Month: February 2019

I am always happy any time I get to spend time in a museum, particularly one as beautiful and diverse as the VMFA. I thought that the women leading the tours and the activities did a wonderful job of leading us through the activities as if we were students, and also explaining important elements to know as teachers. It always is so striking to me to learn about resources that are free and available for students to access, they simply need their teachers to be aware of them! This was impressed upon me in Elem Science when we went to the galleries on U of R campus and learned about their version of tours and distance learning. An important part of being an effective teacher is knowing about resources, knowing how to find resources, and then following through with actually taking advantage of them. If every teacher planned even a few enriching activities a year, that would add so much to the student’s experience. We are so lucky to live in a city like Richmond which has a wealth of all kinds of interesting and educational valuable sites. This got me thinking of what else might be out there, so I did some quick research and found the Three Lakes Nature Center which has a free aquarium, Henricus Historical Park which would be perfect for teaching about colonization and Jamestown, and the Black History Museum which would be valuable for almost any subject or grade level. There are so many possibilities!

This was the most helpful class yet for me personally, as I feel that we covered topics that I have wondered about and have not yet gone over so far in TLP. In every course in this program we discuss how important quality assessment is, but this is the first time I have had someone break down exactly what elements are needed for a strong assessment to this detail. I really appreciated the examples of poorly written questions and poorly formatted worksheets as these are the types of errors that new teachers (including myself) are sure to make unless explicitly instructed on how to do otherwise. In a previous course we discussed how the field of teaching has a high rate of new teachers dropping out of the profession in the first few years, and I feel that simple things such as going over how to write test questions could prevent the types of errors and anxiety that may drive new teachers to jump ship.

My other thought from the night was a connection I made to my current job teaching individuals with Autism. I was wondering to myself why I was so excited about the prospect of writing rubrics and enjoying the topic so much, when I realized that it was because this would be a strength for me after my training at my current school. I am already used to breaking down tasks and behaviors into discrete and objectively defined steps, and this is the same type of thinking process involved with creating a rubric. Every day I am thinking about what nuanced, specific aspect of a skill I am targeting or assessing, so it comes naturally to think about graded assignments in that way. There are many connections between my current teaching duties and those in general education, and it is interesting to see the overlapping skill areas.

This class reminded me of some projects that I had completed myself in school, and have also heard mention in other courses. Some of them included family heritage projects, where students worked with their families to construct family trees that extended as far back as they could go. That was a common activity when I was growing up, and I remember making a family tree with my parents in elementary school. I wonder how this activity has evolved as we are learning more about the different family structures that exist, and the possible inequities that may be magnified from a project like that. How can one celebrate the different types of families and backgrounds of all students and also teach the importance of personal history while also being sensitive to students whose family life may be painful or non-existent? I am noticing more and more that almost every activity or project could benefit from looking at it through the lens of trauma informed teaching.

The other main thing I noticed this class was how personally engaged I felt because of the interaction with the authentic documents. This further reinforces the idea that the delivery of content should be through meaningful and engaging tasks that have many open ended and deeper thinking questions as well as answers.