Learning to Learn

I met with Wynne and Jason yesterday at 5PM.  We discussed the lesson plans.  I am not able to spend 30 hours spinning my wheels accomplishing nothing and I believed that is where I was at as I received Wynne’s comments on my third lesson plan.  I believed that I was allowed to go forward and create meaningless or flawed lesson plans and that I was getting direction way too late in the game.  This caused me a great deal of anxiety, as I was planning on using the lesson plans as material that I could present in a job interview.  I believed yesterday that although I had spent the time, I did not have the goods. 

The questions that I had for both Wynne and Jason were, why don’t I have 1000’s of examples of lesson plans?  There must be droves of books about this topic and why am I working with one lesson plan sample from Jason that apparently does not reflect the type of content LaGuardia CC would like to see in a lesson plan.  Maybe this is all a person with an Education background needs as they have had multiple exposures to lesson plans.  Also, I was wondering why I never got the class curriculum as to what is planned for teaching everyday of the class.  It is difficult for me to tie into the class now or at a later date with ideas for lessons or lesson plans if I don’t know what everybody is going to be doing.  Also, I asked why I had not seen a copy of the test that the students would eventually take.  My idea there is to take the test and work into a lesson plan backwards.  This seems to me to be a very efficient way to get students to know the material that they will have to know for the test. Wynne was holding the sample test document in her hand, but she did not share it with me.  I am supposing that the document was meant to be seen by limited eyes only, but I was not told this, I assumed.  I understood from the meeting that my reaction was unexpected and perhaps surprising.  From this I took away that I had overreacted and that I should calm down.  Wynne suggested that we did not need to stick with the lesson plan schedule that we had initially agreed upon and for the next week I would concentrate on the half of a paper due.  I resolved to stay in the class on faith.

For the evening class I tried something new.  I sat in a different part of class. When I taught my lesson last week, there were the standard 2-3 participators that would raise their hand for every invitation to do so.  So I sat next to 2 of these students and I managed to get into a group with both of them.  Jordan, Stacy and Said were gracious enough to let me chime in.  I noticed that not all groups would allow me in necessarily per my other class visits.   The latter half of the class, they were working with a graphic organizer to help them learn the difference between objective and subjective writing.  They were using the Bricklayers’ Boy as their text and they were asked to write about what the father, and then what the son thought about education.  All of them went through the text and painstakingly wrote down all of the sentences that gave some indication of what the father and the son thought.  Although this was a slow process, the group was systematic and combed the text for all that applied.  Then it came to the subjective part and I noticed a real slow down in output.  For Jordan, he would put down an interpretation of the text and not be able to expand on it.  I understood this, because this is a problem that I have in writing.  It is a very tight feeling inside and you are wondering why you need to write anything more, isn’t what I wrote explanation enough.  So I shared with him that I understood how he felt because I believe that I have to overcome the same hurdle when I write.  And so I tried to help him get to the supporting explanation of his top sentence.  He would look like he understood, then he would move forward to write something and then retract without writing anything.  This went on for 10 minutes.   At one point he looked like he knew what he wanted to say and then started writing something that was off the mark.  The whole time, I was trying to prompt him to move forward in a soft way with appropriate questions about the text.  The other two, Said and Stacy, also took their time but they were better able to plod through.  The three of them used each other for the objective part and they used each other for the subjective part and Said and Stacy kept of writing, but not Jordan.  This could have meant a couple of different things.  Maybe Jordan was too kind to say to me that I was not helping him and I should just let him get it out on his own.  Or maybe he really could not get it out and the little that I offered him may have helped.  Without my prompting, he stated that it had been helpful when I left.  Again, this was either because he is kind or maybe I did help.

After having just gone through a major learning frustration myself, I was marveling at Jordan’s composure.

I was also able to look at their math workbook in which they were working on negatives and positives.  Said, really had a handle on the division and multiplication.  I was looking at his addition and subtraction and found an error.  They told me that they found the addition and subtraction harder than the multiplication and division.

Some of the students are saying hello to me when I walk in.  They seem to be easier with me after I gave my lesson.  I think they are aware that I am in the same boat they are.