Terrence+ONeill

Terence O'Neill First Term, 2006: My classwork with Adrien Hollifield's Owen High School classrooms.

Day 5: SILSA class with April Dockerty at Asheville High School

Today Travis Weiland and I participated in two separate blocks of April Dockerty's SILSA classes, a interdepartmental course designed to help students place themselves in the greater world. In the first period Travis and I helped the students stay focused as they arranged all of their belongings that they carried with them in long lines down the hallway of the high school. The class, composed of around thirty students, was divided into two groups. This division helped the class motivate themselves with the competitive element. The activity also employed students' sense of indentity, because they got to see their cd's, decorated notebooks, jackets, and homework spread out with their classmates' objects. We proceeded to remove different definitions of the objects that students in other places in the world might not have( electronics, food, written material). This process was designed to show the students how many advantages we had as Americans. Then we took the class into the classroom and Ms. Dockerty and another teacher worked the whole class through math problems that reflected the propositions presented by the book "If the World Were a Village." A student asked why the singular village was using the plural verb "were,' but the teacher brushed this off (this question was clearly off subject), so I wrote him a note explaining the use of 'were' in instances of the possible. He said "the English language is weird." I agreed, but I hoped I made the point to him so that he could remember it later. In the second period we skipped the first exercise with their possesions and went directly to the book. This time, the students were able to work in groups, and I saw how some students kept others in line. This positive peer pressure was very impressive to watch, though the group that I was in charge of helping to figure out the math problems was working at a much faster pace than I could keep up with.

Robin Gallagher's Curriculum Fieldwork entries: commentary

I have just reviewed Robin Gallegher's Fieldwork entries, even though she is working towards becoming an elementary educator, whereas I hope to be a high school teacher. The first thing that I noticed discerning the work that each of us has done is that Robin focuses much more on the subject matter and focuses on the specific resources that the teacher is using. I pay more attention to the teacher's interactions with students. I know that both are useful, but I think I might look more towards what specific subjects and materials a teacher implements in teaching those subjects, especially with a mind towards using those resources myself. An example of a high school teacher using her specific history is how Adrien Hollifield used her history as a writer on Appalachian folk music as a student in college and then referenced that to get her students excited about how oral tradition can affect music and poetry, specifically ballads. As I move forward towards my second semester, I will focus much more closely on what teachers are suing, and how I could adapt those tactics myself to further match my own experiences and strengths.

Day 4: Adrien Hollifield's Honors English Class at Owen High School 10/6/06

For this class I was to teach Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est." Adrien had told me the day before that Iwas to lead a discussion on imagery. The text book had some backgorund informaiton on Wilfred Owen, but I led the class from the poem and not the background text. When I cam into class they were dsicussing the business end of the class, attendance, upcoming assingnments and tests, as I waited and panned the faces, trying to see if I recognized any faces and attempting to get a feel for the attentiveness and energy level of the students. I stepped up to the podium and began by having the students read the poem to themselves. Then the students had to tell me that somebody should read it aloud. I know from my own experience how important it is for students to hear poetry, not just to read it. For some reason, on this day, I forgot what all of the best practices were. After we finished the reading, I jumped into the discussion by giving the students a little bit of the background on Owen that I know from my own work with his poetry. As teh discussion progressed, I realized that I should have had everything that I wanted to discuss laid out in front of me, not just loosely pulled together in my head. I should have had an idea for the flow and the structure; even with great students such as these, who were willing to give the conversation their energy rather than letting it die, the teacher should have an idea as to what the questions are leading the students towards, and how it should all be wrapped up at the end. It was probably overconfidence that led me to underpreparedness. I was working on this subject earlier that week for my thesis, and even though I knew the material I did not think how that knowledge would apply to a discussion. I thought my comfort level with students and the material would combine to give the class flow and structure. I was partly wirght--the class and I enojyed the discussion, and the time allotted did take care of itself, but it did not go in the ideal direction, the students' maximum learning. For the future, I will map out the ideas that I would like the students to touch upon, maybe even letting them know those points beforehand, and the questions that will get us there.

