Reflection 1: Our Own Styles of Communication

delete

Reflection 1-
How do our own
styles of communication affect our views of teaching, learning about teaching,
and actual work in schools?
My styles of communcation affect my views of teaching.  I am more of an active rather than passive communicator.  I believe in confrontation when appropriate and individual conversations.  I often will tell students to be quiet, listen, and basic classroom commands in a loud teaching voice.  I am not afraid to "get in the kid's faces".  I will stop all misbehavior when it occurs.  I have had to adapt certain strategies to cater to each classroom as they are all different and demonstrate different types of problems and challenges.  My "in-your-face" approach comes with certain positives and drawbacks. It is positive and addresses issues right then and there but it is not helpful to the student who does not do well under that pressure and repsond well to confrontation.  i need to learn to adapt different teaching strategies to different types of students.  i love the work I do at my school site and believe that everyday is a new day and a new learning experience.  i am just trying to get better everyday because that is what I demand of myself.  I learned that teaching is fluid and you need to take every situation and obstacle as they come and be ready to deal with them on the fly and on the spot and be able to think quick on your feet or else you fall flat on your face.  i communicate with the students the same way i have them communicate with themselves, through dialogues and challenging questions.
How do the readings connect to our ideas and
experiences with teaching and schools? 
The readings connect to our experiences and ideas with teaching and schools in many ways.  It gives meaning and reflection and analysis to the why these experiences occur and how to deal with them.  I believe that the book "Turning on Learning" addresses real-life problems our students face everyday because of their race, skin color, SES, class, gender, and status (disabled, etc.).  Our students are often labeled into these boxes and treated like a statistic later to be condemned and pitied on the late 10'o clock news.  i have realized that teaching in the inner city is extremely rewarding and that they are not like most the negative stereotypes out there about them.  Many students are ready and capable of leraning and this dispells many of the stereotypes against their ways of learning.  I believe that each of my students has the ability to be the best they can if they would first realize that themselves and strive for it everyday.

I have a few styles of communication that I use in the classroom. One of the strategies that I rely on the most is drawing pictures and diagrams on the board. I try to use a lot of my imagination to understand science, and I use drawings to project what I am thinking because words are simply not enough. Learning chemistry requires a lot of models and analogies, since the majority of the foundation for chemistry is nanoscopic. Being unable to interact at the atomic level has caused me to rely on drawings a lot for both teaching and learning chemistry. Another style of communication, one that I wish I could stop using, is making faces that are indicative of what I am thinking. For example, I cannot hide it very well when a student responds with a wrong answer. Every time I hear an incorrect answer, my face cringes or my brows raise. I do similar things when my students guess correctly and are unsure. I am hoping to be able to stop doing these things because they immediately indicate to the student whether they are right or wrong without requirign them to think more about their responses. I would like them to decide for themselves that they are right, or discover for themselves why they are wrong, without relying on reading my expressions all the time.

How do diverse students interact at your school sites? How do you find
race, gender, sexual identity, class, and/or language issues are affecting your
current work as teachers and educators?
The high school I am teaching at is
Stern Mass High School; it is composed of 97% Latin-American students.  Out of all my classes, I only have one
African American student that happens to have a language impediment.  This student is a very bright student,
and other students acknowledge that, but they also tend to discuss between
themselves the awkward facial expressions he makes or the quality of speech he
uses to communicate.  Students
could do a better job of incorporating the 3% minority of cultures into their
groups. 
The varying socio economic status
in my classrooms is unidentified because of the policy of wearing uniforms in class.  Students do observe what type of phone
they each have, their shoes, the cars their parents drop them off in, what
technology they bring to school (Ipad, laptops). These observations amongst
each other in my opinion have not made an impact on how the students interact
with each other. 
Most of my students come from the
surrounding area of East Los Angeles, according to the KIDS COUNT Data Book,
1/3 students come from a household where their parents are unemployed.  This means students are required to
work, required to help around the house, more burdens are placed on these
students, not to mention the lack of the basic necessities of food, clothing,
and proper living space and environment. 
This definitely affects my students in their classrooms. 

