Thursday, November 10, 2011

Interviewing "Doc"

The principle at Beacon Academy is Dr. Debra Lukens, but everyone there refers to her as "Doc." I went into her office a few weeks ago and asked if I could talk with her more about the school sometime, and she set aside an hour one afternoon to meet with me.


I had prepared a lot of questions to ask her but also asked some follow-up questions just based on the flow of our discussion. I wanted to know more about how the school operated. Even though I have gone for well over 20 hours, I still have a lot of questions about how everything actually works as far as the students completing all of their requirements, especially those who are scheduled to graduate this year. I have noticed how unmotivated a lot of the students seem, and I often wonder how much they actually achieve by the end of the year.



Doc gave me a very good impression of the educational vigor of the school. She explained that while many "at risk" students--which include those who are very smart or extremely anxious, involved with the courts, or have some sort of family problems--learn how to "slip through the cracks" in regular public schools, they don't have that option at Beacon. They can't cheat their way through the school because they all have different assignments. She admitted that most students struggle quite a bit during their first semester at Beacon as they are introduced a new way of learning and have to "unlearn" the traditional school ways. But by the second semester, most students actually complete more than enough to fulfill their requirements for that year. She also told me that all of last year's graduates got into their first choice of college with full ride scholarships.



After hearing Mrs. Walsh and Doc talk about the philosophy and implementation of that philosophy within the school, I am still trying to evaluate how their claims match up with what I have seen. Obviously, my experience there has been very limited, which also limits my scope of what really happens in the classroom. I am really supportive of the fact that the teachers seem to invest so much of their lives in the students, both in and out of school, and have a very close relationship with each of them. I also think it is very good that they are seeking to help students be interested in what they are learning, especially since so many of them come into the school completely "turned off" of learning because of their previous experiences.



However, some of the things I am still concerned about include the lack of discipline I see the students demonstrating in the classroom. I think it is good to give them some independence and choice in their learning, but it seems like most students need a bit more structure than what they are being offered at Beacon. As a homeschooler, I had a similar experience of being allowed to work on whatever subjects I wanted to throughout the day, but I had to fulfill certain requirements each day before I was allowed to be finished for the day. The approach at Beacon is that students are simply required to complete a certain amount of work by the end of each semester rather than during each day, which does not seem to work very well for motivating them to work hard during the course of the day.



Even though I might not agree with all of the things being implemented at Beacon, I really have enjoyed my time there. I have loved spending one-on-one time with the students, and I really hope to practice that in my classroom in the future. I realize that it will be a lot harder if I have five or six classes of thirty students each, but I hope I can find ways to get to know the students as individuals. Some ways to do that might be scheduling conferences with each students as they work on more major assignments, making attempts to talk with them before and after classes, and allowing them to write about things that are personal and meaningful to them. I think the most important thing I can do as a teacher is to love and value each of my students, to look for ways to meet their unique needs, and to see that they are all in my classroom for a specific and good reason, even if that reason is not readily apparent.







Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Grammar Instruction

This week at Beacon, I was able to help a student named Zach with a writing project. Zach is a senior and is required to write an autobiography for one of his graduation requirements. At Mrs. Walsh's suggestion, he agreed to let me read what he had written so far. "She can help you with your grammar!" Mrs. Walsh insisted.

I found out, a little to my surprise, that Zach was actually a very good writer. After reading through the paper once, I tried to ask him questions about the sentences that needed some further attention. His most consistent grammar issue was combining two independent clauses with a comma and no coordinating conjunction. When I asked him if he knew what a coordinating conjunction was, he said no. So I took him to the Purdue Online Writing Lab and showed him how to search for specific grammar or writing questions. Zach was pretty convinced that his way of using commas was just his way of using his "voice" in his papers. I tried to explain that there were times when conventional grammar rules could be broken for "effect" within writing - like the intentional use of fragments - but that combining two sentences with a comma was not one of them. Or, at least, that was what I was going to maintain.

I found that most of the time, I did not need to specifcally point out Zach's mistakes. I simply had to point to a sentence and ask him what he thought it needed. He explained to me that while he didn't know all of the names for grammatical components within sentences, he knew how to use them. And that was very obvious to me, as well. Zach had told me earlier that he read quite a bit and that when he found a book he really liked, he would almost always read it in only one or two sittings. I asked him if he thought that was one way he learned how to write well, and he seemed to agree that was a possibility.

This made me re-think my ideas about teaching grammar. I thought back to my years of homeschooling, when my mom would have me and my siblings write a one-page essay every day. While I did not know all of the rules of grammar, I was applying their conventions within my writing. It seems like that is the same thing that was happening with Zach. Though he didn't know phrases like "independent clauses" and "coordinating conjunctions," he knew how to recognize them within his writing.

We talked about teaching grammar in class a few weeks ago, and I was introduced then to an idea about teaching grammar through unconventional means - like having students copy the form of a certain type of sentence, rather than labeling the grammatical components that made up the sentence. I think after working one-on-one with Zach, I can see that kind of method being a lot more effective than simply teaching grammar rules.

Mrs. Walsh told me after class how helpful it was to have me sit down and work one-on-one with Zach. I assured her that I really enjoyed it and told her some of my thoughts about teaching grammar through writing rather than through memorization of a set of rules. She explained some of ideas about teaching in a way that makes the information relevant to the students. When a student is being taught about grammar based on something he or she has written, they are much more likely to embrace and remember the instruction.

I really enjoy the opportunities to work with students one-on-one at Beacon. There are certainly some things about the charter school setting that I still question, but I can also see many advantages to giving individual instruction rather than class-wide instruction. And it is also a lot of fun to get to know the students as I work with them individually!