Observations so far…

Since I am wanting to create a log of what I have observed so far I wanted to write out a few highlights I have noticed so far that connect to classroom management.

  • Expectations are everything!! setting clear expectations of what students need or should be doing is incredibly helpful for both the teacher and the student.
  • If you set expectations for students odds are they will meet them. a teacher on our trip to a high school told me this and I thought it was very cleaver. she told me how over a number of years she noticed how well all students were able to “rise to the occasion” in terms of learning when expectations were set for them.
  • Classroom management is all about “you and me” or in other words the relationship between students and teachers. Forming a genuinely caring relationship with your students where you actually know things about them and check in with them is really important. a two-minute conversation with a kid can mean a lot and it also allows a teacher to better relate to their students.
  • Classroom management and overall respect is huge. I have seen who I thought was the best behaved and hardest working kids with one teacher turn to absolutely chaotic kids with a different teacher based on the respect and power dynamic change.

 

Reflecting on this, these are just a few points I believe that they are all very valuable. most of these observations were things that I hadn’t put too much thought into before. however, I feel like I have a better understanding of classroom expectations and the importance of respectful and caring relationships with students.

October 28, 2019 Add Comment

New topic Free Inquiry

For my free inquiry doing something extra like painting was not manageable for me. I wasn’t finding time to pursue this on top of school and learning a new instrument for music. With this in mind, and for the sake of efficiency, I have decided to explore deeper my topic for my final inquiry project based around my Wednesday visits.

What elements of classroom management are the most challenging for new teachers?

Now this question has changed nearly ten times because there was so much I wanted to explore regarding the management skills teachers need. My mentor teacher suggested narrowing my question in order to make it better, which I completely agreed with.

Using my free inquiry blog, I want to explore more about this topic to make myself more knowledgeable for when I present my project. I also want to track what I observe during my Wednesday visits. by tracking what I am noticing at on Wednesdays I will be able to cultivate all my observations together in order to make a more comprehensive understanding of classroom management and what new teachers may struggle with.

October 28, 2019 Add Comment

My Inquiry Stuggles

If you can’t already tell from my lack of inquiry posts I have been struggling with implementing inquiry into my own learning. Inquiry based learning is something I find incredibly interesting but is very different from way I have learned in the past. I feel like today was a breakthrough for me I feel like inquiry is something I can explor and not fear after seeing the Psii school and understanding a real world application of inquiry at a real school. For me, I am so used to doing what a teacher tells me to do and working in a box and not thinking for myself about what I want to learn. I also felt like I had a plan and a idea of what I wanted to do but when it came to outing my idea into action I realized it was unrealistic because of the course load I already have. After my first post I soon realized I was not able to take on a huge project so different from the rest of my courses like what I was planning on doing. I wasn’t able to get all the supplies I wanted to do one massive painting as most of my old equipment was back home. Although I was still working on finishing smaller paintings and I was doing art at home for myself I felt like it wasn’t connected enough to what I had planned for my inquiry so I didn’t want to track or post about it. I also felt like I couldn’t change it because my first post set that idea in stone which I learned today is not what this inquiry project is about. By writing about my struggles with this project I am learning what not to do going forward and gaining a better understanding of how inquiry based learning works. Becoming more knowledgeable about how to be a learner and working through inquiry I feel like I will be better able to teach lessons based around inquiry learning to my future students.

October 22, 2019 Add Comment

Midterm

In the video below I meet all the goals I had set for myself including…

 

Knowing where the different keys on a piano are (cdefgabc)

Playing the chords G, C, F

Playing the song heart and soul (both the parts)

 

Video 2019-10-21, 7 42 33 PM

October 22, 2019 Add Comment

Experience at PSII

After visiting the Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry I feel like I have grasped a better understanding of inquiry and how it works. I finally realized that it is normal to face a lot of struggles when first investigating inquiry. Shifting one’s mindset is not an easy thing to do and at PSII I began to feel more confident about being able to learn through an inquiry-based process when I started coming up with more questions.

