Myke Emal Ed Psych Blog

Current Teacher Behaviors 1. Identity vs Confusion is the psychosocial crisis I feel is most prevalent in the class. Since our writing unit is tackling relevant social issues, students are having to determine their stances on them. I've noticed that several of them are extremely opinionated, to the degree that it sometimes feels like they're exhibiting their opinions in order for the whole class to see who they are and where they stand on both the social issues they're writing about as well as the education system as a whole. Others are trying to sort out their feelings on an issue, but social expectations from their parents and previous teachers still seem to shape their opinions and identity. The class seems to be split between Foreclosure and Moratorium. The former because I can hear parents' opinions coming out of some students' mouths each day, and moratorium for the more loudly opinionated ones who don't seem completely confident in their statements, bu...

edTPA Prep Since our unit is centering around personal narratives and touchy subjects within society, the teacher spent some time in the "topic choosing" lesson to get to know students' background and what issues interested them. Many were drawn to topics that affected their personal community and culture, with many gravitating toward socioeconomic topics like wages and others drawn to issues of race and prejudice. The teacher asked many of these students how they felt about the issue to get their perspective and viewpoint, and always encouraged them to pursue and explore that perspective as we continue to work on the final story.  Those one-on-one talks are about the extent of how it's incorporated into instruction. I think the teacher is afraid of addressing controversial topics with the class as a whole since things can quickly devolve into aggressive name-calling or otherwise just get the class off track. Put in those personal talks, he always points out that ...

Current Teacher Behavior 1. My cooperating teacher usually takes the place of the More Knowledgeable Other since his lessons are usually centered around a "cheat sheet" handout that lists all the pertinent info of the day's writing skill which he proceeds to lecture on and demonstrate through model texts and his own writing done in front of the class. Though right now we're teaching fairly basic concepts that have been hammered into kids since grade school (dialogue, POV, etc), he treats them like new concepts. He seems to put a lot of his attention on the students' Zone of Proximal Development, as he doesn't leave a lot of time to what they already know/can learn on their own. It feels like he assumes they don't know/can't learn any of the concepts without his instruction, so I guess he would assess their ZPD is everything about the concept and doesn't wonder about what they can do on their own. He does provide lots of scaffolding by providing ...

Current Teacher Behaviors 1. During this narrative writing unit, the teacher introduces disequilibrium by asking further probing questions about a decently well-known concept (like what dialogue is). Students can explain on their own that dialogue is when different characters speak to each other, so they already have that knowledge accommodated. But when he asks how dialogue is formatted (using indents, apostrophes, adding detailed descriptors after the dialogue to explain how it is said or what the character saying it is doing, etc), students enter a state of disequilibrium. Students can accommodate the use of apostrophes since it's very familiar to them from the early grades of school. We help the students assimilate the new information by employing concrete examples. The teacher had two students come to the front and assigned them a character from the dialogue projected on the board, which spoke to the concrete operational stage. Each role was highlighted a separate color, an...

Current Teacher Behaviors My cooperating teacher uses daily handouts as formative assessments in which students practice the daily concept/skill. These are sometimes (but not always) turned in at the end of class so he can formally grade them and identify any patterns of mastery and struggle. When they are not turned in, he and I will walk around the room and informally assess how individual students are doing and if there are any points of confusion/questions. The informal assessment is fairly practical now since, with me in the picture, his workload is cut in half. On his own, I don't think he'd be able to visit every student each class and give instruction one-on-one feedback and additional instruction. These handouts always point towards the summative assessment, which in our current unit is a narrative story (performance assessment since students create the story and are only graded on components of writing rather than content of the story). The rubric for this story ...