LESSON TWELVE: IT'S ALL ABOUT MAKING CONNECTIONS

22 January 2014: Day 12

LESSON TWELVE: IT’S ALL ABOUT MAKING CONNECTIONS

I repeated yesterday’s lesson plan today with the next two groups of sixth graders. The first group was considerably slower than yesterday’s students; the second group was in-between.

What was different was today I had my first observation by WGU Clinical Supervisor Hester Hill. Hester is a lovely lady with decades of experience as a teacher who is genuinely interested in helping me benefit as much as I can from my student teaching. Be that as it may, the fact that I was being observed and graded added a new level to my anxiety.

For the most part, things went smoothly—except that the students were quite hyper and unusually loud. I counted on the fact that Hester understands sixth grade behavior, and I plowed ahead.

The lesson was successful, with most students already seeing the benefits of using the graphic organizer for prewriting. They accomplished a good deal, and were justifiably proud of themselves in many cases.

Afterward, Hester and I discussed various classroom management techniques and ideas. She shared some great ideas with me and I look forward to implementing them.

Allison and I took some time at the beginning of the day and during lunch to plan for the eighth grade lesson. In light of yesterday’s “un-success,” we were both a little unsure how to go forward. Together, we came up with a plan: we would invite the students to pick up where we had left off the day before. We would remind them about U.S. symbols and invite them, individually, to come up with a symbol/logo/medallion to represent themselves. Depending on how it went, we would invite them to share their symbols, then move forward with the other information in the chapter. I had prepared a PowerPoint on famous artists of the time—a presentation of paintings, especially those of the Hudson River School artists. I also had videos of “Blackface” performances of some of the most popular songs of the day. I was going to show them the trailers for two films made based on popular literature of the time: Last of the Mohicans, and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

But when the lesson began, and the students started to work on coming up with words they would use to describe themselves, and symbols to capture those words, something happened. In a short while, they were really working on the project. They seemed to be sincerely interested in capturing something about themselves on paper. As they struggled to come up with descriptors and characteristics they hoped described themselves, they tentatively began reaching out to other students. They started to share what they had written, and ask for other students’ input. They wanted me to look over what they had written, and to tell them what characteristics or qualities I associated with them.

We had planned to stop the drawing portion of the activity relatively early, but for the first time in a while, the students were engaged. They were talking about symbolisms (including those on the American flag, Uncle Sam, and the Great Seal), about what they liked and didn’t like about themselves, about how they identified themselves (and how that related to Americans’ national identity). In the process, they began to see the things they had in common. They started to realize, as they opened up (just a little) to one another, that they were more alike than not.

LESSON TWELVE: IT’S ALL ABOUT MAKING CONNECTIONS

By the end of the lesson, connections had been made. Students realized that subcultures existed in the mid-nineteenth century, and they exist today. They connected the importance of symbols for countries, sports teams, groups, and individuals. They saw the connections created among the members of a group who saw or established a group identity.

More importantly, they connected with me as they opened up and shared things that are important to them, things they feel identify them. They connected with each other.

John Amos Comenius once wrote, “To teach means scarcely anything more than to show how things differ from one another in their different purposes, forms, and origins… Therefore, he who differentiates well teaches well.” When we confront the ways we are different, we see how we are the same. When we look at the things that divide us, we learn about the bridges that might connect us.

Comenius’ words apply to every discipline. Its application to history is obvious. But learning to write well is to differentiate between good and bad writing. Learning to play an instrument, sing, or master a sport are the same. It’s about connections—connecting students to facts, to one another, to their heroes and enemies, to their teachers and families. And most of all, connecting them to the world around them, and helping them to see the role they might play in it.

I love that about my job.