Walking the Walk

So I'm pretty much a native Washington DCer now (and I can make up terms like that because I am so in the hood...haha). I have seen a robbery, a cop pull a gun on a high school student, rode the metro at 3am, been to a dance club where a shady man named Kamiry got me and my friends in (My code name on the list was Annajelina) and every day upon my arrival home I am greeted by street performers near the entrance of the subway (my favorite is this quartet group in the picture on the right, they sung the Lion Sleeps Tonight the other day! It was amazing, they are seriously talented- and yes I gave them a dollar). In addition I am learning the DC versions of hand games (You know like Miss Mary Mat etc that all the ladies did when we were in Elementary school), my favorite one is the Jail Bird Rock ("Mommas in the kitchen cookin rice, daddy's outside shooting dice, brothers in jail ringin a bell and sistas outside sellin fruit coctails! Rockin Robin...). On that field trip we went to (that I mentioned in my previous post) some of my kids parents complimented on me on my ability to "jam" with the kids. Yup, I'm pretty much a rock star out here. Oh and don't worry about me taking all these pictures, its totally normal and I don't stand out at all as a tourist when I do it...anyways... (Side note, Can I just say that I really, seriously LOVE IT OUT HERE!)

In much bigger news (I know the mind reels to think that there could be more after the above statements) we have a T.V. in our apartment now!! Yes, before this moment we had no working T.V. and were unable to watch movies anywhere other than our laptops, but now that has changed. For those of you who know me, I love watching movies. So I pretty much freaked out and documented the entire T.V. placement into our apartment (partly because in order to get it from our friends apartment into our apartment we placed it on a Costco shopping cart that we just happened to have- its ok to take the carts here, they pick them up in the parking lot downstairs once a week- and the image was hilarious, and partly because I was very excited to have a T.V. again). You can see the two lovely gentleman who transferred the T.V. into our apartment for us on the left. They were kind enough to pose for me:) Needless to say I've probably watched at least one movie or show on it a day since we got it. (We don't have cable, but my roomie Lene has a bunch of shows on DVD- including Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Awesome.)

In other news the ward out here is GREAT! We went camping up in Maryland awhile ago for a ward camp out and it was a blast. Roasted marshmallows, an impromptu dance with someones I-Pod, several games including baseball (which I am not at all good at haha- although in this picture I did hit the ball), ultimate frisbee (where I ran around in circles almost the whole time- looking awesome while I did it of course) and soccer which I actually wasn't half bad at. We even had this series of competitions. Our team was Team 13, so naturally we gave ourselves the name Black Cats and Broken Mirrors! We ended the competition undefeated (it ended after two rounds because we got rained on but still, undefeated. :) haha).

Last night we went to the ward Halloween party. As you can see we have Joyce going as her gorgeous self, Lene the Zombie and my wonderful Megan going as Sue Sylvester from Glee. Shalyn who you'll see in the picture below with me, went as a spider web. And we can all totally, walk the walk. It was awesome, we carved a pumpkin (no faces for us, we carved the word Swag into our pumpkin- because hullo it had swag). It was Joyce's first time ever carving a pumpkin, she did very well...the A in swag is a little weird but other than that it was pretty sweet. Another person there carved two pumpkins, one was the Death Star and the other was that one planet that gets destroyed by the Death Star in Star Wars. Don't worry, I took a picture of it. It was awesome. There was also an impromptu dance (started by me, my lovely roommate Shalyn, and a fantastic girl by the name of...Kim? Dang I suck at names.), and a costume competition that Lene my roommate totally won for her wicked awesome Zombie costume. I was goth, as you can see it totally fits me. I used a piece of an earring to make a fake lip ring for the evening, but after several weird looks and questions about whether it was real or not I took it out for the sake of my delicate reputation haha. It was a night to remember for sure:) (There was also this all things pumpkin treat competition, my roomie Lene the zombie- zombie name Zoe- made pumpkin brownies! Freakin delicious. Pumpkin rocks.)

Star Chart AHOY!

So ladies and gents, the results are in the star chart is a...(drum roll please) HIT! My kids love it and they are behaving the best I've ever seen them. The first week my students were Stepford students, I mean the straightest backs you've ever seen in line, hands behind their backs, just beautiful. Excellent reports from their specials teachers (like when they go to art, library, music, P.E. etc), and not only do they love it but the parents love it as well. Whereas before, although their child was extremely intelligent and well-behaved, they never heard anything back about how their child was doing in class unless it was during parent teacher conferences. Now they hear about it every day. I love it.

It's not quite perfect yet, there are still some days where students who earn a star student award don't receive it because of the fact that I'm not teaching all day yet and Mrs. Dorsey doesn't generally award check marks to students when they behave. I am determined to make sure this doesn't happen again though (I had a student in tears on Thursday because of it, and an extremely upset parent). I really feel like the whole atmosphere in the classroom has changed though! I'm able to do more with my kids like stations, small group activities, and rotations. As time goes on I am discovering more and more, what my teaching style is and who I am as an educator. For example, from Day 1 I have discovered that an excellent way to keep students engaged is to use things students love in the lessons. In Math I have included Sponge Bob, Mario, motorcycles, dinosaurs, rocket ships, air guitars and anything else I can think of in my lessons and my kids seem to really love math! They love the idea that I'm challenging them and trying to trick them, and showing me that they know more than I think they do.

As time goes on I am falling more and more in love with my kids and the DCPS district. I look forward to going to school and miss my kids when I don't. We took a field trip to a nearby schools farm a couple weeks ago (we used the public bus for transportation, 70 kids plus about 15 adults, plus whoever was already riding on the bus, it was a squishy ride haha) and I was taking pictures of the kids like crazy.

