Observing Teacher Teaching Holocaust Jaime R. Sandoval Rossier School of Education EDU 516 November 20, 2013 Dr.

Bernstein

Observing Teacher Teaching Holocaust I am going to observe the instructor as an important way to become more aware of strategies by utilizing the ideas of Rodgers and Raider-Roth (2006) directly through the senses. These will be broken in two particularly sections: One is to see and the other is to hear. I will take notice of observing separately and without noise. To become aware of in-mind to achieve an understanding of what the verbal and audio, the tone, the body language, and the activities that the teacher uses with the students (Rodgers & Raider-Roth, 2006, p. 267). Video Observation The instructor is of Anglo-Saxon ethnicity. She is observing and engaging with each one of the thirty students, in attendance, of who compile her classroom. I can tell by the way she moves her head that she connects with each one of the students. At the two minute mark of the video, she smiles at something I cannot identify, for without sound or audio, it becomes almost impossible without a given written or signaled clue. Then she asks that one student seated from each row, collect paperwork from the desk placed at the front of the classroom. Then the instructor started to read for a few minutes and was able to get the students to participate. After a few minutes or so of reading, she started to talk once again. She seems to be asking questions, since a student from the back raised his hand, and several others followed. She continues to speak, possibly asking more questions, since everyone seems to agree with her visually, followed once again by the act of several students raising their hands. This action of teacher and student behavior continues for quite some time, approximately for about four minutes, leading to the raising of hands from both sides of the classroom. Obviously in this forum, she provides accessibility to each one of her students that was seen participating by raising their hands.

She continues speaking. Im assuming its relat ed to a good issue since the students listen with interest. A student from the back is witnessed, raising her hand. She appears to be of Middle Eastern ethnicity due in part both by her facial structure and garment attire. Energetically conducing the forum for a brief minute then passing it along to another patiently awaiting student. At about minute 9:40 the instructor is seen using various hand gestures or erratic movements, I have no idea why. A single student is witnessed paying attention and participating with the instructor. Soon after that, she returned back to her desk after talking continually for about four minutes of lecture. Looking along the video clip, she holds something in her hand, possibly for a lesson plan she is following. The instructor reads what looks like a set of flashcards and continues reading them, all along while she is so carefully holding them in her hand. And as she continues to read, her right hand appears to move in sequence and flows with her reading. She then appears to be surprised at comments and testimonies given by students at approximately minute 12:20. Suddenly as a result of her facial expressions, she seems to be voicing some concern. Just like the teacher, the students also seem altered and bothered yet maintain an orderly conduct. The teacher, of course, proceeds to take charge and controls the classroom. She then continues with what seems to be a lecture or lesson of the same heated nature or argument, since all pupils seem highly interested and intrigued by the subject matter. She continuedher facial expressions are consistent and she keeps vigilant, that is, a look of interest and making sure that each one of the students is connecting to her conversation. Again, teacher student exchange conversation. Her hand gestures, especially those of continuing circular motion, appear to take charge of the lecture, and entertain her audience, rather her students. By the actions witnessed, she appeared to have asked a series of students to collect a

stack of sheets from a designated area. On another corner, it is hard to miss a large white cardboard triangle with fairly big bold print of words such as, but not inclusive to the following: genocide, discrimination and prejudice. The students reading now are from the sheet that each one has on their possession. Her pattern is recognizable; it seems the majority of time is consumed by conversation, conducted by the teacher. She is pointing to the triangle, and the students are responding to her command. She agrees with a student after listening to him. Making a direct connection with him, she replies something to him and blushes suddenly. Suddenly she is more than blushing, now red at twentyfive minutes in the video for some unknown reason. Unaffected, she once again takes lead of the classroom by talking but does give a student the opportunity to speak. The student makes conversation and ends by turning and nodding to her attention. Once again, she goes back briefly, and then gives the forum to another student seated at the front of class. Proceeding, she takes down the triangle at minute 30. At the spectrum of minute thirty-one, she seems shacking off the potency reflected from the stare of the students. I can see that a student seated in the front row was reading from the sheet. Followed by another question, again, it is a noticeable pattern. She begins now to write tragic historical events, on a poster board, such as the Holocaust, the Cambodian genocide, and many other horrific events. Several others after the students replied. This leaving her with enough time to make her point across, ending with discrimination. She is making several hand gestures in accordance with the flashcards. She made this move before 36:30 minutes. She goes back to her flashcards, then instructs and provides the students another set of reading assignments. She is saying something, but since this is an observation without sound, I cannot tell what it is she is saying. There seems to be more

