Happy Sunday, everyone!
I am currently student teaching in one of Allendale High School's resource rooms, and I noticed that students and teachers alike waste a lot of time during the day. The most time is wasted at the beginning of class. My CT stands in the hallway during transition times to talk with students and other staff. However, he consistently stays in the hallway 3-5 minutes after the bell rings to continue chatting with someone. The students during that time do not prepare their materials for class but simply chat and play on their phones. By the time my CT enters the room and the students get their work out, ten minutes of the period have been wasted.
When I asked my CT what he felt the biggest time waster is for teachers, he said making lesson plans. He said that he creates a general roadmap of where he wants to go with his students, but he feels that a day-to-day plan is unnecessary, especially when he is unsure how students will grasp the topic introduced in the lesson. A few years ago the teachers at Allendale High School were required to send the principal copies of all their lesson plans for the week and my CT hated it. He felt that was the biggest building level operation that wasted his time. My CT wanted to feel that he could be flexible with his students which is hard to do when there were daily, step-by-step lesson plans to follow that were being monitored by administrators. Instead of wasting time in both of these tasks, my CT said he would rather plan discussion topics that focus around becoming an adult for his students.
I am currently student teaching in one of Allendale High School's resource rooms, and I noticed that students and teachers alike waste a lot of time during the day. The most time is wasted at the beginning of class. My CT stands in the hallway during transition times to talk with students and other staff. However, he consistently stays in the hallway 3-5 minutes after the bell rings to continue chatting with someone. The students during that time do not prepare their materials for class but simply chat and play on their phones. By the time my CT enters the room and the students get their work out, ten minutes of the period have been wasted. When I asked my CT what he felt the biggest time waster is for teachers, he said making lesson plans. He said that he creates a general roadmap of where he wants to go with his students, but he feels that a day-to-day plan is unnecessary, especially when he is unsure how students will grasp the topic introduced in the lesson. A few years ago the teachers at Allendale High School were required to send the principal copies of all their lesson plans for the week and my CT hated it. He felt that was the biggest building level operation that wasted his time. My CT wanted to feel that he could be flexible with his students which is hard to do when there were daily, step-by-step lesson plans to follow that were being monitored by administrators. Instead of wasting time in both of these tasks, my CT said he would rather plan discussion topics that focus around becoming an adult for his students.
I am also placed in a high school classroom where a lot of time is wasted. I feel the biggest distraction and time waster are the phones. There are no strict rules in the classroom, which allows students to have their phones to listen to music and whatever else they do. Also, if the daily lesson or assignment does not take the whole class period, which seems to happen a lot, the students have time to chat and use their phones. I wonder how many other high school special education classrooms have similar issues?
ReplyDeleteI think a lot of them do. I just switched placements from one resource room in Allendale High School to another, and cell phones were a huge distraction in both rooms. Will your CT allow you to set the rules when you take over the class? Maybe you could limit them? My first one said no and my new one said I could set my own rules. I think I will only allow cell phones out during independent work time and I plan to incorporate cell phone use in my lessons to gauge interest in my lessons as well. To be fair, I cannot sit still for 70 minutes and often break up my homework assignments and class activities by looking at my cellphone, so I do not want to take that away from my students since those mini breaks prove so beneficial to me.
DeleteI definitely think that socializing in the morning is a good thing at the high school level. It's a good opportunity to build rapport with your students, but I can see how 3-5 late can add up over a year.
ReplyDeleteI can see how turning in your lesson plans can be very time consuming, and for a teacher who has everything planned out it can seem tedious. But, you also cannot assume that other teachers are doing their jobs correctly and are prepared for instruction every day. It is just the job of an administrator to make sure that all of the students in the school are receiving the same quality of education. It is okay to adjust your lesson plan afterwards to the needs of the students, but it is also good to have a plan for if they grasp all of the concepts.
Absolutely! I think it is especially important for new teachers to check in with the administrators about their lesson planning. My CT was just upset, I believe, because he as been teaching over 25 years and felt that he should have been trusted at that point. Then again, I do not think you can only ask some but not all teachers to turn in their plans.
DeleteI wonder if a big part of the problem was that all of this "turning in lesson plans" business happened before gmail and google drive became so popular? It would be much easier to share something with an administrator and get comments on it via google drive than email. A lot of the teachers I know use google drive anyway to store their lesson plans, so it would not be a huge problem to share the folder with an administrator. At least at Allendale High School I don't think it would be a big deal; it seems like a relaxed environment regarding contact between the staff. I got an email account from my placement today and had over 60 emails in there. A few of them were not even remotely professional and one actually contained profanity, sent to all of the teachers, in response to a well-liked teacher announcing that he would be leaving the school in a week.
Requiring lesson plans, are, um, well, [holding back]. And you're correct, things change in the moment (that's called adjusting instruction). As for the hallway duty, yes, that can be counterproductive. While we're usually required to monitor in the hallway, it's a matter of getting down to business.
ReplyDeleteCell phones are tricky. They're not going away, and banning them simply is a non-issue anymore. (Teachers do a poor job of modeling this...just check out staff meetings...or your classmates in your current classes). However, clear expectations are your best bet, along with modeling correct behavior.
Good point on lesson plans and Google Drive. It'd be easy to share files on a weekly basis, or just give the admin access to your lesson plan folder (then ask them questions to determine whether they were indeed read).
Thank you for the feedback! I have noticed poor cell phone modeling as well in my placement. Several times I see students and teachers on their phones while the other one is speaking and vice versa. Maybe on the first days of school and trimester a cell phone etiquette lesson would be appropriate. I am assuming there are a bunch of resources online for that.
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