Mediation and Syllabus Proposal.

VOTE FOR PEDRO SARAH!!

With several topics to hit in our final weeks of EN 310, I’m oddly and slightly bummed there are too few meetings left in which to tackle any majority of them. With no intended disrespect, I feel like our engines have just turned over and begun roaring to life, ready to take us on a road trip of real learning. That being said, it is what it is and that is three weeks. Three weeks to cram into the nooks and crannies, those topics which we are most passionate about, topics we long to know more (or something) about, topics to bind together our technique and approach, understanding and abilities into a solid and confident educator, who supposedly is ready for the “real world” complete with its opinionated adolescents, fiery parents and seasoned professionals. What makes us ready? Which nooks and crannies are most needing of being satisfied? What is the final glue to hold it all together. As a class, we have come up with some great ideas. Again, it’s a shame we can’t cover each of our hearts desires but there have been common threads among many of us within the classroom and they are:

1)      Discovering and discussing potential classroom challenges.

Proposed Syllabus: An entire class time  or week (two class times) should be devoted to exploring potential problems within the classroom, among colleagues, parents, students etc. We should brainstorm possible situations and then brainstorm solutions to those problems. Perhaps having seasoned professionals there to answer questions (Dr. Ellis is adequate I believe) would be helpful but ideally I would like to have a new teacher, one who has been teaching 1-3 years come in and talk about their beliefs as they began their new job as a teacher and what their expectations were, what kind of challenges they ran into, what was unexpected etc. This approach blankets other commonalities among suggestions from our class. For example, it includes the Hope/Fear chart and will inspire discussion naturally to encompass a fairly broad range of topics. We will be able to ask questions, get answers and run “what-if” scenarios etc. “pick his/her brain”.

2)      Review GLCE and Examining State, Federal Standards

Proposed Syllabus: Learn about these standards. I know so little about this I don’t even know how to structure a day or two to learn about the standards. Without knowing even where to begin, I believe this would be a great area to begin tackling. Learning these will obviously and undoubtedly help in the creating of lesson plans. A wise thing for a professional teacher to know.

3)      Doing each others activities and receiving peer review on them.

Much like teachers collaborate, it would be nice to have our class practice that as a group of future teachers. We have collaborated to a degree, though that degree has almost always resulted in individual projects that are joined together. There isn’t anything that we have all worked on as a whole to develop and collaborate. One way we could practice this would be to work through lesson plans our classmates have created. Actually doing activities included and offering feedback on how they worked, things that could be tweaked or offer insights on how they think it could be strengthened. Perhaps small groups would work best for this considering the restricted time available.

4)      Practicing writing:

There has been mention of returning to our own writing either by blog or by journal to keep with the motto “good writers write, write and write some more”. I enjoy our writing time so I’m throwing this in as a 2 cent thought to keep journal writing alive to the very end! As a slight twist however, I think we should use them not as free writing so much for the last few weeks but as a journal, a teacher reflection, a diary (call it what you want) of what struck you most in the class that day. We would use the last 10 minutes a day writing what was most significant to us, what we learned, what stood out, ideas we liked, things that worked, things we want to try in our classrooms etc. Make our final weeks synonymus with good habits of teacher reflection-by way of doing what good writers do. Write.