Introduction to Fieldwork

Throughout my time in fieldwork, there has been an atmosphere of progressing the ways in which us, as potential future teachers, and current teachers teach the students that are growing up in an environment that demands different requires that any of us saw when we were kids. To accomplish this, we looked to Expeditionary Learning and Teaching practices, as well as some ways to augment the current curriculum requirements set by the state government to fit the needs of the workforce and colleges today. This new outlook on the ways that the teachers of future generations need to change is one that wants to help us move out of the factory-like classrooms and, finally, into the 21st Century for educational practices.

During our first few visits of the classroom with Mr. Simms, I realized that his students seemed to be actually enjoying what they were learning and were engaged in the discussion going around the classroom for nearly the entire time that we were present. This was a type of environment that I wasn’t used to and I felt happily surprised that they were having a different outcome from this one class than I had for the majority of my high school experience, which was primarily lectures with limited discussions for the entire class time. I wrote about this in my field journal upon seeing it first hand by talking about how the “use of tech” in the classroom and the “very casual environment” created by the amount of “open discussions” may have led to this happening and created the formula for success for Mr. Simms and his students.

The use of technology inside the classroom with laptops, phones, and google classroom was something that I had never seen before inside a classroom environment, and was discouraged in my high school with the typical line that we all hear of ‘you aren’t going to have a calculator or a dictionary in your pocket at all times.’ How times have changed. However, what I was seeing with the use of technology fit in perfectly with an article that I reviewed for my blog, where I stated, “laptops in the classroom do not decrease the average score by a margin large enough to deem them as being bad to the learning environment. This is also shown in the same article with the statement, ‘Instructor controls are important, as we want to eliminate any differences from instructors who are better or worse at delivering the material. Class-hour controls account for whether students perform differently at different hours of the day, such as before or after lunch. Semester controls ensure that differences are not driven by slight variations in the course between the two semesters.’” This move to technology also fit perfectly into what I have been saying the entire class that we need to move to technology driven skills to fit into the needs of the modern society.

Outside of our visits, we were also able to listen to some presentation on up and coming educational practices, such as a presentation from Mrs. Sheffield on Project Based Learning. During this, we learned that the system focused on the success of the student through creative projects rather than lectures and normal teaching arrangements to create a more fun and engaging environment for learning. My primary thought, as I stated in my field journal, was “How does this teach the student of failure to prepare them for life after mandatory education?” To this, Sheffield showed the different ways that it created failure from simple failure in the creation of the project to the act of laziness on the student’s part relating to lower grades, but not as harshly as the current system tries to do.

I personally feel that my time in this class has been well spent. I have not ever thought of being a teacher, and to be completely honest I still have no want to be one. The amount of responsibility that these men and women have to take on to prepare the future generations of working men and women is immense and I feel that with the techniques that are learned from in this class and, from what we saw in our visits to Mr. Simms’ class, are already in effect and working very well for both the students and the teachers.

 

Classroom Portrait

Inside – During our time in visiting the classroom through the first part of the semester we saw multiple things that were different from our high school experiences. For myself, it was a high school of about the same size as the one I went to and graduated from, but the teachers were a lot more open and understanding about many of the things that were going on in their classrooms. One of such things was the usage of laptops during every class that we attended. In my time in high school, technology was considered nearly a sin to use during class time, even for educational purposes, and was seen that way until nearly the end of my Senior year. With the use of this and the near-continuous open discussion that was presented through our visits, it felt very different to the environment and reactions I was expecting in the time leading up to the visits. It was refreshing to see a school using technology to educate with technology as one of the primary factors with the ability for the students to google search facts and access lessons through the google classroom that they had set up for their section. This ultimately showed to me many promising things, especially with us going into the last we were in the classroom before going into fully online courses across the nation.

Outside – Virginia’s public schools are financed through a combination of state, local and federal funds (VDOE website). This allows for many opportunities for the students in Rockbridge county including the students in Mr. Simms Psychology class. The vision of the Virginia Department of Education is “to create an excellent system of public education that prepares every Virginia student for success”. In the past 5 years, Rockbridge County High School has graduated over 91% of its students. This corresponds with the observations made in Mr. Simms class. The high level of education presented to the students definitely reflects the goal of the State and VDOE. According to the VDOE website, Rockbridge County High School is highly accredited. This makes sense as our observation from our sit-in reflects that the students in Mr. Simms class and indeed the high school in general is an atmosphere that is highly geared towards affording the  students the highest level of education through dedication to principles of interactive learning and individual student development. Education is important to the state of Virginia and this is reflected in the VDOE and their mission to provide students the best possible learning environment. Mason and I had the opportunity to observe this for ourselves during several visits to the Rockbridge County High School in Lexington, VA.

