Blog #5

Student teaching this past week was not a very good experience for me.  The county I am in is facing a $41 million deficit.  So last week they laid off dozens of teachers for the next school year including two of the four business education teachers. One of the teachers has 10 years experience with the county and was laid off in favor of another teacher who has eight years but is also a coach. Teachers were called into the principal's office and then sometimes would come out crying or very angry.  Several teachers said to me "Are you sure you want to do this? All in all, not a very positive environment to be in. In addition, it seems that my chances of getting a job next year are about nil.

On the plus side my host teacher is very nice. The classroom I am in has computers at every desk so one of the big problems is keeping students from surfing the net or playing computer games. The type of classes that are taught in here require the teacher to be more of a facilitator. Direct lessons are short and not every day.  Students are required to use their computers to complete lessons on their computer and using the textbook. The teacher then makes her way around the room answering questions or helping students one-on-one who are having problems. I like the environment and feel very comfortable in the class.

I am still enjoying Readicide.  I intend to keep this book as a reference when I have my own class. The author has some great ideas for strategies that we can use in our classrooms to increase students' reading comprehension. I like the way he presents the book, telling stories about experiments he has tried in his classroom and how they worked out. Whenever he talks about reading, an example "the reading flow", I can completely relate. I am love to read just about anything I can get my hands on and feel a sense of devastation that so many students never get to know how that "reading flow" feels. I sincerely hope that no matter what class I eventually teach, that I can bring more students to enjoy reading and increase their reading comprehension, than if they had never been in my class.

Due 2/4/10

Some of my ideas for literacy engagements includes using Read-Alouds and shared reading. I would like to pick out a content relevant article and get the class reading.  I would also like to use Kelly Gallagher's idea of having the students circle words they are not sure of while reading individually, then move them into groups to discuss it and see if they can figure it out as a team, and then have a class discussion. Additionally, I like Gallagher's 20 questions strategy.  I will have to see how my classes are before I can make a final decision on these choices.  I will not be teaching business essentials like I thought I would be, I will be teaching accounting and computer applications. So I will have to see what will be appropriate for those topics.

I am really enjoying Readicide.  It confirms some ideas that I have had for some time about what is going on in our schools. How sad that students did not know who the vice president is? I am incredulous that students are reading for a grand total of 17 minutes in the course of an entire day of high school! What does the future hold if this failure of our education system continues. To try to address this issue, I would like to incorporate the authors idea of "article of the week" into my future classroom.  What a great way to address vocabulary, reading comprehension skills, current events and an awareness of what is going on in the world around them.

I think that my progress on my inquiry project is coming along very well. I have finished with the literature review and moving on to the next step.  My literacy engagements are going to spawn from this project and I am curious to see what the outcome will be. I am very concerned about reading in my discipline but I will need to get in the classroom and get some real experience with the students before I am really going to be able to grasp the situation. Then I will be able to figure out which learning strategies really work and discard those that do not.