In this section, I’ll predominantly speak about my experiences during my three weeks of fully taking over the classroom. During that time, I was responsible for lesson planning, creating slides for every day, teaching, classroom management, and updating students’ behavior calendars at the end of every day. I’m focusing specifically on this period because I was the closest to being a full-time teacher in the UTAP program while also still a student at the University of Pennsylvania. Using Emdin’s effective teaching strategy of curation, I have taken the time to watch back many of my videos to “identify practices that might[’ve] negatively affect[ed] [my] connections with students” (2016). Therefore, while my whole portfolio is based around making space for students to question my authority, I found, through looking back at my teaching, that there are several moments when I could’ve made questioning more routine and available to students.
Student Teaching
A student teacher is a person in the classroom who, arguably, has the most empathy for every person in the room. They are experiencing what it is to be a student with long days in school, homework, tests/papers, and feeling tired. I also gained much more insight into what it takes and means to be a teacher: planning, designing lessons, executing lessons, being on your feet all day, grading, classroom management, and much more. Student teachers do both at the same time! That also means we are learning double the amount. I’ve been a systematic observer in my placement and classes at Penn GSE. This portfolio is an accumulation of my observations from the year: observing events and behaviors as they occur and recording them based on a previously structured system.
The final section will be a deep dive into my role as a student teacher in my classroom. How it disrupted, positively and negatively, the traditional classroom dynamic shared between teacher and students and uncovered opportunities for balance within the classroom. My presence was an uncommon one in a traditional classroom setting. Typically, it is just the students and a teacher. However, by shifting these authority and power dynamics, everyone in the classroom was learning new ways to maneuver our unique situation of having a teacher, student-teacher, and students present in one classroom.
Who is asking the questions?
implementation of the two strategies began. I was stuck in the habit of spending too much time on anchor charts because I was calling on every student to add information to the chart: it was not sustainable. My mentor suggested I use popsicle sticks to call on only a handful of randomly selected students. When I began this strategy, the students questioned why everyone wasn’t getting a turn. I explained to them that it took a lot of time, and students who weren’t actively talking were beginning to check out. Students who were questioning why I had shifted my strategy of calling on them prompted a second strategy to arise, narrating my expectations. By saying, “I will only be calling on two students for this section,” I was setting student’s expectations. They were no longer confused or frustrated when their name didn’t get called on because they knew there were only two opportunities, for example, available at that moment. This artifact is the product of my coach and mentor questioning my methods of questioning the students, which led the class to question me as why a shift in strategy had occurred. There were many moments during my takeover when one party’s questioning caused a domino effect such as this one. All in all, the asking of questions seemed more balanced while I was student teaching. This stems from a shift in authority, which caused the chemistry of the classroom culture is in flux. The shift in power dynamics caused everyone to assume the role of asking questions to make sense of the ‘new normal’ we were all being faced with. All in all, the asking of questions seemed more balanced while I was student teaching. Students were questioning me, I was questioning them, and my mentor was questioning us both.
When I stepped into the role of leading the classroom during my takeover, the act of asking questions became more evenly spread out. Because my role as the authority figure was new to the classroom culture, everyone questioned one another more frequently, and it became a common practice. As the student teacher, I was asking questions to my CM, students, coach, and myself. It seems that “with every advanced degree comes further training in how to document and critique the world as it is rather than imagine it and create it as it could be” (Shalaby, 2017, p. 71). Amid all the questioning, I found myself getting lost in critiquing and struggled to imagine ways to combat obstacles I was facing as the lead teacher. My mentor and coach’s questioning of my practice got me out of that rut, which led to the development of two of my favorite teaching strategies: popsicle sticks and narrating my expectations. This anchor chart represents where the shift in my practice and
What is being taught?
