My Fifth Day

On February 22, I was in Mr. Jones's class again. At first, Anna and I decided we would switch between classes, but I wanted to stay in Mr. Jones's class. I like the upper grades better, and it was more writing help than grammar. The week's schedule was modified, so classes stopped after one. In order to be able to fill my normal hour and fifteen minute time, I stayed for first and second period.

In first period, I helped a student with an essay. The assignment was to write about a moment in her life when she showed courage. At the bottom of her essay, Mr. Jones wrote where there needed to be improvements. The comments applied to the entire class, so after reading them, I focused on the ones specific to her essay. I enjoyed her essay a lot, and was surprised on how well she wrote. A majority of the language was informal and slang, but since it was a personal narrative, I think it reflected her voice and personality well. However, the organization was pretty confusing. Her story just begins without an introduction, and has a lot of background information. There were also many moments of courage in her story, instead of just one. However, her conclusion only mentioned one moment.

With Mr. Jones's comments in mind, we spent the class working on an introduction and revising her conclusion. First, I asked her to say what her main point was. What did she want her reader to take away from reading her story? Then, I told her what I took away from it based on her writing. I explained why the beginning and ending was a little confusing. So, she worked on introducing her essay and stating her main point. She would just type and I would help when she was stuck on expressing her ideas.

For her conclusion, I explained why she needed to revise it. What her story, and what she told me, was conveying did not match up with her conclusion. She told me her point was that she made it through each hardship, and that was courage. However, her conclusion only mentioned one moment. I had her explain why each moment was important, and how does that contribute to her definition of courage.

In second period, I helped on the same assignment with another student. While I focused on helping the previous student to write an introduction and conclusion paragraph, this student needed multiple improvements. Mr. Jones required the page length to be around three to four pages. Total, this student had about one and a half pages. Her main problem was her language was too broad. In order to increase her page count, I asked her to explain certain statements and go into detail about specific moments of courage. We also worked on developing an introduction paragraph. By the time class ended, she still did not have enough, but there was a huge difference with what she had before.

I really enjoyed working with both students. The writing level was high compared to the ninth grade class I was in. I think that is why I enjoy working with older students. At a ninth grade level, their writing is not going to be great, but that's okay. It's really hard for me to accept that. At eleventh grade level, there still some issues, but I can work with it more and help. I know I have to learn how to have reasonable expectations for writing. Ninth graders aren't going to write as well as me or an older student.

My Fourth Day

On Wednesday, February 15th, I had a change in placement. After Anna and I arrived in Ms. Johns's class, she informed us another teacher, Mr. Jones, needed one of us in an 11th grade class. At first, I did not want to leave, since I had gotten more familiar with the students and Ms. Johns, but I decided I wanted to experience a different grade level.

In Mr. Jones's class, there were a lot more students, and they were older. I was kind of nervous, but Mr. Jones was super nice and outgoing. He set me up with a student, Lexie. In his class, students mainly work on assignments on their own on class laptops. Lexie was finishing an assignment where she had to write a summary of a short story. Mr. Jones had a step-by-step process that had to be filled out. Mainly, they had to state important parts of the story and explain them.

This assignment was a struggle for me. I had a clear idea of what I thought the answers should be, but Lexie did not always do what I thought was right, but I did not know how to lead her in the direction I thought she should go without outright telling her what I thought. I think it's important for teachers to not just tell a student the right answer when they're wrong. They should help lead them to the right answer. I wasn't sure how to do that with Lexie. Furthermore, maybe I wasn't right in the first place. Picking out important parts of a story is a matter of opinion. While I would've chosen different moments than Lexie, her reasoning for her choices made sense, and who was I to tell her she was wrong? Because of my age and inexperience, I still have a hard time feeling like an authority on a subject. I know no teacher knows everything, but I still lack a lot of confidence. That's something I'm really going to work on during my next visits. I need to be more confident and authoritative.

My Third Day

My third day was on February 8th. Once again, I was in Ms. Johns's class with Anna. Instead of grammar, the class was going over the Progressive Era. At first, I could not remember this time period, but it was basically the same as the "Roaring Twenties."

After she went over the basics of the period, the class broke into groups and were assigned a section of the reading. Each group had to underline importance sentences, phrases, or words they did not understand. I was assigned to work with a group of three boys. I had them volunteer to read their section out loud, and was happy that everyone did so willingly. Usually, you have to pick a student to read out loud. They did the assignment perfectly, but it was hard for them to single out important sentences. To them, most of the sentences were important. I could identify with their problem. It's hard for me to pick apart things, because even the supporting sentences contribute to the big picture.

Ms. Johns then had each group talk about what they thought was important, and any words they did not understand. She wrote all the words each group said on a large paper for future reference. This portion of class took the longest, and went till the end of class. When Anna and I were preparing to leave, Ms. Johns asked us how everything went. She also informed me that she wanted me with the group of three boys, because of her relationship with one. They were all bright students, but one of the boys just did not like her, and would not work if she was present. I was surprised; each student was very nice and did the assignment without need for any prompting or keeping on task. She did not tell me which boy it was, and I kind of glad she didn't. In my group's presentation about Girl, Interrupted, we discussed how knowing about a person's mental illness might cause us to prescribe behaviors to him or her before we know the individual. Now, this situation has nothing to do with mental illness, but I liked not knowing which student had the issue with Ms. Johns because I did not want to unconsciously label them and view them any different than the other students.

Overall, I enjoyed the review of the twenties and seeing a group of students eagerly do an assignment and learn new vocabulary.