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Ms. Ng’s Mosaic Case Study: Reflection

I. Students

First and foremost, working with this group of young students served well as not only an

eye-opening experience, but also a reminder of what it was like to be a young pre-teen or

teenager. An aspect that I enjoyed was how unrestricted the experience was and how it also

functioned as practice of one-on-one student interactions without the outside pressures of grades

or assessments influencing our lessons. I was most struck by how excited and willing to

participate the students were, especially since I do not remember being as excited about school

during my own summer vacations—I was even more impressed by how many students openly

admitted that they enjoyed reading considering middle school is a time where students seem to

grow more and more concerned about what their peers think of them, and reading is certainly not

a hobby typically considered in fashion with young people.

Perhaps I just did not know what to expect or had low expectations because I do not

remember much about reading as a middle schooler—I have always considered a so-called

“advanced reader”—but I was genuinely and pleasantly surprised with how intuitive and willing

to learn the group of King Middle School students were. Unfortunately, with the exception of

one class period, my partner and I had to work with a new student every single session, but the

attitudes toward reading and writing were generally all positive no matter who we interacted

with. I am not sure if it was just luck or chance with whom we were paired, or if this overall

group of students just genuinely enjoyed reading and writing; regardless, their positivity made

the experience much more enjoyable and fluid. This positive attitude is ultimately what allowed

us the chance to focus on putting activities from our textbooks into practical use without
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focusing too much on subject interest, which was admittedly one of my biggest concerns in the

beginning. Despite the fact that all of our students were willing to participate, most of our

students appeared to either be reading on a lower level or at least struggling with vocabulary. A

general strength across all of our students was the ability to empathize with the characters and

make the reading somehow relate or become relevant to their own lives.

One student in particular who seemed to struggle with reading out loud and vocabulary

was Ariel, a rising sixth grader. She enjoyed reading mystery and comic books, although reading

was her least favorite subject in school because she did not particularly like reading in front of

her class. She did, however, enjoy listening to her teachers read. Oddly enough, on the other

hand, her favorite subject was math. Ariel expressed to us how much she enjoyed writing, and it

was clearly evident in her vivid imagination and strength as a verbal storyteller. Areas that she

could use improvement were command of figurative language and vocabulary. However, though

she struggled with vocabulary, she was adept at using context clues and root words as a way to

replace the unfamiliar word with a more familiar one—this was honestly one of the most

astonishing moments for me because it was incredible watching a student talk her way through

something that most adults do without thinking. Ariel was also the one student my partner and I

were able to work with more than once.

Another one of our students, Demetrius, also enjoyed comic books, but did not struggle

with reading out loud as much as Ariel. Demetrius also enjoyed playing sports, football and

basketball in particular. His favorite book series was the Magic Tree House Series, but he also

enjoyed reading science-fiction as well. He preferred shorter works to longer books—in fact, he

insisted that the Harry Potter books were just too long, but that may have been because reading
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just was not his favorite subject (math was). Creative writing and using figurative language was

an area that Demetrius was strong in, but like Ariel, he struggled with vocabulary.

I felt the most at ease working with Desdemona because we had a poetry lesson planned

for the day that she was paired with us, and she actually wrote her own poetry! She kept an

online portfolio that she periodically updated with poems she was proud of, and she even decided

to add the poem she wrote during our session together. Like Demetrius and Ariel, Desdemona

struggled a bit with reading out loud and vocabulary, but she mustered on so with gusto and

confidence. She had a strong command of figurative language, and one of her favorite things to

write about was her family and food.

Benvolio, a rising seventh grader, also enjoyed reading science-fiction and fantasy books,

but his favorite medium was comic books. Like Demetrius, he had a huge interest in superheroes

and sports, particularly soccer. He preferred being outdoors to being indoors, though we learned

that he is attached to his phone through one of the writing activities we executed with him.

Unlike our other students, Benvolio did not have a positive experience with writing as much as

he did with reading. Yet like most of our other students, he was an exceptional oral storyteller.

While the in-class activities provided by the various textbooks used in the class were

helpful, I think that something I took away from this semester is everything needs to be done

with adjustments to each individual child. Not every dependent reader is going to need constant

scaffolding; some just need to know that you believe in their ability to be successful in whatever

you have assigned them, and if you make a point to show students that you care, then chances are

they will receive what you want them to receive from any given lesson. While aspects of what

we should learn through our education may be universal, the education experience itself is a

personal one.
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II. Teachers

Something that I have become remarkably aware of through this experience is how

natural and unnatural different aspects of teaching feel. But despite that awkwardness that lurks

in the background (which I imagine is actually rather natural, especially for teachers at the

beginning of their careers), there is still always room to adjust and adapt and grow as an

educator; education is a process that requires effective educators to be perpetual students

themselves. For instance, I found that I had a very easy time questioning and discussing the way

readings relate to my own life and finding ways to help my students feel grounded in what they

are reading as well. One of my biggest concerns about teaching English Language Arts is how to

make a mandated curriculum interesting for groups that are bound to have interests varying from

one end of the spectrum to the other. I think that the Beers (2003), Daniels, Zemelman, &

Steineke, (2007), and Donovan (2012) texts find a workable medium with scaffolding techniques

and varied writing activities to help inspire interest. An example of this is from the Donovan

(2012) text in particular: I am still hesitant about how to implement a few of the art forms

described in the book, but I sincerely like the idea of using visual art to allow students to develop

their writing with “rich details and characteristics of the image” and can certainly see myself

using it in my classroom (Donovan, 2012, p. 131). This technique is certainly applicable in all

the content areas, not just English Language Arts.

