ELLEN
BERG
Diary #38
FINAL ENTRY:
Reflecting on This Year and Next
At 1:00 a.m. on May 25, a man was shot and killed in front of my home in a carjacking gone awry.
On May 31, during the lunch hour, a scant week after the first incident, two teachers at my school were shot at in the drive-through of a heavily trafficked fast food restaurant in another attempted carjacking. Thankfully, they were both okay though the gunmen were firing from only a few feet away from them. Beyond the initial shock of waking to gunshots right outside my window, I thought I was okay. It was just dumb luck that the man was murdered on my street. He was fleeing from the gunmen who had tried to take his car on another street. Unfortunately he did not realize our street was not a through street, so he was blocked off as he turned around and lost his life. In general, crime does not scare me too much because most of the time I can understand the whys behind the actions. The kids on another street broke out car windows because they were bored and looking for pocket change. The farmer threatened my husband and his friends when they were kids with a gun to teach them a lesson about trespassing on his property. While I do not condone these actions and others like them, I understand them. My understandings help me avoid risky behaviors and situations.However, over the weeks following these two incidents I have been plagued with fear and mild panic attacks anytime we drive into our neighborhood after dark.
I do not understand these people who are willing to kill over a car, willing to kill someone even though they won't even be able to take the car because of the dead or wounded bodies. What makes you decide to open fire on someone, trade an attempted robbery for murder, when they try to flee? To my rational mind, it does not make any kind of sense, and that frightens me.
It seems these criminals are more interested in retaliating for someone attempting to defend their property. They are just reacting, responding like animals.
Teaching kids to think
I think these events, so late in the school year, have reawakened my initial mission as a teacher: teaching students to THINK. Although I have always wanted to be a language arts teacher, I have always believed it was my duty to teach students to be thinking, reflective individuals. Content is important, but content without understanding is worthless.
I have many, many book smart kids who lack decision-making skills, who react over the slightest comment or bump in the hallway. Who cares if their test scores are good or they can write well if they are not rational, thinking members of society?
In the crush of papers to grade, students to manage, and lessons to prepare, I am afraid a little of my initial mission was lost along the way. I spent a lot of time teaching kids to focus on reaching for mastery or the next A, but I did not do a very good job at teaching them how to get there, or why they got there.
How does she repeat the success of the past? Why did he earn the grade he earned? What does a C mean as opposed to a B? What IS mastery?
The power of personal reflection
While my assignments improved overall in design and critical thinking, I neglected to take that last step to cement the learning for my students, or rather, to have them make it concrete for themselves.
My students learned a lot of content, but I do not know if they learned much about the underlying thought processes. And that, it seems to me, is much more important in the long run.
For example, while they probably have a very clear understanding of fairy tales as a genre and Cinderella stories, I do not know if they understand how to apply the systems of classification, comparison and contrast to new situations. I got so wrapped up in the thrill of their connections that I did not even realize how important it was to direct-teach the "thinking skill" as an integrated and transferable skill in and of itself.
Reflection should be at the heart of everything we do and teach. Science, mathematics, behavior, goal setting, reading, writing...all of these bodies of knowledge can only be deepened as we push our students to be reflective and become reflective practitioners ourselves.How does this translate into everyday practice? Knowing myself, I think I need to put long-term structures for reflection into place lest I slip into hit-or-miss reflection.
My own reflective practice, through my diary-writing for MiddleWeb, is a clear demonstration of this principle. I know that each Sunday night of the school year I will be sitting down to write my entries. With the structure and expectation in mind, I look for writing opportunities during the week. What aspect of my practice or classroom demands further investigation? What trends do I notice? Although I have to narrow my choices, I often make more discoveries than I note in this forum. But it's the routine of reflection, the habit and structure, that make it all work so well for me.
Where my reflection is leading me
I have just begun to think, but a few ideas come to mind of how to infuse my classroom with opportunities for my students to reflect on both content and process:
• Bi-weekly student conferences with all students for reading and writing. The teacher and student will determine content goals.
• Portfolios with reflective pieces for all students. In the past what I have called portfolios have only been work folders. Portfolios allow students to select work that they are most proud of and to reflect on what makes each piece a "good" one.
• Weekly goal-setting with my advisory students. Students need to see how to set and work toward goals, and they need to see both success and failure modeled by the teacher.
• Class meetings with advisory students, perhaps with all students as necessary. Students too often look to me to solve class problems, and too often I do not have the clout or answers to handle them. Class meetings help students articulate the standard of behavior and develop a shared responsibility for the community.
• Student contracts for behavior on an as-needed basis. Students can track their progress toward behavior goals and reflect on what strategies are and are not working.
• More use of the follow-up question, "What makes you think that?" It not only sends the message that the thought behind the question is as important as the answer, it also pushes kids to dig deeper.
I am putting a lot on the table for next year, and I cannot honestly say I will be able to implement all the demands and expectations I am creating for myself. I know how it is when one hundred students' papers are in my briefcase and the office has passed on another piece of paperwork.
I will be better
What I can say is I will not have another year like this one. While I persisted with content, I completely gave up trying to connect with my students or to effect global behavior changes. I got out of the game too early, and in doing so, both my students and I lost out. That is something I need to fix, because I missed the joy that good working relationships with young adolescents can bring. It made it doubly hard to go to work each day.
But I'll work on me this summer as I begin to develop relationships with next year's students during the summer session. My goals for the summer? To laugh more, teach my students to recognize the creativity each one of them has, and to renew my joy in this amazing profession I have chosen.More importantly, I intend to reflect a lot more about the past year. It has much yet to teach.
Editor's note: We're pleased that Ellen has agreed to continue her diary next school year. Stick around!
Read Ellen's special summer diary
