- Where you are teaching, grade level and subject matter
- How long you have been teaching
- A bit about your students
- What you need to know more about right now
- What else you would like to learn about in this class.
Thank you!
Monday, January 16, 2017
Module One Introductions
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Hello, classmates! My name is Carrie Stark and I am a newbie to the teaching world. I was a medical social worker for the past 15 years and the winds of change called my name.
ReplyDeleteI am teaching at Buckhannon Upshur Middle School in the Special Education Department. I am assigned to 6th grade students. I started teaching on December 20, 2016. That was a crazy time to start - the week before Christmas break!
My students are great! They are dynamic, enthusiastic and bright. Many of them are involved in sports teams and other extra-curricular activities. Many, on the other hand, come from poor socioeconomic conditions at home and struggle with chronic homelessness, drug addiction and hunger. They have a wide range of learning needs and disabilities.
I would like to learn more about the basics of good classroom management - the real foundation of how to manage a controlled, productive classroom.
In addition, I would like to learn where to find online resources about classroom management. I am sure there are excellent resources out there - I'm just not sure where to look. It is also difficult to differentiate between "real" information versus "fake."
A bit about me...I am married to a great guy. We have two wonderful kids, ages 12 and 6. We are a typical busy family going crazy between basketball, swim team, work schedules and commitments, 4H and other after school activities. We live on a small farm and are getting ready to become beekeepers! We hope to start this spring with two hives. Wish us luck!
Hello Carrie good luck with your bee colony! My cousin raises bees and finds it both a rewarding and delicious hobby. My area has a very low socioeconomic status so I too understand the dynamic of dealing with the stress a tumultuous home life can have on educational success. Best of luck looking forward to working with you and learning together.
DeleteCarrie,
DeleteI am teaching at B-UHS so I would be thrilled to meet sometime! This is also my first year teaching, though I did sub long term for about 1.5 years before this, and I started 2 weeks before winter break as well so I absolutely know how dramatic and terrifying that is. I also have a lot of students with drug problems themselves and at home, wearing the same outfit every single day, and listening to administrators explain their history breaks my heart regularly.
I also aspire to own beehives someday! :)
Brittney Barlett
I would love to meet up sometime! You can private message me on Facebook. It's Carrie Shannonn Stark. Thank you!
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteGood Morning, I am Julie Martin special education teacher at Anna Jarvis Elementary School. I have second grade behavior students that are on a kindergarten level. My students are full pull out due to the extreme behaviors they exhibit. One of my students is ADHD and ODD the other has a cognitive delay and is a flight risk. The student that is a flight risk wears a tracker on his wrist and is no longer allowed to go outside for recess due to running from the playground. The behaviors exhibited include but are not limited to screaming, tantrums, throwing objects, kicking, punching, spitting, biting, cussing, verbal threats, and running around the room. If code purple is called at the school, it is usually because f my student is running.
ReplyDeleteI began substituting in the fall of 2013 and worked as the long-term Math 1 sub for most of the 2014-2015 school year at Philip Barbour High School. The majority of my time, other than my long-term assignment, has been at the elementary schools. I was also the afterschool/summer math teacher for Project Isaac for two years. I resigned from that position when I got on full time this year.
The most difficult aspect of my classroom is teaching/exposing the second-grade standards to the students. The students in my room have a limited attention span of about 5-15 minutes and turn off quickly if they find the information presented difficult. I would also like to learn more about effective consequences and reward programs.
As for me I am a recently divorced single mom of two rambunctious boys. They are 5 and 8 attending preschool and third grade. We enjoy outdoor activities like biking, hiking, and swimming. My boys like to play basketball and T-ball while I like to garden. I am also house hunting hoping to find my forever home. I am a career changer as I have my MBA but wanted to have the same schedule as my children and find working with students to be the most rewarding job.
I am looking forward to learning new strategies and gaining the teaching certificate that I have been wanting for so long. Good luck in all your educational endeavors!
Hi, Julie. It definitely sounds like you have your hands full! I also have an advisory class of students with very short attention spans. I think some good strategies in classroom management will serve us well!
DeleteThank you for the well wishes regarding our bees! I wish you the same for your house hunt!
Hello everyone!
ReplyDeleteI am Sharon Zeck Hesse. I teach Special Education (English 9, Civics and learning skills) at Grafton High School. I also co-teach Geometry, English 12 and another Civics class.
ReplyDeleteI have been teaching since Dec. 22nd at Grafton High School; however, I taught English 6, English 7 and pullouts for reading and math at Stemmer's Run Middle School in Baltimore, Maryland.
My students have a variety of learning disabilities, behavior problems, and family issues. One has just enrolled following an extensive time in "lock up" as he put it. So far most of my students tend to strive hard to complete their work; however, I have some that don't want to do the work. For those that don't want to do the work, it seems they are just afraid to fail and have no confidence in themselves.
