Reconnect and Reflect: Returning from my Student Teaching

Hi everyone! For those of you who did not know, I had to take a break from blogging in order to focus on the final phase of my educational experience to become a teacher. Managing work as an actual teacher on top of my other obligations (day job, Kiwanis, etc.) has taken its toll on me and prevented me from doing any written reflection. All the reflection I was able to do was looking at my tear stricken face from the bottom of a 22oz pint glass at a PT's during happy hour. This post may be a long one as it details some of the highlights of my student teaching experience.

I taught at Fremont Professional Development Middle School - a tier one school that is sixty years old on the corner of Maryland Pkwy and St Louis Ave, just blocks away from downtown. The building is pretty ancient and reminded me of my own middle school - St. John Kanty - and at times I felt like I suffered from PTSD (joke!)

The front of the school. "Professional Development" is a title given to it after the program for developing student teachers was established there.

The atmosphere there was unlike any other school, with students from a variety of backgrounds and rich cultures. The population at Fremont is mostly Hispanic students, many being ELL or at-risk. However, the staff there is a team made up of incredibly caring yet professional individuals who have become immersed in the mire of student antics and have learned to roll with the punches and give not just great instruction but meaningful experiences to the students who need it most.

Coming into FPDMS, I felt very green yet confident in my own abilities to wrangle a crowd to listen to me. I felt that my experience hosting meetings for my organization, speaking in front of a packed church congregation, and constant reflection in my leadership course helped prepare me for managing a bunch of rowdy students in a classroom. However, I was proven wrong as the students would steamroll my instruction with misbehavior and lack of attention. Fortunately, I had a very good mentor who held a very tight and short leash on her classroom. Still today, I feel that students can and should be motivated to behave and learn if an educator uses the right impetus and style. However, I have also learned that sometimes teachers just have to bite the bullet and crack the whip on students in order to get them to sit up and read. Being a good educator requires a balanced use of both of these ideologies and precise timing and execution as well.

This is just the first of my many revelations. I came to the school as idealistic as they come. I was paired with a teacher that is twenty years in the profession. I came introducing uses of technology as that was what I grew up with. She came at me and reminded me of the good old days with pen and paper. I tried a couple of technological based lessons, and the students, to my surprise, had issues with them. It wasn't the method that was wrong, it was just that they lacked the mental aptitude. Technology vs Tradition is another one of those educator dichotomies where a good teacher knows when to use one or the other. It is a balance that is determined by the make up of your class.

Before this post gets too long, I want to highlight this last truth that was revealed to me and that makes up my teacher ideology. I have forgotten what it is like to be a young student. I think I have gotten used to thinking deeply, considering every word and action, choosing what I do carefully after weighing the consequences. I forget that students don't normally go through this routine, and whether or not that is defined by biology, as if their brains haven't developed to the point of that cognitive level yet, or by nurture, that educators haven't got them in the routine of it yet. All in all, these students are not thinking as complexly as I am so simple is usually best. I have a tendency to talk and over-explain myself, and this usually just loses students for lack of interest. Just keep activities short and simple and let them do the work.

I know that I have so much to learn but I feel like these three tenets have helped shaped my ideology thus far. These are all theories that must be tested in the field, and I think that after seven long years, I might just finally be ready. I have so many to thank, including my mentor teacher, peers, and everyone who has supported me in becoming an educator, including you, reader. I look forward to many more experiences and will be sure to include you along the ride. I have one week left to my program. Next step, graduation!

Reflexive Pronouns and Objects of Preposition

Ha! A reflexive pronoun gets mistaken for the object of the preposition.

Normally, the "yourself" would emphasize the fact that the character is doing all the work. Grammatically, it probably should have read "are you putting them up, yourself."

Instead, in the final frame, "yourself" is treated as the object of the prepositional phrase "up yourself." This indicates the location of where the lights are being put, resulting in a humorous and grim scene.

I see what you did there.

Breaking down "The Sentence" in the classroom

The other day in my teaching methods class, we were given a paragraph of informational text and the challenge of "how would you teach this text to your students". Now, this was no normal piece of informational text designed by some Springboard scholars to actually help students comprehend some piece of information or practice a reading skill. This was a paragraph from the abstract of a research paper on some kind of breakthrough marine microorganism.

I was thinking how to teach reading this to 8th graders when I couldn't even get it!

