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.

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!

Evaluating What is Considered "Appropriate"

Mrs. Walsh was once again absent from school during one of my observations, and her husband was filling in for her. Her husband is a county sheriff, and it was very interesting to see how he interacted with the students and the way in which they responded to him. With the boys, he was a bit "rough," but it was easy to see that they respected him. I could see that there was an overall relationship of trust between him and the students, and I think that was due to the fact that they realized that he would not abuse his position of authority - both as their substitute teacher and as a sheriff. It made me think about what kind of persona I naturally give off to students and what kinds of things I may have to work at in order to encourage their respect and cooperation.

I went around the room to see what the students were working on and to offer any help I could give. Most of them were working on math, again. They almost always understood what they were supposed to do; the problem was getting them to actually work diligently at it. One girl said that my sitting beside her made her self-conscious, so I moved over to a table where two boys were working on a report that they were writing about heavy metal music.

Yes. Heavy metal music. That was their topic. I had seen them working on it in previous weeks but had never actually seen any of the content of their report. They kept saying that they wanted to wait until they were finished with it to show it to me, but when I pointed out that I might not still be around by the time they were completely finished, they agreed to let me see what they had so far. They had written a brief summary of the history of the genre of metal music, and they had also listed sub-genres and described what kind of content each sub-genre generally included. I was actually very impressed with how well written the report was, overall. They had included varied sentence structure, and it generally flowed well. The thing that I started to question, though, was the wisdom in allowing students to focus on a topic that may include highly inappropriate material.

The boys showed me some lyrics and album covers for the metal bands they were research, and I was honestly horrified by many of the images and the content of the songs. When I asked the boys why they enjoyed that kind of music, they defended the music and pictures by saying that it was simply "poetry" and that was what made it "beautiful." When I asked them if they thought singing about the things included in the lyrics was appropriate, they concluded, "Whatever makes a person happy is okay." They also told me that they did not think that the lyrics affected their thinking at all. At one point, one of the students told me, "You know, you're pretty cool, but sometimes you can be such a Christian."

Well, yes, being a Christian does influence my opinion and reaction to this kind of thing, but I am also fairly certain that many teachers would discourage the idea that students should be permitted to research anything in their area of interest. The big question is, who gets to determine what is considered "classroom appropriate"? How will I determine that when I teach in my own classroom? I suppose it will be a combination of the school's policies, explicit instructions from my administrators, and my own discretion. And that's the hard one.

There has to be a line, though, between encouraging the students to take initiative in their learning and promoting explicitly violent or sexual content - things that are highly prevalent in many of the lyrics I which was shown by these boys. I believe students should be allowed to study things that are interesting and immediately applicable to their lives, but I certainly do not embrace the idea that they can simply choose a topic they find "relevant" and deem it "academic."

It's another of those hard judgement calls that it seems teachers face in many, many aspects of their teaching.

Unplanned Subbing

Last week, I got to spend the entire day at Beacon Academy. My day started at 7:30 a.m. at Christo's, a nearby resturant. The teachers meet there every Monday from 7:30-8:30 for breakfast and a staff meeting. I went with another girl from Purdue who is also doing teaching observation at Beacon. It was nice to have someone else there who was new to the experience.

When we arrived, we were directed by the waiter to the table where the staff always meets, and they all arrived shorly afterwards - all except Mrs. Walsh, my supervising teacher. She was sick that day and wouldn't be coming at all, which made me slightly more nervous about the idea of spending the whole day in the school. The principal told me that it would actually be good if I could stay, though, because I could help them. There are only four teachers there (and about 60 students), so having one teacher gone makes things slightly more complicated.

Margaret, the other Purdue student, and I asked some questions about how the school operates, which was helpful. The teachers talked about the relationship they have with their students, with one teacher explaining how she had recently taken one of her students out to dinner because his family forgot to celebrate his birthday. Things like that make me impressed with the level of care the teachers show for their students. However, it also makes me realize that a similar kind of relationship will probably not be possible for me to have with every student, if I teach in a "regular" public school, where classes are bigger and "professional boundaries" seem more defined.

