Methodology
and Technology
A strong welcome and
opening to a room full of students is an excellent way of establishing order to
the classroom. If a teacher opens with a
firm, articulate voice, then she will immediately capture the attention of the
students and can expect to get her lesson plan outline across each and every
student. I noticed this during my field
experiences. Ms. Intihar, an English
teacher, began her Language Arts class with a firm, but pleasant, greeting to
all and then wasted no time in instructing the class on what it would be doing
that day. In particular, she used a
provocative, “Okay, listen up”, in order to gear all attention towards
her. The students were instructed to
read silently for fifteen minutes. All
seemed to have gone in order for the rest of the class period. This was good execution of the principle,
‘opening strongly’. However, in another
class, a College Algebra and Trigonometry course, Mrs. Lukareski began by
greeting her class, but didn’t move immediately into explanation of the day’s
lesson. Instead, she first asked for the
students’ feedback on the substitute whom they had been dealt the day before. From what it seemed like, the students had a
lot to say about the substitute, mostly negative commentary. And the teacher mentioned that this wasn’t
the first occasion in which she required a substitute. This may be why the teacher requested
feedback from the students. She knew
that they were going to have some steam to blow, and that if they hadn’t blown
it off, then they would’ve possessed too much confined energy and wouldn’t have
been able to focus clearly in class.
That goes to show that Mrs. Lukareski recognizes characteristics of her
students and adapts her class agenda in order to accommodate those needs and
attitudes of her students. After that,
Mrs. Lukareski kicked the day’s lesson into gear, and the students followed
suit by withdrawing their notebooks and taking notes. That day, the lesson was about the
trigonometric functions known as sine, cosine, and tangent. At a particular point, she was explaining the
tangent function. Quickly after, she
offered three tangent problems, but one student called for assistance. Mrs. Lukareski realized his struggle to
comprehend the utility of the trigonometric function known as tangent, so she
began to create a real world problem that incorporated this function. It went as follows: “If a plane is headed
forward, and is at an elevation of 10,000 ft, at what angle must it travel
downward from this point on in order to safely land on its runway that is
15,000 ft from the plane’s current location?”
The light bulb went off for the student once she walked him through this
problem and demonstrated the tangent’s importance in solving it. Allowing the students to apply what they are
learning to real-world scenarios is an effective way of assuring the students’
retention of that concept, as was displayed here. Going back to the English teacher, Ms.
Intihar, her class began the day with fifteen minutes of silent reading after
hearing the agenda. Having individual
time to absorb content allows students to enter a stage of maximum
concentration in which they can gracefully learn the information before
them. Silent reading is a great way to
execute this type of principle. However,
upon the completion of the fifteen minutes, the teacher didn’t ask anybody to
reflect on what they had just read. It’s
not that one student would’ve spoiled the reading by giving too many details
about the book. Everyone was only
supposed to be finishing a chapter according to Ms. Intihar. So there’s no reason that she shouldn’t have
asked for their opinions/analyses after that reading session, but she
didn’t. I feel that student
involvement/reflection after the deep concentration stage that I mentioned is
critical to a student’s retention of what it was that he was learning about.
Professionalism
Professionalism is one
aspect of teaching that all teachers should consider and take seriously. Many things go into being professional,
including appropriate attire, language, when and how that language is used,
non-verbal communication, organization, and a whole bunch of other stuff. First and foremost, the old saying goes, “If
you look good, then you’ll feel good”.
This couldn’t be any truer for teachers.
They are professionals, and professionals must feel good about what they
do. They must wake up every day with a
sense of enthusiasm towards their careers.
How can they reassure that they always have that enthusiasm? The answer is by dressing the part. By fulfilling the appearance of a
professional with a suit and tie, they are more able to enter the mindset that
they are people who can influence others.
By achieving this mindset, they’ve halfway won the war. One teacher who I noticed during my clinical
experiences for her attire was Ms. Intihar.
