Empathy In the Classroom

I have found an awesome education website: Edutopia. It has articles by teachers covering a variety of topics and contents. I found an awesome article at the beginning of last school year titled "Empathy: The Most Important Back-to-School Supply." It focuses on empathy as a tool to help students learn better.

Teaching to me, as well as many others, means more than reading Shakespeare, learning mathematic formulas, or memorizing historical dates. I feel that this is especially the case in Middle and High School when students are going through so many changes and are trying to figure out who they are. I have seen so many teenagers who are stuck in their own heads worried about how they look, how they act, and what others think of them. Empathy is a skill that can help these kids bloom.

Teaching is about helping students to become  the best people that they can be. This includes teaching important skills like empathy, or the ability to see the world through another person's eyes. The article relies heavily on the Start Empathy initiative which strives to develop schools where students learn to develop empathy. They have created a program which has three steps.

Step #1: Prepare-To begin create a foundation for students by creating a safe space in the classroom where students feel they can step outside their bubbles and think about new points of view. This includes modelling empathy in your actions and emotions.

Step #2: Engage-Next, help students to put themselves into someone else's shoes, challenge stereotypes, and to solve problems together.

Step #3: Reflect and Act-Now comes the part where students put what they have learned into action and come to find similarities and appreciate differences.

How do I apply this in my own classroom? I feel that I have many opportunities teaching English and History to teach empathy. I can use stories and historical events to provide a variety of perspectives to help students to make connections and find the beauty in difference. I can also use writing, an important skill in both contents, to allow students to communicate with their peers and others. Another awesome way to develop empathy is through service. I want to develop service learning projects to help students to place their focus on others rather than themselves.

What an amazing way to broaden the classroom and helps students to become caring and productive adults.

What Students Remember

The other day I was on facebook and came across an article that really opened my eyes. The article is called "What Students Remember Most About Teachers" and was written by Lori Gard.

This article is structured as a letter from a veteran teacher to a new teacher. The main message being to slow down and stress less. According to the author the most important part of teaching is not the curriculum or the tests but being there for your students. I agree with this statement 100%. During my pre-service training I remember having a discussion along these same lines the gist of which was that if a teacher is teaching for anything other than the students, they will hate it. I saw this during my student teaching. The times I hated teaching the most were either when I got caught up in the curriculum and forgot my students or when I started comparing myself to other teachers. I forgot who I was and why I got into teaching. I thought that to be the best teacher I needed to have the flashiest lesson plans or be the most entertaining.

This leads me to my favorite line in the article. "At the end of the day, most students won't remember what amazing lesson plans you've created. No, they'll not remember that amazing decor you've designed. But they will remember you." This struck me pretty hard. The teachers that I admired the most were the ones that took the time to get to know me and who listened to what I had to say. I hope that I can do the same for my students. The best way to do this, according to Gard, is by being. Being available, kind, compassionate, transparent, real, thought, and myself. I am going to use this philosophy to drive my teaching.

The other part of the article that struck me was the admonition to stop being so hard on yourself and to stop comparing yourself to others. This was something that I really struggled with all through my education. It seemed that all through my education classes I was bombarded with what a good teacher ought to be, and so many times I thought I was falling short of this ideal. I have come to learn that there is no one perfect version of a teacher but a million unique and individual ones. One of my teachers in high school summed it up perfectly. "I tried so hard to be like all the other teachers in my program, and I ended up hating it and thinking that I was never going to be any good . . . . It wasn’t until I found my own teacher voice that I started to enjoy it and find my place in a school.  Now I can’t imagine doing anything else."

I am so glad I came across this article and was reminded of what truly lies at the heart of teaching and what makes it such a rewarding career.

Literacy: From One Classroom to Another

Both of my subject areas English and History have a large emphasis on literacy. At the beginning of the semester I wondered what I would learn that I had not learned before. Now that the semester is drawing to a close I have discovered that I have gained not only a refresher on the types of literacy I need to be incorporating into my classroom but specific ways that I can do so.

The greatest lesson that I have learned this semester is that literacy is not limited to the English classroom. There is literacy in math, science, art, music, and health. There are also ways that I can incorporate math or science literacy into the English classroom. I especially enjoyed the lesson on writing instruction where we were assigned to build our own bridges and then write a proposal based on that experience. I feel that incorporating a lesson like this would help students see that reading and writing are important no matter what your interests are more than just telling them or having them talk to someone in the profession. I learned so much from students in other disciplines and their experiences in literacy. I hope that I will be able to develop lessons and projects with teachers outside of my discipline to encourage literacy.

To encourage students to pursue literacy in their interests I would provide students with a classroom library stocked with more than just English or History books. I really enjoyed the day we passed around the books from all the different subject areas. There were many that caught my eye as books I wanted to read or could even incorporate into lessons. I feel that to reach this goal requires two types of knowledge. First, a knowledge of a variety of books, and second, a knowledge of students and their interests. It is more effective to know a students is interested in art and to recommend a book about Van Gogh than it is to tell students to go find books that interest them. When students see that we value many different types of learning they will be more likely to want to learn.

This class opened my eyes to the many diverse ways we can help students to develop literacy.

Historical Fiction Bookclub

For my self-selected project I chose to work with Marti and Hayley to form a book club to read two historical fiction novels. We read When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr and Fever by Mary Beth Keane.
                             