I would like to know more about how to co-teach successfully with a variety of expectations regarding teaching roles. I would also like to learn more about ways to approach classroom management when there are different expectations among other teachers. I would also like to know more about general requirements of content areas.
I have a masters in social work and have worked with a variety of clients. I think this experience will help me to understand where many of my children are coming from and what additional support they may need.
I have been a single mom since my daughter, Lauren, was 7 years old. She is now grown and is seeking a degree in education too. She is married to a US Airman.
Hi, Sharon. I find it so interesting that two of us are social workers! I know for me, social work became very scary. I knew it was time for a career change when I had a patient's husband physically threaten not only myself but my children as well.
DeleteI would also be interested in some good co-teaching strategies as I collaborate with many general education teachers throughout the day.
Best wishes to you in your classroom. It sounds like you certainly have some challenging students. I truly believe that our social work background will serve us well!
Hello, all!
ReplyDeleteMy name is Brittney Barlett and I was recently accepted as a permanent freshman English teacher at Buckhannon-Upshur High School. I am 26, have a Bachelor's in English from The Ohio State University, and moved to West Virginia just over 3 years ago. I was a long-term high school English teacher at Lewis County High School for about a year and a half and am thrilled to have secured a permanent position at B-UHS. I love my new school!
My students are all freshmen English students. This is my first time teaching freshmen and they are surprisingly enjoyable to interact with! We have focused on using complete sentences at all times, which is a serious struggle, and have moved to higher-order thinking by studying Romeo & Juliet. Our current focus is long-term projects, citing textual evidence, and inferring character intent. Due to block scheduling, I am able to give students ~15 minutes of silent sustained reading every single day, followed by entires into a journal. This has resulted in a few students asking to borrow a book who have admitted to never reading one before in their lives.
On a personality-based level, their is a lot of learned helplessness and students struggle with the state of affairs at home. I try to be as accessible as possible and deal with issues as they arrive and make myself available as a safe space for those who feel harassed elsewhere. Luckily my administration is wonderful and proactive and the resources available to me are tremendous when compared to my experience at my previous school. I am incredibly grateful that administrators seem to have a true passion for assisting the students.
As for myself, I have never been in an education class. I struggle with understanding proper methods of assessment, what to look for when grading assignments, and how to structure my grading to ensure students' performance is reflected appropriately. Classroom management is also something I hope to learn this year, though I have seen a serious improvement in my management skills this year as compared to my long-term substitute experience. I have already passed my PRAXIS exams, so I do not need any help studying for those.
I am excited to be taking this course with you all! I hope we learn a lot together :)
Brittney Barlett
Trying one Classroom Management Idea...
ReplyDeleteNow that we're coming to the end of Module One, and after viewing the offered classroom management video clips, the one classroom management idea that really caught my attention was the "SLANT" technique.
SLANT is a classroom management technique that stands for :
Sit Up
Lean Forward (some instruct their students to have fingers crossed on the desk)
Ask and Answer Questions
Nod Your Head
Track the speaker with your eyes
I like this technique because it teaches the students to be an active listener in class. I have noticed in my classes, many of the kids lack vital, basic listening skills, therefore missing assignments, instructions, and details. SLANT would help to keep everyone focused and engaged throughout the lesson.
As final thought about using the SLANT technique, I would be hopeful that this technique could serve my students well in other classes as well as becoming a useful life skill. After all, "When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know. But if you listen, you may learn something new." - the Dali Lama
Carrie,
DeleteI also really liked this technique! It seemed an effective strategy to be able to monitor whether students are engaging. It also prevents them from working ahead when you need to lead instruction before an assignment, keeps their hands off of their phones, and ensures they are watching and following your instruction.
Hello, all!
ReplyDeleteI am considering implementing the proximity technique in order to manage certain surface behaviors in my classroom.
In my freshman English classes I randomize seating daily by having students draw sticks with a desk number on it. This allows me to do group work in rows and means different students get to interact whenever I assign group work. However, one of my classes tends to have a few students who display disruptive surface behaviors that have persisted throughout the school year.
Due to the randomized seating, these students are in different locations each time they enter my room. This means sometimes they end up next to their friends, which exacerbates the surface issues. I often end up moving them, but I don't like to do this as I feel it undermines my goals in randomizing the seating and takes away student empowerment in their "chosen" seat that day - even though the seating is a random draw, it still gives students ownership in having a "choice". If I engage in proximity techniques and hover in the areas where I see surface behaviors arising, I feel this will allow me more options in managing disruption without resorting to moving students into different seats.
Hope you all are having a great school year!
Brittney Barlett