questions. Next, there is a transition, and we are about to see a video with an interview is taking place at minute thirty-nine of the video: The first, interviewee whose name is Kristine Keren, is projected on the screen. She is a lady making hand gestures up and down with her left arm. She is wearing a mint-colored suit, well groomed. She appears to be well-off, since she is wearing a necklace of pearls that matches her oval shaped earrings. Strangely though, she starts to break down and begins sobbing. The interview ends with her at 40:08, and the next one follows along. The second interview is of an elderly lady under the name of Lea Schabinski-Faranof. She is wearing a royal blue blouse, accompanied with a double opal pearl long necklace. Her age is displayed on her neck and as well as on the various wrinkles surroundings her mouth. She wears very light make-up which is emphasized by the tone of her cheek. Her hair is short and she wears a pair of glasses. While talking, her eyebrows move up and down following the open discussion. After those movements, the camera slowly vanishes to another interview; The third interviewee goes by the name of Milton Belfer. This man has a full set of hair, which he combs to the back. His hair is totally grey. His eyes move to the top of his head as he tries to recollect the images in his storage of memory. He pauses and gazes in other directions to avoid direct eye contact with the interviewer. He smiles as he tells his story projects makes comments, then the video clip cuts and begins another section with the same person. He begins scratching his head and continues to comment. Then, both his eyebrows reach their maximum height, and the video ends at minute 41:39; Itka Zygmuntowicth is another Holocaust survivor who is providing her account. She is wearing a beautiful red dress with three black lines, two along her shoulders, and another that runs straight down the middle front. Her hair is grey. It appears to be hard for her to retell what

happened. Her face shows anguish when telling the story. She has strong features, like those of a person who is able to take any obstacle. She seems focused on giving the right answer but, at the same time, agony is displayed on her face. Peter Braunfeld is the next Holocaust survivor to be interviewed. He is a relaxed, talkative person, who moves with his head while narrating his story. Also, he appears to be a man around his 70s. Mr. Braunfeld is wearing a blue tie and a sport coat. He seems to enjoy the conversation, because he laughs throughout the interview. There is a moment when Mr. Braunfeld is in complete silence at minute 43:02, before he realizes that he is not commenting. When he continues to talk again, a few seconds go by before the monitor turns black, finalizing the interview. At minute 43:08, we are back to the teacher and students exchanging information. The students continue to read. The interviewers are part of the reading. The teacher provides the students with pictures of the interviewers with some words next to the pictures. The students are communicating to each other, trying to allocate the pictures to a small version of the pyramid of hate. The instructor provides a student a medium version of a picture of the Holocaust survivors, of Kristine, and it seems that she asks the student to place the picture at a the pyramid of hate located at the left hand side of the teachers location stage. He places this picture next to the violence word. Next, another student collects the picture of Lea, and begins to place this next to acts of violence. The student that placed the picture begins to provide the students with discourse. Another student follows after the seconds choice. This student places her picture at the violence of the pyramid of hate. Then, she recites a few sentences to the rest of the class and

sits at her desk. The instructor provides praise to the student and uses her right hand to invite another student to participate. After all the students sitting in the front row made their selection, other students are given the opportunity to make changes from the original definition the student classified the picture to be. For example, at minute 47:29, a student is seen walking from the back of the classroom to move one of the pictures that is located under act of violence to the top of the pyramid, which stands as genocide. Then, she provides a reason for her movement. After a few minutes, she waits to see who has any questions, notices that everyone is content, and goes back to her seating area. After this another student gets up and moves the picture of Milton to the discrimination part of the pyramid. He moves this picture from its original stance of prejudice, and provides his reasoning to the teacher for making that change. He then goes back to his seat after listening to a few words the instructor is providing him. And another student gets up. However, this student did not like the previous placement and moves the same picture another level. Miltons picture now is placed at the violence section of the pyramid of hate. Audio I hear the instructor asking multiple questions throughout the length of the video, but before she commences, she formally introduces herself. She clearly states her name is Marylin Marci at the beginning of the video. She modestly mentions that she has up to date served as a history teacher for 23 years. Specifically, she teaches todays history, which leads to genocide. Marci specifies the importance of studying history, because there is a possibility of a repeating genocide. We must be able to recognize such patterns, and they must be taken into account, preventing a reoccurrence.

