Yesterday, the site supervisor was not at Wordsmiths. She had another commitment this entire week, so she’d emailed me and several other interns beforehand to let us know. In the email, Mariah had said that we should use the time-out discipline structure as needed, and had told us to call her if anything went awry.  Since I knew she’d given keys to other people, I assumed she had just included me on this list so that I’d be prepared for the situation.

When I arrived on Wednesday afternoon, there were 2 other interns there. They told me that they had been there on Monday and Tuesday as well. I suggested that we go outside first, since it was nice out; I remember thinking that, when I was there 2 weeks ago, it might have been night to get some of the kids’ energy out before making them sit down and do work. Both interns disagreed with me—they said that the kids had “gotten better” in the past weeks, and they wanted to stick to this routine.

In this situation, I felt that I was more like a “volunteer” than an “intern”—I definitely did not feel that I had the authority to make decisions that would affect the schedule. I wanted to, but deferred to the interns’ decision. However, I think that these other two girls were also unsure of their authority; they didn’t want to deviate from the normal programming, even if it could be a positive experiment. 

OERs offer student writers an opportunity to learn from each other in ways that a traditional classroom setting doesn’t always allow. These resources include tutorials, interactive exercises, and examples of peer-reviewed work, and digitized reference guides designed to help students become more effective - and more comfortable - as writers.

Resources covered:
A Writer’s Reference
Perdue University’s Online Writing Lab
Writing Spaces
Classroom Salon

A few years ago, I signed up to get email updates from Sophia.org, a site that compiles online tutorials and resources for both students and teachers. Today's email: Do you know your learning style? Find out using SOPHIA's learning preference assessment. Take our two-minute adventure and you'll be on your way to making the most of your learning potential.

So of course, I took it. While I think my learning style is slightly more nuanced than their response, it was fun to reflect on the kind of teaching that I respond to.. 

(College)

Today only 1 student shows up. He was absent last week and is eager for a private lesson to help him catch up. We review and learn to identify scales. Due to lack of time, the other students in the class will not learn this; it's not essential to identify harmonic and melodic minor scales but it's nice. One student who was absent has missed three weeks in a row, she told me in an email she has been off-campus on weekends due to a combination of family emergencies and other commitments. She says she is practicing on her own so next week we'll see. I emailed the choral director to let him know, but he didn't seem upset. I think it was a mistake to schedule Sunday afternoon class, although it sounded like a good idea at the time.

(Fourth Grade)

...I lead a somewhat complex activity in which the students broke into groups of four and “composed” a rhythm of 8 measures in 4/4 time then performed it. Some groups really took it a great level by adding movements to their performances. Overall, there was a huge range in how long it took groups to write. I tried to hurry some groups along, which didn't really work. I didn't have a back-up for when students finished writing. There were a few times I struggled to get their attention. Ms. Presley urged me to be more “alpha” and to be sure to get them quiet rather than trying to talk over them. This also came up during the “performances”; some were not very good listeners.

Field Notes 4/17- Ms. R 11th grade American History, Mr. T 10th grade English

Today in my field placement I noticed the different teaching styles of Ms. R and Mr. T. They are very similar in they way they plan their lessons, because they are based around Tech Prep’s core values (inquiry, research, collaboration, presentation, reflection). The assignments are often very open-ended and push students to think critically and be creative (I could do a whole post about the actual projects themselves). However, it seems my two teachers have approached this type of project-based curriculum in different ways.

4/12/13