Field Trip: Barb Rentenbach

On December 4th, 2013, I had the privilege of seeing Barb Rentenbach's presentation in Hodges library.  Barb has autism must communicate via iPad and a stylus.  She talked about one overarching theme: "Teachers, please embrace your power to be..."  followed by five categories on how teachers can embrace students with autism and/or aspergers syndrome.  She wrote a book over the course of ten years with a team of psychologists.  As the book gained a following, so did her popularity.  She is now known worldwide and even had the exclusive chance of turning her book into an audiobook for free.  Her ultimate goal in life is to be able to be self-sustaining financially just like any one else.  She started her own publishing company and is well on her way to achieving that goal.  Barb says, "autism is not my prison, it is my prism."

1. ...be open
A.  Providing alternative forms of communication for those who do not speak is as important as education gets.

• Barb must use "facilitated communication" to talk to people.  She must type with a facilitator physically supporting her movement to help stabilize movement, reduce impulsive pointing, and preservations (repetition of the same motor response).

B.  Barb suffers from a case of apraxia.  The National Institute of Health defines apraxia as, "a neurological disorder characterized by loss of the ability to execute or carry out learned movements despite having the desire and ability to perform them.  Her goal with FC is to make progress toward independent typing.

2. ...be part of the solution

A.  Do not exclude austisic people from the general public.  She wants teachers to stand out from the crowd and welcome autism into the class.  One way is through constantly thanking them with good behavior.  For example, always saying thank you or yes, good job.  Her own brother has chosen to stop communicating with her because he does not believe in FC.

B.  It took only one teacher, Andrea Reynolds, to stand out from the crowd and treat her as an equal being.  Reynolds taught from her heart and changed Barb's reality and course.  It just takes one teacher.  Be that for someone.

3. ...be informed

A.  Here she wants us to talk about and be mindful of sex education.  Just because nobody talks about it, does not mean it is not a real issue.

4. ...be mindful

A.  Here she encourages us to be mindful of nonverbal communication.  Autistics understand the reality of impermanence.  Autism may serve to provide the individual time and space to contemplate and meditate more so than any convent or monastery, referring to Tibetan monks.

B.  Motivating autistics can be a tricky task.  Teachers must make participating in things outside of the autistic mind interesting, safe, and low-stress.  Do not give up.  Encourage everyone to enjoy and appreciate the process as much as the product.

5. ...be you

A.  Finally, Barb wants more teachers who live and love what they teach.  Never forget who we are and why we have chosen this profession.

When I first walked into the room, I felt so sad for Barb and how fortunate I am to be in good health.  I felt this way until I saw a smile on her face when typing to us.  I knew that she has embraced her condition and is doing everything in her power to make the best of it.  It is going to take some time to get used to having autistic children in my class.  Right now, I really am not sure how I am going to tackle this situation.  But based on what I learned tonight, my best option would be to treat them like anyone else.  I must be the teacher that stands out and acts different towards people with disabilities.  I am thankful to have time to go watch this awesome woman tonight.  Such a good day.

Remembering, Analyzing

1. Would the reasons behind the United States' entry into the War of 1812 be considered a well-defined problem or an ill-defined problem? (Remembering).

2. Social studies allows for a high level of thinking and creativity.  How could you use divergent thinking strategies when looking at, say, the Reagan administration's Cold War policy?  Think about how you could use this starting point to branch out to possible solutions.  (Analyze).

Constructivism

Talking about authentic activities always gets me excited because we can all remember one authentic task that stands out in our memory.  I remember in high school U.S. government class, we had a big team debate at the end of the semester that placed four people in teams of two, one team is pro and the other is against.  Topics ranged from abortion to capital punishment to the Second Amendment right to bear arms.  I was PRO capital punishment with a friend and we had some fun with it and it definitely taught me some real world skills that I needed for college: TEAMWORK.

History classes are often thought of as boring, so I feel like authentic tasks would be my go-to, sure fire way of motivating my students to really love what they're doing.  For me, as a future high school social studies teacher, utilizing authentic activities is key because they will be graduating soon and moving on to the real world.  They NEED to learn how to be patient, work in teams, build "people skills" as my mom would say, and become more self-directed.

That being said, my authentic task would probably fall under a project-based learning task.  Ormrod defines this as, "Classroom activity in which students acquire new knowledge and skills while working on a complex, multifaceted project that yields a concrete end product" (Ormrod 231).  It's no denying that I am a huge patriot and supporter of the men and women in our military; they do what only a few can do.  Going along with my love for student autonomy, I would give my students maybe two or three options.

