Step 11: Halfway there

Recently a classmate of mine pointed out that we are now more than halfway through the program. I can both hardly believe how quickly time has passed, and also feel more comfortable here than I could have imagined after just  5 1/2 months in Philadelphia. In fact, it was one year ago this holiday season that I began seriously considering TEP. I vividly remember reading the former GA's blog during vacation, feeling both excited and intimidated by her account of her experience. As she described the numerous lessons she had designed and papers she had written, I could hardly imagine how I woud be able to do all of that within such a short amount of time - and yet, here I am at the end of the fall semester and I too have planned and led lessons, written papers, designed a website, and, most importantly, become deeply connected to a group of 32 first graders who have inspired me to be more dedicated than ever to this career path.

Announcing to the children in my class that this week would be my last in their class, I told them that as my first students, I would never forget them - and I truly believe that. They have impacted me more than I could dream of. Each cute face from the first day of school now has an individual personality, academic talents, classroom challenges and wonderful memories associated with it. As I wrote them each a goodbye letter, it was satisfying to realize that I had unique memories with each one. This, to me, is the luxury of student teaching - even though I was only in their classroom 2-3 days per week, I was able to spend my time in the classroom observing closely, and conferencing personally with all the kids. It is also the greatest lesson that I hope to take to my future classroom, for even though I will have many more responsibilities to juggle as the primary teacher, connecting with my students will be of utmost priority. 

Needless to say, today's goodbye was very difficult - and yet tomorrow I am going to meet the students in my future class. It is intimidating to me to think of jumping in to their classroom halfway through the year, and I am nervous about how I will "fit in". This makes me think of a picture book we read to the students during the first week of school called First Day Jitters. In it, the main character expresses great nervousness about her first day at a new school and throughout her story you expect that she is a student. The surprise comes when, at the end, you find out that she is the teacher! This will certainly be me; and yet it is with great fondness now that I remember the first day of school with my first graders, so I only hope that my relationships with my future third graders develop as rewardingly!

But first, vacation. One of the best things about my life in grad school as compared to last year's working schedule is the built-in vacation time! Our winter break is a bit shorter than other students in GSE as we return when the school district resumes. Even so, two weeks is a very appealing break right now! I'll be back during the first week of January. Until then, happy holidays!

Step 10: It takes village

Please excuse the short post this week: our classes as well as our first student teaching placements wrap up next week, and this Friday is the deadline for my Term III lesson design and analysis project. Yikes! I am up to my ears in notes, artifacts, and emotions regarding the small group lessons I taught, and I am now trying to reflect on them in order to take lessons from both the good and the bad aspects of these attempts into my future teaching.

Amidst this grad school work, I have continued to find tremendous value in the time I spend at my placement. In addition to my work with the kids, I’m also learning from the interactions between my classroom mentor and the parents.  Last week I had the opportunity to participate in parent-teacher conferences, and this experience helped me develop a greater appreciation of the role that a teacher gets to play in a child’s “village”. Throughout the term I have really admired the way that my classroom mentor has interacted with parents with both respect and frankness. She even invited parents on two occasions to come into the classroom to watch how she supports their children in learning to read. Many eagerly attended, hungry for strategies they could use at home, and she gave them tips such as how to make read-alouds more purposeful.  Similarly, at last week’s conferences I witnessed collaborative conversations about how to best support children. I have to admit I was a bit nervous about how some of the conferences would go, particularly those with parents of kids who are not doing well academically; but it was actually really nice to see how these parents did not get indignant or defensive - instead they were genuinely interested in how they could help their students do better. I appreciated how my mentor spoke with the parents (and even the students who often accompanied them) honestly, but also gently.  She emphasized student progress and seemed to truly believe that these students could continue to improve even if they’re not passing right now. It still does not quite sit right with me that, within our current system, many teachers must assign letter grades to children as young as my first graders; but if grades must exist, I would prefer they be spoken about as temporary indications of progress, rather than ultimate labels of a student’s ability. 

