Claire Whitby's E-Portfolio
Just need a computer and some inspiration...
Content Area Piece
Ever since my sophomore year at Stratford High School, I’ve wanted to teach. However, I started off thinking that my calling was to teach the little kids, i.e. elementary school. After many years of babysitting children under the age of ten, field experiences where I was a mentor at an elementary school, and having an awesome brother who’s thirteen, I have decided to go a different and crazy route: middle school. When I tell people this, the most common response I get is: “Wow! Good luck with that. It takes a special person to handle those guys.” I just say, “Yeah, I know. It’ll be tough, but I love that age.” I’m a rising junior and was just accepted last semester into the Reich College of Education at Appalachian. I’m excited to get started in all the adventures of more field experiences and the inevitable student teaching my final semester. Although the light of my excitement almost gets snuffed out whenever I hear someone say, “Those who can’t do, teach.” Using examples of exemplary schools, trends in the field, teaching strategies, and an interview with a former middle school teacher, I will prove that it takes a strong, organized, and smart person to teach.
Trends Within the Field
In the recent past and still today, the ratio of female to male teachers in middle schools shows that females are dominant in numbers. There just aren’t a lot of males going out for the job. I wanted to find some research that had been done about this subject to get some answers about why men don’t go into the field at the rate that women do. I found an article that was written by Sheelagh Drudy called “Gender differences in entrance patterns and awards in initial teacher education”. It was published in 2006 in the Irish Educational Studies Journal. Drudy (2006) found that the media had come to the conclusion that because boys create this “assumed feminism” about teaching, they just don’t think about choosing to become a teacher later in their academic career (p. 257). This makes sense because if a male realizes that something is mostly feminine they won’t touch it with a ten-foot pole. And let’s face it, we all notice at one point or another that the majority of our teachers for the school year are female. Boys tend to think, “Teaching is for women, I need to have a manly job when I grow up; like an engineer or a lawyer.” With the hope of creating inspirations and aspirations as a future teacher, I will try my best to change young boys’ opinions about the occupation of teaching. I can point out great men who have been teachers and show them that it’s not just for women. Young boys live off that male role model in their lives. Sometimes, because of the lack of a male figure in the home, that role model can be their male teacher at school. The article stated that in 1995, the year when the number of male applicants to the college of education was greatest, the “percentage of male first preferences was markedly lower than that for total male applicants” (Drudy, 2006, p. 264). This makes it clear that the majority of males applying for the college of education are males that couldn’t get into any other field of study. We want education to be males’ first choice more often than their second or third choice. They of course have to want to teach but we need to get the excitement level up when it comes to the teaching profession.
Tracy Smith, the former middle school teacher I talk about later in the paper, mentioned some prevalent trends within the field I had not previously thought about: “Suicide has been linked in young adolescents to bullying and homophobia” (Smith). An article called “Perceptions of Bullying in a Dated Over-Crowded School Setting” defines bullying as “Unprovoked conscious and aggressive action by one or more students intended to achieve physical or psychological dominance over others through intimidation or threat” (Thomas, Bolen, Hester, Hyde, 2010, p. 76). Thomas et al. goes on to explain, “ Victims often have self-esteem issues, suffer from depression and anxiety, and find it difficult to maintain healthy psychological relationships (Meyer-Adams & Conner, 2008)” (2010, p. 77). To think kids, as early as middle school, are dealing with these issues is mind blowing. This adds to the pressures of being a teacher. Not only do they have to worry about students’ academic well-being throughout the school year but their psychological well-being as well. These are heavy topics but middle school teachers must be prepared to handle them.
A multitude of teaching techniques.
It takes more than most think or expect to be a successful teacher. The Occupational Outlook Handbook: 2010-2011 Edition noted that teaching any age “requires a variety of skills and aptitudes, including a talent for working with children; organizational, administrative, and recordkeeping abilities; research and communication skills; the power to influence, motivate, and train others; patience; and creativity” (U.S. Department of Labor, 2010, p. 256). For example, last year at Appalachian, I was required to take an educational psychology class. We learned different ways to handle situations in the classroom, methods to teach students with, such as mnemonics to help with memorization, as well as ways to efficiently run the classroom. We studied teaching methods such as these from a widely used teacher’s guidebook called Teach Like a Champion. It was written by Doug Lemov in 2010 with the purpose of helping teachers by providing them with “49 techniques that put students on the path to college.” The book and DVD combination gives teachers useful classroom techniques they can implement into their lesson plans as well as their daily routines. For example, one method used to create a strong classroom culture is called “SLANT”. The word SLANT is an acronym for “Sit up, listen, ask and answer questions, nod your head, and track the speaker” (Lemov, 2009, p. 159). The teacher simply says the word SLANT and students automatically know what is expected of them.
Another technique which sets a high academic expectation is called “Stretch It”. This method claims, “the sequence of learning does not end with a right answer; reward right answers with follow-up questions that extend knowledge and test for reliability” (Lemov, 2009, p. 41). This is an industrious way to get students to be at the level the teacher needs them to be. A teacher doesn’t simply affirm the student in their correct answer, but prompts the student with a follow-up question, which allows them to think critically and further explore the topic.
Teaching tools like these are necessary to have as a teacher. However, I will need to combine a multitude of these methods to create an exceptional champion teacher within myself. I’m beyond excited to use everything this book has to offer when I have my own classroom. It will be kept on my shelf for when I need a little boost in my confidence. Being a teacher is hard work and first-year teachers often feel like a deer in the headlights – not knowing where to start when it comes to discipline, lesson plans and creating a structured classroom and this book makes it a little easier.