1. Interview a member of their family who served in the military and tell their story either through a video interview or write an essay.  If that family member is deceased then they could do a research project on them.
2. Send them out into the community to find war veterans to interview.  As the teacher, it would be my responsibility to figure out where these men and women are and if they will be willing to cooperate with a student for an interview.  The older vets absolutely LOVE recognition and are thrilled to have someone talk to them.
3. It's always important to have a "Plan C" if the above two don't get the job done.  If the above two do not work then I would assign them to, maybe, write to a historical figure and the student could act as the secretary of state.  They would advise the president on what the proper course of action should be.  Something along those lines, I'm just shooting out ideas here!

I know this is a hypothetical scenario and a perfect world example, but I would hope my students would react positively to it.  I hope they will realize the positive impact they had on that veteran just by simply having a conversation.  Who knows, maybe they will love it and may not seem like work at all!  Students, especially high school age, are often opposed to writing papers so I hope that they will avoid option 3 and go for the first two!  Upon completion of the activity, they will have done many things: serve their community, learn FAR more than a textbook could explain, have a new understanding for veterans, and build interview skills that will help them later on in life.

I see several obstacles with this assignment.  One, finding enough veterans in the community who want to be interviewed.  Two, the technical side of things.  How will they record the interview?  With the student's own camera or having to use school equipment which may be short or non-existent?  Three, many students won't know how to be respectful and know what questions to ask.  Four, how will I know as a teacher if I am putting too much work on a young kid?  They have other commitments and lives as well.  I will have to approve each and every interview between student and veteran.  The list could go on and on!  But I wholeheartedly believe the positive aspects of this project outweigh the negative.

Behavioral and Social Cognitive Views of Learning

According to Ormrod, behaviorism is defined as, "Theoretical perspective in which learning and behavior are described and explained in terms of stimulus-response relationships" (Ormrod 285).  She lists five perspectives that are the backbone of any behaviorist teacher.

• "People's behaviors are largely the result of their experience with environmental stimuli" (286).
• I like this because it can involve changing the environment that your students are in to help them behave in the way you want and to learn.
• "Learning involves a behavior change" (286).
• This means we can only see physical changes in behavior, not mental changes.  We cannot observe if the student has learned anything until they, maybe, take a test or quiz or something.
• "Learning involves forming associations among stimuli and responses" (286).
• Learning involves observable events: X leads to Y.
• "Learning is most likely to take place when stimuli and responses occur close together in time" (287).
• I understood this as one thing leading immediately to the next.  If I have a class that is rowdy and won't calm down, I could use something more drastic like smacking the podium with a mallet.  I remember a teacher doing that in a class in high school and each time she would grab the mallet, we would all shut up because we FEARED the noise it made.  Plus, we feared her in general.
• "Many species of animals, including human beings, learn in similar ways" (287).
• Much research has been done that shows that animal behavior is helpful in understanding human behavior tendencies.  Hmm, I like to think of myself as higher than some lab animal personally.

In my class, I would define successful mastery of my lesson objectives through the following ways.  I would need to design an assignment that allows me to judge their behavior in class.  A type of pop quiz would be a good way (well for me) to start a class off to see how much they remember from the last class.  I would look around the class to see their behaviors and actions.  If I notice a lot of head turning and upset faces, I know that they aren't doing their work.  If they aren't really confident in their answers then I know they don't understand the material either.  For those that do well, I would positively reinforce them with rewards.  For those who did not do so well, I could maybe move them to the front of the room, away from their peers so they don't feel distracted and cause problems.

Classroom Management

Classroom management, in my opinion, is ranked right up there with motivation that we studied last week.  Being able to control the reigns of my class  is going to be my biggest challenge hands down.  I know that I am an easy-going person and I love to have a good time but right now I have no clue on how to best manage a class.  I'm so easy-going in fact that sometimes I feel like I'm a "door mat."  Controlling my class is something that I will need to really focus on if I'm going to have any success.  I rarely gave my teachers trouble in school because I knew if I caused problems, my mother would be waiting at home to give me a good tongue lashing and punish me.  I remember plenty of people in high school that gave the teachers the hardest time and my heart sinks just thinking about in those situations that WILL happen to me.

