To include participation or not?

Fair Assessments: What do you think?

There is some controversy over whether or not to include participation in students' scores. I'm still not sure how I feel about this matter because I'm not sure of the best way to encourage students to do their work and stay on task if participation is not included. I do agree that it's very difficult to remain objective about students if they have a tendency or personality that makes it more difficult for them to speak up, they could have exceptionalities that we may or may not know about or there could be issues at home that make it difficult for them to learn and focus at school.

Every teacher I've talked to so far, in Ronan, includes participation to some extent. In some courses more weight is given to it than others. Some teachers give students 1 point per day or others use it to inch up a grade by a plus or minus. It is hard to be subjective when certain students usually act a certain way or continually choose to not do their work in class. When Ms. Mallon grades a student's work she doesn't look at the student's name until the end. This can help her be more subjective. There is always a rubric with objectives clearly stated and discussed. Students are not graded down for turning in work late as long as they are putting forth effort. She encourages them to do their best work and to finish up all of the steps.

Ms. Mallon also gave me a great tip to help with assessment in art when I feel my objectives and/or rubric is unclear. She had me give the students back their work upon completion, they self-assessed themselves against my rubric and wrote a paragraph reflection/explanation for their grade. I read their reflections to see if they got my objectives and knew how to meet them. I took their self-assessment scores, compared them with mine and met them 1/2 way. 

The key in making assessments fair is to have clear objectives printed out for students and administration to see. These objectives must be gone over with students and expectations discussed before beginning the project. Technically, this should work in a perfect classroom but many times teachers need to be able to adjust assignments and objectives if they are unclear or if students are not really getting it. Sometimes even when students know exactly what to do and how to do it, they just get lazy and don't do it or their minds are just focused on something else (like weekend plans or lunch). Patience is very important virtue to learn when teaching and we must remember students' ages and stages of development.

      

Two Very Different Styles of Teaching

Mr. Smith and Ms. Mallon have different styles of teaching and different ways of handling organization, planning lessons, and classroom management. It was fun to see the results from the Left Brain/Right Brain traits test that Ms. Mallon gave her students. I scored more heavily on the Right Brain side but Ms. Mallon is about even in left brain and right brain tendencies. Her background is in architecture so she thinks easily in numbers (like in inches) and can simultaneously work and switch back and forth from light brained activities to more left brained activities. This makes a well-rounded art teacher because she related well to students of both tendencies. Ms. Mallon is also very organized in how she runs the class, plans and manages the class and behavior. She is consistent and some of the students call her strict.

Mr. Smith, on the other hand, is a little more like me in his style. He is always thinking, creating, revising lessons. He even has little inventions he makes to use are tools or make sanding or some other process easier for his students. He's not super organized but he knows where everything is and he doesn't have much storage space for supplies and the 100's of students that come through his classroom. We collaborate together well and he has really helped me backwards plan and think about how to set up materials and what to expect as far as the length of the project and the costs involved in the supplies.

I love how I've grown to see how these two extremes help me find a balance in where I fit in and what my teaching style might be. I'm still daily growing, learning, and adjusting teaching methods but everyday is an adventure. Isn't that what teaching is all about?

Change is inevitable...especially when working with kids!

So, today I have a new student teaching schedule. The fist 10 weeks or so I spent 1st and 2nd periods at K. William Harvey Elementary School and the rest of the day with the High School/Middle School art teacher. She teaches one 8th grade art class during the last period of the day and the rest of her classes are High School: Beginning Art, Advanced/AP Art, or Sculpture classes. My favorite class so far, is probably the 8th grade class because I've had the privilege of teaching them from day 1, until the last day of the Quarter which was yesterday. They have a ton of energy and big hearts. I love that they act like kids one minute and then young-adults the next.

You never know what to expect!

Today, I will swap my schedule and spend most of the day at the Elementary school. Yay! It will be fun and less grading. This is the first day of the new quarter and I will probably help Mr. Smith with his grading because it is all due by Friday.

A couple of the 8th grade girls also volunteered to help me get the sets ready for the Dracula play the middle school students were producing. It was a ton of fun and a ton of work on top of my already over-committed schedule but the seeing the play all come together almost perfectly was a reward in itself! The art students who helped me also discovered they loved set design and that they are amazing artists! One of my students was impressed that I was bragging to her twin sister about what a great artist and illustrator she is. She was shocked and didn't really think she's that great of an artist but she is! It is fun to see middle schoolers interact and see that at their best and worst. Most of the time they are kind and somewhat on task but they are always a bit crazy and that class was chaotic at times. Somedays when I would lose the reigns and lose control of the class, I'd never be able to get it back!

I discovered a few tricks of the trade that I learned from my field supervisor and mentor teachers:
1) Always have a warm-up for students so I can take role and change gears for the class. Get them into the routine so they come in, sit down and know exactly what to do without reminders. This may take a week or a month!

2) When the bell rings, it's my signal to let them go but they do not need to line up at the door (against school policy because of safety reasons) and I get to choose when to let them go. This is really hard when lunch is next but I try to take a quick walk around the room to see if floor is a mess or the paint brushes and/or pencils are cleaned up and put away AND THEN let them go. This doesn't always work because some kids just ignore me and leave anyway because it's lunchtime!

3) Planning and grading fairly is very IMPORTANT. I don't feel I did a very good job at this 1st quarter but it was my first time using the "GradeBook" software and grading art so I think I did OK. I mostly did the grades for the 8th graders and they were mostly graded on participation because this was only a 1 quarter exploratory art class where they learn to use different materials/mediums and try different techniques. All of the work they did in a mere 10 weeks is impressive!

Note to all student teachers:

3 things I wish I would've known before stepping my foot in the classroom.

1) Do not trust the students...even for a second
I do not mean that they cannot be trusted. I just mean that we really need those eyes in the back of our heads already (especially with all of the dangerously sharp objects in the art room). What this looks like: I am always in a position in the classroom where I can see everyone all of the time. That takes some pre-planning and quickly moving my eyes around the room almost constantly. Seriously, sometimes I feel more like a cop than a teacher!

2) Three to six page long Unit Plans are awesome but when you are teaching 5 different courses per day and only have about 50 mins./day of prep this is not realistic. In a pinch, I need: 2-3 lesson or learning objectives, a small paragraph of how-to's and list of materials and then a sentence or two about assessments/grading criteria and a very well thought out rubric to go over with the students. Oh, and don't forget the student sample or visual example. They absolutely need some sort of visual framework to go by. This does limit their options and sometimes imagination but it's usually very hard to figure out what your teacher is looking for without an example.

3) Panic and extreme emotional exhaustion is normal! Most teachers just teach and sleep their way through their first year. I had a situation with a student that could have ended badly and she should have been sent to the vice principal. I didn't really handle it totally to protocol but I know this student well and knew she was testing me to see how far she could go. She may have won that battle but now I have the discipline tool belt (after talking to the powers that be and hearing their first week of teaching stories) to know what to do and how to handle it better next time. Because there will be a next time and it could escalate. Should I do the dance or should I be firm, calm and in control? hmm