Jace Flores Student Teacher Blog

Category: Principled Teaching

Disciplining

Probably the least savory thing about teaching is disciplining, especially if you have to write up students that you like. My general philosophy with disciplining is I try to give the kids as many exit strategy opportunities as possible, as one may call it in geopolitical terms. With how important relationships are, writing up a kid feels awkward, it feels bad and it could very well sour something that was going fairly well up to that point. So I usually start off by trying to ignore it, maybe have a general class call of attention so that there is no need to single out kids. If the distractions or issues at hand continue then I’ll escalate to singling out kids to have their attention and cooperation. If that does not work, that is when I will get to writing up kids. Now I have had only one day where it felt necessary to write up kids, and the above picture is an example of a log I did for a student whose information has been redacted as you can see. I gave them every opportunity to not have to deal with a write up, the opportunities were squandered and the punishment was meted. While admittedly there was some catharsis, I mostly felt negative about the whole thing, because these are kids I like. But I think this illustrates the importance of good relationships with clear student-teacher boundaries.

December 14, 2024
Grading

I think there is no thing both kids and parents are sensitive to then grades. It makes sense, after all these little data points control the outcomes these students have in their academic career. Each number put in nudges each kid’s future in one direction or another. So grading is a very important thing that in my experience requires both a formulaic side and a nuanced side to keep things reasonable for what the kids receive. For most assignments the foundation of my approach was to set up a basic formula.

For instance, lets say an assignment is worth 10 points and that assignment had 5 questions. Each question is worth 2 points, and for each question the kid answered adequately they get 2 points. This I found to be simple yet effective enough to be grading ~90 sheets a day. However, nuances are required. Say a kid is SS. Then it is reasonable to not expect all 5 questions to be answered and instead grade them on, say, 2-3 questions (guiding them to which questions are most important of course). Or if there was simply not enough time to reasonably expect the kids to get to all 5, then I would grade on 3-4 questions. There may also be personal modifications. If a kid does not get to all the questions but participated well in a class discussion or warmup, it doesn’t hurt to give them a point or two. Or if a kid is having a bad day, why make their day worse with a 0?

In consultation with Brian, this grading schematic proved to work well in effectively grading the kids based on various factors, with nothing unjustified. If a kid got a 0, I could easily explain why. If a kid got a 10, I could also easily explain why. There were plenty of opportunities for the kids to make up work as well and boost their grade. A low grade was not necessarily final.

December 11, 2024
Behind The Scenes: Post-Lesson Conversations

Something that happens regularly after a lesson is done and Brian and I have time is we reflect on the lesson. I myself am a very self reflective person and constantly calculate in my mind what things have gone well, what things are permissible if not necessarily optimal (perhaps a slight watering of things down for better understanding or ability for students to do it) and what things plain did not go well. Brian and I will discuss these different things and he will either pitch his own ideas or I will pitch mine on further strengthening the lesson. Lately I have been in a pretty good flow but particularly in the first weeks of student teaching these conversations were invaluable in strengthening my lesson plans to better achieve their overall purpose. Importantly, this feedback was incorporated immediately so that for the next period I taught they would have a much better and effective learning experience. This did create a humorous situation where one period served as a guinea pig and the other had a more effective lesson. Thankfully the periods alternated on when I had them first so there was equality in who kinda got the short end of the stick. Nevertheless, these conversations were instrumental to the stride that I think has been achieved lately, and hopefully in the long run.

November 18, 2024