The Act of Feeding
By Amber Ricketts
During my year long student teaching experience at Michigan State University I made the decision that my current knowledge in teaching was not good enough. Though I had wonderful experiences, and knowledge of educational theories, I needed more, and thus I decided to enroll in the Master of Arts program in Education. While I was completing my program the concentration area which I chose to study was literacy. On the verge of starting a new second grade teaching position I really felt ill-prepared in teaching second graders how to read, comprehend, and how to think for themselves. Though I knew about morphemes, phonemes, phoneme segmentation, and blending phonemes, amongst a list of many other key terms I did not know how my knowledge of those areas and an assortment of other subject matter would translate over into the classroom.
Nevertheless, throughout the course of my graduate degree I learned valuable skills which I will take with me throughout life. I gained insight on how to teach decoding skills, how to help students make connections with text, flip-sounds, and write about the things that were meaningful to them; instead of some random prompt they felt so disconnected from. Meaning to them was writing about their seventh birthday, the time their fifth tooth fell out in class, and the time they got to hang out with their dad, by which they had not seen in years. Through the process of teaching them I learned. I learned that I had to be willing to try out the strategies which I was introducing them too, and that it was okay to fall at times, but that it was never okay for me to give up. It was through perseverance and determination that I learned how to reach my students, uplift them in their struggles, and then personally ask for help when I was unsure of the answers.
Along the course of completing my Master's program there were many courses which touched me on a personal level, driving me to research more, understand more, and see how that understanding related to the real world. One of the first classes I took which transferred over into my Master's coursework was a course (Te 802) which concentrated on reflecting and inquiry within technology. More than just reflection and inquiry it concentrated on literacy, what I deemed to be important in literacy and some of the best practices for teaching my students how to become lifelong literacy learners. Within this class I learned about authenticity and building relationships with my children. Literacy wasn’t just how well my students could read and write, but it was how their life influenced the things they read and wrote about. It had everything to do with the emotions, the emotions which could be brought to life if a teacher really knew her students. During this course I really got to know two students who really struggled with reading and writing, one of which was on a track to be tested for special education services. In delving into their lives through authentic activities I got to know my students, their personal lives, their lack of attention at home, and how they felt about life and school. In doing so their writing improved, their school work improved, and their relationship with me also improved to the point where they were so open and ready to take in new knowledge. That experience alone showed me that in order to be a better teacher I would have to know my students and be totally invested in their lives and future potential.
As I got farther and farther into my Master's program I enrolled in a class (Ed 800) which focused on concepts of educational inquiry. Unbeknownst to me what we were going to discuss I went into this class lacking the confidence in myself as an educational theorist. Yet, taking this class allowed for me to question my own skills. It allowed for me to ask questions: what is meaning? Who makes it? How do we inform our instruction from it? In doing so I realized that theory started in the form of questioning. Asking questions and making sense of those questions. Within this class I was given the opportunity to read a work by Vivian Paley titled, The Girl with the Brown Crayon. In reading this book I found that the author really struggled with getting her students to be more purposeful in their reading. Not only did she want her students to hear the stories being read, but she also wanted them to analyze the Leo Lionni books and make meaningful connections to their own lives. Throughout the process of getting her students more involved she found that as her students became engaged in reading about fantasies and creating their own explanation for them that she was much more at ease in bringing out her own. Through this course I came face to face with my own insecurities. I realized that though I expected so much out of my students I was not giving them the same in response. As a child every day I would write, but somehow from adolescence to adulthood I lost those creative juices. I lost my inner voice. Nevertheless, this course really showed me that I could find my inner voice through getting back to the point of writing. Now, I write in a journal at least three times a week about what I read, trying to make sense of it. Often I find myself expressing my own shortcomings, trying to relate it with what I’ve read and heard about. Eventually I want to get to a place where I am journaling five to seven times a week.