She was wearing a school color red t-shirt with jeans and running
shoes. If she weren’t in charge of a
classroom and didn’t have a designated desk in that classroom, then I’m beyond
positive that any student in that high school would confuse her for a fellow
peer. She was completely undistinguishable
from her kids. It actually surprises me
that students were following her every direction during the class period
because of her lack of distinguishability.
If I were sitting amongst those students as a student myself, I wouldn’t
be able to resist but unconsciously ignore much of what she would’ve been
saying. And this we can attribute to the
fact that in order to be taken seriously as a professional, one must look and
present himself as a professional. This
means that Ms. Intihar shouldn’t have been looking like any old person who is
approachable in any way, shape, or form.
For example, if a male teacher were dressed like Ms. Intihar was, a
t-shirt, skinny jeans, and gym shoes, it is likely that the male students would
view him as a peer, rather than a leader.
And their reasoning for doing this wouldn’t be unjustified because that
is how humans function. When we see
familiarity, such as if the teacher were wearing a pair of Jordan shoes, then
we begin to correlate that item with a possible characteristic that the teacher
could possess. We think, if he wears
Jordan shoes, then he is likely into playing basketball and playing NBA 2k15 (a
basketball videogame). Therefore, it is
okay for us to be informal with this fella.
This is very understandable from the students’ point of view, and for
this reason, the teacher must do everything in his power in order to avoid
embedding such views into his students’ minds.
Wearing fancy clothes could do the trick. On the other hand, another teacher, named Ms.
Ortega, was dressed very fancy. She was
wearing a black skirt and blazer outfit with black flattop shoes. Her hair was curled and was shiny. Her attire implied that she was ready to get
down to business. Moving onto another
way of how a teacher presents him/herself, we have verbal language. Verbal language is a big determiner of how
effective and successful a teacher will be.
If a teacher has a boring, monotone voice, then I very well doubt that
his students will retain any much of anything about what he lectures. In contrast, if a teacher knows how to
manipulate vocal variety and how to change the flavor of the atmosphere simply
through his language use, then he will be a more effective teacher and leader,
in general. Besides being very well
groomed, Ms. Ortega was excellent in matters of verbal language. She could talk rapidly, moderately, or slowly
for effect. She knew when to put
emphasis on a word to accentuate its purpose in the sentence. For instance, in one case, a student had
finished her classwork and homework early, and so he began to do homework for
another class. It appeared that he was
puzzled by a question on his other class’ homework, so he asked a peer, with
the hope that she would essentially answer the problem for him, if she could
give her response to that particular question.
Ms. Ortega noticed this, but instead of scolding him for wanting to
cheat on homework and hurt his feelings in front of the class, she simply said,
“YOU want HER to do one of YOUR homework problems?”, while emphasizing those
three capitalized words. Without
question, the student simply tried to play it off to the rest of the class by
saying, “No (haha), I was just joking around”.
She spared the student embarrassment while demonstrating to him that
cheating is highly frowned upon. I
respect that a lot because a lot of teachers are unable to accomplish both of
these things simultaneously. Another
thing about Ms. Ortega is that although she looked the part of a professional,
she didn’t create a barrier between her and her students. Of course, she may have seemed intimidating
to some because of how much she looked like an important person, but she was
not unapproachable. This was because of
the trust that she established with her students by being so nice and humorous
to them. She was very polite to each and
every one of them. She also knew how to
tell a joke and elicit lots of laughs from the students.
Understanding
Learners
Understanding-learners is
a complex component. This is a component
that should not only be executed in high school but also throughout life in
order to ensure the mental and physical wellbeing of a child. Distribution of attention is what I believe
to be the highlight of this component.