When I arrived at the school, the principal asked me if I would like to do "Advisory Circle" with the students. This involved the students sitting in a circle and talking about whatever topics came to mind. I simply started by asking them how their weekend was and if anyone had done anything exciting. One girl answered, but the other students seemed less than excited to participate in any discussion. However, once I started asking them some questions about their internships, which they do on Tuesdays and Thursdays, they were more engaged. One student told me that he wanted to do "teen court" for his internship because he wanted to be a lawyer. We then had a discussion about lying and its implications on society. That led to a discussion about morals and, more specifically, about Christianity. I was amazed at how engaged the students became in the discussion. I simply kept asking them questions and provided very little of my own input or opinion on the matter. The student who talked about wanting to become a lawyer, who had previously seemed completely uninterested in having any discussion, was suddenly transformed into a very opinionated, passionate speaker. He spoke of his own experience in reading the Bible seven times and his understanding of who God is and the significance He has today. Several other students put out their opinions, as well, and though I wanted to say more about my understanding of the Bible and the gospel, I wanted to be careful not to "force" my opinion on any of them. So I asked a few more questions until one student said he was tired of talking about religion and that we were not supposed to talk about it in the classroom anyway. I told him I didn't want them to break the rules, and that was the end of the discussion and of "Advisory Circle."

The students then got out their laptops and got to work. One of the other teachers came in periodically throughout the day, but I was mostly left to handle the classroom myself. It was basically like I was a substitute teacher for them. While I enjoyed getting to know the students better and working with them one-on-one, I found that it was very difficult for them to stay on task with their individual assignments. I tried to spend one-on-one time with each student, and I found that some needed more guidance than others. I actually ended up teaching more algebra than English (which I will discuss more in my lesson presentation reflection)! It was amusing to think that I was helping students with the subject that I struggled with most in high school.

I learned a lot in this experience about how to try to motivate students to do work. When one student asked me, "When will I ever use this in life?", instead of telling him that it would help him get into college (which I always found to be a VERY unsatisfying answer from my algebra teacher!), I told him it would give him lots of patience and perserverence, which he would need a lot of in life. That got a smile out of him, but I don't think he was fully convinced.

Another thing this experience made me think a lot about is where the line is between sharing my beliefs and opinions on a matter and simply guiding the students in discussion and letting them share their own opinions. Obviously, there were things the students said that I disagreed with, but I did not feel like I have the freedom, especially in a classroom that was not "mine", to confront those things. It makes me wonder where the balance is between speaking of the things that define who I am and how I view the world and letting students decide on their own ideas about those topics. How can I present them with truth in a way that is appropriate for the classroom and according to administrative guidelines?

This also gave me a bit of a taste of what having my own classroom might be like. Of course, I realize that the charter school setting is very different from the typical public school setting. It was good, though, to have the chance to have some authority in the classroom and to be able to lead them in discussion and help them with their individual work. I hope that in the future I have opportunities to work with students one-on-one, because that is what I find most rewarding and appealing about teaching. It was good to have an experience that made me feel a tiny bit closer to being a "real" teacher because I am realizing that whether I am ready or not, student teaching is about to come...

The Joys of Grading

During my last visit to Beacon Academy, I had the pleasure of being introduced to what I am told teachers love best: grading.

Well, okay, I am actually told that this is one of the least favorite of all activities required of teachers. I am starting to see why.

The students are currently working on the concept of rational discourse - analyzing arguments that they are presented with and responding in a logical, justifiable way. They are reading a book about the aftermath of September 11, which includes articles and papers that discuss the validity and implications of our nation's response to September 11th. The students are required to read and respond to each chapter. They must post a response which includes their inital response to the arguments presented within the chapter and then post in response to at least one other student's original post. Mrs. Walsh told me that I could grade their posts and quickly told me some of the requirements she had for them, included a minimum length of 250 words, correct grammar and punctiation usage, and at least one properly cited reference to the text. She showed me an example of a rubric she had used for a Socratic Circle that the students were required to participate in, and she also showed me a diagram with "Bloom's Taxonomy" to explain the standards to which the students are held. I was told to make my own rubric for the blog posts, but Mrs. Walsh encouraged me to go ahead and start reading and grading them so that I could get a better idea of what I wanted to include in the rubric.