The teacher sounds confident and engaging in the classroom and repeats her strategy of multiple questions asked after every article finale. She conducts a series of difficult and mind tantalizing questions which keep the students intrigued, involved, and in tune with the lesson plan. Her focus on asking relevant questions during the whole lesson must be because she obtains the necessary feedback from the students as they raise their hands and participate. Needless to say, students do participate with the instructor and sound joyfully engaged in the lesson. The instructor sounds ethical, i.e, she provides the proper standards of conduct. Students, as said above, perceived the conversation with a collaborative opinion. The evidence is the pyramid of hate, which she mentions this at minute 37:23 of the video. The students are participating in identifying what leads the instructor and several individuals others to believe and be aware of the genocide called the Holocaust. Nieto and Bode (2012) provide us an ethical way to see imperative, and encourage educators on how race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, and other markers of identify areinfluencing students school lives (Nieto, 2012, p.276-277). The students have now discovered how to identify some patterns, leading to a moment when the teacher is shocked to hear of such evolution of patterns taking place on school campuses. And these can be accounted for by both observing and hearing. This section covers the usage and materials practiced throughout the video. The students basically are guided to participate on what I perceived to be a conditioned form of collaboration. A pre-service could identify several teaching methods with the articles provided, which are piled on stacks at the front of the classroom. In response to the teachers request for volunteers, the front row students provided a stack of articles to each one of the students seated behind them. This request was fulfilled quickly and successfully by all the front row selectees. This method is noticeable through the video following an interval on approximately five minutes, and then the

instructor asked the students to collect the materials and sit, respectively. In addition, the instructor adds another form of credibility to her lesson plan by providing documentaries on interviews conducted on various Holocausts survivors by the SHOAH. After, she notes that the students are a diverse ethnic group, who appear to have intellectualism since they maintained control of their attention. Her approach begins by offering the students to select a picture of the interviewers and instructing them to place them on a specific pyramid, the pyramid of hate. The result from this experiment leads to understanding of the links; to differentiate between genocide and prejudices. Analyze After observing the teacher, student, and content interaction and reading several ideology articles, I came to think that the instructor expresses her job quite well. She thinks that we can construct the history of our country, and of the century, providing the students instructions utilizing the content of contemporary history, that is, the instruction of history is surrounded with the question, is history inevitable? In other words, is history a repeated pattern? And is it avoidable? Since, the students participate in the conversation, this makes her lesson engaging. However, there are some images showing uninterested, bored, tuned out, complexions reflecting on the students faces. She asserts that, in this twenty-first century, we should analyze what the last century was about. And she begins to explain several terminologies. Informing the students ways to identify these trends when they stumble upon these words: Intolerance, dehumanization, and stereotyping leads to acts of violence, acts of mass violence, and genocides. She assesses the students, a potential tool that is going to provide the teacher information on the student so as she can get to

know them. This with the aid of the document titled, Have You Ever, as she verbally announces instructions to complete the questionnaire to her class. It begins with Have you ever heard of a person making a joke about this persons background on the bases of race, gender, religious, or sexual orientation? Immediately at minute 4:50, this questions, spurs that each one of the students raise their hand. She claims this to be pervasive. A female student of Asian descent, pronounced the first reply; however, her response was low pitched, as she said, they are trying to make themselves feel better. Unfortunately, the teacher was unable to comprehend and uttered a basic reply, interesting responseinteresting response to this question. And w ithout losing any time, she quickly redirects her attention to another responsive student. Another interesting moment as well: at the back of the classroom, a student begins to say that this act of prejudice suppresses the White race for example. This remark induced a smirk on this Caucasian student as if he had delivered a joke in the middle of lecture. A smirk on the teachers face clearly implies that she seems to concur. The most striking part of this moment though was when the smirking student who had the forum, began to justify the previous remark by saying that, it was intentionally shared so as to make other people laugh. It clearly did. After analyzing the instructors mode of instruction towards the students learning objective, Anderson et al. (2001) thinks that the instructor should have made an addition to her lesson plan because In history, an objective could be to learn to write papers to historical that meet standards(Anderson et al., 2001, p. 88). Other scholars also believe that including some sort of hand-to-paper mechanism in between can help the student to recognize more efficiently the lecture. It is clear that the instructor only produced a small assessment that directs the

student to identify himself when she provides the questionnaire, Have You Ever, at the beginning of the lecture. Due to the instructors drilling of the subject at intervals, McDermott (2009) states that the students are going to recall the event of the lesson because of its diligence.

Lesson Analysis In a fast pace environment such as ours, the instructor made an important move in informing the classroom and the world about the connection of history literacy with her lecture utilizing media. In addition, the instructor did a superb job in honoring the victims of the Holocaust as an idea to glorify and commemorate the dead. Nevertheless, it is ironic to talk about genocide: when we are teaching our students to avoid horrific events. Just like those of our ancestors who participated in them at the beginning of Americas history. Recall the settlements of the Pilgrims who committed an act of violence, called genocide of Native Americans. Moreover, the lesson plan was able to cover several topics such as knowing, reading, and talking; shaped with the eagerness to identify the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group initiation signs. In the writings of the observation above one is able to recognize the dialogue of the teacher with the students to understand mass murder. Not related to any of the genocide topics, but only to the lesson plan Moje (2004) mentioned that to in order to complete Discourse, the teacher should have had added some writing in her learning strategy. At this point she should also have acquired the navigational skills that are obtained over time due to her impressive amount of time teaching history. The dialogue of the instructor-student is noticeable along the entire video. McCartheys (1997) research indicates the importance of implementing dialogue since this promotes critical

