Hello!
Graduation is approaching
quickly, everyone! I am so glad that the KPTP madness is over. My unit over The Crucible ended pretty well. Students
are happy to be done with the play though. That play is a beast to tackle with
CWC students. I learned so much while teaching this unit. I learned the
language in The Crucible is even more
difficult for students to understand now than it was when I read it 7 years
ago. I had to have all of my background knowledge and explanations planned out
before each reading because I never knew what students would have trouble
understanding.
I have been trying to keep the article
“Never Work Harder Than Your Students” in mind while I have been teaching over
the past 2 months. I tried a lot of open (Socratic like) discussions when
students needed to discuss acts of the play and they went over pretty well. I
did not feel as worn out at the end of the days when students did the most
talking which is what the article said would happen. I am still working on allowing enough wait
–time. I tend to get impatient and I hint at the answer before students
actually have enough time to think of the answer.
The thing that I need to work on
the most is being assertive when it is my time to talk. I tend to wait until
students are quiet and this eats through a lot of class time sometimes. The
things that I have tried so far have not been too successful:
- Talking over the class…never works… I tried it once or twice.
- Waiting for the class to finish talking…they take this as me saying that it is okay to talk for the rest of the hour.
- Letting my frustration show through my facial expression because my patience is low due to a sinus headache…this gets a pity “Be quiet, Miss Schmidt is trying to talk!” from a handful of students.
- Saying “Okay, let’s re-focus and listen.”…this seems to work two thirds of the time.
- Staring at the student that will not quit talking until they stop talking…this worked once, but I doubt that it will ever work again.
Is there something that someone has tried in a class of
very social students that has worked well most of the time? I might also need to focus on my “teacher
voice” to make sure that I sound firm and serious (but not mean) when I am
trying to get their attention. Some of my juniors told me that holding students
during passing period might work because some of their teachers do it, but I am
hesitant to do that because my CT has never done that and I do not think that
they will take me seriously or react well to it because it is not part of the
classroom routine that they are used to. Harry Wong always advises that the
first week of school is critical, so I definitely intend to make sure that
students understand how I will get the class to re-focus and pay attention to
me along with all of my other procedures within that first week.
Other than my search for the most effective way to get
students’ attention, the last few weeks have been positive and productive. I
hope that everything is going well for everyone!