You can see how high level the reading is in the example given to us. However, there is a way to make it simpler, but it requires a firm grasp of English Grammar. You can already see that I started doing that as I was reading. I was eliminating everything but the most crucial parts of the sentence - the Main Subject and Main Verb. To me, the first few sentences read: "The allocation is a complex process. We use analysis to investigate sources..."

Grammar is all about breaking down sentences into their parts and understanding how they interact. Students of mine will definitely not need to know the information in this passage, but they can practice the skill of breaking complex sentences into their components and labeling them. I would engage them in CCSS L.7.3a - Choose language that expresses ideas precisely and concisely, recognizing and eliminating wordiness and redundancy.

To one in the field of studying...whatever this paper is studying, none of this is wordy. Everything is quite precise. However, teaching a student to recognize adjectives and adverbs, adjectival phrases, prepositional phrases, dependent clauses....all the stuff that is necessary to making something precise to a scholar but confusing to a student...and having them eliminate them to get to the point is a skill. They won't even have to know what the words are or mean if they recognize the structural pattern of a sentence!

What concerns me with students in a typical classroom that I expect to be teaching is that many students lack the fundamental grammar basics. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions, clauses....all of those things are lost on the student because they don't practice it enough. Traditional reading is not a priority, and the way technology has evolved, more people are concerned with sharing their thoughts via images rather than describing them in words. And even if their "statuses" are posted in words, they are in non SAE form, or internet "meme" slang. I'm sure I need some research to back this claim up, but that's my guess anyways.

I would like to teach a lesson on this topic. I would like to illustrate the lack of understanding of SAE and traditional language use in the classroom by social media and then propose some methods to teach against it (or with it if possible). We are on the prepositions and clauses part of our Grammar unit now, so I will focus on breaking those down in conjunction with my peers.

How words are made

Before I get into studying for my next test, there is something that I have to review when it comes to English Grammar. I have consistently gotten word formation incorrect because I forget what is what, so I will review that here so I won't forget.

Affixation
Not to be confused with choking (asphyxiation), affix is a common way for forming words by adding on a derivational affix. bake > baker


Compounding
This is when you join two or more words to make a new word. skate + board = skateboard (a board like object on which one skates)


Zero Derivation
No change is made to the word. It just changes in context. Buy a comb(noun) from the store to comb(verb) your hair.


Stress Shift
No change is made to the word but when pronouncing it, stress a different syllable. The doctor was able to successfully implant (unstressed/stressed) new hair implants (stressed/unstressed)


Clipping
Shortening of a long word (not to be confused with backformation). Mathematics > Math


Acronym Formation
Making of a word using the initials of what it represents. NASA . National Aeronautics and Space Administration


Blending
Parts of two words are used to make a new word. Breakfast + Lunch = Brunch


Backformation
This is the opposite of Affixation. Instead of adding affixes, you take them away to form a new word. This is different from Clipping in that clipping deals with taking away syllables which probably don't have an actual phonological purpose. Backformation takes away affixes with phonological purpose like removing "ham" from "hamburger".


Branding
The result of powerful marketing, this is when a commercial business brand name becomes popular enough to stand in for the object it represents. Facial Tissue > Kleenex


Onomatopoeia
When a word is created to emulate a sound. "Hiss" "Buzz"


Borrowing
More like taking a word from another language. Sushi Taboo Chic


I got these wrong for the most part on my first exam. Oh well, try again!

Grammar Basics (OMG why is it like this?)

I just posted about how I really wanted to learn the intricacies of the English Language. Then I read the chapter and am all of a sudden wavering in my resolve. No wonder the textbook (English Grammar: Language as Human Behavior 3rd Ed.) prefaced the chapter with a very long explanation of Why and How we study language. In a nutshell, it goes like this:

• Language is important as it holds value socially and educationally
• Like, what do you think of a person that says "ain't" over someone that says "am/is not"
• "I ain't about that life" vs. "I am not about that life" or "I ain't over him yet" vs "I am not over him yet"
• There is no official authority on how English must be
• Who decides what is right or what is wrong?
• Because of the large amounts of groups and individuals who use English, standardization of one variation under one authority is impossible
• Unless we want real grammar Nazi's and persecution of people who say "who" instead of "whom". I don't think we want that
• Language is constantly changing
• huge impact of internet and instant messaging
• Seriously, kids are pretty much anti-establishment. If adults something is the straight and narrow, it's not cool. Thus, slang, and if something is used enough, it becomes mainstream.

Result: We should study language to understand the dynamics of it and its impact on society because it is this important thing that people care about. 

