Teaching of Writing
Field Experience
Reflection: This was an interesting experience because Mrs. Pyles had a student teacher this semester from Appalachian State University. I had the opportunity to see the way she was taught in the English Education program at ASU and compare her style to my own. They were beginning Night by Elie Wiesel and at the beginning of class, the student teacher gave each student a handout. On this handout students had to rank each person listed on a scale from 1 to 4 (1=Not Guilty; 4=Guilty) based on their involvement in the Holocaust. Once that was completed, students had to write a defense for each ranking in one sentence. The responses were astounding because each student who spoke defended their rankings or questioned the defense of other students. This discussion lasted 40 minutes because almost every student wanted to share their sentences. While the students were writing those sentences, I noticed the student teacher was not doing anything. In that instance, I would have been writing along with the students or walking around the room to make sure students were staying on task rather than standing at the front of the room. That would have been a great opportunity for her to reflect on her other classes.
Reflection: The class I observed was AP English and they were preparing for the timed writing sections of the test. One of my goals is to teach AP English and this observation was a learning experience because I could see how another teacher teaches writing for that particular section of the AP test. I had an opportunity to talk to Mr. Putnam about his view on rubrics. During class he said he did not like rubrics and preferred to use templates. He considered rubrics to a checklist of items or a guideline that had to be followed. After he explained this, I thought it was a good point but those ideas do not have to be attached to the word “rubric.” Those ideas are attached to the teacher who uses that for assessment: follow the rules, you pass; don’t follow the rules, you don’t pass. Also while talking to Mr. Putnam I realized his ideas and opinions were very similar to the texts from class and to my personal philosophy of teaching writing.
Working with the small groups during this time was great because it gave me a chance to see what it would be like to be the teacher during writing group sessions. I want writing groups to be an important part of my future classroom. It always helps to get feedback from not only your teacher, but also from your peers. It was difficult to get the students to talk about their writing at first, but they did finally start asking questions.
Reflection: Contrary to what Heather may say, she is an excellent teacher and I had the opportunity to observe her class. She is not joking when she says her students hardly ever participate in discussion or respond to her questions. This is my greatest fear: standing in front of a class of students who do not respond to any questions and do not care if their opinions are heard. I want to facilitate discussions in the classroom because I do not want to hear myself talk all day. That would be boring; I already know what I think. I want to know what my students are thinking even if it goes against my thinking. Also, working in the Writing Center has given me the opportunity to work with students one-on-one with writing and I do not want to lose that in the classroom. If I had time, I would want to sit down with each student to discuss their writing but that sometimes cannot happen. However, Heather took just a couple of minutes to go around to each student and give feedback on the assignment she returned. Even if it is a few minutes, that is a great opportunity to talk to students about their writing process and growth.
I observed Ms. Aldridge’s 2nd period sophomores and 3rd period seniors. Unfortunately, Ms. Aldridge could not be there that day due to sickness but it was still a great experience. 2nd period continued their reading of Night by Elie Wiesel and worked on the questions for the chapters they read during class. I was supposed to do an activity with the students for the first 10 minutes of class but since she was not there, I did not want to question the substitute about doing the activity. I have included a picture of the activity below. 3rd period worked on their “I Am” and “Where I’m From” poems. I had an interesting discussion with two students in the class about poetry and I recorded the following statement of one of those students: “I like writing poetry but I don’t like writing in forms. She’s telling you what to write and I don’t like that.” I wanted to ask the student how her poem might be different if she did not have to follow the form, but the bell rang and the students left. This goes back to my ideas about individuality in my daybook entry #7; students want to express themselves and we should not limit what they do in writing.
The last two hours of my field experience come from two sessions with the same student in the Writing Center. I did not know at the time that I would include this in my field experience and all I have of field notes are my reflections after the consultations. The first hour I worked with the student, he asked me a question that shocked me: How do you know where to put a period and a comma? This particular student had run-on sentence after run-on sentence in their essay and I was trying to get him to separate the ideas but he did not understand. The week before, I worked with him and ended up basically doing it myself. This time I needed to explain the concept of a period to this student in a way he could understand and use it in future essays. I remembered what one professor said about ESL students; sometimes they have to hear it read aloud. I read each sentence aloud to the student to show him the natural stops and pauses. I would stop every time I had the natural pauses and stops to explain, but eventually he started to stop me. Over the next month I worked with the student at least five more times and saw a tremendous amount of progress with the use of periods and commas. The second hour I decided to talk about was when he came in and instead of asking for help with punctuation, he asked for help with planning and content. I thought this was a huge step for this particular student and his writing has improved over the course of the semester.