Every human being on this Earth deserves attention. This could go so far as to apply to animals,
but that is beyond the point. From the
moment that a newborn is popped out of its mother, he or she will require
individual attention. Parents should
talk to their toddlers as much as possible to help the toddler learn
language. It is also imperative for the
parents to encourage, and reward, the positive behavior of their child. For instance, when a child draws a car on a
paper, no matter what the quality of the car is, the parents should praise the
child for that action. It is a
self-esteem building mechanism. This
will motivate the child to repeat the action because he will be craving the
happiness that his parents display when he shows them his work. This, of course, is true in
schoolchildren. As a teacher, one must
display some certain level of joy upon noticing the effort that the students
are exerting on a particular assignment or activity. Mr. Esposito, a gym teacher, is the teacher
whom I noticed most praised his students for their efforts. His class was full of diverse
populations. There were blacks, whites,
and Latinos, but he didn’t limit showing expression and pride to only one
group. He praised every guy and girl in
that gym class who were working their butts off. Specifically, they were in the weight room
when I went to observe. Here in the
weight room it was easy to identify what students were actually pushing
themselves and which ones were making an ass of themselves. The golden thing that I liked about Mr.
Esposito is that he did verbally reward those who were pushing their limits but
he didn’t exactly ignore those who weren’t.
Instead, he would tell the slackers to pick up their game or to “push
the gas”. He would use constructive
criticism to convey his message that they weren’t doing as much as they were
capable of. For instance, he told one
football player that he was capable of doing 50 push-ups rather than the 40
that he performed because he was using an incorrect body form. The student didn’t argue; he simply accepted
the critique and went and tried Esposito’s recommended form. Further elaborating on this, this gym teacher
was frequently demonstrating to students the way that a particular exercise was
performed. This helped his students in
two different ways. First, it allowed
them to get more muscular burn for their buck.
And for two, it was helping them to avoid injury. It’s important for teachers to respond to
student needs. Ms. Ortega, the Spanish
teacher, is very good at satisfying her students’ needs. In her class, there are native, as well as
non-native, Spanish speakers. In order
to maintain class pace, that is, to not leave behind the non-native speakers,
she has prepared an advantageous seating chart.
There are clusters of unions of two desks side by side. In one desk she places a native speaker and
in the other, she places a non-native speaker.
Her motive for doing this is as what you would expect: if a non-native
speaker gets lost or is having trouble during an activity and Ms. Ortega is
busy with another student, the non-native speaker can reference the native
speaker for assistance. Her purpose is
not to have her teaching responsibilities completely replaced by those of high
school, native Spanish-speaking students.
This is simply a plan that she devised in which the student can provide
the non-native speaker with temporary assistance until Ms. Ortega is available
to come help. It helps reduce the stress
on the students by reducing the amount of time that they must wait in order to have
their questions asked. Another thing
that Ms. Ortega does that is unique and that satisfies the needs of her
students is that she plays background music, during class time that is
dedicated to working on assigned work.
The music that she plays is Spanish music, of course. The whole concept of playing music during
class time came from the cry of students (mostly non-native speakers) because
they weren’t able to immerse themselves in Hispanic culture outside of class
time. That is, all they were learning
about culture was what was being taught in the lesson plan, but they never
listened to Spanish music because they didn’t know who the Spanish singers
were, and they didn’t know how to search for popular Spanish music. The way Ms. Ortega addressed that need,
according to her, was by every day playing the music of one well-known Hispanic
music artist and requesting that the students remember his/her name. She figured that this was a great way of
exposing non-native speakers to Hispanic culture in a conventional manner.
Management
of the Physical Environment
The environment in which
a teacher teaches has much to do with how effectively his/her lesson plans will
be. For instance, many teachers hang
posters, pictures, and drawings on the walls in order to show students that the
stuff that they are learning is not limited to the classroom. For instance, Ms. Ortega’s classroom was
heavily decorated with items related to language learning and cultural
immersion. She had soccer jerseys from
different countries hanging from the ceiling.
There were posters of scenarios with dialogues in Spanish. There were also images of common items with
the item’s name in Spanish placed adjacent to the item. In Mr. Esposito’s weight room, there were
images of weightlifters in cartoon form with funny captions, better known as
memes. These were actually pretty funny
and did make the usual, plain, old, boring weightlifting atmosphere seem
lighter. Going back to Ms. Ortega’s
classroom, a few minutes into class, one student mentioned that she could not
concentrate because it was too hot in the room.
