Last Day: Things to Remember

For my final day in the classroom with my 8A parallel (the tougher of the two parallels) I wanted to get their feedback in a way where they could all share. For both parallels I made awards for each student and recognized them individually for something they earned or did well during the partial such as “most improved writing.” With 8A, I decided to have them discuss openly what I could have done better, what we should have covered more during the unit, how I can better manage the classroom, etc. As always, some students sat on the floor as I was while others remained in their desks, but they all contributed to the conversation. That is how that parallel worked, once 3 or 4 contributed, they all felt compelled to add to the conversation and got ideas from what their classmates said. Instead of having each of them write down answers on paper, I got much more beneficial fedback from them just by talking to them. I don't think we could have done this if we hadn't built a rapor with one another. They trusted me not to get angry with their honesty, and I trusted them to help me with that honesty, one reason why I both loved and had trouble with this parallel.

Our class discussion lasted about 20 minutes, moving through the questions and hearing the opinion of every single student. Here are some of the most helpful things the students told me:

1. “Use individual punishment rather than just taking daily points from our grade and a way for us to see it.”

-Explaination: At the beginning of the unit I realized that I needed some sort of system for keeping the 8A class responsible for talking out of turn, disrupting class, etc. so I used the same method that my MT had used. I would take points off of their “daily grade” which was a system the school used called “attitude assessment” that would be added into their final grades at the end of the partial. While the kids were used to this, I wasn't and was unsure about what constituted points being taken off or given, so I just used a clipboard and took off points when they were talking when someone else was or disrupting class. At first it worked, but some students did not care about their grade and I really didn't have an alternate plan for them other than just sending them outside of the class. I picked this up in the fall, but one of the teachers I observed at Colegio would tell his students to go outside until they were ready for class which I liked because it put how long they were in the hall in their hands. I started using the same line and that worked with two of my problem students. Still, there were some small disruptions that should have been prevented and my kids told me that one of their previous teachers would punish them with a minute of wall sits (physical punishment, is this legal?) and would write their name on the board in a box. There were three boxes on the board and whomever was the final person to get their name in the box would get an email home to his or her parent. Basically, the class had to try together to keep from being punished. They also had good boxes that worked the same way. I don't think I will try wall sits because that seems like it would take a lot of time out of the class, but I do like the box idea.

2. “Spend more time on the history.”

-I do wish I could have done this because my 8^th graders had never learned about the Civil Rights Movement in depth before. We may have had more time to cover it if I'd cut out certain activities, but at the time I though two days was enough time to cover the most important aspects of the movement. The student were generally interested in the racial hate crimes and the people that fought it, but I moved on to begin the play and touched on these things sporadically nonetheless. I think now that they would have gotten more out of the play and understood it more if we would have covered this time in history more thoroughly. If I do this play again in the states, I hope to work with the students' history class to connecting history and literature more thoroughly.