Jacquelynn Brison

11/14/2013

BTED 411-001

Professional Development Activities Reports

Dr. Lucinda Willis

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Table of Contents

Pi Omega Pi Membership 3 Elementary Classroom Observation . 4-6 Indiana County Technology Center Tour . 7-9 High School Business Teacher Interview 10-12 Volunteering/Community Service 13-17

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Pi Omega Pi Membership and Participation When we had our first meeting for POP, there were only five of us in attendance. We discussed plans to do a Co-Op dinner on December 7, 2013 at Benjamins here in Indiana for the current student teachers and for their co-ops. As of right now we are still planning and working things out for this dinner. It is hard to do because there are only five of us and with how little time we have to do it. At this meeting we also discussed doing a bake sale during finals week. We are going to hopefully have a table set up on Tuesday, December 10th in the library between 9am and 1pm with different baked goods and drinks for students who are trying to cram for their finals. We have not set up who is going to work what shift yet. Again, it is hard to get these things moving because of the short time we have to do it and because of the lack of members this semester. COBSAC was also brought up. I plan on attending the final meeting of the semester on December 5th. At our POP meeting, we decided to pick officers. I volunteered to take on the role of Vice President. This semester is dwindling down and so its hard to get things going for this organization. Next semester I plan to wholeheartedly take on the role of Vice President, be very active in this club, and attend all COBSAC meetings that I can.

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Elementary Classroom Observation On November 13, 2013 and November 15, 2013, I observed in a Pre-Kindergarten classroom at Benjamin Franklin Elementary with Mrs. Amy McDow. The classroom environment was very friendly feeling. There were all kinds of colorful art projects on all of the walls. All of the furniture in the classroom was very small, preschool children sized. There were no desks in the classroom. There was an art table that was big enough for about six children to sit around, two mini couches, and two mini tables with four chairs each spread around the classroom. The main gathering spot in the classroom was the rug in front of the smart board, which was used to circle time. There is a row of lockers in the classroom for the kids to put their book bags and coats and hats in. On the front of the locker is a picture of the student and their name so they know which locker is theirs. The rules for circle time are posted on the wall above the smart board. There is a picture and words on each poster to remind the students of the rules. There is also a job board, where students are assigned a different job each day. Different jobs include line leaders, weather person, and room manager. The students take these rules very seriously and enjoy doing them each day. Mrs. McDow uses a lot of positive reinforcement in her classroom. When a student is acting out or doing something that they should not be, she will either ignore the behavior, or if it is bad enough, she will quietly correct the student without making a big scene. She doesnt raise her voice. She is always calm and collected when it comes to the students. After being in the classroom for just five minutes, I could tell that Mrs. McDow had each kind of power established and the kids respected that. For discipline, each student has a card on the board. They all start at green every day. If they get in trouble, she will move them down to yellow and then red. There are different

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consequences that go with each color. I didnt ask what the consequences were because both days I was there, not a single kid had their card moved to yellow. She did a lot of threatening. She said many times, Class, calm down, or I will move cards. After that was said the students would correct themselves. During circle time, if the whole class was being noisy or off task, she would point to which rule they needed to work on. She had to remind the students of the rules, a lot. But once she said something to a particular student, they worked on that behavior and got better at it. With four year olds you have to constantly explain things, which she did. They had questions about everything, all the time. She answered them in a way that is very low on Blooms, which they understood. When she was asking them questions, her questions were always very low on Blooms. They were almost always knowledge questions. Mrs. McDow told me that the most important things with kids this age is to not rush the transitions. She said to always let them take their time because if you rush them, it will just get hectic and out of control. I saw that when they did transitions, if they were going to be using new materials, she would sit, show them the materials, explain to them what they were about, and what they were going to be doing before she let them go. She made sure that each student knew what he or she was to be doing so that it would make the transitions a little bit smoother. There were a lot of songs that were sung that helped the kids with the transitions. They did most of their learning during circle time. They talked about new numbers, months, colors, shapes, patterns, and more while using the smart board during this time. After the students would learn the new material, they would transition into a time where they could go do different activities that were scattered across the room that would incorporate their new learning.

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All in all, Mrs. McDow and her aid do a fantastic job in running this classroom. Its hard to imagine trying to teach, let alone managing a group of 20 four year olds. These children are learning everything that she is teaching them very well, with a few exceptions who will probably need extra help, and they are all starting to understand the rules of being in school. All of the students are doing a wonderful job at making the transition from being at home or day care all day to being in school and Mrs. McDow is a wonderful teacher who is helping the transition for them be even smoother.

