Final Blog post for Ed/psyc module 5

This week in Woolfolk we read chapters 12, 14, and 15 each chapter had an abundance of information. In this weeks blog I will touch on a topic form each chapter.

In chapter fifteen we talked about my least favorite thing assesments. As a psychology major when I learned about school psychology and how one major responsibility is to assess students and write up reports I did not think that was something I would be interested in doing day after day. Not because I did not want to work with students but because I want to be more productive in a students well being. In chapter fifteen I  learned that there are different forms of assessment p.548 Assessement is broader then testing measurement because it includes all kinds of ways to sample and observe students' skills, knowledge, and abilites (Linn & Miller, 2005). While I may not love to assess so formally I think I would apppreciate informal and observation assessment. It is just my opinion but maybe assessing is like learning styles and perhaps some testing will be adjusted to the students style and in thier best interest.

In chapter 14 we also learned about teaching approaches. This summer I will be interning at a summer camp I will have a classroom full of 1st and 2nd graders while this will not be a regular classroom we will do some basic skills combined with a fitness program. The basic skills as described in chapter fourteen p.519 is defined as clearly structured knowledge that is needed for later learning and that can be taught step by step. I will be working with underprivileged students and some ELL students and after reading the chapters throughout Woolfolk I think I am a little better prepared. Direct instruction will be a useful tool as well I think this will come into play when we are teaching fitness as well as classroom lessons. The structure will not be exactly like school but we will implememt some learning so the students do not forget everything and loose the summer months.

In chapter twelve we read about anxiety and emotions which is soemthing I have a special interst in. when i observed in Ms. Martinez's class I did see alot of anxiety but for more personal reasons due to home life. There are different types of anxeity as well as the level for each individual student. Woolfolk describes anxiety as interfering with learning and test performance at three focusing attention learning and testing p.453. I am not sure if the research described in Woolfolk is the same as it was twenty-five years ago but this information is so important, I agree with a staement on p. 452 that in the past anxiety and emotions were generally overlooked in research on learning and motivation.  I think with the acception of severe cases setting goals can really help students see an end and not feel so overwhelmed with emotion and anxiety.

I feel that this book is a great resource I will always refer back to if I decide to become a school psycholgist or work with children in general.     

classroom management teacher interview

Hello everyone, for my classroom management project I interviewed a teacher who has been teaching for the last twelve years, her name is Adriana Cervantes she teaches history/social studies at the high school level in the city of Chicago. I asked Adriana a series of questions from the list created by my classmates as well as some questions about teaching in an urban area with so much diversity which unfortunately were not caught in the interview (we realized about halfway through that my Ipad had stopped recording). We talked about how culture affects some of her students, some cultures believe it is disrespectful to look an adult in the eye when they are speaking to them. As educators we have to understand and appreciate the diversity we will see in our classrooms. we even touched on the fact that some cultures in her experience Hispanic culture parents tend not to want their daughters to go away to college, but in Adriana's this is to be worked on by the counselor or social worker she is very clear about her position as a teacher and not becoming to involved with her students personally.

     

I asked Adriana about her classroom philosophy and she said "she really wants her students to learn how to think for themselves, not just follow what the media says because it is on the computer or the television or even for them to learn how to form their own opinions even if it is not the same as their peers, family, or someone in authority. I think this is very important because our students need to know and understand how to make choices especially at am 11th and 12th grade level.

I asked her what she thought a well managed classroom looks like she said "I like my students to be engaged in a learning environment and working in groups or have an open discussion about whatever we are learning world or American history." she also mentioned how she does not like to give busy work, because she does not want her students to just memorize facts and regurgitate answers. While working individually is fine for different activities Adriana prefers to have a more engaged class. I think this represents her passion for the content she teaches.

I also asked Adriana about structure in the classroom and if she thinks if it important to strict. Her response was very helpful and I can really appreciate her saying "she thinks of strict more as structure and she stressed importance of structure in the classroom, my students need structure and they need to know I am organized"

In the interview we also talked about how she manages her classroom and how she handles discipline. Adriana said "I do not have really bad kids or students who act out too much in my class I can usually ask them to step out into the hall way and talk with them, but I always make sure I never say "you" I always say I so they do not feel like I am picking on them or that they are the victim" I think this is a great way to handle high school age students because they are in a vulnerable place and they might think she is going to yell at them, but instead she says I feel like you are being disrespectful or I feel this way or that way (depending on the situation or what the student did). The fact is working with teenagers is challenging educators need to have structure in the classroom so that the students know who is in charge in a respectful manner. 