Thinking about writing in this way helped for me to reflect on the genres of reading and writing I gravitated to, as well as the ones which were less explored. In doing so I found that I mostly wrote personal narratives and fiction, and those genres were the ones I felt most comfortable teaching to my students. The only problem was that I lacked the knowledge and interest in writing expository and poetry, and that lack of knowledge transferred over to my students. In response to that realization it allowed for me to be more conscientious of my teaching, and it allowed for me to explore various other forms of writing.
The fall after taking my educational theory class I took an elective class on teaching and learning K-12 Social Studies (TE 865). As a child I loved geography but that was the only realm my mind thought about which pertained to social studies. Within this course I relearned what social studies was, I learned the purpose for teaching it, but most importantly I learned about critical literacy and how thinking critically plays a role in the structure of social studies. At the very beginning of taking this class I never argued about the construction of maps, or photographs, or whether or not they were true. I just took the information given to me as the sole truth and ran with it. This course, however, helped for me to ask questions about the author of social studies documents, who wrote it, why they wrote it, and what meaning/stereotypes they intended their viewer to take from it. Just as in the classroom students bring in with them many different stereotypes about the world around them, I came to the realization that I was also helping to make and create my own stereotypes, and sometimes that knowledge transferred to my students. This course helped for me to question my own coursework, for them to question the things they saw, and it allowed for me to see that questioning was lacking from my own classroom. This course changed my life in response to the way I teach. Everything has meaning, and now I always preface my classroom discussions with the idea that my students’ ideas are valued and no one has the ability to take that value away from them, but themselves. They make and create meaning, for if they don't then they are just robots operating in a society created in anarchy.
Delving deeper into my program I came across a class (CEP 802) which focused on student attitudes and how to develop more positive ones towards teaching. One of the things I really started to question was my approach in how I motivated students. I found that most often I got my students involved externally by providing them with rewards in the form of computer time, praise, and tangible items like small toys or candy. Yet it was only helping them short term and not for the long run. I found that rewards only temporarily redirected behavior because it controlled it. When the tangible reward was taken away my students ceased to exhibit the behavior which had to ensue for them to initially get the reward.
Throughout the course of this class I really focused on one student, I put him on a behavioral plan and I challenged him to change behaviorally and academically and in doing so he decreased his tantrums, and behavioral outbursts from six to nine times a week, to one to three times a week. The way I talked to him, and the motherly caring approach I took with him made him see that it hurt me when he threw things within the classroom called me or the other children names. At the end of the year he was in a habit of apologizing to me, and thinking about his actions, concentrating on his work for larger amounts of time.
As my coursework drew nearer and nearer to the end I took a class titled, Reading Writing, and Reasoning in Secondary School Subjects (TE 843). This class led me back to critically literacy and stereotypes, but it made me think back to all the children's books and movies which I had previously read and viewed. I viewed clips of Cinderella and Snow White and wondered why true love meant blissful kisses, fairy godmothers, and a prince to change the lives of the helpless women surrounding them. I’ve realized that society has programmed us to think in a certain way, whether we allow that thinking or do all we can to stop it. We can’t help what we see….but we can help how we perceive it and how we think about it after all is said and done. In taking this class I created a lesson on the concepts of beauty. Questions stemming from that lesson included: What is beauty? What defines it? How can we view beauty differently? My students cut out pictures from magazines identifying what was beautiful to them, and then read a picture titled Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters to identify what was truly beautiful in the story. In doing so it made me think much more critically in terms of other lesson plans that were just given to me. It made me create more of my own and supplement others with critical texts. Since that class I have researched more, learned more, and dared my students, whether second graders or not, to think outside of the box.
All in all throughout the time spent completing my Masters of Art in Education I have undoubtedly learned. I have learned how to question, challenge my students in the questioning, and have learned to reflect on the lessons I teach and the approach I take with my students. Most importantly I have learned how to listen. This degree has opened my mind, has helped for me to find my inner voice. In times of uncertainty it has boosted my confidence in areas which were foreign to me. It has given me power, liberating power, not just academically, but power in compassion, because it is in that compassion where I meet my students where they are at. Giving them what they currently need and feeding them their desires, so that they can in turn teach someone else.
