This has been a very busy week indeed. Besides homework (hard to believe I have so much at my age; I wonder sometimes what I was thinking going back to school), my roommate injured his knee slipping on the snow last weekend, and has been unable to walk. His knee is slowly getting better, but it has meant more work for me playing nursemaid to him all week. I also found out on Tuesday that my daughter, who thought she had only sprained her ankle, actually broke it. She had surgery to insert a screw and some metal plates today, so I spent the better part of this afternoon worrying about her. And, it snowed again, which in my case means shoveling, since I do not own a snow blower.
These types of distractions are not helpful when I should be focusing on things like Chemistry, or Reading 440. I am also quite distracted by state and national political news this week - so much is going on, and I find that I simply cannot just ignore it, even when I know I should be studying. It is also the start of the Great Back Yard Bird Count, and as I pulled into the driveway this afternoon, I just had to stop and do my first count. I have 6 different feeders in the backyard, and there were 8 different kinds of birds about the feeders within a fifteen minute time frame.
A week like this reminds me that when I am teaching, I need to be cognizant of my students distractions as well. I can force myself to be focused for long periods of time, but that has taken years of practice to achieve. When you are`young, hormones are raging, peer pressure is unbelievably strong, and school might not always be at the top of your priorities. How do we go about focusing our students attention on what we need them to learn? Adding variety to our teaching methods is certainly one way, but addressing the individual needs of each student may be the greatest challenge that we face.
Hi Julie - When I read your posting, I thought of the modeling examples from the text. Demonstrating to students time-management skills would be a great mini-lesson (especially incorporated in with a big homework assignment). Sometimes, I find myself taking for granted that my children just know how to proofread their work or how to study alone. It is when I take a step back and passively watch one of them try to accomplish a task that I realize they do not always intuitively just 'know' what they are supposed to do. Two of my children are very similar in their learning styles while my third is very different. She definitely comes to mind as needing to see how to stay on task, prioritize and manage time. There is certainly great reasons why we should find time to stop and do a Great Back Yard Bird Count. In addition, students will also face stresses and worry over their family situations which they need to manage in addition to their course work. I'm not saying you should share personal situations with students, but I think your posting could be the basis of a modeling exercise. I hope your daughter is recovering well and that things slow down a bit for you!
ReplyDeleteShannon,
DeleteYou're right about needing to teach time-management skills. I don't recall anyone ever teaching them to me. I wonder how much more effective my time in college the first time around would have been had I known?
Julie,
ReplyDeleteI like the look of your blog and think it's really cool that you're doing the Back Yard Bird Count! As Shannon said, taking the time to do things like that is so important.
I, too, have days when I wonder whether going back to school was the wisest decision given everything on my plate. I think all of us in the Act program, though, have such a love of learning and our content areas and feel compelled to pass that on to young people. Something that I struggle with is the worry that I won't be able to overcome the kind of apathy that I have seen in classroom observations and ignite the spark of interest in students. I am hopeful that this course is going to give me some guidance in developing strategies to reach out to and engage disinterested or distracted student.
Hang in there!
Lara
Lara,
DeleteI know what you mean about worrying about passing along that spark. What happened with us along our journey may not apply to a large percentage of our students. I too want to figure out how to engage even the most disinterested among them. I spend some time curating websites that might be helpful in reaching out to some students. I also hope that we can gather help from other teachers along the way.
Julie,
ReplyDeleteI like the way your background, title of your blog, and your post reference the backyard theme. I think it is important to remember where students are in their journeys. Personal connections can be as valuable as the variety of teaching methods we use to reach them in our content areas.
Cheri