For my future classroom, I would first set the tone by the way I first present myself to the class.  I believe if you first present the rules of the class and the consequences if you do not follow the rules, then they will know you, as the teacher, do not let things slide.  If you let students kind of get away with no consequences then you're just setting yourself up for a bad time.  Last year when I was interviewed for the teacher education program, I answered one of their questions with "respect is key and it goes both ways."  Establishing and maintaining productive teacher-student relationships is one of the most, if not the most, important aspects of classroom management.  Some students may have had teachers in the past who don't care much about them and, as a result, that student may not think that I care about him/her.  Ormrod brings up an excellent point, "Regularly communicate caring and respect for students as people." (Ormrod 462).  This applies to me because I will be dealing with high school age students, yes they will be rowdy sure, but they are also young adults.  Keeping a line of communication open to these kids is critical because some might not be as fortunate and have a rough home life.  Think about it for a minute, our students will be looking up to us in the future.  They spend 8 hours a day with us and we act as their role model.  No matter how rough their home life may be, we MUST show them that we care because we are the only other adult figures in their lives.  Never give up.  Work hard to create a friendly and open classroom environment.

I found a useful link that adds on to topics presented in our textbook, Seven Strategies for Building Positive Classrooms, by Carol Gerber Allred, that showcases useful ways to build a great classroom environment.  I hope people will take the time to read through them all.

So clearly I am keen on three big topics for classroom management and creating a learning environment (I love keeping things in threes, it's easier that way):

1. Establishing rules of the class and the consequences
2. Establishing and maintaining productive teacher-student relationships
3. Creating a positive classroom climate - one that is welcoming and friendly to all

High School Case Study

For the CLE from our CSEL guidelines, I chose to examine the high school case study, as this clearly applies to me.  

You have started to dread your fifth period history class. It is made up entirely of seniors who are counting the days until graduation and seem to care very little about learning. Most of the students are obviously members of one clique or another. Whenever they think your back is turned, they start passing notes and text messaging. Worse, three boys have started disrupting those engaged in learning. No matter what you say, they laugh at the students who present their group projects to the class. Yesterday, Tony, Jeff, and Morris started roughhousing; then all three of them refused to sit down and follow the class procedures that the classroom community agreed upon at the beginning of the year. Although you have been using a set approach to handling infractions of rules, you decide it is time to change these procedures.

First, since these are high school age kids, I would start off by cueing them to their misbehavior.  When a teacher stops a lesson to correct a bunch of rowdy kids, it distracts every one else as well.  By taking time to pause and give them a stern look this ideally would get them to stop, and probably feel awkward in front of their peers as well.  They know this behavior is bad and should stop unless they want to cause more problems.  The three boys need to realize that school isn't over yet, but it's also my job to push them to the finish line.

Second, if the misbehavior continues then I would pull all three boys aside after class for a private talk.  A private after class talk is much better than openly calling attention to them because of two things: it takes them away from everyone else so they don't feel like they're getting away with it.  Two, as an educator, I don't want to flat out embarrass them or make them feel unwelcome.  This would also give me a chance to reinforce my classroom rules and consequences for disobeying those rules.  But there's still a big question about this case: How do you get the kids to care and pay attention even though they are so close to graduating?  They do not see a reason to.  I hope to answer questions like this in EDPY 401.

Last, if they continue to be a problem and it is obvious that they still don't care about my class, I will call in the cavalry (the parents).    As I mentioned near the beginning of the blog, communication is vital in both teacher-student and teacher-parent relationships.  If you communicate with parents to show that you care about their kids instead of constantly punishing them, then that will hopefully lead to the parents disciplining them at home.

These are perfect scenario responses to the case study.  Who knows what to expect in the real world classroom.  Sometimes classroom rules don't matter to some kids and that requires adapting to on the teacher's part.

Dan Pink RSA Video on Motivation

The Dan Pink video that we watched in class last week greatly surprised me.  I always assumed there was only one way to reward people: through performance with the carrot and stick method.  It kind of comes natural that we would assume that high performance should bring greater rewards.  Dan Pink points out that this is not always the case.  For simple, straight forward tasks, nothing beats the carrot and stick method.  For rudimentary cognitive tasks that require conceptual, creative thinking actually hurts the top performers.

Pink asks two questions: If you reward something, do you get more of the behavior that you want?  And if you punish something do you get less of the behavior you want?  To help answer these he brings up the issue of money.  Money is a big time motivator, but it has to be enough money or else the person won't be motivated.

