Journal 2
Having many experiences working with middle school students throughout high school and into college, I have the luxury of having some sort of background for the work to come. With that said, I am still a little apprehensive as all of the work that I have done was outside of a classroom environment. This will be my first time working with students within a classroom environment. I am excited to be able to go into the classroom with other cadets accompanying me, as we can each draw from our own experiences to fill in each other’s gaps. Doing the theoretical studies of different educational models, I feel like have also helped prepare me for the upcoming visit. Even though we have yet to actually develop any curriculum from the models ourselves, they have helped me develop my mindset. By looking at lesson plans through the eyes of an instructor rather than those of a student has helped me conceptualize what we will be doing this semester. Having the experts come into class helped in the conceptualization. By having a textbook meant for teachers to build curriculum, it has allowed me to expand my thinking into what it is going to take to create a project from start to finish. Even though it may not be the direction or topic that the project we develop in our own class room goes, seeing an example of a project and learning the steps helped substantially. I may even try and incorporate some aspects of the recycling project into the project, if the city has stopped recycling it must have affected the local schools as well. This would make it closer to home for the students, rather than trying to solve a problem at a foreign school. Most importantly, I think the best thing that we have done in preparation for our visiting is the planning itself. We will not know for sure what to expect, but in those situations, planning is everything. I think by just synthesizing our expectations and inspirations for the visits it is making us better stewards of the field work program.
Sam,
I appreciate seeing you think through the building blocks of curricular design, since there is no perfect way to synthesize both learning theories, benchmarks, student needs and teacher expertise. It can be a fun minefield, for lack of a better mixed metaphor. This thinking will be material to return to as you compose some introductory remarks on teaching philosophy for your partner inquiry. Backwards design is a method that asks you to think all the way to the end first, and this way you can begin to imagine what lasting impact (whether academic, community or otherwise) your decisions might have on a student relationship in these classrooms. What you do have at your disposal is a youthful rapport and something new to bring to the classroom, and that often is the right combination for helping engage a hesitant student.
Was there anything in your pedagogical reading this past week about PB teaching, or the two teacher narratives on expeditionary learning that helped you connect with some of Ms. Caruthers or Ms. Sheffield’s presentations? Sharing a detail or two from your field journal will help you track the things that you want to prioritize, and we’ll spend time doing this together.
MAJ Hodde