Step 9: Learning from experience

I'm pleased to report that I have officially finished planning and teaching my four small group lessons required for my integrated Term III project! As previously described, our main assignment this "quarter" is to plan one lesson each for math, literacy, science and social studies, and then to teach and subsequently analyze it. In brief, these were my topics for my lessons:

• Math: Finding the "missing part" in an addition story problem
• Literacy: Using context clues to figure out the meaning of an unfamiliar word
• Science: Engineers are problem solvers, and you can be one, too!
• Social Studies: What types of environments do people live in? How are they similar/different?

Even as recently as a month ago, the idea of coming up with these topics and a plan for how to teach them seemed incredibly daunting. I can honestly say I'm surprised by how naturally these lessons emerged simply out of my continued presence in the classroom and my sense of what my students needed to know/would enjoy learning. My Classroom Mentor has been very flexible about allowing me to choose and teach these on my own, and I am very grateful to the input of my Penn professors who helped me clarify and modify my ideas.


Our instructors all emphasized that the focus in these lessons should be on planning thoughtfully, and reflecting purposefully on our experiences. Fortunately, we will not be graded on our actual teaching. I say fortunately, because I will be the first to admit, some of my lessons did not go the way I expected! From timing (there is never enough of it!), to student responses (kids really do "say the darndest things!"), my lessons were anything but smooth; however they will certainly provide me with extensive material to reflect on! Each instructor has provided a slightly different framework through which we are supposed to examine our lessons, and together I think they are encouraging us to develop long-term skills in self-reflection, evaluation, and formative assessment. For example, in math, we are examining our lesson with regards to the discourse, tasks, norms and tools present; in social studies, the types of questions we ask take precedence; and in literacy, we are examining the alignment of our lessons with classroom objectives and state standards. All of these aspects are integral to student learning, and yet they are challenging to uphold in the fast paced-high environment of a school classroom. As I begin to look back on the videos I took of myself teaching, I realize how far I have to go in developing my practice, and feel grateful for this year of student teaching as an opportunity to really get the hands-on experience that teaching requires.

Step 8: Run fast, run far, run Philly!

Have I mentioned recently how much I love Philly? Nothing has affirmed my excitement about this great city as much as my experience this weekend at the Philadelphia Marathon. As I ran through the streets with 30,000 other runners in front of crowds at least double that size, my warm feelings toward this city swelled. From the Mayor’s send-off high fives, to the residents handing out tissues outside their homes, to the spectators who remained at the finish line even as slow-pokes like me rolled in many hours later, I witnessed the community commitment of the people of this city. Additionally, the route took us through the fascinating mix of landscapes that Philadelphia contains: over the course of 26.2 miles we passed grand museums; modern office buildings; historic monuments; prestigious universities; diverse neighborhoods; and more. In fact, throughout my training I have loved the opportunity that running has allowed for getting to know this new home. Philadelphia is remarkably approachable by foot, and I love that I now have a sense of how the remarkably different neighborhood landscapes fit together.

As Thanksgiving draws near, I also want to take this opportunity to express my gratitude for the new people in my life who are making this year not only useful to my future career, but also fun! In fact, among those wonderful runners and spectators were several of my TEP classmates! Despite the cold weather and lengthy time commitment, they came out with bright signs and warm smiles to get me and the other runners through the race. Despite the countless hours that we spend together at the GSE building, our cohort also chooses to do things together outside the classroom and I feel so lucky to be developing these relationships with future colleagues and friends!

Step 7: A week in the life

Over the course of the past week, I have had the pleasure of speaking with a few prospective students during GSE's open house and webchat (more of each of theses sessions to come, so keep an eye on http://www.gse.upenn.edu/admissions_financial to learn more about these events). These conversations have reminded me of how difficult it was to imagine what my day-to-day life in this program would look like: What would my schedule be like? Would I feel more like a student or a teacher? Would it feel like college, or like holding a job? So today I'm going to give you a taste of my weekly schedule in case these are questions on your mind, too.

As suggested above, my weekdays are generally pretty booked from around 8am until 7pm (Thursday is the only night when class gets out later than that); however, I have managed to find approximately 10 hours during the week to work at an on-campus work-study job (in addition to this GA job for which I'm blogging). In terms of the schoolwork that is required outside of class time, I have found it very doable to fit it in at night and during our occasional free periods during the day. For example, I am currently sitting in the GSE computer lab typing this between classes and will soon go finish my reading for this evening's literacy class.

