This was an interesting course and not what I expected at all. It was quite interesting trying to relate these “off topics” to teaching. Fashion, design, photography…who would say, “Oh yeah, this reminds me of the time in my classroom that….”? Well, I have to say, in the course of this class, I found myself relating these topics quite a bit! This class really opened my eyes to different forms of teaching. This is exactly what I expect out of a class; Material to look at the way I teach and to reflect how I can change myself to meet my students’ needs.
We looked first at the imaginative bridges from movies and television to teaching. This was my first experience at trying to connect these seemingly unrelated topics. I had to think hard about this connection and I reread the articles that were assigned. Finally I looked at the art of movie making as a whole. I looked at the actors, directors, stagehands, etc. When I was able to step back this far I found a connection! I looked at the students as the actors and myself at the director. I even looked at the para-pros, special education teacher and other teachers throughout the school as the stagehands or the other workers behind the scenes that make everything come together. I was starting to get the hang of this imaginative bridges thing! I saw that I was directing all of my actors through their scenes of my lesson. If I wanted my lesson to be successful I had to direct them.
I mentioned in my blog about architecture relating to teaching in two ways: good support structure and being long lasting. Having a good support structure in a building is what good architecture is all about. The idea is the same for teaching. At my school we have a good support structure from the principal all the way to the part time Title 1 aids and child care workers. My school is small, K-8 with 150 students. We have nine teachers, and 5 classrooms. I find that it is so easy to support each other and it works the other way around. I find myself going to the 5/6 grade teacher to ask her questions about how she taught a certain math concept to her former students who are now in my classroom. I have some of my advanced readers help struggling readers in the lower grades. We wouldn’t be able to do any of this without the support of our principal who looks for ways to have all of the teachers on the same page and working together. I think that if this support system wasn’t in place I wouldn’t be able to do my job as efficiently. We support each other naturally so it was cool to look through my NDCE goggles to see this connection.
The biggest relationship I found was with the music and hook module. I found so many connections with my class. One I already talked about was connecting the John Brown blurb in their textbook to the actual song I found on Youtube. Throughout the history lesson of the Civil War I found different songs I could incorporate into my lessons to make them more interesting and compelling. I think the different ways I incorporated music and other video clips really helped the students interact and understand the material more. I saw their homework answers become more complete and thoughtful. At the end of the chapter they took a test and there was even a slight improvement in the grades. I really think I interested some of the students that weren’t really moved by the standard reading in the textbook. I can’t wait to see what other connections I can make for the upcoming chapters. I’ve found a song from “Our American Cousin,” the play that Lincoln was watching when he was shot. This may be a profound connection to our reading after Spring Break about Lincoln’s assassination.
Lastly, the module about fashion was really fun. I love WNTW so it was cool to already have some background knowledge of the show. Again I talked briefly about this in my blog but I can expand some more here. The poetry unit is still going strong in our classroom. This connection was easily made because Rachel (my partner teacher) came into this unit with new eyes. This is her first year and she really likes poetry on her own. She had so many different ideas that it seemed every day the students were doing something new with poetry. I think this is an important point because the students never had time to be bored. The students are researching poets and are trying to connect with them. They are also making connections between the poets’ lives and the style, format and content of the poems they write. It’s great that Rachel already has great insight into a compelling experience.
This course really made me look at outside sources I could pull in to make my lessons more meaningful and compelling for my students. I think having us find the connection made it more personal to us. I was able to find the connections in my own way. I was able to use my own classroom and use the material in a way I thought was most helpful. I can't wait to continue to use these experiences throughout my teaching career.
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