Then he switches gears to talk about three things that were interesting and I think can help me in my future class: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.  Autonomy is a fantastic way of motivating people.  But it can also hurt because you don't want your students to feel like they have complete independence from you, but instead your students are like your protectorates, if that makes sense.  Autonomy can highlight certain abilities and skills if they feel like they have choice in the matter when it comes to assignments.  Dan gives the example of the Australian software company that allows its developers one day of autonomy each quarter to develop ideas and such.  That allowed for the company to see the great ideas its employees had without interfering or governing their work, and probably made them feel satisfied.  This is awesome because who wants to be told what to do ALL of the time?  I. Love. Autonomy and I'm going to utilize it in my future classroom.

The next motivator is mastery.  Mastery is the urge to get better at stuff.  Mastery drives us to improve on unique things that make us individuals in our free time.  Dan talks about Linux and it powers many servers worldwide, Apache is a free browser (correct me if i'm wrong, I don't use it), and the all mighty Wikipedia.  These things are free and are made by people who have jobs but yet still are driven to create these tools for free.  Wikipedia is absolutely free and it runs on donations from people who contribute to its purpose.  Why do people do this KNOWING they won't get paid?  Challenge, mastery, and making a contribution to something greater.

Lastly, Dan discusses the purpose motive.  Striving for a purpose, well for lack of a better term, gives us a sense of purpose.  It's why we get up every day and find something useful to do.  Employers more and more are starting to put the purpose motive higher than the profit motive.  A great purpose brings great people who are looking to be a part of that greatness.  I mean, who doesn't want to work for an employer that does cool stuff or maybe has half-days on a Friday once a month I don't know.  Purpose is exactly why I want to teach.  I know without any doubt that teaching will give me that sense of purpose that I'm ready for.  I really enjoyed this video and hope that everyone else in the class gets a chance to watch all of it.

Theories of Motivation

Today in class we talked all about the subject of motivation and how vital it is to creating a successful learning environment.  Motivation takes many forms intrinsically and extrinsically with rewards, tangible or simply motivation to get that "feel good" feeling by learning.  Motivation energizes students to learn and be proactive about pursuing goals in the class.  This matters especially when the student is in a subject that is not particularly his or her favorite or strongest subject.

There are three types of motivation that stand out to me: situated motivation, extrinsic, and intrinsic.  In class, I brought up the story about being in a 9th grade physical science course in high school.  On days in which we were in the science lab I was very motivated to get my hands on the equipment and solving the worksheets either individually or in a group.  I was motivated in those situations because I really loved lab days but did not enjoy test days.

I am extrinsically motivated to do exceptionally well in school when I am at my job.  I enjoy the people that I work with but I am ready to move on.  This makes me understand that the only way out is by giving my 100% at school.  I am motivated by the fact that I will soon have a degree and a teaching job that will get me out of my current situation.  While in school, I remember having class review games such as Jeopardy that provided extrinsic motivators like bonus credit on an upcoming test.  Those kinds of motivators encourage me to commit all of my efforts to succeed.

Intrinsic motivation comes from when I am motivated by factors within myself to perform the task at hand.  For example, I get enjoyment out of talking to war veterans, especially the World War II guys, because I know they will not be with us much longer.  I believe it is morally right to thank these men and listen to their stories out of pure enjoyment and satisfaction.  When in school, I also get enjoyment out of simply being there every day.  I understand how important education is to my future, therefore, I feel obligated to give my all every day in school.

From our textbook on page 363, I found two theories that make sense and could help me out in the future.  Under the cognitive theory, "learners tend to be more intrinsically motivated when they believe they have some control of choice in their activities - in other words, when they have a sense of self-determination" (Ormrod 363).  Here are some ways I can use this theory in my future classroom: give the students choice in a type of authentic assessment so they do not feel forced to do a project in one concrete way.  I can see how this can boost motivation because they might feel stronger about a subject or idea over another.  I want my students to be fully engaged and by giving them choice it should motivate them to do well on the assignment.

I also found the sociocultural theory to be beneficial as well.  It talks about how students may gradually internalize the importance of good behaviors set by the parents.  My parents, especially my step-dad, disciplined me in such a way that I learned how to be a good student and set an example for others.  They externally motivated me in such a way that I now want to be a teacher and help others do the same thing!