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Indiana County Technology Center Tour On November 18, 2013, I took a tour of the Indiana County Technology Center with Mr. Michael McDermott, principal of the school. When you walk into the main lobby, it looks just like a regular high school. It is, though, much different. At ICTC, there are students in grades 10, 11, and 12. These students will do a half of a day at their sending school, and then a half of a day at ICTC. They will either do the first half at the sending school, or at ICTC. Since the school only does a half of a day of instruction, there is no cafeteria to eat at. There is, however, a culinary student run restaurant that you are more than welcomed to stop and eat at. Indiana County Technology Center does not do the traditional classes of core academic classes. Instead, the students are in a shop class that they have chosen. There fourteen different program areas that are offered at ICTC. There are many technology centers like Indiana Countys, and all differ in the programs that are offered. The ones that are offered at ICTC are: Automotive Technology, Collision Repair Technology, Carpentry, Electrical Occupations, HVAC, Masonry, Machining Technology, Welding Technology, Digital Media Technology, Graphics & Electronic Media, Computer Systems Technology, Cosmetology, Culinary Arts, and Health Occupations Technology. All of the programs that are offered at ICTC are industrycertified. Upon graduation from ICTC, students will receive a certification from the field that they have studied. For example, a student that has went through the Cosmetology program will take the state boards either right before or right after graduation and will then be certified in the state of Pennsylvania to practice Cosmetology. Many students will then enter the workforce with their certifications. Some, mainly those students in the Health Occupations Technology area, will go

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on to post-secondary education, such as the nursing program here at IUP. An advantage that students that pursue this option is that many colleges will accept the credits that were earned at the school, as long as they did well, and will let the students skip the entry level classes. This not only saves time but money for these students. Before graduation, though, during the senior year, students have the option to join the workforce, in their area, and go to a job up to three days a week, instead of going to school. They will get paid just like a regular employee. There is a big advantage to both the student and the employer by doing this. The employer will be able to say whether the student knows exactly what they are doing and have the opportunity to higher them right after graduation, or they can say where the student needs more practice and can have them go back to the classroom and sharpen up on certain skills. Many of the shops are interconnected. For instance, the shops that are clustered into the Construction and Building Trades all join together and build a house. The carpentry students begin by building the house itself including the frame, doing the siding, etc. The electrical students come in and do all wiring and everything that has to do with electricity. After that, the HVAC students come in and set up the furnace and air conditioning. After the house in completed, the Habitat for Humanity of Westmorland County comes and takes the house and gives it to a needing family. All of the funding for this project is provided by the Habitat for Humanity. Mr. McDermott was talking to me about the behavior at the school. Most students want to be at this school, learning their trade. He said that most of the behavior problems they have are goofing off in the shop areas. When that happens, he talks to them and reminds them if they cant behave in the shop, they cant be there any longer. This normally makes the students straighten

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up and start behaving in the class again. Another major difference between the behaviors of students at ICTC and a regular high school is that students at ICTC are given more freedoms. They are free to wear their hats in the buildings, go buy a snack if theyd like to, etc. These different freedoms lets these students feel like adults, in turn making them act like adults.

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Interview A High School Business Teacher I interviewed Ms. Alisha Fleming, who graduated from IUP with her Bachelors Degree in Business Education in the Fall of 2007. She is currently employed at West Shamokin Jr/Sr High School. She has not been in the teaching world for long, but I believed that she was the perfect candidate for this assignment. I had Ms. Fleming in fall 2008 for a Java 1 and Multimedia Digital Design class. The first thing that she said to us in the Java class was, Guys, I really have no idea what I am doing in this class. I did not learn this stuff in college. This is going to be a rough year, but were going to learn together. That whole year we ended up Alice to do our programming. I wanted to go back and talk to Ms. Fleming and see how things have changed. The courses that Ms. Fleming teaches are Java 1-4, Stem Robotics, Visual Basics 1 and 2, Web Design 1 and 2, and Multimedia Digital Design. There are more computer courses such as Computer Science 9, Word and PowerPoint, and Multimedia Basics. Another class, unrelated to the Business Ed degree that Ms. Fleming teaches is Intro to Algebra. She told me that she got her certification in mid-level math this past year and shes glad she did because it made it possible for her to keep her job. To continue with her professional development, Ms. Fleming takes different week-long courses over the summers through PLS/Wilks University. They are normally a Monday through Friday, 8am-4pm class, and upon completion, she gets her three credit hours. After a disastourus first year, she went on to obtain her Masters in the classes such as Java, Visual Basics, etc. so she knows what she is talking about in class. She said every once and a while there are things that she has to ask students about. She said, You have to think of it this way. These kids have grown up with this technology. They have known it since they were young. Most of them had smart

