Week 2 Parker, Palmer and Marzano

Reflections:

Parker and Palmer – Reading this article brought me right back to many of my gen. ed. college classes. Lecturing for hours, no discussion, 2 minutes left after class for the 50 questions we had in class. Then those stupid flash cards… I have made so many flash cards, and while they helped me pass my classes, I think many of the teachers “failed” me (not literally) by making me completely uninterested to take any class in their field again. Had the classes been engaging, it would have been something for me to consider, but I guess it’s a good thing, I wouldn’t want to do anything except art!!

One thing that struck chord with me is how, on page 39, the article talks about the students finding security in the passive way of teaching. That never occurred to me, but now thinking back, it is so true. It is the way we (or at least the way I) learned. I knew how to “get through” these classes; it felt normal. Not until I saw other teachers in action did I know that other ways of teaching even existed.

Objectivism, bringing in your own experiences. The story about Abba Felix was very interesting. I have had a couple teachers who have been a lot like Abba. They encourage play, thought, individuality, and they embrace the silence and value its thought provoking tendencies. I have made my best work with these teachers and I try to mirror them in my own class with my students. However, I am nowhere near their caliber. I get so passionate about my students’ pieces when they are passionate because they have so many ideas that can be made into wonderful pieces of art. The thing that gets into the way of their ideas coming to life (and this happens to me as well) is themselves. Their insecurity is so high, they are afraid of failure, they are afraid to show too much too of themselves.  In high school, I believe that is the biggest thing is the insecurity they feel that holds them back.

Marzano, Chapter 3 – To Say I was a bit overwhelmed while reading Marzano is a bit of an understatement. “a teacher need a rubric for each scale for each element. Scales for the forty-one elements are provided…” (p. 37) This seemed a bit daunting when I started reading. After I read the chapter and I was contemplating over the types of responses I employ in my classroom I was a little bit surprised that I generally only use two types of questioning and responses in my classroom. A lot of my time when students are working on projects is spent discussing what they are doing. I don’t necessarily go into a conversation looking for a particular answer, I am just gauging their understanding. Elaborative interrogation is something that I use a lot, I ask questions like “why did you choose that design?” or “How does that connect to our content?” Many of my students have gotten used to me coming around and can usually carry on a conversation about their work, but it took some time.  I also use many of the retrieval questions in my intro classes because many of them are learning the vocabulary for the first time. I ask them to use the vocabulary when they are talking to me which causes them to have to think back to the games we played for them to learn it in the first place.  I use many of the questions in the “Multiple types of questions” section. Maybe I should try to bring some new practices into my classroom.

As far as rating myself went, I found that I was scoring myself with mostly 3’s. Because I am a new teacher, I think that I do know these strategies, but I have not had enough practice with them. I feel, after reading this that, I am cheating some my students out of truly understanding the content that I am trying to teach and I feel that I am not encouraging them to think deep enough with what I teach in the classroom. Some of my students pick up on things so quickly, and some get left behind. Especially in one particular intro class where I have 5 out of 25 of my students in the special education program.  Most of them do not have the ability to do a lot of the units as they were designed but they love art so we let them do portions of the work but have to alter it greatly, I feel like I am not teaching them anything. I think that after reading over these chapters, I will be able to better reflect on how I teaching these kids and hopefully improve their experiences.

That got a little off topic, but the main similarity I noticed between the 12 characteristics and these ‘rubrics’ was the focus on the students. It is all about the students. They are what we are there for. Engaging the students, making relationship with students, communication with students, are all parts of being a 21^st century educator. We all know these things, how come it is so hard to put it into practice sometimes?