It proved to be much harder than I thought. First of all, I was told to delete posts which did not fulfill the requirements, after explaining to the students what they needed to change. It was very difficult to summarize and clearly explain to the students what they had done wrong and how they could improve. Most of them seemed to listen and respond well to my suggestions, but one student blantantly told me he didn't care about his grade. The other hard thing was the fact that the students range in age from 14 to 18, and yet they all seem to be held to the same standards, at least as far as this assignment was concerned. That did not seem quite right to me.

This made me think a lot about what I will do in my future teaching when it comes to grading. Will I make a rubric for every assignment, and what happens if there are loopholes in my rubric? I tried to think through the different possibilities, based on my initial readings of the blog posts, as I put my own rubric together. I had to think about what kinds of things I saw the students doing well and what things I saw as weaknesses.

Another question I have is will I hold all of my students to the same standard, even if I teach in a traditional classroom where all of the students are roughly the same age? What happens if I have students who are struggling or are non-native English speakers? In one of my teaching observations, I had a conversation with one of my teachers about it. She had several Hispanic students in her class, and she explained to me how she had to look for things in their writing other than strictly following proper grammar rules. When I teach, I want to learn how to look at the content before I look at the mistakes. It was hard to do that with these blog posts because so many of them had such glaring mistakes.

I'd like to ask Mrs. Walsh next time about her justification in having all of the students complete the same assignment and grading them according to a single standard. I'd also like to ask her how and why the students are expected to know the concepts behind correct grammar usage, since, as far as I can see, there is no formal instruction. It reminds me of my homeschooling experience in which my mother required all of my siblings and me to write at least a one-page essay every day. She would mainly check for spelling and grammar errors when she graded them, and I had a vague concept of how to write but no formal instruction on grammar rules. When I attended a Christian school in 7th and 8th grade, I felt like I was behind the other students when it came to knowing about the mechanics of sentence structure. I could write a proper sentence, but I did not necessarily know why it was considered correct.

This charter school is proving to be even more different than I thought! I look forward to future visits and hope I can have the opportunity to attend for at least one full day, to get a broader idea of how the school works.

First Charter School Encounter

I had my first visit to Beacon Academy on Monday. Though I wasn't feeling particularly nervous about the visit, I wasn't sure what to expect. The only thing I really knew was that it was a charter school, which meant that the students were integrated instead of being separated by grade, and their school included project-based learning.

I pulled up to the school, which meets in a Jewish center, and a policeman pulled up just as I was walking up to the door. The door was locked, but a woman opened it from inside and said, "Who are you?" I told her my name and that I was looking for Kimberly. "That's me," she replied, "And this is my husband." She nodded to the policeman who walked up behind me. Kimberly showed me into her classroom and left me in there while she talked to her husband in the hallway.

The students weren't currently in the classroom, and I looked around at colorful beanbag chairs, a leather couch, several swivel chairs, and laptops strewn about the room. I tried to imagine what it would be like with the students there. It reminded me a bit of homeschooling, as the setting seemed much more casual than a public school classroom.

The door opened, and a few students started to walk in, acknowledging my presence but not really saying much. One girl eagerly introduced herself as Anna, shook my hand, and asked me who I was. I explained that I was from Purdue and quickly found that none of the students had been expecting me. The first things that stood out to me about each student were the amount of leather, metal, piercings, and multi-colored hair. Again, I hadn't known at all what to expect, so I wasn't exactly surprised, but I also wasn't sure what to think.

Kimberly came back in and told the students to sit down and properly introduce themselves. There were about eight students, and Kimberly said she had five missing. They all told me their names and ages and grade levels - ranging from an 8th grader to a couple of seniors. Two of the guys introduced themselves as "Bear" and "Wolf." Kimberly told them to stop being ridiculous and give me their real names. It was so interested to watch her interact with the students. There was a familiarity in their relationship. The students weren't disrespectful, but they were certainly very comfortable with her. And she, in her jeans and t-shirt, seemed completely comfortable with them.