Some of the questions about being a teacher were not all positive responses from Ms. Cervantes but she did express how she loves to teach her content area, She did say teaching is her job and she does not get attached to any of her students. I am not sure how I feel about that but I think that for me personally it would be a challenge not to become almost more like a mentor as well as an educator for my students especially if I have them for the whole school year. 

Adriana teaches most of her lessons from outside resources, which I think is a great way to really inform students, she said she does this because the text books sugar coat a lot of history and she wants he students to learn history from a broader perspective so they can form their own ideas and opinions. 

During the interview I asked Adriana about how she feels about pushing her students and does she let them know what she expects from them. She said yes in the beginning of the school year she makes it very clear what she expects from them as far as their school work and homework is concerned. there is a new procedure within CPS which allows for students to make up missing work or tests, Adriana says CPS is making it so that students will not fail. This implementation is not a good one because as Adriana says we are not teaching the students accountability or real life skills. Adriana said she always sets the standard high it does not matter what she thinks about the student because she said when we push our students they will surprise you. Adriana said I do not like when teachers do not set high standards because they are only depriving their students. I then asked what about students who have a learning disability how does she help them stay a float? Adriana said most often her students with learning disabilities try the hardest and come to her for extra help which she always provides.  

We also talked about the cultural difference in the way she teaches and speaks to her students. She said most definitely there is a difference from her urban city school than if she was teaching in an upscale school with primarily white students. Adriana mentioned that she also went to a CPS school and she can relate to most of her students she feels like she is giving back. 

Adriana is not a religious person and she does teach in a public school so faith does not have a place in her classroom. She also stated that her college education was not very helpful as far as classroom management that is all learned through trial and error. 

This interview was very informative and really helped me to see things a little more clearly as far as working with an older age group.

         

       

        

Module 4 week 4

In this weeks readings we became pretty familiar with metacognition which means knowledge about our own thinking processes (p318 chp 9), or as Woolfolk would say thinking about thinking. I like the example of "thinking about thinking" maybe thats the while mind thing and thats why I am a psychology major, because I myself am always thinking about what I am thinking about the mind is an amazing thing. Anyhow moving on to what Metacognition is or at least what it involves p. 318 declaritive knowledge which is about yourself as a learner, the factors that influence your learning and memory and the skills and strategies and resources needed to perform a task. An example of this can be how some individuals need to have soft music playing in the background in order to concentrate without the music they cannot read and understand what they are reading. next is the procedural knowledge or knowing how to use the stategies an example of this could be how we use flash cards to remember facts when we study for a test. the final kind of knowledge is self-regulatory knowledge to ensure the completion of the task knowing when and why to apply the procedures and strategies. metacognition is very useful and can be a great way to help a student understand and develop the proper way to establish learning. Another helpful resource is the KWL which is a great way to find out what a student knows about a new subject or topic as well as for students to figure out what they want to know and to determine what they have learned about that about that subject or topic.

In chapter 10 we learned about complex learning environments (p.364) which are problems and learning situations that mimic the ill-structured nature of real life. As a psychology major I think this is something I found very useful. I think we expect our children to know what to do or how to handle any situation, but this is not always the case and as a school psycholgist I hope to that I can help my students to make connections with real life situations that are inevitable, my hope would be that I can prepare them to the best of my ability to always handle life situations with grace, maybe even to pray about if that is an option. Real life situations will not come with instructions therefore complex learning environments when apped to me will be different than that of a classroom setting.

In chapter 11 of Woolfolk we learned about modeling this is when students learn by watching others (p. 400) this can be a child watching an older sibling draw a picture or even watching film personalities. Woolfolk says in order to learn by observation we must pay close attention, for example when we are learning to play the piano we must pay close attention to see what keys we need to use. next we must remember what keys we need to touch in order to make the sound we want. 

