Time to Nap.

I was so close to losing it with a student today. I felt the anger rise up to my face and I got all red and hot. Why? While his classmates were giving speeches, he had his phone out. He saw me see him with his phone. He put his phone away and denied he even has a phone when I told him I needed to bag and tag it. What scared me was how angry I became simply because a student was being defiant. This was the first time I had to deal with a directly defiant student and I just felt so flustered. My goal was not to win. My goal in dealing with defiant students in the future is not to fight until I win. It seemed pointless, but I still felt like I needed to make a point.

To top it off, though, this is a student who has been doing very little work in the classroom. It's scary to think how easy it would be to give up and let him fail with no intervention. I'm ready to take a nap though - I had a great day and this one situation just wore me out. It's nice to know this is a dilemma veteran teachers face too. I think they just know how to not let it follow them home better.

My First Week

So how'd it go with my first week full-time? Great! I'm still adjusting to this whole waking up and not working evenings thing. I still don't know what to do when my alarm goes off early in the morning. The teaching part has been going well though. I still have a bit of the "WHAT AM I DOING?" air to my teaching, but it's slowly beginning to disappear with every time I get up in front of the classroom. I am beginning to become more attune to the environment of the classroom: task management, behavior management, individual instruction time with each student, differentiating instruction to tailor to students' needs. It's a process, but I am ecstatic that I am beginning to get a sense of myself as a teacher.

BEGINNING is the key though. I still have a long way to go, but I can't consider myself great after one week.

Vocabulary

I am always a bit torn when it comes to direct vocabulary instruction. For the most part, it seems so pointless and dull. Here: look up this word and use it in a sentence. Now it's committed to your memory forever. These words they have to look up seem to be esoteric and antiquated. Is it necessary to learn words that have been basically purged from our spoken and modern written language? So many paradoxes rise for me when I think about it - especially since I am a word-lover who gets a thrill over finding a word I have not even heard before.

I have to say, though, that the question about vocabulary instruction is answered when a student has difficulty answering a question in an assignment due to not knowing a word. That's it. Debate over. Yes, it's needed. The way to do it, though, is a good question. I can't tell if the worksheets currently used in class have made as much progress as possible as several students were unable to recall vocabulary words from previous worksheets.

I think the way to do it is to invite discovery from students, instead of assigning discovery to them. This is much easier for me to say than to actually make into a real lesson; however, I think most people have a natural curiosity to know unknown words (unless too many are presented in a row or the reading is too complicated, but that is just considered frustration). I think there's a way to tap into this, but it will just be something I will consider for the moment.

Digital Literacy and Assessment

Something that I think about sometimes is the way to assess use of digital literacy. We stress its use and hey, I like it a lot too, but how do you assess something that can go in so many ways? I suppose this is always the issue with open-ended assessment, but if a student makes a really, really terrible video with awful audio quality and abysmal video quality, should we give them the same grade as another group with a cleaner presentation if they hit all the requirements? I suppose it really depends upon what you are grading. If it's a film production course, grade on product quality. If it's not, don't. However, students should be aware that if their product is so incomprehensible, that I can't pick out what I'm supposed to be grading, that I can't give them the same grade, even if they really did include the requirements.

Another issue that comes up is in-class research for projects. Since there is such a digital divide in schools, most teachers will need to have in-class computer time for students to do research and work on products. How do you bolster efficiency there? When I went to Park Center yesterday, the students were researching poets, but they were doing it somewhat aimlessly. Some were on Facebook. Some were on YouTube, but I don't believe blocking these websites will help. I don't know if every second of every classroom needs to be spent working, but wasted class time hurts my teacher soul a bit.

LINK: http://www.chompchomp.com - I've been struggling with how to make grammar instruction slightly interesting, because there's not much you can do other than direct instruction and practices. Here's at least a humorous approach to grammar exercises.