 

Model of Excellence Card

Unit Proposal

 

Topic

The topic that we will be covering is the usage of Bibliotherapy (Literature Therapy) and how it is used to help deal with the struggles of PTSD.

Guiding Questions

• How effective is Bibliotherapy in the modern therapy?
• Has Bibliotherapy been seen as effective in the realm of PTSD treatment?

Learning Goals

Inside of the lesson, we will touch on the following learning areas:

• English
• Health
• Psychology

Inside of the lesson, we will touch on the following EL Principles:

• The Responsibility for Learning
• Collaboration and Competition
• Service and Compassion

Students will understand…

• How Bibliotherapy works
• How effective Bibliotherapy has been in the recreational realm
• How effective Bibliotherapy has been in the military realm for PTSD treatment
• The future of Bibliotherapy

Students will practice and be able to do…

• Visual Presentations of a format of their choice
• Research will scholarly sources
• Work in cohesive groups

Project

Students will have a culminating project at the end of the three-week time frame for the lesson. The project will consist of a well-researched and group created audio-visual presentation in a format of the students’ choice (i.e. PowerPoint, video, podcast, etc.). The project will focus on PTSD and Bibliotherapy, but can take the shape of any idea inside of the areas of Bibliotherapy and PTSD mitigation.

Assessment

Student assessment will be based on the following:

• How well the students participated in the groups
• The amount of research put into the assignment
• The final product of an audio-visual presentation

 

Activity Teach-In

 

Final Journal

Day, MR

 

I never wanted to be a teacher.

 

With this class, it confirmed that feeling that I do not want to be a teacher due to some of the responsibilities that these men and women hold for shaping the future generation into well-rounded members of society. However, it also confirmed that there is, in fact, a future for the progression of teaching coming for those that feel that the current educational practices are still behind the curve of societal needs for workers. From my visits to the classroom and seeing some of the practices already implemented that I would have loved to had in my time in high school, such as the usage of technology, an open-floor like class, and things being nearly 100% paperless during our visits through the use of Google Classroom, it seemed like these progressions are fitting in perfectly in the schools. The students looked happy and were having as much fun as the teacher was when they were roleplaying their therapy sessions or participating in open discussions.

 

However, there were still a few things that I didn’t agree with throughout the course. One of these such things was the calling back to the ideas of George Dewey for the foundations of what we were going to be doing at the beginning of the semester. Yes, he is the father of public education, but shouldn’t we have been focusing on ideas from someone that setting the framework for the induction of modern educational practices, such as EL and PBL? Looking at these things, it allowed for me to go out and find where there needed to be change in our current educational system (in which my state still is with Common Core) and see where it fits into everything that students need to learn to be successful.

Final Journal – Ronald Mulach

Graduation

At the beginning of this class I had mixed feelings about what the course would entail as far as the content and it sounded like we would have to make a lesson plan and teach it to students who were younger than us. I remember wishing I didn’t have to take this class in order to fulfill my degree requirements as an elective so I could graduate. In the beginning, I wasn’t very excited about being “stuck” in fieldwork 411W especially since I though it would be writing intensive. However, I decided to have a good attitude and put the work in since as the saying goes you get out of something what you put into it. Looking back now, I am glad that I wasn’t able to drop the class, because of the opportunities that this class afforded me to learn more about the structure and concepts behind the large beast that is the education process.

I think I learned a lot about the way teachers approach presenting lessons to students and how students can achieve more out of the classroom experience. As a child on through the years of high school I never really enjoyed going to school. Even today as I write this, I would rather be outside. However, I understand now as I did then that education is important especially the kind you get in school because education is not only a key to open doors in life to better things but a way to understand the way our society functions.

When Mason and I visited Mr. Simms class it was refreshing to sit in their midst and remember how it felt to have college ahead of me and with that all the doubts and fears of the uncertainty of the future. Now that I am facing a different type of challenge as I move on past college, fieldwork was a good class to take as I am on my way forward. This class has helped me dissect the elements of the classroom especially the way that classrooms are evolving to fit the future expectations of our society.  As I move forward in life, I doubt I have seen the last of school though it may not be in a classroom anymore. I have seen rather effectively through this class that the building blocks of my education are accessible and shareable in ways that are not bound by a classroom or institution.