This past Thursday, I attended my first ever KATE conference. Not being an early bird, I planned on arriving shortly before Clare Vanderpool was scheduled to begin her keynote so I could grab what was left of the continental breakfast they provided and find myself a seat. Well, since I have never driven to the hotel that it was held at on my own before, I got sufficiently lost on my way there and didn't get there until later than expected. Luckily, I snatched up some fruit and a yogurt cup right before one of the hotel workers took it all away. Grabbing a seat from along the wall, I squeezed in between two of my fellow PSTs. Shortly after, Mrs. Vanderpool began her keynote speech.
While I found her speech to be both funny and educating, it also caused me to realize that her book Moon Over Manifest focuses a great deal on historical things. I really do not like history, so my chances of ever reading this book are slim. Well, at least right now they are. That could always change. After she was finished with her speech, I headed to the breakout session that I think just about every other PST did: "Survivalism 101: Navigating the Jungle of an Unfamiliar School and Making it Through the Critical First 5 Years of Teaching."
As I entered the room along with Mr. Whitman and Ms. Elena, we were all handed a leaf to write on. On one side, we were to write why we were entering the profession of teaching; on the other, we were supposed to write three positive things about our (future) career. My three positives were so cliché that Ms. Elena said I should have written "A Lesson on Clichés" in the top corner of my leaf. Haha. Anyway, these two presenters from a high school located in a nearby town were very helpful and also enthusiastic about sharing their knowledge with us. We were provided with several templates, including one we can use to prepare for unexpected absences where we'll need a substitute! One of them also recommended something I probably would have done on my own anyway: color-coding everything. And I mean everything. Make assignments for one unit blue, ones for another green, etc. It seems insane, but I think it could work. We'll see if it works out for me.
Once we were finished with our survival unit, Mr. Whitman and I walked across the hall to our next session: "Poetry Out Loud." After sitting down for maybe a minute, a fellow PST came in and said there were cookies down the hall. This led to almost all of us leaving the session's room for cookies, which made us late, but it worked out because our presenter was still working on some technological issues when we returned anyway. While certain parts of this presentation gave me goosebumps because I now have a way to possibly get my students interested in poetry, it was mostly promoting a national poetry competition. I would like for some of my future students to participate in this competition, but I am unsure if I will have the opportunity to help them along if they do.
Lunch time! Off to sit with Dr. Mason, Mrs. Hart, Ms. Hollas and a couple of Dr. Mason's friends. While Dr. Mason chatted with her two colleagues, Mrs. Hart, Ms. Hollas and I chatted about the sessions we had attended and showed each other our free stuff we'd gotten from them. I learned that a session that Ms. Hollas went to was awesome and I plan on looking into the program (Write Source®) that was discussed in the session. Hooray for technology helping us teach students writing and grammar skills! As most of us finished eating, Jay Asher began his keynote after being introduced.
Jay Asher gave one of the most hilarious speeches I've heard in my life. I'm not even kidding, guys. This man made me laugh so much, but he also made me realize something. I kept telling myself I didn't want to read Thirteen Reasons Why anytime soon. Guess what? Now I do. And it's all thanks to Jay's speech and how he gave so much context about the book out to us. For example, he told us about the girl he knew that tried to commit suicide, the one that I believe inspired him to write this book in the first place. Once I get paid, I think I'm going to see if I can find the book somewhere online, or I might just go to the library and check it out. It's been a long time since I've checked out a book. I should do that.
Unfortunately, I missed the last part of Mr. Asher's keynote because I had to leave around 2:00PM to get to work. Anyone care to tell me what I missed? Also, any information that you're willing to share about Thursday's afternoon sessions and Friday's sessions would be appreciated as well!
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Online Reflection #3: Help!
This past Thursday, I taught my first lesson in the unit the class is working on focusing around the book Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. Starting the class with a journal entry, I quickly realized that was a horrible idea to start the class with even though I had seen Mrs. Ellis use the same type of activity as bellwork successfully before.
While trying to make sure all of the students present had notebook paper to write their journal entry on, the class was a bit noisy and disrespectful. Then something amazing happened: Kyle, my "fostered gamer," said something along the lines of "Come on! Can't we just be good for her? Show some respect. She's finally getting to teach us!" I was so proud of him. Normally he's the class clown, distracting students from their work, but right now he was the only student in class that stood up for me and I realized that maybe I have started to make that connection with him that so many of you mentioned in your thank you notes to me.
Once the students had been given a bit of time to write their journal entries, I started the tape so we could all listen and follow along to chapters four and five of the novel. Listening to the author read his story, I found that several of the students were beginning to doze off, but I could not think of any part of either chapter that warranted stopping the tape to discuss more. All of it was so cut and dry, I did not see any reason to stop, especially considering the time to listen to the two chapters was limited to the class period. I did stop between the chapters and offer to read the second chapter aloud myself, but the class seemed to prefer the tape of the author.
One of the suggestions I received from Mrs. Ellis was to stop during the chapters I teach in the next couple of weeks and discuss what is happening and ask questions about the content of the chapters. Hopefully the next few chapters I teach will be easier for me. Have any of you read this book? Taught it? I need all the help I can get!
Tonight while grading the journal entries from last Thursday, I realized that the students in this class are very different from one another. Only a handful made a successful response to the prompt that was given, which was to imagine they were climbing Mount Everest with the novel's author, Jon Krakauer. Others pointed out the obvious: "I would be cold." "I would be scared to die." "I wouldn't be on the mountain in the first place because I'm afraid of heights." I couldn't help but wonder: were my instructions unclear or did they just not care? I tried to make my prompt broad enough that it would be possible for both those in the special education program as well as those who were not to respond to it successfully. I also did my best to make it relevant enough so the students could relate back to the novel, while still making it a personal narrative. Where did I go wrong?
While trying to make sure all of the students present had notebook paper to write their journal entry on, the class was a bit noisy and disrespectful. Then something amazing happened: Kyle, my "fostered gamer," said something along the lines of "Come on! Can't we just be good for her? Show some respect. She's finally getting to teach us!" I was so proud of him. Normally he's the class clown, distracting students from their work, but right now he was the only student in class that stood up for me and I realized that maybe I have started to make that connection with him that so many of you mentioned in your thank you notes to me.
Once the students had been given a bit of time to write their journal entries, I started the tape so we could all listen and follow along to chapters four and five of the novel. Listening to the author read his story, I found that several of the students were beginning to doze off, but I could not think of any part of either chapter that warranted stopping the tape to discuss more. All of it was so cut and dry, I did not see any reason to stop, especially considering the time to listen to the two chapters was limited to the class period. I did stop between the chapters and offer to read the second chapter aloud myself, but the class seemed to prefer the tape of the author.
One of the suggestions I received from Mrs. Ellis was to stop during the chapters I teach in the next couple of weeks and discuss what is happening and ask questions about the content of the chapters. Hopefully the next few chapters I teach will be easier for me. Have any of you read this book? Taught it? I need all the help I can get!
Tonight while grading the journal entries from last Thursday, I realized that the students in this class are very different from one another. Only a handful made a successful response to the prompt that was given, which was to imagine they were climbing Mount Everest with the novel's author, Jon Krakauer. Others pointed out the obvious: "I would be cold." "I would be scared to die." "I wouldn't be on the mountain in the first place because I'm afraid of heights." I couldn't help but wonder: were my instructions unclear or did they just not care? I tried to make my prompt broad enough that it would be possible for both those in the special education program as well as those who were not to respond to it successfully. I also did my best to make it relevant enough so the students could relate back to the novel, while still making it a personal narrative. Where did I go wrong?
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