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phones before I did. I didnt grow up with all of this technology. I had keyboarding and the Microsoft Word class in high school. These students are bound to know more about some of this stuff then I am. You cant be afraid to ask them about some stuff. Any opportunity she gets to go to any kind of workshop that is about technology, she goes. She said she really likes going to the workshops that are about different software versions that have updated, for example Adobe Photoshop. She is always keeping an eye out for different workshops that are hosted by Pittsburgh Technical Institute and California University. When she makes her lesson plans, she is planning for a 40 minute period. She said she doesnt like to stand in front of a class and lecture that whole time. The classes that she is teaching is so much more hands on than it is lecture. She will introduce new materials to the class, do examples of the new materials, and then let the students go off on their own and work on it at their own pace. The students that she has in her classroom are there by choice because the classes that she teaches are all electives. These students rarely give her any kind of behavioral problems. The classes that she teaches are also higher level thinking. You have to have at least a little bit of knowledge about what youre doing. These kids tend to be smarter. She said most of them are preparing to go on to college. Since most of these kids are heading off to college, and not directly into the work force, there is no kind of certification that they are able to work towards. In the high school setting, most of the time the technology and software are not up to date. This is definitely the case at West Shamokin. Ms. Fleming made the point that just this past year the computers were finally updated to Microsoft Office 2007. Not very long after, they were asked if they would like to upgrade to 2010. They turned it down because before we know it, Microsoft Office 2013 is going to be coming out.

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The teachers that are in the Business program at West Shamokin are pushing for some change. Within the past year they were able to pick up a course that was designed by Carnegie Mellon. It is the Stem Robotics class. These students have a wonderful opportunity to build, code, and operate a robot. The students get to use real world examples in the classroom. This program is also trying to turn Java 4 into an AP course. This is a wonderful idea. I graduated from West Shamokin in 2009. I can see, with just the different courses that are offered, that a lot has changed in the school in terms of these kinds of courses. I can also see how much more knowledgeable Ms. Fleming is in the courses that she is teaching now. There is no way she would have been able to teach a robotics class her first year out of college. She made a good point when she said, Just because I graduated college almost 6 years ago, doesnt mean that Im still not a first year teacher. With different subjects such as History, the material doesnt change. The Civil War will always happen during the same years, as well as the Great Depression. The method of teaching it may change, but the material doesnt. With the classes that I am teaching, with them being so involved in technology, the material that I am trying to cover with my students is ever changing. And that makes me feel like a first year teacher, every year. This interview with her made me realize that I may not be as prepared as I think I am when I first enter the classroom. I am always going to have to be doing research and learning about the new technologies that are out there that I am going to want to teach my students about.

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Ten Hours of Community Service/ Teaching Related Volunteering For the first seven hours of my volunteering, I went to a Learning Support classroom at Richland Elementary school in Cambria County. I was there for one full school day. The classroom teacher was ok with me helping the students and getting involved. I had a long, fun filled day with these six students. I did a lot of things in the classroom. I went with each student individually and they read their word list to me. They were working on words that have the ay combination in it. Theyre learning about when two vowels go-a-walking, the first one does the talking and these were the vowels they were learning about. If they messed a word up, we would sound it out letter by letter and then put it together until they got it. After we finished the word list we worked on spelling words. These words also contained the ay combination and were mostly the words on their reading list. If they misspelled a word we would erase the white board and try again. If they had a lot of trouble with that word, I circled it on the list so they would practice at home. After everyone was finished with their word list and the other morning work the teacher had for them, we cleaned up and got ready for a story about the Pilgrims. Mrs. Goldstrom taught the kids a little lesson about who the Pilgrims were, where they came from, and a brief history on why they came. I then got to read a short little book that taught the kids about Thanksgiving. It didnt go into great detail; these students are only in grades 1-3. The book talked about what kind of foods they had their first Thanksgiving, what kind of clothes they wore, how they lived, how hard the first winter was, how hard the ride on the boat was, things like that. The kids really enjoyed the book and learning about those things. When story time was over, we had an art project for the kids to do. There was a May Flower for the students to make. There was one already done so they had an example to go off