The major lesson that was being taught to everyone when I was student teaching was that more scaffolds are needed to support student learning. By balancing, more evenly, the role of an authority figure with my mentor, she could allot more time to noting areas where students were struggling. As I stepped into my mentor’s role, I learned what
students needed versus what they actually received in a lot of different areas: materials, resources, time, and energy spent, on the teacher’s part, creating lessons that will serve students for the future. As an authority figure in the classroom, you should “aim to get it right with all youth [and] a productive starting point is to design teaching and learning to the group(s) of students who have been marginalized the most in society and within schools… we need frameworks that have been written by people of color and designed for children of color” (Muhammad, 2020, p. 11). To design teaching and learning for students, you must start by understanding what they are struggling with. Where is the disconnect? Because I took over the traditional role of authority figure, more time on my mentor’s part was spent pinpointing the areas where students needed scaffolding and support. Similarly, in the feedback I received from my coach regarding the last phonics lesson that she watched, she learned that a deeper level of consideration for scaffolding was present. This can be seen through her questions. In the lesson, we were working with whiteboards and dry-erase markers to
write letters and words. Some students quickly wrote the answers and then were left waiting for their fellow classmates to be ready. While other students were struggling to put a letter to the sound they were hearing. Meanwhile, I was taught that, scaffolds were not in place for any of the students during this portion of the lesson. My mentor’s questions teach me that not enough time is given to struggling students. Also, I need to find an attention grabber for those who do complete the work quickly while they wait for the whole class to be back on the same page. Since less authority was present in my mentor at the time, she was able to reflect on this lesson and come up with potential scaffolds that could support students during phonics. Throughout the takeover, everyone in the room learned of areas, that weren’t as apparent, where students need more support in the classroom. When the position of authority is shared across multiple people, the weight of the authoritarian position is lessened. This made room in my mentor’s time to spend designing and differentiating new teaching and learning opportunities that would more intricately scaffold lessons for our students.
How does relationship-building affect the presence of authority?
Prior to stepping into my role of authority for the takeover, I had to build a relationship with everyone in the room so that they would trust my ability to stand as an authority figure: strong relationships create trust, which shakes up conventional power dynamics. However, giving a person the trust to be the authority figure in a room takes time. Building relational capital with the students allows for a foundation of trust to be built up, “particularly when it comes to working toward equity, trust is the foundation of any warm demander interaction” (Safir, 2017, p. 2). In the months since I was switched from first grade to kindergarten, I’d taken every opportunity to build relationships with my students. The slow incline of my responsibilities in the classroom served my relationship and trust-building with the class well. During that time, we achieved a level of trust, respect, and appreciation for one another, which made my growing level of authority during the transition to the takeover more natural. Our relationships bred trust.
However, the week I began the ramp-up to my takeover, we welcomed sixteen new students and four new aids to our classroom. I had no time to build that relationship of trust with them before taking over. Therefore, it had to happen amid the takeover. My reflection on the first full week leading the classroom is to the left. It adds detail to my struggle with relationship-building, specifically with the new adults in the room, and the challenges I faced that helped me grow into the final two weeks of the takeover. There wasn’t a level of trust built up between myself and the other adults in the room at the start of my takeover that would garner their belief that I could struggle and overcome redirecting behaviors productively in the classroom. I had many experiences when the assistants in the classroom would talk over my teaching, and students began to pick up on their actions. I could see that when the SSAs would talk over my teaching, students would do it more frequently to me as well. For those newer students to my classroom, they were following suite with the aids they were familiar with. This resulted in relationship building with my new students to become more difficult than I had expected. I,
first, had to strengthen my relationships with the students so that the aids could see the respect I had for student learning and success. Then, the adults and I could work on our relationship of trust further down the line. Ultimately, I learned the importance of relationship-building among every member of the classroom is integral: between students and adults alike. I believe I didn’t spend enough time building relationships with all the adults in the room, which led to a disjointed relationship between classroom members during my takeover that I had not anticipated. Luckily, by early April, we had spent enough time building a relationship that gaining their trust in my authority had become less of a struggle!
Lingering positionality questions…
Does my presence negatively affect the students learning?
Does the shift in authority cause a ripple effect? Positive or negative?
Does the fact that I was only with K-1 starting in October and K-2 joined during the ramp-up of my takeover change how my authority was seen across the board?
Does the fact that I knew I’d be leaving soon affect the relationships I was building with K-2, knowing I’d only be in the classroom for another month after spring break?