’ learning. The emphasis on memory seemed interesting, as I know a lot of secondary teachers are veering away from memorization by allowing students to have open-notes assessments and sometimes even give them study guides that are nearly identical to the actual tests. I have heard of mixed results. Sometimes, the students likely do better than they otherwise would(assuming they learned the concepts well enough in the first place), while there are also cases where a lot of students still fail the assignment. As an aspiring secondary English teacher, it was interesting to see an emphasis on vocabulary when I feel like vocabulary was not emphasized much in any of my classes. I was unaware that learning advanced vocabulary was so crucial for poor students’ success.. D: Implement Strategy Critical thinking is a crucial component of English classes. One strategy I would use to teach it would be to use powerful questions. I think this strategy seems like a helpful guide for students who may struggle with critical thinking or just need some direction to articulate their thoughts on a subject. Compared to some strategies, I find using powerful questions to be a versatile one. It can be used as a way to confirm a topic for an argument essay. A student can see if they can answer the suggested questions, which can help decide if their topic offers enough material for an essay. I imagine this exercise could also help them organize their paper. I can also see a student using these reasoning questions to evaluate an author’s argument as they analyze a work. I am specifically thinking of this question: “Why did they do _______, and can you think of other ways to do it?” It seems like a helpful way to teach students to analyze an author's work while encouraging them to think about how they disagree with the author. I also like the affirmation paired with the using powerful questions strategy. You can acknowledge a student’s contribution, which may make their confidence grow. I know a lot of students have something fascinating to say, but they are afraid to express their thoughts due to potential judgment from their peers and/or teacher. |
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SCBenson001
October 3, 2023, 2:38 PM
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A: Positivity Mindset B: Self-Assessment As someone with depression, I have heard a lot about the benefits of optimism. Seeing quantitative stats was new for me, as I generally hear it presented as generalizations, such as “optimism makes you more productive/less depressed.” The statistics added some credibility to what I’ve been told for so long. I also find that the positivity mindset reinforced how I would not want my students to be pessimistic like me. It is so much easier for me to encourage others to be optimistic. However, I first need to work on my optimism for myself so that I can be better about fostering optimism in others. I can take strategies such as the gratitude log and implement them in my own life. I already feel like the positivity mindset is likely going to be one of the most significant mindsets presented in the book. I think it is especially relevant today when Gen Z is marked by negativity about the state of the world. They have experienced multiple economic crises, and their childhood has been impacted by a pandemic that will continue to have long-lasting effects on their emotional development. There is such a delicate balance between being aware of the world and remaining optimistic about the future, but it’s a balance I would like to have in my lessons. C: Insights/Questions It’s not really an insight specifically from the text, but I feel like you should remind students with low self-esteem that confidence is a process they should continuously work on. In a world of instant gratification and hedonic happiness, I feel like it has become even more difficult to teach something that needs constant reinforcement. A lot of the strategies align with social emotional learning, which is a term I am shocked to not see in the texts. As someone who has done cognitive behavioral therapy for depression, I also found a lot of overlap with those strategies. The reference to the amygdala and prefrontal cortex reminded me of how high schoolers have the amygdala develop before the prefrontal cortex, so emotional regulation is especially tricky. What are specific emotional regulation strategies I can use with high schoolers? D: Implement Strategy When I become a teacher, I see myself incorporating meaningful projects in my secondary English curriculum. Project-based learning is not always linked to English class, but I think it can easily include a lot of the key components of writing a paper. Project-based learning involves critical thinking, research, and coming up with a compelling topic/argument. Project-based learning tends to play into students’ strengths if the teacher allows for a lot of choice. Ideally, I would allow for choice unless a student needs more constraints to effectively do the project. I imagine I would allow students to do a physical copy or a digital one, and I would encourage creativity in the presentation. I think tying in the project into an overall theme is also interesting. For example, I know a teacher who allows students to do a semester-long project on their passion, and a lot of the works they read are about passion. The main issue I think project-based learning will present me is creating a rubric that effectively guides all students. Even though I would love variety and individuality, I also would want the quality to be consistent regardless of what format the student opted to do. A rubric can also help a student see what I am looking for in their project, and it allows me to fairly grade work. |
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