Ms. Ortega said, “Well, we can’t have that, now can we?” So Ms. Ortega instructed the girl to crack
open a few windows so that a breeze would enter the room. Moments later the girl responded that the
temperature felt much better and that her focus was back on point. I was glad when I heard the student say
that. Many of teachers would simply have
told the student to ignore the temperature and focus on the lesson at
hand. But this is a fine error and if
she had done so, Ms. Ortega would have caused the student to remain unfocused
during the class period. As a result,
she would’ve missed out on tons of important content. Next we talk about Ms. Intihar’s classroom
physical environment. Being an English
teacher, she reads a lot of books. And
to this orchard of books that were in her classroom, she had 2 very large book
cases with books organized neatly within them.
All identical books were grouped together and in order of number. For instance, I mentioned earlier that this
class was doing silent reading for the first fifteen minutes of class. The students were assigned a book for the
semester, and they were supposed to be bringing those books to class every
day. But, naturally, some students forgot
their books, and they had to borrow extra copies from Ms. Intihar. Ms. Intihar checked those books out to the
borrowing students and once class came to an end, she had each of those
students return their books to their designated location on the bookcase. They also had to be put in numerical order
according to a number with which Ms. Intihar had marked all of the books. Another thing that was uplifting about Ms.
Intihar’s classroom is that the walls were sporting tons of student work. Part of the left wall was plastered with a
big purple background which housed poetry done by each and every one of her
students. Alongside that wall was a
section which had little sticky notes, one devoted to each student it appeared. When I approached the sticky notes to read
what they had on them, they seemed to be opinions on a book or movie
ending. Then at the end of the class
when I asked Ms. Intihar about that section of sticky notes, she said that it
was, indeed, a collage of student opinions towards the ending of the movie that
they had recently watched. She said that
she did this because she wanted her students to know that their feelings and
critique about things were valued and that they weren’t just ideas that went in
through one ear and out through the other.
One other thing that Ms. Intihar utilized to distinguish her classroom
from an ordinary one was a suggestion box.
This was simple and useful. She
simply asked her students to give their feedback on processes and activities
that went on during class time and to support their feedback with sound
reasoning. She told them to avoid
saying, “I don’t like silent reading because it’s boring”. She told them that she wants to know why it
is boring. Enough admiring Ms. Intihar;
let’s return to Mrs. Lukareski. There
are two things that were going on in Mrs. Lukareski’s classroom that I’d like
to reflect on. First, in her classroom,
she was using the smart board to perform math problems on the board. She turned off all room lights as she began
to use it. She did so and then worked on
the board for about two minutes, but then it occurred to her that some students
might not have been able to see their own papers since it was so dark. So she asked if anyone was unable to see what
they were writing down and offered to turn back on some room lights. Luckily all students agreed to being able to
see properly, so she continued on. Mrs.
Lukareski became aware of her students’ environment and went out of her way to
correct it for them, so that is very nice of her as a teacher. But one thing that I noted about her
classroom is that it was not very math-oriented. She didn’t have any posters what-so-ever and
she didn’t have any artwork that either she or her students could appreciate. This is a grave error on her part because
math is an essential part of life and by not visually demonstrating that to her
students, they may not be completely getting that message. At bare minimum, she could’ve had a few
images of architectural works of art that were created by means of mathematical
formulas and principles. An Eiffel tower
or a St. Louis arch would’ve done the trick.
Diversity
and Demographics
Bremen High School seemed
to have been a very diverse high school.
First and foremost, this was in the student ethnic demographics. The school’s ethnic composition breaks down
as follows: White (26.8%), Black (29.1%), Hispanic (41.3%), Asian (1.1%), Mixed
(1.5%), Pacific Islander (0.2%). This is
a great composition in my opinion.