When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit is based on Kerr's experience escaping from Germany with her family and then living in France and finally England. For the most part we liked this book especially since it was based on a young girl's experiences which students could relate to. However, the book is fairly simple in a number of ways. The first being that it is written at about a 5th or 6th grade reading level taking it almost out of the realm of secondary education. The second being that the author idealized many of the situations that happened to her. We did find many uses for it, however, especially for ESL students or struggling readers. It also has many themes that could be used in both an English and History class. These themes include new places and identities, various perspectives, censorship, and the effect of war on art. We decided that this book would be a good jumping off point to study a variety of perspectives especially during and after the war since the book ends with the beginning of the war. We also thought it would be fun to do an activity where students write postcards based on the book or other historical events during the same time period since the main character's uncle wrote post cards.

Fever is based on the life of Mary Mallon aka. Typhoid Mary. She was a cook during the late 19th and early 20th century and saw a lot of death during this time. A sanitary engineer, Dr. Soper, first developed the concept of healthy carriers, people who are not ill but spread disease, which he applied to Mary. This led to her capture and exile on North Brother Island for three years. We liked this book as well as it did a good job of humanizing the life of Mary Mallon as well as other events during the same time period such as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. We decided that this would be a good book for cross-curricular activities in English, History, and Science. It would be interesting to have students research how the views of disease have changed over the years and to see how disease is viewed in the present day. We also decided it would be interesting to look at gender and what role it plays in society. In the book, a male healthy carrier was discovered but was not quarantined because he was the head of the household. Other interesting themes in the book is immigration and how they were viewed in society as well as the reality of city life. To build upon this book we decided it would be good to read Mary's accounts along with other primary source documents to enrich the view point presented in the book.

We decided that to encourage reading for pleasure we would include both of these books, along with others, in our own classroom libraries. These books taught me that reading for pleasure in history can be both fun and informative. I learned a lot about Typhoid Mary and the conditions people lived in during the turn of the century. It can also play to students' interests which can help them engage in both an English and history classroom.

Along with a classroom library I would incorporate book clubs or book reviews into my classroom. Students would be assigned to find a historical fiction book that interests them which would either be read as a group or individually. Students would then discuss their book with a group or write a book review. This book review would summarize the book and discuss what the student like or disliked along with their recommendation. It would be fun to create a top ten list of books to read.

The New Literacy

I had the opportunity this week to chaperone the History Fair at Utah State. As part of this fair middle schoolers from Northern Utah wrote papers, created websites, put together documentaries, gave presentations, and put together project boards about people and events in history that they thought were turning points. It was fun to see the creativity and ingenuity of the students. What was even more surprising for me were the digital projects. When I was in junior high many years ago I would not have had the technology or know how to create a web site or a documentary. Seeing both of these projects both done and done well reinforced to me the importance of having technology in the classroom as well as helping students develop a digital literacy.

Granted I am not the most technologically literate. Most elementary students could run circles around me with what they know about technology. I cannot deny that technology is present in everything we do from smart phones, tablets, and laptops. Most jobs today revolve around technology. Students therefore need to learn how to use it for more than updating their status or tweeting their friends.

This leads to the big question of how. How do I help students use technology when I barely know how? How does technology fit into the traditional curriculum especially in subjects like English and History?

After doing some searching I found some answers. I found the following article on Student Pulse, an online journal. Incorporating Technology Into the Modern English Classroom In this article, the author discusses "remix" a type of learning where students take their background knowledge and a text and express their new understanding. The article suggests many ways this remix can be done using technology. One teacher had her students create comics while another had his students create movie trailers using the website animoto.com. The benefit of doing projects like this is an increase in interest from students who get to use their knowledge to create something the whole world will see.

There are many different websites as well for social studies teachers.
Center for History and News Media
Virtual Museums/Field Trips
Film and History
Teaching History

There are many ways to make learning more interesting by building on what students already know. I leave you with a student created documentary for your viewing pleasure.
Uncle Sam's Ace Insect Hunter

The Shoulds and Should Nots of Classroom Management

Clinicals this semester have opened my eyes to many things. One of which being classroom management. I have seen some wonderful classrooms and some not so wonderful classrooms. There are many factors that have been common factors in the wonderful classrooms. These have included clear boundaries and consequences, clear procedures, getting to know students and letting them get to know you (who wants to learn from a stranger?), letting students know why both you and they are doing what you are doing, and working with both the strengths and weaknesses of students to help them get the most out of their education. All of this boils down to trust. If students feel that they can trust a teacher, they are willing to do what he or she says. One instance of classroom management occurred in my clinicals the other day. A student who has a lot of energy was rocking back and forth in his chair. Instead of telling the student to stop what he was doing in front of the class my cooperating teacher pulled him aside before the class ended and talked to him about not rocking back in his chair but to get up and walk around the room instead. This instance taught me a lot of things. It is important to know students to understand why they do the things they do. Is it because they struggle to focus? Are they hungry, tired, stressed, sad? I feel that many times teachers lose patience with these types of students and force them to sit still and quiet. I love the idea of letting my students with the wiggles walk around to refocus. Such a simple and painless solution for every one involved!

I am so excited/terrified to have a classroom and students of my own. I am glad that I have had some good examples of what to do. Maybe now my students won't tear me apart.

Teaching Philosophy

My experience in junior high and high school was typical of most students who pass through the public school system. I did well in my classes, but I still felt like I was a part of the faceless crowd until I reached my senior year. During this year I had an amazing English teacher who saw me as an individual with a voice. She helped me see that I had potential and then gave me the tools to accomplish dreams that I did not think were possible. I want to follow in my teacher’s footsteps to help students to realize that they are important individuals with great potential. I also want to provide my students with the tools they will need to be successful both in and out of the classroom.