Teacher Interview

Teacher Interviewed: Lori Schlueter Relation: Mother, and Teacher Occupation: Computer Applications Teacher at West Branch Middle School Description: She teaches the class Computer Applications to every student in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade over the course of a school year. Format: Online through Google Docs, with informal follow up discussion of questions in person Date: 11/13-16, Informal Discussion 11/19 from 8-8:45pm 1. In Chapter one, we discussed experiments and research as a way to improve education and educational teaching practices. One form of research that teachers would be able to use in their classroom is called Action Research. An example of action research would be a teacher trying a new teaching method in her classroom, observing and collecting the results and sharing it with fellow teachers. Have you ever used Action Research in your classroom? What did you research? What were your results? Did you find it beneficial to conduct such an experiment? No I have not done any formal action research but I do little personal experiments all of the time. For example, I have heard that the people who are talking the most are learning the most. I also have heard of an idea called turn and talk so I decided to try it one day, when introducing a new unit. 2. Do you collect information about your students informally? Do you collect data on a day to day basis about your teaching strategies, ability to engage students, etc.? What does this data look like? How has doing research in your classroom enhanced your teaching? I am constantly collecting informal assessment data by walking around the room and monitoring who is on task and who needs help. Some times (but not very often) I record marks on my grade book when I am looking for specific skills. 3. After graduating with a teaching degree and working as a teacher, in what ways do you continue to seek professional development and improve your classroom? I fully participate in all in-services offered by our district; I participate in county and state technology in education conferences. I earned my masters degree after 3 years of teaching, and went back for 15 more hours of graduate level work. I also use my PLN (Personal Learning Network) when I feel I am having a problem, I am not afraid to ask for ideas from many colleagues. 4. Lev Vygotsky is a psychologist that believes that learning takes place in the zone of proximal development, something a child has not yet learned, but is capable of learning. How do you plan lessons so that you are teaching students in the ZPD? Do you always engage students in the ZPD? Do you feel that all the students in one class are in the same ZPD? If not how do you address the differences? This definitely is the goal of your teaching and in most subjects there is a continuum of learning that naturally follows. The problem is that not all students are in the ZPD at the same time. And the more diverse the population of students is in ability the larger the gap between the zones can be. The art of teaching is to keep trying to move students into the ZPD as often as possible. This is where differentiation is important so at the beginning of class some students are "ready" (in the ZPD) for the content they are about to work with. Other

students are missing something and may need a little extra help getting closer to the ZPD. While another group of students may already know the content and are simply reviewing existing knowledge and will move through it much quicker. If not given any additional challenge or extension of the content past what they already know, then no learning may occur for them during that class period. :-( Similarly the students who were not ready for the material, if not given the supports they need, may not get close enough to the ZPD and no learning for them might not take place either :-( 5. One of Vygotskys theories to support students in the ZPD is to use cooperative learning. Cooperative learning is when students of different abilities work together to learn. How does cooperative learning manifest itself in your classroom? Give a specific example. Do you plan groups carefully based on a students grasp of the material? Has cooperative learning been beneficial to student learning? I do use cooperative learning on a limited basis. This is what it looks like in my class: As you are independently working on a project you are allowed to use your neighbors as a resource when you get stuck and can't figure something out on your own. Your neighbor is allowed to answer your questions and even show you how they did it, but they are not allowed to do it for you. If both of you are stuck, you may ask another neighbor for help. If three or more of you are stuck in the same spot then you all need to raise your hands so I can help. It is usually beneficial to student learning when a student knows what they are trying to do, and has tried to do it on their own then someone gives them some help; they are usually ready for the light bulb to go on. For the student that just recently figured something out to explain or demonstrate it again helps to confirm the understanding that has taken place. However for the student who already knew how to do something well, just showing someone else how to do it again may not have very much effect for them. I do not carefully plan the groups, they are usually formed randomly by seating assignment. 6. In Chapter 3 I learned about Erik Erikson and his view of psychosocial development. Children from the ages of 12-18 are in the stage of Identity versus Role Confusion. In this stage, children ask the question, who am I?. Children will explore and no longer look to their parents for acceptance, but to their peers. Erikson says that students redefine who they are by their drives, and abilities. How does this manifest itself in the classroom? As a teacher do you have a role in supporting your students in their development through this stage? Please give examples. How do you feel that your school as a whole addresses the issues that your students face during this stage of development? I try to address this in 2 ways. I first treat each student with respect and teach them to be respectful of themselves and others. I also try to teach them how to be successful independent learners. I believe both of these goals help to strengthen their own self-images so that they can make good choices as they begin to answer that question of who they are. ? 7. I learned that students begin to judge themselves by social comparison as early as second and third grade. By these years if a student is doing poorly in school they will continue to do so throughout secondary school. Have you experienced such students? How do you assist them? Do they have a negative attitude toward learning? Do you have any success stories? Yes, I have seen many cases of students who regularly do poorly in school and come into my classroom with a negative attitude toward learning. I have also seen students who struggle who come in with a good attitude. This has often made me wonder what causes this difference. In my classroom, I first treat each student with respect and teach them to be respectful of themselves