Third Class Attended for Curriculum Assessment: Adrian Hollifield’s __Planning Period__ 10/2/06 I arranged to meet with Adrian Hollifield for her planning period and entered her classroom at the end of her second to last period. After greeting and checking in with each other, she told me that she would not be having a real planning period today, but would be going to a teacher in-service meeting where she would learn about some new technology resource. But then she also checked to see if I could tag along, and sure enough, I could. I sat next to Adrian without my own laptop, because I ha to have an ID to sign in. And watched the assorted middle aged teachers grumble about the technology. I was surprised by Adrian’s response because she maneuvers the newspaper formatting computer programs with aplomb in her Journalism class, but here she said she struggled. The presenter worked for the school district as a technology infusion specialist. Today, she was showing the five teachers present how to manipulate the new online video and picture resource, FreeStream, offered by the Discover Channel. All of Bumcombe County’s school district is now able to use this system, and it is essentially an easy to use search engine. I think this program would be useful mostly for the historical background it would allow me to be able to give on specific subjects that we would be able to address in literature.

Second Class Attended for Curriculum Fieldwork: Adrian Hollifield’s __Sophomore Academic English Class__ 9/27/06 In Adrian Hollifield’s teaching style, I find an interesting conjunction. She has a very straightforward, traditional teaching style. By this, I mean that she stands at the front of the room with all students facing her while delivering information in a direct teacher to students projection of information. She uses this system to actually exercise a familiarity and friendliness with the students, but from the front of the classroom. The problem with this, for me, is that I have a more difficult time reading student reactions, because they are not really reacting most of the time. Some of the primary difficulties with teaching this early in the morning is that students want to address many of the other things that they have been thinking about over night with their friends in the classroom; this can lead to frequent disturbances in their education. I saw Adrian deal with one of these situations in an interesting way. When students began to act up, she said “all right, take out a sheet of paper,” walked across the room to a filing cabinet and handed something else out—then continued her lecture. The class all sat up straight and paid attention. I was fairly amazed: Adrian hadn’t done anything! This anecdote just goes to show me how important it is, and far it can carry you, to set up certain expectations for your students. If they are misbehaving, they know you will respond, and you signal to them that you are about to, they will correct the behavior themselves, most of the time. Of course, this necessitates laying the foundation of responding well to the behavior in the first place. Also, changing the momentum of the class, even in the subtle way that Adrian did in this class, can do wonders for ninth graders ability to pay attention. Of my favorite classes in college, almost all of them broke the class up into smaller time blocks to give students opportunities to grasp the material from different angles and to try it out for themselves, such as how Adrian was doing with the grammar. Adrian tried using several different methods for teaching the students grammar, including having them teach it to each other, drawing pictures of it, and telling short short short stories to each other that would indicate the words’ meanings, attempting to have the students be able to picture how words were being used, to apply it to different situations in their lives, including more ‘exciting’ ones, helping them to break it out of an academic construct. I think this is very important for ninth graders: they must be able to see what you are teaching them fitting in to the larger context of their lives.

First class attended for Curriculum Fieldwork: Adrien Hollifield’s __Journalism__ 9/22/06 For my first visit to Owen this semester, I visited Adrien Hollifield’s Journalism class. The students of this class eventually fulfill all definitions of what it means to be a journalist is working towards completing the Owen High newspaper. Students brainstorm for comprehensive themes and story ideas, edit the content, format the presentation, take and find appropriate pictures and photographs, and research and write their own stories. Since students have such a wide range of responsibilities and a large degree of autonomy in pursuing those goals, Adrien spends the most time in her classroom working her way from project goal to project goal (rather than student to student) making sure that things were running along smoothly. She suggested things for students to do (call this person? Take that picture? Request permission for that story?), which the students would either completely agree with or respond to constructively. Because the students do have so much choice in how they go about these goals, they have no real reason to argue; Adrien is just helping them along (they recognize her as an expert) towards realizing //their// goals. As Mrs. Hollifield dealt was troubleshooting and I occasionally sent questions her way but found that I would be hindering her responsiveness to the students, I found myself going directly to the students, at their desks and at computers, and asking them what they were doing, who had thought of the main idea, and how they were going about it. Students were mastering newspaper formatting techniques on the computer and writing and working on stories. They were throwing ideas back and forth at each other, which appears extremely informal (from my naïve point of view), but realized later that in my own experience with collaborative creative projects that such time is necessary. They were often responsive and eager to talk about their projects. Mrs. Hollifield helped the students care about their projects by letting them write about things that excited them: boys were writing about the NFL and girls were talking about fashion, but all were also engaging their worldviews in important matters in the community. In conversation, she talked specifically to the work they were doing while still being personable. By allowing them to address the subject matters that tied them to their friends while also encouraging them to look to larger communities as well, she was attempting to have them begin to look outside of themselves, to question what it means to be a person coming from their specificity, and how that might be different for others.