In getting my ImagineIT underway, I first conferred with three of my colleagues for feedback on my ImagineIT focus and dilemmas. My co-workers included one genEd teacher and two SPED teachers. I have learned over the years that SPED teachers see everything in a different light and this is something that is beneficial to the general education high school teacher if he/she is willing to take advantage of it.
The feedback that I received from my conferring teachers about my project was first that student engagement and motivation is definitely a factor that helps to determine whether our students are successful in the courses that we teach or not. They helped me to think outside the box and realize that I can still integrate STEM and other technology into my classroom even though I do not have a lot available to me right now. Some of them told me that in connecting with students I need to make sure that I am not enabling their bad habits or behaviors. Caring about students does not mean that I turn into a door mat or have to be their friend buddy in everything either. They said that I can show that I care about students by developing structure in the classroom and abiding by the classroom rules that I have posted rather than engaging in arguments or back and forth with students. They also suggested follow through and creating sessions where students have the opportunity to try the concepts without a lot of pressure.
I spoke with various students and used one class as my focus group to try out some new ideas. Students in the French class did not like doing a lot of reading or translating. They felt that it was tedious. They informed me that they really enjoyed the overall activity and felt confident in what they learned. They expressed a desire for me to do more lessons involving those types of competitions or practice verbal and written sessions. Students really enjoyed the session where they just got to practice the vocabulary and make mistakes without it hurting their grade. Competing with their classmates with the countdown that gave them a chance to figure out what they had wrong encouraged students to try more and helped to develop their confidence in the new language. My different way of giving notes and assignments dependent on those notes along with verbal and physical (when possible) explanations seemed to help them better relate the new language to their own language.
Based on these two sets of feedback, I chose to focus more on developing a better rapport with my students. I try to design lessons with their interests, likes, and dislikes in mind. I pay attention to the sidebar complaints of students and see them as an opportunity to improve my practice rather than negative comments about me. I see these conversations as students way of letting me know what is and is not working. I also pay attention to how my SPED teacher works with the autistic students in my classroom. His methods helped me to realize that even the gen ed students need that additional practice and feedback in the classroom to help them feel comfortable with using the language.
There are two changes that students wanted that I will not consider making. They want me to use the exercises in the textbook the way that they are written so that they do not have to do any translations. I realized that they were trying to remain disconnected from the new language, doing things automatically without thinking about it or trying to understand what was going on. Literacy is the focus at our school because so many of our students are poor at it and need to improve for success in college and on standardized assessments. On this measure I must stand firm though I do believe that I need to find fun, more engaging ways to get students to translate from French to English and from English to French. They also want me to be more lax on my enforcement of my classroom rules and school policies. These were developed to have high expectations for students both in and out of the classroom and my choosing to not enforce some parts of them will undermine their effectiveness in helping to maintain a student friendly learning environment within my classroom.
The feedback that I received from my conferring teachers about my project was first that student engagement and motivation is definitely a factor that helps to determine whether our students are successful in the courses that we teach or not. They helped me to think outside the box and realize that I can still integrate STEM and other technology into my classroom even though I do not have a lot available to me right now. Some of them told me that in connecting with students I need to make sure that I am not enabling their bad habits or behaviors. Caring about students does not mean that I turn into a door mat or have to be their friend buddy in everything either. They said that I can show that I care about students by developing structure in the classroom and abiding by the classroom rules that I have posted rather than engaging in arguments or back and forth with students. They also suggested follow through and creating sessions where students have the opportunity to try the concepts without a lot of pressure.
I spoke with various students and used one class as my focus group to try out some new ideas. Students in the French class did not like doing a lot of reading or translating. They felt that it was tedious. They informed me that they really enjoyed the overall activity and felt confident in what they learned. They expressed a desire for me to do more lessons involving those types of competitions or practice verbal and written sessions. Students really enjoyed the session where they just got to practice the vocabulary and make mistakes without it hurting their grade. Competing with their classmates with the countdown that gave them a chance to figure out what they had wrong encouraged students to try more and helped to develop their confidence in the new language. My different way of giving notes and assignments dependent on those notes along with verbal and physical (when possible) explanations seemed to help them better relate the new language to their own language.
Based on these two sets of feedback, I chose to focus more on developing a better rapport with my students. I try to design lessons with their interests, likes, and dislikes in mind. I pay attention to the sidebar complaints of students and see them as an opportunity to improve my practice rather than negative comments about me. I see these conversations as students way of letting me know what is and is not working. I also pay attention to how my SPED teacher works with the autistic students in my classroom. His methods helped me to realize that even the gen ed students need that additional practice and feedback in the classroom to help them feel comfortable with using the language.
There are two changes that students wanted that I will not consider making. They want me to use the exercises in the textbook the way that they are written so that they do not have to do any translations. I realized that they were trying to remain disconnected from the new language, doing things automatically without thinking about it or trying to understand what was going on. Literacy is the focus at our school because so many of our students are poor at it and need to improve for success in college and on standardized assessments. On this measure I must stand firm though I do believe that I need to find fun, more engaging ways to get students to translate from French to English and from English to French. They also want me to be more lax on my enforcement of my classroom rules and school policies. These were developed to have high expectations for students both in and out of the classroom and my choosing to not enforce some parts of them will undermine their effectiveness in helping to maintain a student friendly learning environment within my classroom.