Blog 2

1.  Informal versus Formal Assessment
An informal assessment is something that would most likely take place at the beginning of a new section of the class.  This could take place in the form of a brief discussion and provide a starting point for both the teacher and the class.  After identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the class from the informal assessment, I would move on to the formal assessment at the end of each section.  The students who did not perform very well in the informal assessment will have time to improve in order to succeed on the formal assessment.  These two assessment types would also help me, as the teacher, find areas of improvement in my lesson plans.

2.  Paper-Pencil versus Performance Assessment
For a paper-pencil assessment I would most commonly assign homework and worksheets for the students to complete on their own.  As a future history teacher, using worksheets with maps or short-answer essay questions are going to help the students put things in historical context.  For a performance assessment, I believe a neat project would be to assign each student to a past American President and have them recite a clip of that president's farewell address and then explain to the class what it all means in modern day English.  This would demonstrate how much American foreign policy has changed over the course of our history.  I believe this would help the students learn how the U.S. came to be a superpower and how we conduct ourselves worldwide. Not only foreign policy but also taking a step back in time to see how a president wanted his successor to guide the nation.  This is only one of many possible ideas I could use to have some fun in my history classes.

3.  Traditional versus Authentic Assessment
Traditional assessments are concrete/old school methods of assessing a student's progress in the class.  These obviously consist of quizzes/tests/papers.  Authentic assessments measure a students' knowledge and skills in real world situations in a way that build upon traditional methods.  I think a fun authentic task would be a political debate in a U.S. Government class.  I remember in high school we were all assigned hot topic political issues and one team was "for it" and the other was "against it."  The students who weren't debating that day wrote down which team they think won on a sheet of paper and handed it to the teacher.  It got us out of taking an optional written test and also taught us about collaborative learning along with some friendly competition!!  These sorts of group tasks develop social skills that will help them succeed outside the classroom in the real world.

4.  Standardized Tests versus Teacher-Developed Assessments
Standardized tests are tests that we are all too familiar with.  These include TCAP, SAT, ACT, just to name a few.  These are statewide tests that assess a students' general achievement and ability levels.  As a  teacher, it would be my job to help the students excel on the social studies part of the test as well as helping with text anxiety in general.  Teacher-developed assessments help gauge how a student performs related to a specific instructional objective.  I believe the best way to learn in history/social studies is through written exams and papers.  So for my own assessments, I would give them several topics to write about on a test and let them choose one.

5.  Criterion-Referenced versus Norm-Referenced Assessments
For a criterion-referenced assessment, one easy way is by giving a T/F and multiple choice test with questions and statements relating to American people, dates, key events, and so on.  With this test, I would know what area of the curriculum needs improvement.  For a norm-referenced assessment, the students could take a general social studies test to determine how students differ from class to class and maybe even school system to school system.

Blog 1

Reflecting back on the first class, I remember being a bit scared of what to expect.  I'm now accepted as a candidate to UT's Teacher Education program and that carries a lot of responsibility.  My fellow classmates seem like interesting people and I hope to get to know each of them more as the semester unfolds.  Brian certainly knew how to calm down the "first day nervousness" that all students get, well I know I do!  He's a funny person and a sense of humor is a great thing for a classroom.

Our first group activity broke the ice between the people around me.  We all created a solid list of what it means to be professional.  But there were three words that I forgot to toss on the list.  My step-father is ex-military and having being brought up by him since I was three years old has taught me to be a responsible young man.  Improvise, adapt, and overcome are those three words.  All are excellent descriptions of what it means to be professional.  I want to learn about the art of teaching.  That is why I am here.  What all goes into creating a lesson plan?  How do you best go about assessing the classroom's learning abilities?  What happens if your teaching method is ineffective?  These are just a few questions that I had in mind for the semester.  I hope to get to know my fellow history majors better and maybe we can help each other out with whatever the case may be.

What I am most looking forward to this semester is further developing my skills as a future educator.  This class is a critical element in creating effective teaching methods.  I feel honored to even be in this program in the first place.  I've known I wanted to be a teacher early on in high school years ago.  It's going to be a challenge, but that goes without saying.  I want to be the most effective teacher I can be.  It's one thing to know your subject area, and another to know how to teach it.  United States history teachers are "a dime a dozen," as the saying goes, but I'm a firm believer in hard work paying off.  UT's program is prestigious and this semester will bring me one step closer to being a licensed teacher in Tennessee.