How do you teach 8th graders literary terms? Onomatopeia, personification, metaphor/simile, and the list goes on. I hardly remember the terms sometimes. How do I teach them these terms so that they can retain them? It takes repetition--do I cycle through my entire curriculum four times a year? That would be ideal, but not realistic. Then I'm supposed to teach them grammar, plus writing, plus reading? And half of them aren't even at 8th grade level: there are ELL's, lazy students, transfers, etc. And I have to get them to the point where they can pass the CSAP? Oy! I think I'll stick with teaching them to think. Maybe that's the strategy I need to start with. If a student can think, s/he can do anything.

Over the last two weeks, I have been faithfully observing Mrs. Garcia and the kids in her classroom. The majority of her students are hispanic, some are ELLs, some aren't. Their heights range from 4 feet to 6 feet. At 12 and 13, they already have swearing habits; most don't like to listen and most don't like school, especially reading and grammar. Mrs. Garcia consistently challenges these students to expect more of themselves. I haven't observed a day where she didn't give them homework. She separates the students who need to be separated and does a pretty good job of keeping most of the engaged, which still requires that you repeat yourself two or three extra times.
I am challenged mostly with the kids' attitudes. They especially don't want to listen to me because I'm not the teacher. When they say that I usually shock them by saying that they are correct--I'm not the teacher, but I do want to see them learn and not distracting to themselves or to others. I constantly think about what I would do if I was the teacher, though. The students don't have to listen, but if they don't what am I supposed to do? There are few consequences for trouble-makers in the classroom. That is the #1 thing I'm going to have to figure out before I start teaching--discipline. I have to know the rules, follow through with them, and not be intimidated; plus I'm supposed to teach! I don't know how some teachers do it.

My first week of observations

I am observing an 8-grade Reading/Language Arts classroom. As I am from Washington State, I don't know a whole lot about the Colorado public education system, but Ms. Linda Garcia (my classroom teacher) has enlightened me on a few things and also on a few "tricks of the trade."

The state, it seems, has really buckled down on getting kids to read, so they have this "Accelerated Reader" program with certain novels the kids can read and computerized tests to assess their comprehension. Very interesting. Ms. Garcia has her students complete one book and a test every month--a big feat for an eighth grader, but very good for them. The state has also mandated that Junior highers read the book, "The Outsiders," as it deals with many of the social issues that students daily deal with. I haven't read it yet, but I hope to borrow one and read it soon.

The kids seem to respect Ms. Garcia quite a bit, so I'm glad that I got put in her classroom. She also has a lot of strategies that I can learn from. She gives the kids cartoon vocabulary and has them write down the words and make sentences out of them--that exercise includes many different learners from visual to kinesthetic. A simple strategy she suggested, also, is to write down the names of students, who have missed a class(es) and subsequently have missed homework, on the homework sheets so that I don't have to remember later on what homework they missed. It's little things like that that are good to know ahead of time.

All in all, observation is going well. I definately like the kids and they definately have multiple struggles from English-language learning to attitudes, but that's the challenge of the job!

On "Tough Choices or Tough Times"

I really enjoyed this article, I have to say. For a while I have been thinking that the structure of the public education system needs to be torn down and rebuilt and all of the sudden this article comes into my hands. I don't know how much math the author's done or how much research he's done, probably a good amount, but he makes some big claims so I'm not completely convinced. But I liked it enough that I sent copies to a teacher ed student, a college professor, and the director of Upward Bound, all in Omak, WA. The college professor said that she might have her students read it in her Social Problems class - I think that if we spread the message it will multiply because people are ready for change. I don't know how perfect the plan is, but it's a start to trying to better our educational system.