Identity

To support my students' identity development, I will: 

• Read literature with diverse characters and authors and make sure to point out different career choices.
• Invite guest speakers who relate the the theme of the literature we are reading to talk about their professions.
• Encourage them to talk to school counselors and invite the counselors into my classroom on a regular basis so the students will be familiar with them.
• Encourage service projects at organizations that students have interest in. For example, if a student is considering becoming a veterinarian  I would encourage him or her to volunteer at the humane society or animal shelter.
• Notice and discuss trends and fads that my students are following.
• Have clear consequences for undesirable behavior.
• Give students examples of what I expect from them by showing them previous students' work that has been done well.
• Criticize undesirable behaviors and never criticize the person who does that behavior.

(most of these ideas are from pg. 106 in Educational Psychology by Anita Woolfolk)

Differentiation

When teaching literature I want to teach based on themes rather than teaching specific texts. To differentiate for readiness I will have literature circles (groups) where students will be reading the same theme but different texts based on their own reading level. For example, if we are talking about the American dream, some students could read Of Mice and Men, others could read The Great Gatsby and others could read The Catcher in the Rye. Students could even suggest their own books based on the theme which would also differentiate for profile/affect. By using groups to differentiate for readiness in reading, each student will grasp the overall concept and theme but at an appropriate level for own skills.

Piaget in my Classroom

To teach analysis of a story at a concrete level I would find a story that the students could relate directly to. The story would have a teenage protagonist dealing with a problem with friends. The students would understand the analysis of the story because it would be just like something that they have dealt with in their own lives. To create disequilibrium I would make sure the story had the protagonist do something different than is typical for my students to do. The students would at first assimilate the information about what the character in the story is doing because it is the same as what they would do. After the disequilibrium of the character doing something that my students probably wouldn't do, I will have them act out the situation for themselves to help them accommodate.

To add to the formal level I would present different hypothetical situations and have them hypothesize how to solve the imaginary problem. 

Review #1

1. What are you doing well? I am coming to class with a growth mindset and I am doing the field work well.
2. What are you not doing well? I'm not reading or filling out the study guides before class and it is harder for me to understand what is going on because of it. 
3. Are you making sufficient progress on your goals? I am doing well connecting with teenagers more because I understand what is happening with their brains. I need to work on the assessment inventory part of class more but it's hard because although it relates to what we talk about, nothing is due until the end of the semester and I am a notorious procrastinator. I am at a higher than normal stress level which means I am surviving but definitely not thriving. I do think I am becoming a more efficient learner and a better teacher.
4. List specific things you need to change in order to meet your goals. I need to change my study habits (or lack there-of) by doing the reading and filling out the study-guides before class. I can do this by taking small chunks of time so I don't get overwhelmed and by reminding myself that I can do this! In order to be less stressed I need to stay on top of my work instead of taking a relaxing break which ends up putting me farther behind and results in more stress.
5. How is your motivation? Are you focusing on mastery or performance goals? Does anything need to change? My motivation is good. I really like the subject material and I want to know it. I feel like what we are learning will make me a better teacher and a well rounded person. It will also make me more compassionate to people I otherwise may have been frustrated with. I want to learn everything I can but my time management is preventing that so I need to change how I study and make sure I can gain as much insight as possible instead of being rushed and doing the minimum to fulfill assignments.
6. How is your field experience going? Name at least one take-away from your field experience to this point. My field experience is going well. I am doing all my hours this week, spending all my free time at Timpview. I have taken-away the importance of knowing my students strengths and allowing them to use the areas of multiple intelligences where they excel to collaborate with classmates.
7. What can I (Dr. Cox) do to improve your learning in this course? I think you're doing great. I just wish we had more time. Everything is so rushed with the short summer semester.

Intelligence

At the beginning of class I defined intelligence as a changeable level of knowledge and problem solving skills. In English I will have my students do the following to develop emotional intelligence:

• Write personal journals with prompts about their feelings that day to help them recognize their own emotions.
• Brainstorm strategies for characters in the books that we read to manage emotions in specific situations and talk about ways to transfer that knowledge to similar situations in their own lives so that they can manage their own emotions.
• Set goals for the class that are the same or different from my goals for them and make a plan to reach those goals through self motivation. 
• In discussions when responding to others' comments students will show that they recognize others' emotions by saying "(student's name) feels (emotion) about (topic discussed). I can tell because (reason for thinking the other student feels that way)." i.e. "Emily feels angry about racism. I can tell because when she was talking about what happened to Tom in To Kill a Mockingbird her face got red and the volume of her speech was raised. She also used strong words about the scene in the book."
• Brainstorm positive ways to handle relationships and discuss them with a partner. Students will update the list monthly and continue to talk about ideas with classmates.

Course Contract

• My goals for this course include learning how to best connect with teenagers, how to vary assessment appropriately to meet my objectives, and to survive such a short semester without too much stress. 
• Two long term goals that this course may assist me with are becoming a more efficient learner and becoming a good teacher.
• Weekends will be my primary time to prepare for this course. I will do the readings and study guides for the following week on Friday. On the Saturday I will work on the forms of assessment that we covered during the week to compile at the end of the semester into the key assignment. I will collaborate with Anne using Googledocs. I will also work on any major papers during the weekend. On Monday and Wednesday after 11 I will do my field experience because those are the times I am not in class. I will also take care of any small assignments that come up during the week that I didn't know about prior to the weekend on Mondays and Wednesdays.
• A few strategies that I will use to understand the material are interactive reading (making sure to look things up online that I don't understand from the book), and spreading out my field experience. I'm going to look for a specific thing that relates to what I've been learning each time I observe, and if there's not something that relates I will study the information regarding the journal question I answer before I observe so I know exactly what I'm looking for. When I am reading the text I will use Ready, Read, Reduce, Retain strategies that we learned in class.
• If I do not understand a topic I will Google it. Hopefully with my prior knowledge of psychology and a well written textbook I'll be able to understand everything. I will ask my classmates before class if they had trouble with the same concept and if there are a lot of us that don't understand it we will ask our awesome teacher. If I'm the only one who doesn't understand it after exhausting other resources I will go to office hours or ask before or after class.
• I will reach my goals in this course by being an organized, engaged, hard working, low-stress student who asks questions and uses resources effectively.

All About ME!

I am an English Education major. I have a prior bachelors degree in Economics from the University of Utah. I came back to school because I need to have a career that I am passionate about, and I am passionate about teaching English. I had really good English teachers throughout middle and high school and they inspired me to teach others. I have two younger brothers and a best friend who were not as lucky to have amazing teachers and hated their English classes. I'm hoping to save other students from having a bad educational experience. According to vark-learn.com I am

• Visual: 10
• Aural: 5
• Read/Write: 9
• Kinesthetic: 8

I always thought I was primarily a visual learner so it was interesting to find out that I have so much Read/Write and Kinesthetic in me too.