Learning Environments

“Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.”

— William Butler Yates

INTASC 3: Learning Environments

For these reflections to make any kind of sense you will need a timeline:

September 1st, 2017- October 30th, 2017: I was in my field experience at Christiansburg High School.

9/20/2017- Reflection #1

October 31st, 2017- June 1st, 2018: I am in my own classroom at Patrick Henry High School.

11/4/2017- Reflection #2

This is literally written five days into me being in my position.

12/8/2017- Reflection #3

At this point in time I was exhausted and drained by my first few months of teaching. I was constantly working on school as a teacher or graduate student. I turned a corner at some point after the graduate school semester ended and was able to start writing my own lessons.

The names of the student collaborators were blacked out for their privacy, but they worked together to gather their data.

RM’s conclusion shows that he doesn’t really understand why or how he has to use data to explain his reasoning. I want to incorporate more conclusion writing into our labs.

Handwashing Lab

This activity was directly guided by me as a teacher, and featured students working together to complete the experiment in small groups. The students smiled a lot and exclaimed at the fake germs we used. There was a definite pressure on the students who were acting too cool to relax, and eventually they would. The students worked industriously to riddle out the mystery of which kind of washing removed the most germs. I picked this evidence because it suspended the students' social roles because they were wrapped up in the experiment, as I improve I hope to get to that point more often.

Link to the activity sheet.

Reflections on Evidence

I have learned that in order for students to be motivated, they must be comfortable in their role of a learner. They must trust the system that you put into place in your classroom. There should be predictability and routine. There should be fair, equitable rules and reasonable consequences. You must make them understand that you will take care of them on bad days, and celebrate them on good days.

You have to limit distractions and present an oddity or a beauty or a grossness to intrigue them into engaging. Some seem to be under the ill-informed assumption that their work is "for" me as their teacher, and I think that saps motivation, because external pressure is often ineffective. Their negative self-talk is also concerning, because it shows a high level of pressure to perform rather than to learn. Both of these things combine to sap their motivation. I think it can be remedied with consistency and modeling from the beginning of the school year.

In the future, I want to limit negative self-talk and build academic confidence and safety by on-boarding my students to my classroom extensively at the beginning of the school year. I need to wrap more differentiation into my learning environment in a concrete way due to my proclivity for very diverse schools in very diverse communities. I want to apply more student responses to their learning environment via polling and incorporate their feedback as I can.