Reflection Prompt 1 –
How do our own styles of communication affect our views of teaching, learning
about teaching, and actual work in schools? How do the readings connect to our
ideas and experiences with teaching and schools?
 
How do our own styles of communication affect our views of teaching,
learning about teaching, and actual work in schools?
 
In the past my assertive communication skills have affected
me in a negative manner. My husband always quotes a marriage book we both read
when we discuss my way of communication, “its not what you say that’s wrongs,
it’s the way you say it”. Through the years I have tried to work on my
communications skills with others to help aid and build relationships. As a
student teacher I feel I try my best to monitor my tone, and expressions when
directing my students, or masking my disappointment with scores and lack of
motivation from their part. Yet, I have had the pleasure of developing a number
of different relationships with my students where they feel comfortable enough
to tell me when I have “attitude” or sound authoritative. The first time I
heard a comment like this from one of my advisory students, it through me back,
as I was really not trying to give him attitude/sounds authoritative. This
comment made me analyze my demeanor, body language, and facial expressions,
when addressing my students. Because part of my communication skills rely
heavily on my uncontrolled facial expressions, not just tone, it is
increasingly hard for me to hide my thoughts over a matter as my facial
expressions often give me away.
 
How do the readings connect to our ideas and experiences with teaching
and schools?
 
Grant & Sleether
Ch1 & Ch2 from the reading hit home in terms of current
experience with teaching. I teach Biology at LASGS where my mentor teacher is
one of the most easy going, accepting people, I have had the pleasure of
knowing. Because of his character he has developed a reputation among the students
and faculty at my school. When I first came into the classroom, my 10th
grade Biology students had already had him for 9th grade science,
and where well aware of his teaching strategies. Thus I came in as an unwanted
outsider. There was a strong sense of resistance form my students, and at times
it was hard not to take the resistance personal. As people came to observe me I
often got encouraging reports where they stated next year with my own classroom
it would be easier. They often compared my mentor and me as parents, where if
one parent said no the child simply goes and asks the other parent.
Gradually my situation has improved but the following quote
form Ch1, still burns in the back of my head.
“When the gap between teacher and student is not bridged,
learning gets ‘turned off.’  Motivation
to learn and to pass tests, including achievement tests wanes.  In upper grades, thoughts about leaving
school increase.  In these circumstances,
students are as much ‘pushed out’ of school as they drop out.  Symptoms of turned-off learning include
students’ seeming inabilities to grasp concepts, to exert effort, and to
display enthusiasm; repeated lateness or absence; boredom; avoidance; and
sloppy or poor quality work. 
Furthermore, gifted and talented students tend to underperform, doing
just enough to get by.  When students are
turned off, teaching feels like a chore or even a battle.” Page 3

Communication is important in the classroom. The teacher needs to find a way to communicate the content to the students in a way for them to understand it. This might be orally through lecture, visually through graphics and pictures, or through a kinesthetic activity. There are many instructional strategies that have been taught in the past year through the course work which help the teacher teach the content to all the students. I think growing up and attending schools were traditional teaching like lectures were common, I am more used to the typical old fashioned style of teaching. Although being in LAUTR and having been exposed to problem based learning, I am learning and applying other great ways to teach and communicate to students.

 
Being in this program has been in some ways contrary to the type of person that i can be. The first noticeable change was the amount of emotional involvement. The second was the way I communicate and the importance of clarity. There has been a realization that some problems with teaching a lesson is communicating the information that a students needs to acquire. This has been especially true with children with Individualized Educational Programs. I am fortunate enough to be involved in a field wher communicating a topic for discussion to a forum where nobody has been exposed to that type of information is common. This exposure has facilitated communicating the lessons that need to be taught. There have been many ideas thrown at us in this program and one of the ideas that comes to my mind is learning styles. Learning styles offers a way to communicate a lesson that expands the means of communication. Communication, for me, at times, has been something that I have struggled with. This is particularly true when it is a need to communicate the need for help to someone. This aspect of my personality has been contrary to what is needed to be an effective teacher. It is absolutely essential to harness the support from any and all resources and communicate with peers where ever possible. The other aspect of communication that I know to be important is student feedback. I have seen how important it is to communicate to students on their performance. Students need to know how well their doing and what they can do to improve. I believe that it is my duty to consistently update students on how they are doing in a timely fashion. I have seen the potential effects of not doing so. I hope to establish a systematic approach that offers student continual and relevant feedback in a timely manner, which can be an obstacle for some teachers.

