Blog 11

The Fourth Lesson

For the fourth lesson I continued using the text Pros and Cons: Increasing minimum wages.  Since in lesson 2 and lesson 3 we had written summaries about the 2 articles and the students were familiar with the text, I decided to work towards a persuasive writing assignment.  The text was invaluable because it made the students excited about the topic.  When in lesson 3 they read about the cons of raising minimum wage, I think that they were impressed with the arguments made in this article.  So in order to find out if the students had been swayed one way or another, I went for a persuasive piece that allowed them to express themselves. 

When Jason and I met Monday before class, Jason helped me to construct a stellar visual organizer through redoing my evidence collection handout.  He created a box at the top which allowed for entering the main claim.  This was followed by 3 more boxes that were asking for evidence and explanation.  Jason’s reconstructed handout made a huge difference.  It really provided a tool that broke down the writing so that it was almost automatic once the information for the handout had been collected.

While I was giving the lesson, Jason did something different than he had done before.  He jumped in at appropriate times guiding me about things that I was not getting.  What I understood very well after giving the lesson is that the concept of claim, evidence and explanation had to be explained many, many times.  Jason recommended that I start with an I do, you do, we do approach.  I went to the board and entered in an example of a main claim which was followed by my example of evidence and explanation.  We then broke the class down in groups so that they could fill out this handout together.  I was surprised about how challenging this was for them.  But as I thought about it, I have just taken a writing class in the fall semester with Mark McBeth.  I remember being similarly confused while writing my first academic paper in his class.  Jason and I both went around to the different groups helping to clarify the claim, evidence and explanations we were asking from them.  I then asked them to post their work on chart paper.  We continued to go over these concepts while reading each other’s work.  Jason pointed out to me while they were posting their work on chart paper that in many cases there was a hazy line between evidence and explanation.  I tried to hone in on this confusion while we were discussing each other charts.

To finish off the lesson, I asked the students to keep this handout as we would be using it next week to complete the lesson with the persuasive writing.  I had them observe that the handout was a map for how they were going to write the persuasive piece next week.

Although I am teaching a fifth lesson next week, Jason brought me deep into the teaching process.  I was really able to understand how a lesson needed to be scaffolded and how by observing how I and the students were doing during the lesson, I was able to understand when I could move on to the next step.  This observation process is hard for a neophyte educator to put into their teaching because you have to veer your attention away from what you as a teacher have planned.  You have to jump from your plan and really try to see what is going on with the students.  What I loved about teaching this lesson is that Jason forced me to do this.

In our class discussions about what had been posted on the chart paper it became clear that many of them had been swayed by the cons argument.  I cannot wait to see next week’s persuasive writing pieces.

My Second Teaching Experience

My Second Teaching Experience

Thankfully Wynne provided me with the text last week that I used for this week’s lesson.  The text was obtained from the site Newslea.com which allows one to adapt the text level to the student being taught.  The article that Wynne selected is PRO/CON:  Should workers in fast food restaurants make more money?  I decided to split the lesson into 2, one week I would do the pros and the next week I am going to do the cons.  I provided 2 handouts, one that allowed the student to gather evidence for the next handout which was a summary of what they read.  I also used Barbara Gleason’s suggestion of creating a timed lesson plan.  The lesson was timed as follows:  5 minutes explanation of task, 10 minutes reading and marking up the text, 15 minutes establishing the evidence, 15 minutes for each group to pick a piece of evidence and post it on the board for their group and discuss, and 15 minutes to write the summary. 

The text, although it used easy words, was rather shallow on the evidence.  The evidence consisted mostly of author claims that were largely unsupported.  I think that this was a difficult text, because as a writer, you had to latch onto the flimsiest statements to use as a basis for a summary.  I think that this was a fantastic challenge to the class, because it allowed for confidence building.  Even with the flimsiest statements, the class succeeded in finding the evidence.  I was impressed.

I realized the flimsiness of the text while I was teaching.  The whole time I was putting it together it looked great in terms of it being an appropriate level of text for the class.  Being able to find materials to teach with is the hard part of lesson planning.   I realize that teaching is similar to writing in that as you are engaged in the process, unpredictable learning occurs.

I collected the essays and I have read through them.  Jason coached me to read through them, write one good thing that I observe and then to make a list of these observations to that I could use this as a basis for a class discussion before we move onto the Cons. 

When I was being told about what is required from me to complete this class, the 4 lesson plans equated in my head to 4 essays.  Nothing could have been further form the truth.  Lesson plans may not look complex, but they are very complex in terms of implementation.  The idea of the lesson plan is to put together a strategy to teach something.  The effectiveness of the lesson has to be based on the student understanding what you initially set out to teach them and this perhaps should be measured after you have tried to teach the point in several ways.

I have spent so many years observing teaching, and yet I am such a beginner teacher.  I am thankful to Wynne and Jason for their excellent coaching.  I feel that I took a leap in the 2^nd lesson.

Why Do We Not Know Who Our Heroes Are?

Why Do We Not Know Who Our Heroes Are?

I interviewed Dana yesterday before class to find out what a student had to do to be lucky enough to be accepted into the LaGuardia Community College GED Bridge to Business and Health Program.  She explained that when they receive a call from a potential student, they steer applicants to an online registration from which they get about 600 applications.  They ask these students to come in for 3 days prior to entering the program, and if the student can be present for the 3 days before admittance, then they are in.  The first day the students are given a TABE, which is a reading assessment and writing exercise.  The test is constructed in such a way that the student first takes a TABE pre test, from which the instructor discerns whether they should get either one of the 3 booklets marked E, M or D (Dana thought this might stand for Easy, Medium or Difficult).  From there the results indicate whether the student is eligible for the Bridge program, which requires a 5^th grade reading level and above.  If they are below this level, then they are invited to join the BE2 (Basic Adult 2) program, which can get the student up to the level of the Bridge program.  Of the 600 applicants, about 200 students make it to the 3 day registration.  I noticed about 36 students at the beginning of the class that I participate in, of which there are about 26 students left.  Of the people that initially join the class, 63% percent receive their GED and about 65% of these students go onto college.  Although the students are admitted tuition free, Wynne states that the cost per student is probably around $3000.

Our culture seems to think that it is ok to worship glitterati, or people that have come to national and international attention that do not merit, or barely merit, the accolades bestowed on them.  And yet the designers, implementers and users of the LaGuardia Bridge program go unnoticed outside of the academic community.  It is programs like these that make America awesome and they are world demographic shifters, giving people reasons to come to the United States.  The Bridge program allows unlimited chances for an adult to receive an education, and this kind of opportunity is internationally rare.  It was the adult schooling opportunities that my French mother took advantage of when she first got here 54 years ago.  She earned her PhD. in neuropsychology and I watched her go to classes throughout my teen years.  I know what a LaGuardia Bridge student has to go through to earn their academic successes, and the students that take advantage of an incredible product offering are incredible themselves for knowing what they need to do and making it happen.  It is the designers, the implementers and the students of this and other like programs that are our real national and international heroes.