In terms of how I feel in this "in-between" student role, it certainly is different than college. Instead, my courses feel more like professional development - the best ones, in my opinion, are those during which we call upon our own experiences in the classroom to understand a concept taught in class, and vice versa. Most of our assignments also require that we draw on student-teaching experiences rather than document-based research (as explained in previous posts on the integrated assignments for Term II and Term III). Therefore, these don't really feel like the papers that I wrote as an undergrad (and best of all, we have no tests!). Like college, however, I do consistently have work that I could/should be doing even after the "work day" is over - there is always more to read, write, or plan. I guess that's something that won't be likely to change as a teacher, though, so why not get back into the habit of it now?!

Step 6: A Community of Professionals

As I indicated in a previous post, one thing that is very important to me as a pre-service teacher is to feel as though I’m training to join a community of professionals. Without going too far into my rant on this topic, I believe that, in general, far too little credit is given to teachers in this country and it a goal of mine to elevate the teaching profession toward the status that it deserves. I feel very fortunate to be studying at a school whose Dean is a leader in this discussion on an international stage, and I am lucky to be surrounded by many who see teaching as truly intellectual work. 

In addition to those like-minded individuals I have found here in GSE, I am also excited for the opportunities I have to feel like part of a larger network of teaching professionals. Within the last week I was able to attend both a meeting of one of Philadelphia’s wonderful teacher networks (the Philadelphia Teachers’ Learning Cooperative) as well as the National Science Teachers’ Association area conference. In both of these situations I found my pen could hardly keep up with the suggestions and observations I wanted to be sure not to forget and I was humbled by the commitment these long-term teachers have to both improving their own practice, as well as supporting others’ development. The tremendous degree of the collaboration, resource sharing, and overall enthusiasm of other educators was inspiring, and I am proud to be joining their ranks.  

NSTA Conference Exhibit Hall Butterflies

Step 5: Planning Ahead

As I mentioned previously, our year in the Teacher Education Program is divided into five terms, each with a different focus. While we previously focused on the neighborhoods in which we teach (Term I) and the children in our classrooms (Term II), in Term III we shift our focus to pedagogy. This term we will be planning, teaching, and analyzing lessons in each of the subject areas we study (math, literacy, social studies and science). In preparation for these lessons, we are currently discussing the components of a quality lesson plan. The template that we use reflects the values of this program - a good lesson is not just based on the content it includes, but also its reflection of the context it is taught within, and the students to whom it is geared. For example, long before listing the activities we plan to use, we must reflect on the background knowledge that our students might bring to the lesson as well as the questions or challenges they might find in it.

I will admit that the idea of planning out lessons like this that will fill not just one hour of class but a full day, for approximately 180 days in a year is still incredibly daunting to me. However, my professors are doing a good job breaking this preliminary task down into manageable pieces, and they are also being realistic about the fact that as teachers in the future, we may not write such detailed plans for everything we teach. However, the considerations included in this template can guide our actions in the future.

I do not know yet what exactly I'll be teaching for my lessons this term - but I'll keep you posted!

Step 4: Learning for Understanding

As individuals who, ourselves, have been through many years of schooling, we inevitably bring to the classroom a plethora of experiences that might affect the way we understand and subsequently teach academic material to our students. A big emphasis of this program, therefore, involves reflecting on and evaluating those prior experiences such that we might be able to share the useful ones with our future students, and perhaps re-configure the less valuable ones.  The latter is most true for me in math. I will admit that I have very high self-proclaimed math anxiety, the roots of which I can trace back to somewhere around 9^th grade. Around this time I began to consider myself “not a math person;” yet despite this sense, I did just fine in math courses through high school. In college, however, my math self-esteem plummeted when I realized that my former strategies of memorizing and replicating previous problems would no longer suffice. Suddenly I questioned whether I had every truly learned math, and entering this program, I feared I did not have the math knowledge to adequately and accurately teach even my elementary students.