The students got to work, in different parts of the room, while Kimberly explained to me some of the set up of their school. I was amazed to hear about the level of responsibility that the students have. They go to school Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and they have a certain amount of school that they must accomplish each week, but they are responsible to complete it without being told every minute of the day which subject they are supposed to work on and for how long (which again reminds me of homeschooling). On Tuesdays and Thursdays, they each go to different internships, based on their areas of interest. They are required to call the places at which they wish to be placed and do a certain amount of planning and arranging their visits. Kimberly follows up with all of that, along with the mentor that each students has. They are also responsible to come up with a proposal for a semester-long project that they would like to accomplish. Kimberly told me about a past student's project in rebuilding a car and giving it away to a single mom.

Another thing that amazed me was to hear Kimberly talk about how well she knew her students. She really invests her life in them by having them over to her house, interacting with their families, and taking them along on trips she takes. A lot of the students have pretty rough home lives, and it seems like Kimberly is involved in a lot of what goes on in their lives. That was what intriguied and excited me the most about the whole charter school idea. For a teacher to have the opportunity to share her life with students in that kind of way, without the "professional boundaries" enforced in many public schools, seems amazing to me.

Of course, I really still have very little idea how a charter school works, having only experienced it for a little over two hours. But I am really looking forward to learning more about it, talking with Kimberly and the other teachers about their experiences, and perhaps looking into it for my future teaching career.

Maybe I DO want to be a teacher!

Well, here it is. The beginning of the end of my time at Purdue. It makes me feel old to say, "Where did the time go?" In some ways, it's hard to remember life before college; at other times, it seems like only yesterday I was a frightened freshman, desperately pedaling my bike around Purdue's campus, trying my hardest not to get lost. I remember my older brother telling me during my first semester, "You know how they say college goes by fast? Well, they're under-exaggerating."

He was right. It's hard to believe I am actually in my senior year. Lord willing, I will be student teaching next Spring, which means this is my last semester ever of regular classes. That is something that I truly cannot comprehend. Every semester has been pretty drastically different from the others. I have learned a lot about managing my time, doing things outside my comfort zone, and what it means to be a "real adult." It's still hard for me, though, to imagine myself as a real teacher. What does that even mean? Do I know how to teach? Will I even like it? Will the students like me? Do I have enough knowledge of the English language? Do I really have any idea what I'm getting myself into? How hard and scary is this job actually going to be?

Those are some of the questions I ask myself, fairly regularly. When I tell people that I am student teaching in just a few months, it strikes a little bit of terror into my heart. The question that keeps circling in my mind is, "Do I really even want to be a teacher?"

Yesterday, I had my first EDCI 422 class. The time slot is from 3:30-6:20, but I was fairly certain the professor wouldn't want to keep us that long on the first day. Well, I was wrong. But from the first minutes of class, the professor had us interacting, discussing, and engaging, and that is what continued for the entire class period. We discussed our ideal qualities for an English teacher, shared some experiences from our own teaching opportunities and those which we have observed, and asked many questions that we have about things like classroom management, curriculum, and how to keep students engaged. We also made a list of our strengths and our limitations in the context of teaching. For my strengths, I included enthusiasm, love for people, decent knowledge of the subject, and a desire to invest in people's lives. For my weaknesses, I listed lack of experience, lack of knowledge about the subject, becoming easily discouraged and overwhelmed, and a prideful attitude.

I came out of class excited and encouraged and enthusiastic about the idea of teaching. "Maybe I do want to be a teacher after all!" I thought to myself.

I know that it is ultimately by the grace of God and because of my character in Christ that I have a love for people and a desire to invest in people's lives. And I know that it is only by His grace that I will get through my last year of school and my first opportunity to try full-time teaching. I truly believe what Paul boldly states in Romans 8:31 - "If God is for us, who can be against us?"

And that is the only reason that I can dare to believe that I would like to be a teacher one day soon.