In that vein, I think I am more open to trying to integrate other content areas into my

own; previously, I did not see how this was possible, but I think it can be as long as I am willing

to try. Also, the textbooks from this semester have offered an endless supply of activities to turn

to when working with dependent readers—for this, I am very thankful because I will be able to
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look up different ways to engage my future students, and I know not to be too focused on

constantly being the most perfect, most effective teacher. Instead, I have realized that being in

the classroom is more about finding what works for me and my students (and what does not

work) and evolving my teaching repertoire of strategies and activities. Having a wide arrange of

activities at my disposal has shown me how to be more flexible, which is a personality aspect

that I have been trying to improve on this summer.

Working with a partner certainly had its benefits and limitations, but I think that it

worked for the purpose of this course and that the positive outcomes outweighed any negative

aspects. If anything, having a partner available as a tool enhanced my own abilities. I was lucky

enough to work with the same partner for the entire semester, and I feel that we played on the

other person’s strengths for each lesson, building off one another in looking to create meaningful

discussions with our students. Having a partner also helped ease some of the anxiety I felt at the

beginning of the course, and I was thankful that I did not have to take on the pressure alone.

Even though we were open to working together, my partner and I coordinated our lesson plans

with a minimal amount of collaboration. This may seem strange, but it helped us not sound too

rehearsed and created an organic discussion space with our students. We alternated with reading

comprehension and creative writing since both of us have bachelor’s degrees in English with

creative writing as a concentration. I am always interested in what other writers have to say

about the writing process, so it was a joy to watch my partner interact with our students through

writing because I feel like I learned more about the way I write and how I want to introduce

creative writing to my students.

Working with my partner also helped me overcome some of the awkwardness I felt

implementing a few of the activities, such as modeling how to thinking out loud. It is one thing
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to read about an activity in a textbook and another to be able to see how someone actually

implements said strategies to help dependent readers or to simply facilitate discussion. I wholly

believe that teaching is a collaborative effort and would definitely recommend that future cohorts

have the opportunity to work with a partner in future sections of this course. The only limitation

to working with a partner was that we sometimes struggled with timing. Depending on what we

had planned, we would occasionally go over the thirty minutes we allowed each other;

sometimes we spent longer on reading comprehension because we made a point to use guided

reading questions and to return to pre-reading activities, and sometimes we spent longer on

creative writing activities if the student preferred. Fortunately, neither of us had an issue with

allowing the other person to begin the next lesson when this happened. In hindsight, I was

extremely lucky to have been able to work with someone I had already worked with in a

previous class, especially since my original partner was someone I did not get along with as well.

As previously mentioned, my ability to remain flexible was something definitely tested

through working with a partner, but I think it is a quality completely necessary for educators to

have in order to be successful. Something that I was aware of before this class, but has since

been amplified during this summer semester, is that education does not just open doors of

possibility for students—it offers a new realm of possibility teachers as well, so long as teachers

are willing to be perpetual students themselves. As much as we want our students to learn from

us, we need to be willing to learn and evolve through our interactions with them.

III. Student-Teacher Relationship

For the purpose of this course, I am thankful that the students we worked with were so

willing to engage and interact with us. I was tremendously skeptical about working with middle
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school students even though my certification will be grades six through twelve; however, this

course has opened my mind to potentially teaching middle school ELA, not just high school—

though that is not to say I am completely converted yet. This experience also confirmed my

belief that every person has the capability to be achieve academic success, educators just need to

learn how to tap into each individual student’s intuition, interests, and learning style. Working

with students who were not confident readers and writers made me even more determined to find

ways to make English Language Arts relevant to all my students’ lives. To achieve something

that seems so ideal (and unattainable), modeling appears to be one of the best strategies to aid

meaningful learning an educator can perform, regardless of age group. Beers (2003) and Daniels,

Zemelman, & Steineke, (2007) stress this idea over and over again in their textbooks, and I

definitely believe that it is one of the best ways to show students you care and want to be a part

of their learning process.

All student-teacher relationships are built upon a foundation of trust, and students need to

know that their teachers see them as individuals—this can make the biggest difference in student

motivation. Even though we only worked with the King Middle School students for a short

period of time, I think the fact that we took the time to get to know them as people and as

students influenced their willingness to participate and be mentally present. On the first day of

our tutoring sessions, some of our cohort members got together to play a few introduction games

with our students as a way to build rapport. I think this contributed significantly to the success of

the class because it allowed our students to know that we (adults in positions of influence) cared

about them (students who have the power to either react positively or negatively), which in turn,

made them willing to care.