Our communication styles
would have to affect our expectations for our students. It would seem natural
to expect from others the same sort of reactions or responses that you,
yourself would provide. This means in learning and teaching, teachers’ initial reaction
would be to treat the students as the teachers were treated, with the
expectation that students will respond as the teachers responded when in the
same position years earlier.
 The tricky thing about
teaching is making sure not to fall into this habit. To some extent it’s very
useful to remember how you learned. Once you know something, it’s easy to
forget the struggle involved in acquiring that information. Especially when the
same material is taught year after year, if a teacher forgets what was
undertaken to learn the material, she might easily find herself frustrated with
her students when it takes them a while to learn. For this reason it is useful
to be aware of how the material was initially learned.
 It’s also important to
remember that when the teacher learned the material for the first time, her
understanding of it probably was not at the same level that it is now. That
means even if she remembers finding the material easy, she may not have fully
understood it.
 In order to facilitate
students’ learning, a teacher needs to think about what it is the students
should be absorbing, and then must determine the best method for delivery,
understanding that some struggle is necessary.
 “Passively accepting the
status quo of any culture is thus inconsistent with this level of multicultural
education; simply substituting one myth for another contradicts its basic
assumptions because no group is inherently superior or more heroic than any
other.” – Sonia Nieto
This quote made more sense to
me yesterday when I selected it. I don’t know what it means right now. I think I
selected it because it made sense when I considered how my school is trying to
change the way our students think about gay people.
“… The overarching capitalist
principals of turning everything, including human beings and intangibles such
as love, into commodities (‘commodificiation”) for sale, and of maximizing
profits have been practiced at the expense of human life and human spirit, the
environment and whatever else necessary.” – Margo Okazawa-Rey
 I selected this quote because
we are introducing a lesson on human capital. Describing human capital can
sound pretty bad, but if we’re honest, we’re in the business of building human
capital. Right now most teachers would consider themselves unsuccessful if the market
value of their students is less than the average market value of a typical American.
It sounds gross to think of people in these terms, but that’s what we do. I am
getting a Master’s degree to make myself more valuable. I want my students to go
to college so they will be more valuable. I want my students to be valued at a
fair market price. This is the way our system works right now. 

Our job is to teach conduct, English and finally
content.  We will get measured by how the
students perform in the content area but the former two items are prerequisites
to the latter and will have a longer lasting effect on their futures.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Teaching content is relatively easy.  Teaching conduct is tough.   How we communicate as teachers in the
classroom is an important aspect of classroom management.  Ten months ago I had never heard the term
“classroom management”.  Now I realize it
is the precursor to creating an environment where teaching and learning can
occur. 

In regards to communication style it is more important how
you say it, rather than what you say. Body language is important and so your
tone of voice and voice inflection.  Many
people say things like it is a question instead of a command.  

Most importantly you must be consistent.  I have had problems with class management
when I am “acting” differently.  This
happens when I am being observed or when I get feedback regarding class management
and I over correct.   The students don’t react well to this
inconsistency. 

I’ve had three bad days where I questioned
whether it was worth it. You feel like you got things figured out and then you
feel like you don’t know anything.  There
is a reason that teachers don’t get paid well. 
There is no way you can get people to do this job for the pay.  But I would do it for nothing because I like
the way it makes me feel.  I am doing
something important.  Teaching is a
shortcut to the top of Maslow’s hierarchy. 
  At least that’s how I feel on
most days.