Month: April 2019

I am incredibly grateful for the invaluable skills I learned throughout the semester. As I said last night, I dreaded this class and the content. Social studies has never been an area of strength for me and I was afraid my personal feelings may be detected by my future students. Kiddos can sense insecurities and I was afraid I would be ripped apart…not so much anymore!

Now equipped with DBQ, question formulation, I say, you say, and so, I wonder, and so many other amazing strategies for teaching the SS content, I am no longer weary. While I may not be  amazing in my execution of all of these techniques during my first few years of teaching, I know that through practice I will get better.

I also appreciate the opportunity to reflect in so many different ways as we did on the giant sticky notes. My only “issue” is that I never feel like I know what to say/how to respond to such prompts in the moment. It is only once I have had an opportunity to truly sit with a thought that I am able to come up with some type of response. However, being able to see what my classmates wrote was super helpful as I remembered things I would not have otherwise reflected upon. (not sure that makes sense, but hopefully you understand). I’m also grateful for these blog posts as an opportunity to just word vomit what I’m thinking and feeling. I haven’t looked at these as a formal paper, rather an opportunity to get whatever I’m trying to process out in some kind of written form and just be real. So, thank you. Thank you both for everything!

This class made me a bit uncomfortable. When I asked about teaching difficult subjects, I was mainly thinking about a black kid telling me I didn’t know anything because I was white. I’m not sure why, but I had narrowed my thinking in terms of race and failed to think about all of the other possibilities of running into a sensitive subject for which I’m unprepared. I tend to think of myself as a fairly open minded person. I don’t think I’ll have any issue with any diverse population, my “issue” will be the possibility of not knowing what to say when a student asks an off the wall question. I know this because I can’t even begin to count the times one of my boys has done the same. While I agree with learning everything you can about the topic to be as prepared as possible for the unexpected, sometimes that’s not enough and that scares me. However, I think the fact that I’m aware of this possibility is enough to allow me to tread lightly when it comes to delicate subject matter.

I’m still having a hard time wrapping my head around the situation Lynne told us about when she asked a student to address her as ma’am. While I can understand the parent’s perspective, I don’t know why it wasn’t about teacher student and had to be about race. Lynne may have been a white woman but she was/is also a teacher and in a position of authority. I guess maybe it’s the way I was brought up…? I’m just still having trouble wrapping my head around that situation. I do, however appreciate her sharing because I would have never thought something like that could be an issue.

I appreciate the time to work on Virtual Field Trip stuff. I think I got so excited about all of this new technology that I’ve learned about in Drew and Ryan’s class that I may have over-complicated things. Leave it to Dr. Stohr to bring me back down to reality. 🙂  Seriously though, I would love to think of working in a school with access to basic technology resources, but am afraid it may not be possible. If that’s the case, I’m going to have a difficult time adjusting but will definitely manage.

I’m still trying to process this last class. To be honest, I feel like I’ve been doing that a lot over the past few weeks, because rather than being in the moment during an activity, my brain is constantly rolling and trying to figure out how I would use said activity in the classroom. Note to self: slow down, focus, then reflect.

I tend to keep KWL charts in the forefront of my mind as a very effective way to pre-assess and activate prior knowledge. By being on the student end of both the questioning activity and a KWL chart, I now see that there are more effective ways than the KWL. I appreciate how the questioning activity allowed all students to participate in a low stake setting. While I do my best to ensure all students have a chance to participate, it became evident to me that the whole class KWLs I had been doing in previous lesson plans, that students were being left out.

It was also interesting being in the same group as Lisa (love her to death) who had a ton of knowledge about massive resistance, how I noticed myself stepping back and not contributing due to someone else having super obvious previous knowledge. On the other hand, when I worked with a different group on the questioning activity, I was the one with the previous knowledge yet the dynamics all seemed equal (does that even make sense?). Being told all questions mattered may have helped. So was this a better activity or would the KWL chart be just as good if we stressed that all thoughts and questions mattered?

Sorry this is a bit all over the place. I use this as an opportunity to just get the thoughts out in a low stakes way. As I said, I’m still processing…

 

I really enjoyed last night’s class. I felt as if it was not only super informative, but the activity allowed us to be interactive all while learning just how impactful the jigsaw method can be!

Thank you for allowing us time to brainstorm lesson plan ideas. While I feel somewhat confident in my ability to create a decent lesson plan, I realize I always have something to learn (and always will). Talking things out allowed us to understand how others go about the lesson planning process and provided meaningful insight into ideas I otherwise would not have thought about. Further, talking out my ideas with others allowed me to see gaps I would not have seen/noticed otherwise.

As far as the actual content discussed in class, I am a bit fascinated by the Great Depression and Dust Bowl. Most of my fascination comes from my having recently taken a course on the subject, but I never really thought about ways to teach it. Using different forms of documents (maps, letters, etc) really gave deeper meaning to the content. Additionally, jig-sawing out was an extremely effective method for all of us to learn about all of the documents in a fraction of the time. Sure, not everyone in the jigsaw would have as much knowledge about the other documents, but if nothing else, as the teacher, I could take solace in the fact that students were able to take away at least one thing.

If I were to teach on the subject, I would most definitely use the non-fiction piece presented in class in culmination with multiple documents/maps. I feel like this subject is dying to be a PBL :).