first

The best part of watching the class, is when they share their work. The shyness, the outgoingness, it's really beautiful. The way a class works, it's like a little society, and I get to watch it and learn about how they move, go, and exist.

In some students, there's a real enjoyment of performance, others a passion for the writing. Anyway they operate, there's a real hustle and bustle that they are all involved in. They can't help but be part of and possibly even care about the action of the classroom. That's the teacher's hope at least, and I think in this classroom it really works.

In teaching there are certain phrases that help to take a comment without ignoring the student or making them feel stupid, all the while keeping everyone on task: "hold that thought one second..", "that's different from what i asked, but a very valid point, we'll come back to it", "okay okay that's good," "you're on the right track." It's really tricky to get this many young people involved in a discussion, when they are tired, and maybe not into what you're teaching. It's about presenting the information in a way that interests them. Ultimately, interest is the goal.

Interest comes from showing the students that the literary struggles in the novels are their own. Putting them in the text by showing them that what the characters go through, are what they go through. People love relatability. People love being the main character.

It's also very important that the students understand and are with the teacher as they explain things. You can't lose your students.

There are a lot of things that seem easy enough to do, which, are actually not.

Another thing is that a teacher tends to repeat what the students say, perhaps a little more intellectually, or bringing another aspect into it. That way, the person who said it, and those who are listening, might step it up to how the teacher is talking. It's like learning a new language, and seeing the two side by side might help to learn how to speak that new language; looking for certain things, how you read, how you observe.

There's a poetry activity in the class where they write a poem from three seperate moments (previously written on index cards) called an Index Card poem. Then, the students used the same tools to create a poem from a Mad-Libs-like template. Because the second one is a template of a previously prepared and very profound poem, when they enter their memories into it, it will be much better. Later, the two are juxtaposed. This changes how the students write because of their exposure to their own writing.

There's two posters with grids on them for an exercise they did. Becuase they made the charts themselves, the lines are not even, going up going down. As an artist, that kind of free line is very inspiring to me.

There is also a lot of persuasion involved to try to get what you want as far as cirriculum. And a sort of reputation to be built in order to be brave enough to ask for those things. In my first class, I talked to the teacher about lesson plans (for subs), literature and his own writing. I also got to read some of the stuff he and his classmates wrote. I love to read that stuff, plus it was about teaching, making it conclusive to my learning experience here. What I thought was really cool is one of his classmates (graduate studies) presents his work as a comic book. It was very inspriring and Mr. Cohen forwarded it to mr do I look forward to read the rest of it.

balance

There's definitely a balance to be established in every classroom. As much as Mr. Cohen is somewhat free-thinking (understatement of the year) and has a unique classroom (that's more of an understatement), there is still a structure there that I'm not sure I noticed when I was a student. With the classes that are not that cooperative, he reminds me of the how the waste time affects them. In teaching I don't think there's any room for shyness ( a person would get stepped all over). Two things that are hard to describe are the following:

1) The ability to speak in a way that they can understand while still inspiring
2) Striking a balance between structure and keeping interest.

There are a few technique that vary with the style of teaching but a few principles nontheless.

Today I got to sit in on Ms. Ohle's English classes. In another journal, I get to critique and compare the teaching styles of the two teachers, which is really interesting to me because I never thought of there being more than one way of effectively teaching.

So we've begun the journal, which I think should prove somewhat useful. I also got to sit down and listen to discussion between Mr. Cohen and Ms. Ohle about the commonts written in there as well as qualms about starting ina new school (ergo: discussion flowed to a lot of different things).

They read Oranges (which is a poem by Gary Soto) and then illustrated pictures to go with the reading. I'm really intro art and literature so I love activities that use each to enhance each other. It made for new interests and learning about perspectives of these kids. In hearing the mentor/mentee discussion, I saw certain things that might be modified in a lesson to enhance it like reading the whole poem--then in parts later, instead of beginning with reading it in parts--to prevent unwanted behavior (also singling-out or questions to reduce talk-backiness).

a post

I had trouble deciding what internship I wanted to take. I could have done a somewhat unfullfilling job at another company, but I'm not interested in taking this opportunity to use any artistic talent I may have to touch up celebrity photos. Something about that just isn't my style right now.

When I decided to take the internship at my old middle school, I'm not really sure exactly what I wanted to get out of this. I know that teaching has always been something I may want to do with my life. I k new that Mr. Cohen affected the way I read and essentially think.

Today, I sat in on a few classes and talked to Mr. Cohen about what the general plan for my internship is. As in class, learning in this classroom will be expectedly be unorthodox and unique. One idea that may be really useful is the idea that Mr. Cohen proposed to create a study of the way he teaches and the way his mentee teaches. The plan is to study and self-study thw way a teacher instructs and the way a classroom moves, and to communicate the thoughts that come with that to one another.

I also got to sit in on a meeting with my mentor and a teacher he is currently mentoring. She's new at teaching so she asks about teaching methods and decisions. We are all going to work together. I ddin't realize how muc hidden insecurity there is in a first year or inexperienced teacher.