thinking within our community. In addition, he claims that a practice such as the one Marylyn Marcy engages, and promotes school literacy practices that encompass a diverse population (McCarthey, 1997, p.147). The student thinks, reflects, and in several parts of the video a preservice teacher may be able to identify the above when students replace the pictures of the Holocaust survivors to a different category on the pyramid of hate. The instructor assumes that she made the plan necessary to conclude the objective of the learning material. Her approach created a way to identify possible students behaviors. This trait of identifying possible aggressors is important to learn because our country is experimenting with all sorts of aggressiveness throughout the country. One hears and sees the reporters televising shooting accounts in different areas of our country. There are several important reasons to teach principles of genocides: Gounari (2008) provides several reasons to retell atrocities such as the one USC Rossier School of Education provided to us with this video about The Holocaust. She claims that learning about disastrous events is A firm grounding in America History, and is a lear ning process designed to rupture the flawless pictures of harmonious living in a model democratic society. (Bartolome, 2008, p. 105). Not to mention, that these types of events can implicitly influence a citizen when it comes to an intervention of military service, and to differentiate poor and rich social cultures.

Conclusion If you are engaging in observations through the lens of the camera or visiting a location, one is able to describe behaviors. Both of them can provide you the ability to analyze if you are analyzing teaching strategies. A preservice teachers job is to stop, hear, and observe. It is an

important mode provided by Rodgers et al., (2008) to complete the assignments and to understand ourselves better. This strategy of hearing and observing first of all can provide you a tool to write multiple paper assignments since you can add all kinds of details to your research. Also, hearing and observing is a strength that helps anyone to remain neutral. I will call this approach a preactive behavior because you are not acting upon. A person that does not stop to hear and observe in my perspective it is label as proactive because that person is anxious. For example, a preactive person will let the electronic device continue its contour if it goes off. On the other hand, a proactive person will instantly answer the phone call of the cellular phone at the time of her reach. Thus, when someone applies Rodgers approach, one is thinking before acting. Once getting to this point of preactivity mode, you are going to be able to see how things tend to follow on your behalf. To add value to this, let me provide to you another story about the benefits of utilizing the hear and observe approach. One day, a businessman was about to give a presentation that was going to cost him a lucrative contract. However, the day before that person caught some sort of throat problem that had him voiceless the entire day. The person did not know what to do, so his manager offered to provide the speech for him. The voiceless person was able to provide the manager notes of what to say during the presentation. At the end of the presentation, the manager was making other types of comments and the voiceless person was getting anxious and sweating because the manager was not following his notes to close the deal. After, the presentation the manager was able to close the deal. The story, although short, can give you brief conclusion: think before you act. Here the businessman was sweating bullets before knowing that the deal was closed. We can conclude with one word be patient, it is rewarding.

References Anderson, L. W., & Krathwohl, D. R. (Eds.). (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching and assessing: A revision of Blooms Taxonomy of educational objectives: Abridged edition. New York: Longman. Gounari, P. (2008). Unlearning THE Official History: Agency AND Pedagogies OF Possibility. In L. Bartolom (Ed.), Ideologies in Education: Unmasking the Trap of Teacher Neutrality (pp. 97-114). New York: Peter Lang. McCarthey, S. J. (1997). Connecting Home and School Literacy Practices in Classrooms with Diverse Populations. Journal of Literacy Research , 29(2), 145-82. McDermott, R., Raley, J.D., & Seyer-Ochi, I. (2009). Race and class in a culture of risk. Review of Research in Education, 33, 101-116. Retrieved September 12, 2013. From ARES USC Libraries Reserve. https://usc.ares.atlassys.com/ares/ares.dll?SessionID=U112613422L&Action=10&Type=10&Value=68619 Moje, E., Ciechanowski, K. M., Kramer, K., Ellis, L., Carrillo, R., & Collazo, T. (2004). Working Toward Third Space in Content Area Literacy: An Examination of Everyday Funds of Knowledge and Discourse. Reading Research Quarterly, 39(1), 38-70. Rodgers, C. (2002). Seeing Student Learning: Teacher Change and the Role of Reflection.Harvard Educational Review, 72(2), 230-253. Retrieved November 22, 2013 from www.2sc.usc.edu. Wingspan Productions. (Producer). (2011) History Discussion. Retrieved October 27, 2013 from http://www.2sc.usc.edu/mod/page/view.php?id=44506