Compare and Contrast

I went and visited Braden Boss at Springville High School and it was beneficial because he had a lot of good ideas of what to teach and how to animate the students to do well.

As a tech teacher he really jumped head long into the technology aspect. There was the idea of having text voting poles during the announcements, he uses a class blog to control assignments and keep the students informed, he has a Facebook account for the class to do formative and summative assessments, when he sends his journalism students out they text in when they need help or have a question.

Another was a film festival that is held at the end of the year of all the students work. I did that once in an Animation class in High School and we were pumped and working over time to get our projects done. I actually think that is the first time I have ever pulled an all nighter to do school work. But the pint is that is was something to get the students excited. Even the ideas of inviting an expert or someone from a college to be present at the festival or Premiere to me would excite the students to really do their very best work and really put in the time that is required. I know they use this here at the university. The animation department just held their premiere of their latest animation on Tuesday of this week and they had someone from ILM come and talk about the field and give some pointers in what they were doing.

We have gone over this concept in class a little as well of when you give an assignment if there is no follow up on that assignment then why would the students even do it.

From visiting Mr. Moss's class at Wasatch last time and then now seeing Braden Boss it has really been an eye opener in how important classroom management is to the effectiveness and professionalism of the students. Both classes were having a different day than usual whether by technical difficulties or planned happenstance. The difference was in how they handled the situation given to them. Braden is more of a treat them as what they are. He treats his students like high school students, like teenagers and he does it in a teenagerish way. His students treat him more like a buddy than a teacher. When the schedule changed he let the students govern themselves as teenagers as to what they were going to do that day in class rather than giving them direction.

Mr. Moss treats his class like professionals and expects them to act like it. He has them on deadlines and requires professional dress and demeanor while presenting. When things shut down in a much more unexpected way for his class he picked it up and ran with it. He had them start working on ideas for the future and taught them a concept that wasn't meant for their class but had some application after tying it in through a discussion afterwords.

I think what Geoff said about the new teachers feeling young is true. They feel young compared to the other teachers and faculty because they probably are however no matter how young you are you are older than a high school student and are therefore older.

I had one of my college professors who had a problem with this because he looked younger and taught with a lot of energy and acted younger because of it. He was having problems with his students giving him no respect and denying his authority to even teach. It was a little extreme but I noticed how he was really affected by it. He became more structured but still kept the energy. He demanded more respect while still keeping a good relationship with the students. It is possible and necessary to do for the students to understand your roll as a L/T and their rolls as well.

Teaching and Learning

This week has been a real eye opener. It has been great to get to look back and watch the first two teaching clips and just see myself teach. What I learned from that plus the feed back from the class these past two classes has been really beneficial in that it has given me more to look at as well as to look for in myself and in my teachers.

I really like the idea of having a scribe or having someone run the computer for you as you teach. The front of the class just sucks the teacher away from the learning and gives the students free reign over everything when your back is turned or your head down. However if you can have a student doing the writing or running of the computer than you can be out with the students not just keeping an eye on them but getting to know who they are as learners (if they are taking notes or not, see what they are doing helping you know if you need to mix styles up a bit), it gives you the ability to formatively test their comprehension of the material with out giving a pop quiz and to do so on an individual student basis.

Another really good comment that was made was about the fear of silence. I have to agree with Carly when she said, when a teacher asks a question and doesn't give the students enough time to think about it and give an answer before they answer it just turns the students off and they will no longer even think about the questions you ask. Its like assigning homework and telling them that the material will not be graded or tested on. Not a good idea. I love thinking time and I really liked the idea of singling out a group of students (in an area of the room or individually) to specifically wait on or as Geoff said the awkwardness monitor will always chime in with a comment and if the students are just going to wait for him or her to answer that is just as bad as answering it yourself.

Another comment made was on how to keep the students engaged in learning. A suggestion for this was made that you can give them an activity and then tease the lesson out of it rather than give them a lesson on activity. One thing I have always wanted to do that relates is teach about the revolutionary or civil wars and rather than tell the students about the battles or just have them read about them from a text book we would re-enact them. It would take a lot of preparation on the teachers and especially the students part to get it to work correctly if at all but that would be a blast. When I was in sixth grade we re-enacted the continental congress and followed all the procedure to becoming a nation. I remember more about that than anything else I was taught that year. That is my kind of learning.

I am excited to keep going and learning more through watching the others teach as well as seeing the video of how I did this time.

Home Sweet Home

It was really great to get to return to my high school this week and observe the teachers in some of the classes that I took while I was there. It gave me a whole new perspective on my teachers and a better understanding of why they teach the way they teach. We started in TV broadcasting and with it being a new school (by far better than the one they put me in) made it a whole new experience. The teachers goal is to make the classroom as much a real world experience as he could and the architect allowing him to give suggestions on the design of his classroom really helped with that. The way the class is run is at the beginning of the year he teaches the students how to use the equipment and how to fulfill the different rolls required to run a news broadcast. Once he finishes he turns the class over the the students and tells them to go to work. There is a count down clock to remind the students they have a time limit and then they are cycled through the different positions as the semester goes by. At the beginning of every class he gives some words of motivation and at the end after the broadcast he goes over what went wrong and has them work out how to fix it before the next one. It is a really cool thing in that it teaches the students to solve problems and work together to obtain a goal however I feel it would be better for the teacher to be involved sort of floating around the classroom as everyone is preparing to give advice or assistance as needed rather than working on his own at his desk or coming and going from the classroom.

We also had the opportunity to visit with one of the newest faculty who this year took the spot as Digital Media teacher. This is his first year ever teaching. He received his education from Florida in 3D animation and worked in that for a while and then came here and got his teaching degree from Weber and found a job opening at the High School. The teacher he replaced used to teach Digital Media 1 and 2, 3D graphics and animation as well as a network administration class but they have cut his schedule down to a few classes of beginner level Digital Media and a general computing class. Geoff you might understand that. Its keyboarding and a how to class for the basic Microsoft programs. He says he is going to try and do everything he can to get the old class schedule back but only time will tell.

All in all it was a really great experience. It was really good to get to talk to the new faculty as well as one of the student teachers from our program who is there. They really opened up what it is like and just made the whole thing more real.

Wood working vs. Multimedia

This week I visited two very different classrooms, and both interestingly enough are part of my major and areas that I am really intersted in. First I started the day with a ninth grade woodshop. Their teacher started the class with one of Harry Wong's "bellwork" assignments. Here it was called question of the day. "What has a mouth, doesn't chew, and runs?" He would have the students come in and write the answer quietly in their planner (I believe in support of the school policy to always have it for every class). He would go arround at the beginning of class and check off the students who got the answer right. If they didn't have their planner they couldn't get points for answering the question. There was a quick review of previous assigments and then they headed into the shop (ladies first of course). Today they worked on boomarangs and turning pens. The student set right to work. His way to teach was to teach a piece at a time and then teach the next step when someone reached that point. The shop is just a fun environment for learning because it is where you do more hands on, tangible creating which is something that I love.
After the first hour I headed over to the classroom across the hall for the multimedia side of things. Again it was a ninth grade class and the class was started with a "bellwork" problem. These were more of a puzzle to be solved rather than a riddle but none the less a great way to get the students thought processes going at the wee hours of the morning. We helped with some basic drafting and then video editing. I don't know why but I just really enjoy working with video and seeing the creative possibilities that the students can come up with.
Jr. High is really a cool time to each technology because depending on the situation you may be teaching it all. I am really excited to go to the high schools and get a better feel for what it is like for a teacher there.