What a Mess!!

Teaching at the middle school was an exhausting experience! Much of it went according to plan, but there were still some exciting surprises!

The biggest surprise for me was just how much of a mess our activity made! We anticipated the excitement and the chaos, but we were surprised to see the trash left at the end of the assemblies. As a result the clean-up time had to bite into our time to review what the students learned and check their understanding.

I was also surprised to find when it was time to race the cars that a great majority of the students did not understand how the cars worked. They were putting them down backwards and not understanding why some basic parts weren't working. It would have been well worth the time to go over the car and how it's made and how it works before allowing the students to form their assembly lines.

One other thing we could have done to make things go better would have been to have a pause in the assembly line process to get the students to analyze their method to see if there was a way to improve their process. I think it would have been easier to check for understanding midway than any other time.

It was an exciting lesson. I think I learned as much from the students as they learned from me.

Teaching History

I've been struggling lately with planning my portion of our lesson on the assembly line to teach the 6th graders. I have to teach the history of the assembly line. I'm finding two main struggles with this section:

1) History is really hard to summarize in an interesting way so that you can teach it in only 5 minutes.

2) By nature of the subject, it is a lot less hands-on and more difficult to use various types of pedagogy to teach it. I find myself just resorting to the standard powerpoint show and tell method. Luckily I thought of semantically encoding some of the information to make it easier to remember.

Finally after getting frustrated as I was trying to magically make the history more interesting I realized that I was trying too hard. I find the information I was sharing to be inherently interesting. I think I was trying too hard to make it interesting when it ALREADY is. It made me realize that sometimes a teacher just has to appeal to the natural curiosity within the student.

A consideration of my past teachers

I've decided that much of what I qualify as "good teaching" comes from the practices of teachers that I had through the years. I've decided that I want to take a look at their pedagogical styles and analyze them and why they were so effective.

Mr. Sivertson

Mr. Simmons

Mr. Hodur

Mrs. DesRochers

Accurate Assessment

With Geoff's lecture on Thursday I've discovered something very important about my teaching strategy. I've been very "anti-test" all along, thinking that I could discover how well the students are learning without having to test them on it. While this may be true, it's still necessary to provide assessments, if for no other reason than to be able to justify my grading systems.

The one problem I see is that when I sit down and try to write an assessment for any of the lessons I've taught thus far, I find it very difficult. My instruction isn't at all assessment based. As a student I hated when teachers would obviously just teach toward the test, but on the same regard, I hated when the teachers gave a test without adequately preparing us for it.

I think that the key to this balance is not to design your lesson for the test, but to decide what you want your students to understand from your lesson. If you already have teaching goals in mind, they will be more clear-cut in your presentation and writing the assessment will naturally ensue. The lesson won't be built for the test, rather the lesson and the test will be built for the reassurance of the learning process.

Preparing Students for the Work Field

In my last couple of visits to high schools it has occurred to me that tech teachers are some of the few teachers that have the most vast range of teaching responsibilities. In teaching pre-engineering classes tech teachers try to help prepare students for college. They promote problem-solving, engineering skills, mathematics, physics and other collegiate level work. On the other hand, a welding teacher or auto shop teacher has to focus on preparing students to enter the work field upon graduation.

These two tasks can sometimes be far removed from one another. So how does one find the balance when, inevitably, there will be students who want to go to college in some "work field" classes and there will be some people who prefer to go straight into the field in some "collegiate engineering" classes. It's a question of not only teaching implications, but of moral implications as well.

I think that the solution lies in approaching every problem from two perspectives at the same time. Here at BYU I had a math professor who always labeled his lectures with two parts, the "mechanic's point of view" and "the engineer's point of view". The first point of view was an expository on what knowledge would be required if you merely needed to fix a part; the latter being a point of view exposing the knowledge that would be required if you needed to design the part. This juxtaposition always left me wanting to be more like the engineer, but allowed me to feel capable, like the mechanic. I think this is a viable strategy in tech classes.

I think that using the mechanic vs. engineer point of view helps us both prepare students for the workforce while also pointing students to the virtues of higher education.

The Promotion of Independent Learning

I was really fascinated that Lindsay was able to use the simple idea of going back to the future mixed with a few old ads from the 80's to put a desire to learn in me. Before that day I hadn't had any desire to see old commercials or even to figure out how much various products would have been in a certain decade. After having this promotion of my own learning kindled within myself I wondered how to put such a practice into action myself, as a teacher. After much pondering, this is what I've decided you need to perform the following steps:

1)Be excited. No one will be interested in Bubblicious if you aren't yourself. Sell your topic.

2)Show applications to the topic in pop culture, media and practical application.

3)Teach in such a way that there are open-ended questions that naturally occur inside the learner. For example, a student will be more likely to identify with and autonomously research electromagnets if the end of the lesson steers toward the question "How could YOU use an electromagnet to simplify your life?" rather than the question "What is an electromagnet". In order to answer the first question you have to understand the second question.

In the long run, presentation is key, but the depth of question is the solution. I think that as I develop more lesson plans I'll have to build them around the question that I want the students to naturally wonder at the end. Insodoing I think I can increase the autonomy of learning in my students.

A Thought on Modules

As a student I struggle with the system of "module" learning. It's too chaotic and unpredictable for me, and i've always felt that the teacher was too far away for effective instruction so I just had to make up want he or she wanted. I struggle with all of the same things as a teacher, but I now see that there are things that make module-learning better. The main bonus of module learning is that it's easier on the budget. Rather than having a classroom set of hardware or software, you may only need 3 or 4 seats, making modules more affordable. Having discovered this, I've decided to set for myself some perimeters on how to most effectively teach in modules.

#1-- Give adequate instruction.

I've never been one to read directions or even to read through a packet or textbook to figure out how to use something. If I was learning how to use a robot I just pushed buttons until it worked. I hated modules because usually packets are your only source of information for any given unit. I would want to give adequate classroom instruction time before the class breaks up into groups just to use other teaching styles to help students understand the material and what is expected of them

#2--Checking For Understanding

Along with worksheets that are well-written to be sure that students understand key principles, I feel that my involvement would be essential in the modules. I would want to be actively roaming and checking up on students and their projects just to be sure they are not completely off course. IT would certainly be helpful if I could get other student TA's to do the same thing. I think that student TAs are much underused in schools and that they should be expected to help other students rather than simply play games or do homework during their help time. If they want it on their resumé, they should have to work for it.

#3-- Student Sharing

I think one thing that would greatly help students' understanding is to turn each module into a 3-person problem by having me first teach toe module and then have each group share something, a "learning secret" that helped them accomplish the module. This gives the students an opportunity to be proud of their work and to teach one another. It would be helpful to encourage the groups to ask groups that have already done that module for help, if they get stuck.

I think these things would help me more effectively use the necessary evil of modules in teaching.