and others. I also try to teach them how to be successful independent learners. I do this by teaching them to read directions (I often will patiently kneel beside them as I make them read a direction out loud to me and once they do that many of them can get started from there), use their class time well,(if I know a student needs help with this I will try to stop by their desk early in each class period to make sure they have what they need or know what they are working on) and don't give up keep trying (I will often stop by and offer encouragement for their successes and talk to them about what they are having trouble with) 8. Self-Concept, self-esteem, and social relationships, especially with peers are important aspects of an adolescences development. How do these changes going on in your students effect your classroom environment? What are the difficulties that your students face during school (bullying, dropping out, emotional disorders...)? What do you think the most common difficulty students at your school deal with (homework, sports)? See response to question #6 In general, I do not have very many problems with these issues. I try to create a very structured, selfdisciplined environment, with high expectations for behavior, and I try to keep the students busy. When there are problems, I try to handle them quickly and quietly without exaggerating them or over reacting to them. 9. In Chapter 9 I learned that culture (shared norms, traditions, behaviors, language, traditions), and socioeconomic status (income, occupation, education, and prestige in society) has a large influence on student learning. Do you feel that most of your students come from a similar culture and socioeconomic status, or is there a large diversity among your students? If so describe the culture/socioeconomic status. How have you observed these affecting students learning in your class? Has your teaching pedagogy changed because of the culture of the students you teach? I do see some differences as described, mostly in the form of parents who are not supportive of the teachers and are too weak with regard to expectations for their child. However I still teach from my values (of knowledge and hard work can help you) and my classroom environment and expectations match that. 10. Resilience refers to characteristics of learners that enable them to overcome adversity. Have you observed resilience in your students? Do you or your school promote and support students to become resilience? Please give an example. This is important. I do not see resilience in my students but it is definitely something I strive for and I think Is important in dealing with many of the problems you mentioned in questions #6-9 I think some of the things I do as previously described do add to the students resilience. 11. I have learned that students have different learning styles. Have you experienced this in your classroom? Do you accommodate for the differences in your lessons? How? Yes, yes, and yes. This is very important. As often as possible you must, have the students, see it, read it, hear it, do it and say it to make sure they are all getting it. 12. In class I learned about levels-of-processing theory. It says that a student will only remember information that has gone through the most thorough mental processing. An example is a student seeing the object of knowledge, then knowing its name, and finally is giving meaning to the object. Do you use this theory in planning your lessons? How does this manifest itself? If not do you use other methods to help students remember information learned in class? In addition to the answer #11, yes I do this by teaching them to use technical reading and proof reading skills. Here are my technical reading skills:

1. Read through all of the directions. 2. Go back and read the first direction, a little bit at a time to get started. 3. You cannot skip words or directions you do not understand. You must look for them or figure them out. 4. When you are done you go back and re-read all of the directions to remember what you learned and to check to see if you did everything you were supposed to do. We repeat this process over and over again trying to make it a habit. I also structure our projects so that we reuse skills over and over in new ways to build that knowledge. If you learn to proofread well you learn to ask what I was supposed to do. Did I do that? 13. In learning how to be a good student, one needs to learn how to study so as to remember information taught in class. In my psychology class we learned many different ways for students to better remember material. Some examples are distributed practice is better than massed practice (cramming), mnemonics, etc. These practices manifest themselves through note taking, practice tests, underlining etc. Do your students know these skills? Do you teach them in your classroom? What do you use while teaching to help your students best remember the information? Same answers as # 12, since I don't give very many tests I don't focus on how to study or prepare outside of class, but I give them lot's of problem solving experience in class where they need to use their prior knowledge to figure it out. 14. Project-based learning was shown to be very effective in increasing student learning, through cooperative learning, critical thinking, problem-solving Do you use project based learning in your classroom? If so how do you feel they challenge your students and facilitate their learning? Yes to some degree most of our learning is by doing in my class, but I do a lot I introducing how a skill can be used so I tell them which tool to be use. So my projects are very structured guided learning. I do always start with a little bit of discovery learning at the beginning of working with a new tool. But I do very little give them a broad project and say how you can do this, except for extensions for students who work through my projects quickly. But for most part I find the students don't know where to start and when given too open ended projects and I have them for a limited period of time. 42 minutes for 9 weeks. (Something I may develop for their library time though?) 15. Do you right (write) learning objects for your classroom? What are the objects based on? State Standards Do all of the students know the learning objects? How do your use them to guide teaching? Do you have any suggestions for writing learning objects? Yes I do in my curriculum, broken down by project and unit. I share them with the students on the webpage where they get their project directions, on my white board, and when I'm introducing or summarizing our learning on each project. I think it is important for a teacher to know specifically what they want their students to learn. It also helps me to focus on the big and most important ideas.

Informal Follow-up
In speaking with my mother in person about the questions I asked she told me three things that I apply to what I have learned in Educational Psychology. 1. One thing she learned was what resilience was. She felt that resiliency is something that she and the other teachers in her building were constantly trying to teach their students. She especially recognized that it would be helpful to teach students resiliency in dealing with bullying situations. She thinks her school does not teach students how to deal with bullies. Bullies are always going to exist, and people will always say mean things, yet the students are only taught that they should not have to deal with bullies and therefore will not know how to overcome difficulties. 2. Mrs. Schlueter spoke about how she has handled discipline in her classroom. I know from being a student in her classroom that she has a strike system where if a student is misbehaving she gives him a strike. If the student receives three strikes, then he will receive a discipline report. For some students this system does not always work, for these unique students Mrs. Schlueter was normally able to handle the discipline herself, by ignoring the student, isolating him from his friends, or other things. She clearly remembers three students that see was unable to find a solution on her own and sought the advice of the counselor. With her help she made it through the class. 3. This is an example of a school wide reward system that West Branch Middle School has implemented. If a teacher sees a student doing something good, he can give the student a card, the student then gets out of class to go to the principals office where he tells the principal why he got a slushy card, he gets a slushy, and his picture is taken. Every week of the many students, who received slushies, one gets chosen to be the DJ the next morning. The DJ gets to pick a song to play on the speaker system in the morning before school starts. Another reward is that the pictures of those who won slushies is added the PowerPoint that runs on the TVs in the classrooms all day. At first Mrs. Schlueter was skeptical and did not think that the idea would work, but since its implementation has been convinced that it is good for the school. We discussed how now the principal does not only see those students who have discipline problems, but also the students who are benefitting the school. It is also a good system, because it gives the teachers an opportunity to reward students for good behavior, and challenges students to look for those opportunities where they can help their fellow students and teacher.