How lucky I am, therefore, to have Dr. Caroline Ebby as my Math Methods professor. Through this course so far, she has not only led me to reflect on the limitations of my previous mathematical knowledge, but also provided scaffolded ways to develop a more comprehensive understanding of basic mathematical concepts. Never has this been so clear as in our recent exploration of the fundamental meaning of our base-ten number system and it’s integral role in not only understanding place value, but also multiplication and all the algorithms that we were taught in order to “simplify” complex procedures. As it turns out, I believe I skipped directly to the algorithm stage of many mathematical procedures, and thus did not fully grasp their meaning. Dr. Ebby has helped me find the holes in my knowledge, and begin to fill them!

Furthermore, Dr. Ebby teaches with an emphasis on strategy, rather than solution and promotes math activities such as “number talks” which do the same. These short mental math activities prompt students to articulate how they got to their answer, and show them that there are many correct ways to reach a solution. I can only say that I wish I had learned math this way initially, and am grateful both personally to be developing these understandings now, and excited to be able to pass them along to my students.

Step 3: Student Teaching

I recently went home to California for a (too short) weekend visit, and while I was there I found myself answering the question, “How’s your program going?” very frequently. In reflecting on this, I noticed that I spoke with the most excitement about my student teaching placement, yet I have not told you, my blog readers, much if at all about this wonderful part of my life right now. So here goes…

This fall I have the pleasure of student teaching in a Philadelphia public school first grade classroom. I get to be there two full days, as well as occasional half days, each week, and while at first I was afraid that this would not be enough time to feel as though I was really part of the class, the kids as well as my mentor teacher have really welcomed and included me such that when I’m there, I forget that I am only a part-time fixture in their classroom. My role so far has been primarily to provide support for my mentor’s instruction (floating around to answer questions during independent work, for example), however I am increasingly taking on a larger instructional role. For example, as our class contains 31 students, we try as frequently as possible to break up into small groups. When this happens, I often take my own reading or math group where we focus on the particular skills that those students need to focus on. For example, on Monday I worked with a group of students who appeared to show readiness to move from the mathematical strategy of modeling quantities and counting all of the objects in an additive equation on to a more advanced strategy of “counting on” from an original quantity to account for the addition of a new amount in order to reach the total more quickly (more on these math strategies in a later blog). I have also begun leading occasional “number talks,” a quick mental math routine, with the full class to help the students develop number fluency. In these small-group and full-class exercises I get to apply the concepts we discuss in class, and get a first-hand understanding of the ways in which teaching is much harder than it looks!

As mentioned in last week’s post, we are about to begin Term III, which will focus on pedagogy. This means my instructional work in class will ramp up to the next level, too, as we will be designing lessons to teach in each subject area. Throughout the past few months our instructors have had us start to play with designing lessons in class, and I am looking forward to developing one that I can actually try out with my kids! Remind me of this enthusiasm later when I am stressed about teaching or writing about my lesson…

Until then, I will continue to enjoy the way in which being the student teacher allows me more flexibility to spend time focusing on one student at a time, observing the teacher, and reflecting on all of our interactions.

My first bulletin board! So proud of my first grade writers!

Step 2: Term 2 Integrated Assignment

Fast forwarding quite a bit from my previous post about the summer term, here in the Elementary/Middle Level cohort we are actually about to enter our final week of Term II. Although Penn GSE operates on a semester system and our courses generally follow this schedule, TEP's program is divided into five terms, each with a different focus. This term we focused on "Learners and Learning," and our culminating assignment is an inquiry-based examination of a single child in our student-teaching placement. Through observations as well as subject-specific interviews and activities we are attempting to develop an understanding of how this child makes sense of the world and the subjects he or she learns in school. My paper is due to five of my professors (field seminar, as well four methods courses) this week, so forgive me for keeping this post brief!

TEP curriculum grid

Although this paper is a long one by page count, I will admit that I am having quite a good time writing it. It is no secret that I have become very fond of "my student," and so analyzing our interactions and writing about him is really fun and rewarding. Today, for example, I was re-watching a video of an activity I did with him in which he predicted whether objects would sink or float, then dropped the objects in water to test his guesses; I found it so fascinating to see how he developed and adapted frameworks for his understanding given his limited knowledge of the properties of solids that make them float or sink. This project really invites us to use the luxury of spending a year as a student teacher to gain the skills and habits of a teacher researcher such that we can continue close observation and inquiry practices in our future classrooms even with the increased pressures that we will face when we are on our own.