Having such a diverse student body can benefit the school in many
ways. For one, it permits the blending
of cultures. That is, the Hispanic
students are likely to be introducing their customs to black and white students. This I saw in one classroom, when a Mexican
student brought a couple of pieces of authentic Mexican candies to class and
was eating them. A black student asked
the boy if he could have one, and the boy was more than willing to share. Along with giving the candy to the black
student, he provided a brief background of that candy. He told the black student what ingredients
the candy consisted of, mostly a fruit known as tamarind that can only be found
in Latin America. Right there, an
exchange of culture occurred. And I’m
more than positive that this happens on a deeper level during other activities
like sports and afterschool clubs.
Attending school with students of so many ethnic backgrounds also helps
the students to learn about and practice equality and equal rights. It is easy to see how this happens. By rewarding students with honor roll or
student of the month regardless of their race or creed, students begin to embed
into their minds the reality that anyone can achieve the crown in society. And by establishing this mentality in
themselves, students can stay away from the mentalities of prejudice people. For instance, an extreme example, in the
movie “42”, the white baseball players couldn’t stand to see Jackie Robinson
succeed in the major leagues, so they decided to tease, verbally put down, and
assault him on the baseball field. In
terms of teacher demographics at the district of Bremen High School, there are
131 male and 152 female teachers, so not a huge difference. However, 87.5% of the teachers are
white. This is an overwhelming majority
of white teachers in a school where white students don’t even make up a third
of the student population. There most
likely exists a disconnection between minority students and white teachers at
this school. According to the Illinois
Report Card, 43% of students here come from low-income families. White students only make up 29% of the
student body, so at least 14% (probably much more) of low-income students are
minorities. Now, it is safe to assume
that these same students don’t have a history of college attendants in their
families. And so they have nobody to
look at as a role model at this high school.
Most of the teachers are white, with a history of college in their
families, so how can they relate to and inspire these young minority students
who are foreign to the institution known as college. Now let’s talk about course offerings at
Bremen. There are 15 Advanced Placement
course offered. Also, 15.3% of students
have disabilities, so there are special classes devoted to them. When considering the efficacy of teachers at
this high school, it is sort of an either-or.
Of the five teachers I observed, it seemed that Mr. Esposito possessed
the most efficacy. Earlier I mentioned
that he was verbally praising those who worked hard in his weight room and
trying to help motivate those who were slacking off. Ms. Ortega is a young teacher, but it seemed
that she truly enjoyed what she was doing as a teacher. During the two periods that I observed her,
she had a constant smile on her face and was cracking jokes with her
students. She didn’t seem, at all, to be
dreading the classroom in which she was in.
She was integrating Spanish into her instructions for her class in a
lively tone. This is nice to see because
the goal of the class is to, ultimately, learn Spanish. And by exposing her students to it firsthand,
rather than only scripturally (as in worksheets and readings), then she is
widening their chances to pick up on it.
Now is a good time to discuss the instruction of the teachers and how
long they instructed their students. Ms.
Ortega did instruct her students well and in a lively manner, but only
dedicated about 10 minutes to instruction, and the rest of the time was
individual student time to complete work.
Mrs. Lukareski was also one who instructed for a short while, about 20
minutes. Mr. Esposito’s class was in a
weight room, so naturally he shouldn’t have been instructing the students for
too long, or else they wouldn’t have been able to get through their
workouts. Mrs. Arguelles had a relaxed
day the day I went to go observe because it was National Languages Day, and she
teaches Spanish. Her students spent most
of their time eating chips and salsa that were provided while completing
crossword puzzles and coloring an assignment.
Ms. Intihar did actually impress me in that she instructed her class for
the length of the period besides the silent reading session that the students
did. In the case of Mrs. Lukareski or Ms. Ortega,
they should make it a point to instruct their students for longer periods of
time. I say this because students are
more aware and conscious under instruction of a teacher compared to how they
are when they are working silently and/or individually. It is my belief that if one is more conscious
when working on something, then one will process that work and retain it
longer. The brain is more active and
thus more capable of being molded in order to import the knowledge that is
being learned. But if the student is
working alone and is pretty unaware/unconscious, then his brain is less active
and may be less likely to be molded by the incoming information.
