Response for Class on 2/14

I have always hated group projects. It doesn't matter who was in my group, I hated that my grade depended on other people's effort. In high school, I had a few teachers who loved group projects just about as much as everyone else hated them. This meant that we did them often, leaving most of us frustrated. I do remember, though, that there was one kind of group project that I didn't mind. Sometimes, my teachers would split us into groups to teach a section of whatever unit we were on at the time. We had complete control over how to teach the information, how to engage our classmates, and how to test them on what they learned.

The chapter on co-teaching reminded me of this style of group project I did in high school. In the chapter, the author makes a point that when the students are able to teach the class, the teacher gets to see how the students learn best. I think that is such a profound idea, that "the teacher cannot fully meet the needs of students unless the students have an opportunity to show the teacher what they need and then demonstrate what good teaching looks like for them." Many times, having a classmate explain a difficult concept to me helped me more than listening to the teacher repeat himself/herself over and over again. Students will approach teaching by using how they learn to guide them. It allows students to take responsibility of their learning and experience what it is like to be the expert.

In my own experience, I know that I remember things better if I have taught them. Physics was a particularly challenging course senior year. On nights before tests, some of my classmates would get together to have a study session. Often, they asked me to explain different concepts that they didn't understand when our teacher first explained it to us. In taking on the role of the teacher, I was able to better the understanding of my classmates as well as ingraining the information into my own memory.

Not only does this form of co-teaching help the students to better understand the material, but it helps the teacher to see what the students need more of to be successful. I never considered that this was a reason my teachers had us teach parts of units. The idea that teachers could learn from us was not something that was emphasized. Now, I learn a lot from the students I teach; each group gives me more ideas on how to present information, plan assessments, and manage behavior. To be a good teacher, you must also be open to being taught.

The Gallagher chapter discusses the idea of choice in writing. When students are able to have choice, they will write more passionately. I definitely agree with his position. There have been times when a topic was assigned and my writing wasn't as good as it could have been because I cared very little about the topic. I also understand the importance of the standards that teachers must incorporate into their lesson plans/curriculum. I get it. Still, there are many ways that you can give students a choice while meeting the standards.

I really enjoyed reading Gallagher's ideas for incorporating choice into writing assignments. I think the section about "boring topics" was most interesting: there is no such thing as a boring topic. If you can get your students to think deeper about seemingly mundane topics, they will take ownership of their writing because they have developed their own angle to the paper. Part of getting students to enjoy writing is to get them to take ownership of their own ideas.

Christensen's chapter about narrative writing was extremely insightful. I personally believe that narrative writing is just as valuable as essay writing. A narrative is a place to begin teaching about literary analysis. If students can understand concepts in the context of their own writing, it will make it so much easier to understand in another's work.

When Christensen described her method of having her students color-code the literary tools they implemented in their writing, I couldn't get over what a good idea that was. It made me want to print out some of the pieces I've been working on and give them the same treatment! To visually show students the important parts of narrative writing is significant. So many students are visual learners, so an exercise like this can make all the difference in their growth as writers.

The readings for this week gave me more tools for my educator's tool box. I can see the benefit in including students in their learning, and allowing them to experience a role reversal. I understand how important it is to allow my students the luxury of choice whenever possible, that doing so will fuel their writing with passion. I now have a new way to give support to my visual learners, helping them to put literary tools in context, to see what writing looks like with them and without them. All of these techniques are preparing me to become a better teacher, and they are helping me to improve things in my own writing as well.