Necessity for an internationalized curriculum.
The world has changed; all around us, we notice changes towards a more global economy. That same change has not come to the “heart of middle grades education in the past decades” (Jackson, 2009, p. 6). In an academic article called, “New Middle Schools for New Futures” Anthony Jackson argued about the necessity to change the middle school curriculum to one that has a more international focus. He urged that in order to prepare young adolescents for the new international era afoot, a global focus needed to be implemented in our schools. It is known that “American life increasingly involves interaction and working with individuals from vastly different cultures, requiring new sensitivities, perspectives, and communication skills” (Jackson, 2009, p. 7). Think about all of the elements that this statement surrounds. Trying to incorporate internationally focused lessons into the curriculum is going to be difficult. It’s a change for the better but it’s a hard change that will take time, money, and willing, hard-working teachers.
One of those hard-working teachers is Tracy Smith. I asked her what texts she used as a middle school teacher and she used “literature books, trade books, journals and magazines” (Smith). Smith added that if she were still teaching she “would add graphic novels, electronic informational texts, and blogs” (Smith). This statement correlates with the argument from “New Middle Schools for New Futures” – the curriculum needs changing in order to meet the standards of the developing international world around us. We are in the technology age and it seems Ms. Smith agrees with the argument for a broadened curriculum.
Another obstacle teachers face, is gaining this international knowledge for themselves. Jackson says that teachers need the “time to plan and review their work as individuals and as members of interdisciplinary teams” (2009, p. 9). This infers that teachers must always be flexible to curriculum changes that require adjustments in their lessons at any time. It takes time to come up with lesson plans as teachers and with this “change-the-curriculum” scenario or even with the school system as it is now, teachers’ summers will consumed with planning and making adjustments to lesson plans for the upcoming year.
No one has the right to say that what teachers do is easy. Especially with a call for a change in the middle school curriculum, it’s going to get much harder and more time-consuming. And remember, as said by the Occupational Outlook Handbook, “[the] median annual wages of kindergarten, elementary, middle, and secondary school teachers ranged from $47,100 to $51,180 in May 2008; the lowest 10 percent earned $30,970 to $34,280; the top 10 percent earned $75,190 to $80,970” (2010, p. 255). As shown by these salaries, a teachers’ job is undervalued by our society. Teachers are expected to be exceptional in all they do – inside the classroom, in their interactions with parents, and keeping a smile all the while. I’d like to see the people who agree with the statement, “Those who can’t do, teach”, perform the daily duties of a teacher.
Interview with a former middle school teacher: Tracy Smith.
Middle school teachers come in all shapes and sizes and chose to do different things with their lives after they’ve left the middle school campus. Tracy Smith is my Reich College of Education academic advisor at Appalachian. I emailed her a few questions about her feelings regarding middle school education. She told me she had initially majored in English secondary education. However, when she couldn’t find a position at a high school, middle school became her fall-back. She mentioned her “expert” principal and said, “Her mentoring and my wonderful experience that year with the age group made me think of middle school as my primary rather than default decision” (Smith). This goes to show teaching middle school is usually not a teachers’ dream position. I asked her what challenges she faced as a middle school teacher and she shared how her “teacher preparation program was not particularly useful in [her] teaching, especially in teaching young adolescents” (Smith). This is often a grievance to a new teacher. They wish they knew more ways to handle the classroom and this is why I am so excited about Teach Like a Champion; it will always be a resource for me.
The most clichéd, profound question I asked Ms. Smith was, “What was your favorite part about teaching middle school?” She answered, “It was the students” (Smith). She explained how they were also the most challenging part, but “Knowing them and seeing them develop, sharing my classroom with them, going to their ballgames and church events, and even having them over to my house: they were a joy” (Smith). This quote represents how rewarding this job is going to be. The challenges of writing lesson plans, doing research on what’s up to date, grading papers, and classroom discipline will all be worth it at the end of the day.
I have always been offended when people misinterpret the hard work teachers put in for their students. Teachers, in fact, do not get enough credit. I’ve learned how much I truly do stand up for the underpaid teacher. I am confident in my choice to follow my passion of teaching middle school. However, before writing this paper, I’m not sure I knew it was a passion of mine. I need to remember this passion when I’m in my own classroom when I swear, “I’m gonna quit!” But then again, I might love every single bit of it. Bratty kids and all.
References
Drudy, Sheelagh. (2006). Gender differences in entrance patterns and awards initial teacher education. Irish Educational Studies, 25 (3), p. 259-273. DOI: 10.1080/03323310600912674
Jackson, Anthony (2009). New middle schools for new futures. Middle School Journal, 40 (5), p. 6-10.
Lemov, Doug. (2010). Teach like a champion. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons.
U.S. Department of Labor. (2010). Occupational outlook handbook: 2010-2011Edition. Indianapolis: JIST Works.
Thomas, B., Bolen, Y., Hester, J., Hyde, L. (2010) Perceptions of Bullying in a Dated Over-Crowded School Setting. Review of Higher Education & Self-Learning, 3 (7), p. 76-81.
For class, we had to find a piece that had to do with our content area in education. I had never taken a history or english course where they made me write on a specific topic from those subjects, so I pulled a piece from my sophomore english class which talks about my decision, my reasons why, and my motivation for wanting to be a teacher.