I found a lot of the structures they used for learning to be highly interesting. For instance,  the different steps for inquiry and how it works I wouldn’t have thought could have fit in a structure. I thought inquiry was nonconstructive and free-flowing which isn’t entirely realistic because it is something that needs to start more guided and slowly become free inquiry.

inquiry flowchart

October 21, 2019 Add Comment

Music Update 3

My peers have been my best resources so far! Before class, I usually sit at the piano and I have almost always been able to ask one of my peers to show me how to play something. I have found that I am much better at learning piano when I am showed and someone is there to correct me. I was trying to learn as much as I could from youtube but I was having a better experience being taught in person. As a result, I was being shown bits and pieces of songs and practicing them later on my own.

Furthermore, my roommate has been incredibly helpful as well, he had just recently bought a piano for himself, and our apartment has been full of music. He is a very good piano player and has helped me by teaching me bits of theory and correcting my finger positioning.

October 19, 2019 Add Comment

Free Inquiry Subject

I have always been a very creative and expressive person. Like most kids, I explored art in school and had a large collection of abstract finger paintings and dented paper mache masterpieces. it wasn’t until high school that I was able to discover my love of art and realize my artistic abilities, I signed up to take an activism class thinking it would be more centered around social justice when instead we were interviewing refugees in our community and creating a massive representation of their story in the form of a painting that we then would sell having the proceeds go to a refugee student in the community. During these 4 months, I fell in love with painting. I had created something large with meaning and put my heart into every stroke. After that experience, I started painting at home, I never had the best paints or brushes but I just practiced whenever I could. I liked that I had found something I was good at and when I painted I could create anything I wanted. I was free to make dozens of mistakes or be as meticulous as I felt necessary. sometime between starting university and now my passion faded I got caught up in the papers, labs, and readings that I forgot to pursue the things I loved claiming that I just didn’t have time

Relating back to my free inquiry, I want to pursue and track my journey of re-sparking my passion for painting.

September 29, 2019 Add Comment

Twitter Class

Today we started by covering the different twitter platforms and discussed how as a teacher we can utilize twitter to get in touch with other professionals in our field. we learned about useful platforms like the tweet deck and the dashboard as ways to manage using twitter in a productive way. This way I could potentially stay connected to issues regarding BC teachers and stay connected to principles and district trusties in BC.

Image result for twitter

September 23, 2019 Add Comment

Music update 2

I never knew the piano could be such a good stress reliever! Playing is incredibly relaxing and therapeutic and it creates such a good time for me to collect my thoughts while accomplishing something productive.  Since I am learning for music class when I play I feel like I’m getting homework done when I play. So far I have been staying late after almost every music class and coming early and sitting in one of the empty classrooms that have open doors and nobody in them. Since I have been enjoying the piano so much I have often lost track of time and stayed for an hour or more. Although I don’t have a piano at home this has been working very well and I feel like I am getting enough practice time to achieve my learning goals. I have also been frequenting the silent piano at the library. The library is my favorite place to study on campus and I like to go often so now I stary by playing the silent piano for at least half an hour before I start studying to clear my mind and get myself into the right mindset to learn. I feel so much more focused now going into a long study session.

September 22, 2019 Add Comment

Music Update 1

I have never considered myself to be musical at all, and at first, I was terrified to even take a music class. However, as the semester has progressed it has become one of the classes I look forward to the most.  Being able to take my time and learn piano at my own pace has allowed me to eliminate much of the stress and anxiety for me surrounding music. I had a frustrating experience in middle school band and again in high school when I wanted to explore music but had difficulty reading music off a sheet and couldn’t keep up with the other students. I found myself getting lost, left behind and worrying more about fake playing my instrument to keep up oppose to actually learning something. Because of this, I had labeled my self as “not musically inclined” claiming that it would be impossible to learn. In spite of this, I have been having a positive experience picking up piano I am starting to hear myself play stuff that sounds good which is highly motivating as well as satisfying.

September 15, 2019 Add Comment