Oh, and it's official! I finished my TWS (teacher work sample, its like this giant 21 page paper plus lesson plans etc that I needed to finish in order to graduate), and as long as I pass (cross your fingers) I will be graduating from BYU in December with a Bachelors in Elementary Education! I have started to apply for jobs in the DCPS district and am hoping to stay if I can. Who knows what the Lord has in store for me though, it might not work out. We shall see.

The job called Teacher...

Well folks, the honey moons over. Over the last three weeks I have found myself teaching in an intercity school with Mrs. Dorsey as my mentor. She is fantastic, her organizational skills are amazing and her willingness to stick to her guns, so to speak, is inspiring. She has been teaching, overall, for 30 years and has discovered exactly what works best for her. I, however, have not been teaching for 30 years and I have no idea what works best for me.

When dealing with children I have learned that it is vital to be loving but firm. They need to see you as an authority figure and respect you if they are ever going to learn from you. I have taught for short periods of time in several other schools, some through volunteer work others through Brigham Young University. Throughout these experiences I have seen the difference that positive praise and encouragement can do. To often students feel like failures and create self-fulfilled prophecies. For example, a student might believe he/she sucks at math and than when they try to do math they don’t do well because they don’t try or they stress themselves out so much that they can’t think. However, when a teacher comes to a student with this perspective and compliments something they see in this individuals work or shares with the student that they believe in them it can make all the difference in the world. This principle still applies to the students I teach out here, however because I’ve never taught for longer than 6 weeks in one school I have never been put in a situation where sharing that positive praise and encouragement with a student must be maintained long term. This has proved to be a roadblock in my students development.

During my first week of “teaching” I mostly observed and had little to do. Consequently I chose to observe not just my teacher, but those students in her classroom that seemed to have difficulty behaving. I selected those students that I could see having real difficulty and began to watch closely for behavior that I could praise. For example, sitting correctly on the carpet, doing well on a worksheet, improvement in handwriting etc. This positive praise worked! The student that I had chosen to concentrate began to behave; once she was on track I moved to another student and continued this pattern. Giving those students that seemed to need it constant praise on what they were doing well and pointing out places where they could improve in gentle understanding tones. However, as time goes on I am teaching in front of the class more and more, and because I am a person that tends to imitate when it comes to teaching I began to imitate my teachers discipline style. This style focuses mainly on those students who’re misbehaving and giving them quick reminders to keep them on task. Because of this, my students who I had gotten to begin to behave really well started misbehaving to get my attention. That misbehavior, overtime, has begun to spread to those students who have always behaved who greatly desire my attention. In a matter of two and a half weeks my positive praise had gone out the window and, to get the attention they had previously enjoyed, many students in my classroom had begun doing out right silly things at inappropriate times so that I would speak to them. It took me awhile to understand all of this of course at first I was shocked. Why in the world would students who seemed to love me so much and had previously been perfect begin misbehaving during the lessons I taught? I was confused and frustrated because the style of teaching I had begun to adapt felt almost suffocating.

Those of you who know me, know I am a positive and happy person and the constant nagging students to do the correct thing seemed to be sucking away my soul. Something needed to change and so I began talking to my colleagues about the situation, looking for other ideas and tactics to keep my class under control. I wanted to use positive praise as a disciplining tactic and it was Joyce, my lovely roommate fellow first grade student teacher, who started me on the path to success. Halfway through this last week, when the class was beginning to get a little off task or out of control, I began to search for those students who were doing what they were supposed to and pointing it out. For example, “I love how Anisa’s sitting. Her legs are crossed, her hands are in her lap and she’s quiet waiting for directions”. By so doing, I gave those students who were doing well the attention they deserved and those students who weren’t fixed their behavior in order to receive the praise others were getting.

Now, although this tactic was excellent it wasn’t perfect. It took a couple days for the idea to catch on and for students to really begin to behave the way they should but this last Friday was GLORIOUS! I’m telling you I have stepford students, or at least I did for that one day. Than in a moment of inspiration, while taking the students for a restroom and water break, I told them we were having a competition to see who could do the best on our break: boys or girls. Ladies and gentleman I have never in my life seen a class behave better! They were all trying so hard to stand the way they should and not talk, they were absolutely silent in every hallway we walked through. One sweet little girl even got hurt in the hallway on the way back and stood quietly with one hand raised and one behind her back, waiting for me to come to her aid. Tears were streaming down her face but she didn’t make a single noise because she wanted to win this competition so bad. It was magic! (Don’t worry, I dealt with the situation and she was fine.)

The positive in my classroom doesn’t stop there either. I am instituting a STAR chart in the classroom for my students. Basically, when I see a student behaving well they get a checkmark next to their name. These check marks are not perfect and can be taken away for bad behavior. If the student has received 4 (S,T,A,R) checkmarks and kept them until the end of the day they get to take home a small star student award to show to their parents. If a student loses all their checkmarks and they are still not behaving, than we begin to go into strikes. The first strike means a timeout, the second strike means benched at recess, and the third strike is a call home. Its an idea my supervisor, Becky, gave me. I introduce it to the class tomorrow (10/3) so we’ll see how it works out.

I do not, by any means, anticipate that my students will be as well behaved tomorrow as they were on Friday. This is going to take constant work and I am still figuring out the best way to discipline my class. However, I feel like I am at least on the right track now and look forward to the challenges ahead. Wish me luck!