References
Paley, Vivian. The Girl With the Brown Crayon
Steptoe, John. Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters
Nevertheless, throughout the course of my graduate degree I learned valuable skills which I will take with me throughout life. I gained insight on how to teach decoding skills, how to help students make connections with text, flip-sounds, and write about the things that were meaningful to them; instead of some random prompt they felt so disconnected from. Meaning to them was writing about their seventh birthday, the time their fifth tooth fell out in class, and the time they got to hang out with their dad, by which they had not seen in years. Through the process of teaching them I learned. I learned that I had to be willing to try out the strategies which I was introducing them too, and that it was okay to fall at times, but that it was never okay for me to give up. It was through perseverance and determination that I learned how to reach my students, uplift them in their struggles, and then personally ask for help when I was unsure of the answers.
Along the course of completing my Master's program there were many courses which touched me on a personal level, driving me to research more, understand more, and see how that understanding related to the real world. One of the first classes I took which transferred over into my Master's coursework was a course (Te 802) which concentrated on reflecting and inquiry within technology. More than just reflection and inquiry it concentrated on literacy, what I deemed to be important in literacy and some of the best practices for teaching my students how to become lifelong literacy learners. Within this class I learned about authenticity and building relationships with my children. Literacy wasn’t just how well my students could read and write, but it was how their life influenced the things they read and wrote about. It had everything to do with the emotions, the emotions which could be brought to life if a teacher really knew her students. During this course I really got to know two students who really struggled with reading and writing, one of which was on a track to be tested for special education services. In delving into their lives through authentic activities I got to know my students, their personal lives, their lack of attention at home, and how they felt about life and school. In doing so their writing improved, their school work improved, and their relationship with me also improved to the point where they were so open and ready to take in new knowledge. That experience alone showed me that in order to be a better teacher I would have to know my students and be totally invested in their lives and future potential.
As I got farther and farther into my Master's program I enrolled in a class (Ed 800) which focused on concepts of educational inquiry. Unbeknownst to me what we were going to discuss I went into this class lacking the confidence in myself as an educational theorist. Yet, taking this class allowed for me to question my own skills. It allowed for me to ask questions: what is meaning? Who makes it? How do we inform our instruction from it? In doing so I realized that theory started in the form of questioning. Asking questions and making sense of those questions. Within this class I was given the opportunity to read a work by Vivian Paley titled, The Girl with the Brown Crayon. In reading this book I found that the author really struggled with getting her students to be more purposeful in their reading. Not only did she want her students to hear the stories being read, but she also wanted them to analyze the Leo Lionni books and make meaningful connections to their own lives. Throughout the process of getting her students more involved she found that as her students became engaged in reading about fantasies and creating their own explanation for them that she was much more at ease in bringing out her own. Through this course I came face to face with my own insecurities. I realized that though I expected so much out of my students I was not giving them the same in response. As a child every day I would write, but somehow from adolescence to adulthood I lost those creative juices. I lost my inner voice. Nevertheless, this course really showed me that I could find my inner voice through getting back to the point of writing. Now, I write in a journal at least three times a week about what I read, trying to make sense of it. Often I find myself expressing my own shortcomings, trying to relate it with what I’ve read and heard about. Eventually I want to get to a place where I am journaling five to seven times a week.
Thinking about writing in this way helped for me to reflect on the genres of reading and writing I gravitated to, as well as the ones which were less explored. In doing so I found that I mostly wrote personal narratives and fiction, and those genres were the ones I felt most comfortable teaching to my students. The only problem was that I lacked the knowledge and interest in writing expository and poetry, and that lack of knowledge transferred over to my students. In response to that realization it allowed for me to be more conscientious of my teaching, and it allowed for me to explore various other forms of writing.