There was so much information this week in chapters nine, ten, and eleven. I found that so much of this information can be applied to me working with students even though I will not be an educator. For example I can use social persuasion with my students who might be overwhelmed as I have seen in my observation in Ms. Martinez's classroom. sometimes the students felt very overwhelmed and whould become very anxious and in some cases Ms. Martinez said even violent with other classmates. Mind you the majority if not all the students have behavior disorders. This takes me back to the complex learning environment I think many students have so many other things going on in their lives and they simply need to know how to deal with real life situations even though they are not adults. One student comes from a foster home and sometimes he is not provided with basic needs and Ms. Martinez has some basic items such as tooth brushes/tooth paste, deoderant, and even socks just incase her students need them. This is the sad reaity for these students and this is their complex learning environment.              

week three module #3

This week in Woolfolk we have been reading about classical conditioning and operant conditioning. As a psychology major I am familiar with Pavlovian but by no means an expert. There are also respondents that go along with classical conditioning (p.248) which are reactions to the condition. An example of classical conditioning is when my daughter ate cheddar cheese flavored crackers that she had eaten many times before but this time after she ate them she woke up later that night vomiting. Later that week week she was diagnosed with the stomach flu but she is convinced the cheese crackers made her sick and caused her to wake up that night feeling sick. Now when she smells the crackers she get nauseous (which is the response to the smell that she believes made her sick before p. 248).
With operant conditioning people learn something due to their environment (Woolfolk p. 250) which in some cases there can be a reinforcer one example would be if a student who is rewarded with praise when her/she raises their hand as opposed to shouting out an answer. A negative reinforcer would be when a student is caught with a cell phone in class and it is taken away from the student until the end of the day (p. 251).

In chapter thirteen we read about culturally responsive management (p. 501)this is something that if I had been not seen for myself I might have thought was incorrect or maybe even bias. In the classroom observation with Ms. Martinez I saw first hand how an educator culturally responded to her students. Ms. Martinez was not rude or disrespectful by any means but just the words she uses are not how the teachers in other school speak to their students who are majority white. She says things such as "quit playin' I don't have time for all that mess" or "quit actin' a fool we have work to do" the students respond with a chuckle and say "ok Ms. Martinez we gonna quit". In my daughters classroom we hear our teachers say things like "Ok class today we have to really take the time to get through this lesson it is very important" or "that behavior is unacceptable" the students in this class respond. Ms. Martinez says when she began teaching she had no idea what to expect and her students had no respect for her and never responded to her she says she needed to change the way she thought and reacted to certain things as well. She basically needed to talk to them in a way they knew how to respond so she could reach them. over the years this has become much better and she can maintain better relationships where the students do not feel as if she is just there to judge them as an outsider.       

MODULE #2 WEEK 2 Diversity & BD/ED

As I read through chapters 4, 5, and 6 this week I found so much useful information. As a Psychology major who will work with students I just find culture to be incredibly interesting. On p. 211 in Woolfolk writes about Poverty and school achievement, most of the students in Ms. Martinez's eight grade class are at a poverty level as well as single parent homes. some of these students are even in foster care. Sometimes Ms. Martinez will give them socks or a tooth brush with some toothpaste because these are things they do not have. This brings me to the stress level these children are under, not sure if they will be moved to another foster home or if they will have dinner because the parents have to work. This is their reality, I do not think it is justified to say they don't care about school but in many cases students who have to deal with these situations do not hold school to a high priority.

This week we also read about emotional and behavioral disorders which means "behaviors or emotions that deviate so much from the norm that they interfere with the child's own growth and development and or the lives of others--inappropriate behaviors and anxieties , and trouble with relationships" (Woolfolk, p 144). When I first heard these terms I have no idea what they meant I just thought it was a student who did not behave in class sort of like the class clown or trouble maker. I was very far off this is a serious disorder and as I have mentioned before some of Ms. Martinez's students have already been in trouble with the law for things ranging from minor offenses to violent crimes. Woolfolk states that early intervention is very important but that many students do not get appropriate help p. 144. I personally have not observed any episodes in my observation, but Ms. Martinez has many many stories to share. This is a serious disorder especially for such young people, I personally do not understand why there is not more help in American schools for our students.