So here is what I understand:

Constituents - Language is made up of these things. Parts. Components. Constituents are words or groups of words that somehow belong together. They make sense. 

Those parts are organized in a heriarchy. At the bottom you have roots and affixes. These are the base form of words and the attachments that change the word meaning. Then there are the words themselves, roots combined with affixes. Then phrases, groups of words that go together as a noun phrase or verb phrase. Then when a noun phrase and verb phrase combine you get clauses. Finally, you can have a combination of independent and dependent clauses that make sentences.

It's like how atoms make molecules, molecules make compounds, compounds make mixtures, etc.

Then there's the rules and regulations that make sense of everything - the SYNTAX.

(that word is so intimidating)

Syntax is broken up into three major categories: Lexicon, Word Order, Inflectional Morphology

Lexicon consists of word classes. This is the stuff we learned in elementary (or grammar) school. Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives, Adverbs, etc. 

Word Order - words are arranged in order of their grammatic and functional meanings. These are unmarked word orders. However, when writers or speakers move the words around to create emphasis or voice, then this is marked order. 

Inflectional Morphology - finally, the way that individual words make sense is the use of morphology. Function words include minor word classes like prepositions and articles that make sense of the main words....like stuffing in a turkey. The turkey is great on its own, but the stuffing helps keep it all together and making sense as a meal. (Arguably, stuffing is great on its own too, but that makes this analogy fall apart) Then, grammatical morphemes like affixes help to distinguish tense, aspect, voice, modality, and mood.

I don't want to be late for a test on this but this is all I can process at the moment. I'll update this post afterwords....probably with a drink. Wish me luck

I use language because I care

This strip from one of my favorite webcomics just so happened to appear just as I was considering starting up writing again, this time as a writing assignment for my English Grammar class. It illustrates perfectly (or perfectly illustrates?) this feared and abhorred Grammar Nazi mindset of educated individuals. As I learn more about our language and explore all the nooks and crannies of our English, I run the risk of becoming one of these who persecute those who do not adhere to the latest rules speaking. However, that is not my intent.

I want to learn language because, as the comic implies, it is one of the main means of connecting with others. I remember a scene from the movie The Dead Poet's Society in which the character played by Robin Williams (you're free, genie) stated that "language was invented for one reason...to woo women." While I do not seek any romantic companionship as a result of my studying language, I acknowledge it as such a powerful force that it deserves scrutiny. How is it that we give meaning to utterances of sounds and syllables? Why do we put value on certain words? What is their origin and how are they transformed from morpheme to morpheme? I'll admit, I don't know, but if understanding language as a means communication will connect me to other human beings and I can bring others into the fold so we aren't so alone, then I'm happy to pay the price. (Seriously, I didn't know an English class could cost so much.)

Ryan Writes #6: Think for yourself!

Something happened in class the other day. I hadn't noticed it, but when I took the opportunity to lead a discussion about Utopian ideals vs Dystopian realities, I dropped a couple of example. Of course, this is common practice, since in order to get the students to understand what I was talking about, I wanted to make the concept relatable. So, I made the connections for the students and seemed to get some nods of acknowledgement and understanding. Satisfied, I turned the class back over to my mentor so she could lead them in their typical post-discussion reflection.

A week later, after my mentor had gone through the journals, she pulled me aside to show me something. "Remember when you gave an example of this last week?" She showed me several students' journal writings, all citing the same example I had given them. "All they did was copy down what you said." At seeing that, a little bit of me died inside. I thought I had gotten through to the students, that they actually understood what I was trying to teach them. I was, for the most part, wrong.

In a culture of testing and assessments, students seem to pick up on what is expected of them to pass the class, albeit marginally. They look for hints as to what the teacher wants them to spit out to get satisfactory marks. They are trained to pick up the clues dropped by the instructor as to what to reiterate, without understanding or practicing the inherent concept. Basically, they are trained to repeat, not to think for themselves. My mentor, however, is tough enough and experienced enough to not be moved by these simple acts, and she is always urging the students to "think for themselves."

This trend I see in students shows me how "lazy" they are in that they don't want to think, but re-actively practice "monkey-see-monkey-do." I'm frightened because this translates to potential voters who just jump on the bandwagon, drones who are incapable of escalating the career and administrative hierarchy. I know that it can't be done in one lesson, but I have not spent enough time with my mentor to see exactly how she teaches her students to "think for themselves."