The fall after taking my educational theory class I took an elective class on teaching and learning K-12 Social Studies (TE 865). As a child I loved geography but that was the only realm my mind thought about which pertained to social studies. Within this course I relearned what social studies was, I learned the purpose for teaching it, but most importantly I learned about critical literacy and how thinking critically plays a role in the structure of social studies. At the very beginning of taking this class I never argued about the construction of maps, or photographs, or whether or not they were true. I just took the information given to me as the sole truth and ran with it. This course, however, helped for me to ask questions about the author of social studies documents, who wrote it, why they wrote it, and what meaning/stereotypes they intended their viewer to take from it. Just as in the classroom students bring in with them many different stereotypes about the world around them, I came to the realization that I was also helping to make and create my own stereotypes, and sometimes that knowledge transferred to my students. This course helped for me to question my own coursework, for them to question the things they saw, and it allowed for me to see that questioning was lacking from my own classroom. This course changed my life in response to the way I teach. Everything has meaning, and now I always preface my classroom discussions with the idea that my students’ ideas are valued and no one has the ability to take that value away from them, but themselves. They make and create meaning, for if they don't then they are just robots operating in a society created in anarchy.
Delving deeper into my program I came across a class (CEP 802) which focused on student attitudes and how to develop more positive ones towards teaching. One of the things I really started to question was my approach in how I motivated students. I found that most often I got my students involved externally by providing them with rewards in the form of computer time, praise, and tangible items like small toys or candy. Yet it was only helping them short term and not for the long run. I found that rewards only temporarily redirected behavior because it controlled it. When the tangible reward was taken away my students ceased to exhibit the behavior which had to ensue for them to initially get the reward.
Throughout the course of this class I really focused on one student, I put him on a behavioral plan and I challenged him to change behaviorally and academically and in doing so he decreased his tantrums, and behavioral outbursts from six to nine times a week, to one to three times a week. The way I talked to him, and the motherly caring approach I took with him made him see that it hurt me when he threw things within the classroom called me or the other children names. At the end of the year he was in a habit of apologizing to me, and thinking about his actions, concentrating on his work for larger amounts of time.
As my coursework drew nearer and nearer to the end I took a class titled, Reading Writing, and Reasoning in Secondary School Subjects (TE 843). This class led me back to critically literacy and stereotypes, but it made me think back to all the children's books and movies which I had previously read and viewed. I viewed clips of Cinderella and Snow White and wondered why true love meant blissful kisses, fairy godmothers, and a prince to change the lives of the helpless women surrounding them. I’ve realized that society has programmed us to think in a certain way, whether we allow that thinking or do all we can to stop it. We can’t help what we see….but we can help how we perceive it and how we think about it after all is said and done. In taking this class I created a lesson on the concepts of beauty. Questions stemming from that lesson included: What is beauty? What defines it? How can we view beauty differently? My students cut out pictures from magazines identifying what was beautiful to them, and then read a picture titled Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters to identify what was truly beautiful in the story. In doing so it made me think much more critically in terms of other lesson plans that were just given to me. It made me create more of my own and supplement others with critical texts. Since that class I have researched more, learned more, and dared my students, whether second graders or not, to think outside of the box.
All in all throughout the time spent completing my Masters of Art in Education I have undoubtedly learned. I have learned how to question, challenge my students in the questioning, and have learned to reflect on the lessons I teach and the approach I take with my students. Most importantly I have learned how to listen. This degree has opened my mind, has helped for me to find my inner voice. In times of uncertainty it has boosted my confidence in areas which were foreign to me. It has given me power, liberating power, not just academically, but power in compassion, because it is in that compassion where I meet my students where they are at. Giving them what they currently need and feeding them their desires, so that they can in turn teach someone else.
References
Paley, Vivian. The Girl With the Brown Crayon
Steptoe, John. Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters