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The most exciting and rewarding part of this entire experience was getting to see the

strategies we implemented successfully working as we progressed through each lesson.

Unfortunately, since we only worked with one student more than once, my partner and I were

unable to see how our students improved week-by-week—but this does not take away from the

fact that it was still enormously gratifying to watch the metaphorical lightbulbs go off above

students’ heads as they just got what we wanted them to get out of the material. The instance

where this occurred was our second session with Ariel. We had been expecting Benvolio, so the

short story I picked was for a higher reading level (“All Summer in a Day” by Ray Bradbury). I

thought that the text might be a bit too difficult for Ariel, but with the use of an anticipation

guide (Beers, 2003, p. 74) and plenty of guided reading questions, she was able to not only

understand the takeaway of the story, but also talk about the diction Bradbury chose and how it

influenced the way we read the story. My partner and I had been so impressed with her success,

and I think that it is a huge testament to the effectiveness of scaffolding.

We were also lucky enough that even if our students were not interested in the day’s

material, they still made the effort to participate. Though when this happened, as it did on the

very last session, we tried to pair the unwanted activity with something preferred. In this

particular instance, the student was someone who had worked with the same mentor up until the

last session, and we could tell that he was no longer mentally present (especially since he had

eaten about four sugar cookies right as we began our session), so instead of focusing on the

writing activities we had planned, we let him draw and had him explain his drawings to us as a

compromise (though we did not let him know this). As he was explaining the various details of

his artwork, we encouraged him to write it down so he would not forget, and he did jot down a

few sentences. In practical classroom use, I think that I would simply try another activity if I find
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it is not working as well to pique student interest. Everything cannot be exciting and fun,

especially in public education, but my hope is that balance and variation coupled with high

expectations on my part will help keep students engaged (or at least interested). I have a

firsthand account from Demetrius about his sixth-grade reading teacher who he did not get along

with because he could sense that she did not care about him as an individual. As an education

student, I read and hear about how teacher attitude can make the biggest difference, but I think

we tend to forget how big of an impact it can actually make as we get older and begin to care

more about school intrinsically. Nonetheless, it was a sharp reminder hearing it from

Demetrius’s mouth: here was a student who could potentially be my own student one day, and he

was completely turned off from reading because of a teacher he had. No matter the age, students

are astute when it comes to reading their teachers, so it is vital to be conscious of the kind of

attitude I want to carry as an educator in the classroom.

I am not sure if my relationship with my students was influenced by some of the overall

themes of social justice raised by Dr. Muhammad at the beginning of the semester, but I was

certainly aware of the larger issues outside of the classroom that affected my students. It was

apparent that most of the students we worked with came from a vastly different socioeconomic

group than my partner and me, who are from predominately white, upper-middle class

neighborhoods in metro-Atlanta. I would have liked to explored these differences more and

picked literature more applicable to their situations and more empowering for them to read, but it

was easier to create reading and writing assignments based off of general interests and

comprehension because we never knew who was going to be working with us on any given day.

IV. Course Readings

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The one thing that the texts agree on is the necessity to constantly model reading and

writing strategies that I want my students to use. If I cannot do it myself, then I should not expect

my students to be able to do it. For example, I cannot recall when anyone ever physically or

verbally showed me how to prepare for a formal presentation, and I think a lot of people can

relate to this and will agree that this is one of the main reasons why public speaking can be so

intimidating. Even though standing up at the front of a classroom can probably be considered a

formal presentation, if I talk through this and let my students know exactly what I am doing and

how I am arriving at certain points, then they might have a better idea of how to do these tasks

on their own.

Another important aspect that I will take with me as I move on in my education career is to

be consistently thinking of different ways to transform my students into better equipped readers

and writers. At the end of the day, an important part of my job is to assist my students in

becoming effective critical thinkers—critical thinking that will hopefully stem from questioning

literature into questioning why things are the way they are in our societies and their realities. As

previously mentioned, one of my biggest concerns about teaching has been how to make the

mandated curriculum that students typically have little to no interest in resonate with them, so

something that really struck me was the way Content-Area Writing suggests that educators

should view writing as a tool that “prepares young people for involved, active citizenship”

(Daniels, Zemelman, & Steineke, 2007, p. 6). This directly relates back to the importance of

realizing what positions of power students occupy (or do not occupy) and how to address their

needs accordingly. To me, this suggestion seems like a great way to encourage my students to

engage in active reading and writing: the bottom line is that if they can find passion, reason, and

purpose in what they read and write about, then they will be more willing to participate.
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V. References

Beers, K. (2003). When kids can’t read, what teachers can do: A guide for teachers 6-12.

Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Daniels, H., Zemelman, S., & Steineke, N. (2007). Content-area writing: Every teacher's guide.

Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Donovan, L., & Pascale, L. (2012). Integrating the arts across the content areas. Huntington

Beach, CA: Shell Education.

* Names were changed to protect the identities of the individuals mentioned.