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of. We used construction paper and straws. All of the pieces were already cut out, so the kids only had to glue them onto the paper. I helped each student take the glue stick and glue around the edge of the piece of ship and stick it on the paper. For the sail posts, we used the straws. We had a lot of fun, and a difficult time, gluing the straw to the paper, so we ended up taping the straws onto the paper. I helped each student finish their May Flowers. Around this time Mrs. Goldstrom had to go to an ITP meeting, which she was unaware of. So, I was left in the classroom with the students and two TSSs. We finished the May Flowers by adding a paper that the students had already written about the voyage, to the bottom of their pictures. All of them were so excited to take their projects home and show their families what they had made. Since Mrs. Goldstrom had to go to the meeting, and there was only 20 minutes left until lunch, we put on A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving for them to watch. They were supposed to be quiet and watch the movie, but their teacher wasnt there to enforce it, so of course they were a little chatty. They liked asking me questions about who I was, why I was there, and things like that. I enjoyed talking to them, telling them about myself, and asking them about their selves. It was then time for the kids to head to lunch. Since the TSSs went with the kids, I was left by myself. I started cutting out things that were laminated that needed cut out, doing small things like that around the class. Mrs. Goldstrom had shown me a project they had done earlier in the month that needed a start stapled over a letter e, so I finished that up for her. Once she got back from the meeting, she and I had lunch. She has a student that normally comes in at noon, but he was absent that day, so we had an extra half hour. With that half hour we took down all of the Thanksgiving decorations she had in the classroom and started putting up the Christmas decorations. Shes been in the classroom

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for 20 years and still has decorations that her and her sister made during her first year of teaching. I thought that was pretty awesome. After the kids came back from recess, it was time for Math. Two additional students came to the classroom for Math. It is the only subject that they are there for. For Math, we did a Pilgrim Math sheet. The students had to look at the ship sails and put the numbers in order from smallest to largest. There were four numbers on each ship, and there were six ships on each worksheet. I worked with three different students on this worksheet. I showed them all how to do it, and then helped them individually. One of the kids got it real quick, and was done fast. It surprised me because hes Autistic and pretty high up on the spectrum. He did better than the other kids on it. The other two students I worked with very obviously didnt like Math and tried their hardest to do everything and anything to keep me off task. I was told I looked like a Pilgrim; I had pretty diamonds on my shirt; anything they could think of to make me not want to work on the worksheet. Towards the end of the day all of the kids went back to their homerooms. Mrs. Goldstrom and I cleaned the classroom up, straightened desks, and other things like that just to make sure the class was ready for the next day. I had such a great experience in this classroom. I definitely want to go back. For the last three hours of my volunteering, I helped my neighbor. He is in an alternative school, for kids with behavioral problems. He has been doing very well there, behaviorally, and was told if he could bring up his failing Math and History grades that he could return to his home school.

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I had him bring home all of the Math and History homework that he had. I helped him by having him tell me the way his teachers explain things and then I tried to explain them in terms that he could understand. He is in a Math 7 class. They are working with fractions right now. He is having trouble multiplying and dividing them. I explained it to him a couple different ways, and showed him a bunch of examples. When he did a problem the wrong way, I corrected him as soon as he went to make the mistake. This helped him a lot. By the time we were done he was a professional at multiplying and dividing simple fractions. In his History class, they are learning about ancient Egypt. I discovered that his big problem in this class is that he really does not like to read, at all. So, we decided to get on the computer and look on YouTube to see if we could find any videos on ancient Egypt. The videos that we found, that werent hours long, helped him finish the work sheets that he had to complete. He also picked up a slightly better understanding of Egypt. I told him that even though he doesnt like to read, hes going to have to get over it because all through high school hes going to be reading a lot, and not reading assignments will just come back to bite you. We talked about different ways to make reading a little bit more enjoyable for him. I told him instead of trying to sit down and read a whole assignment at once, read a little chunk, take a few notes on what he just read, and take a couple minute break. Go get a drink, just get up and walk away for a few minutes. I also told him to not ignore the pictures and captions. I told him that sometimes the captions had some pretty interesting facts in them. I think, and hope, hes going to take my advice about reading. He is a pretty smart kid, he just doesnt like to apply himself. I dont think he really cares if he goes back to his home school, I think its mom that is pushing for it.

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Im not done helping him, though. I plan on visiting him at least once a week while Im on break to make sure hes keeping up with his homework and doing what hes supposed to be doing. I also told him to message me any time he needs help with any homework.