The Praxis of Pedagogy Day 47

Today was a great teaching day. In all my classes, I had the students write I am poems while I distributed textbooks, checked homework, and had them fill out tongue depressors with their names on them. I am slowly shifting my thinking in teaching. My main concern is to create a low affective filter. That's teacherspeak for making an environment where people feel safe and comfortable to take academic risks. Even if the student gets the wrong answer I have them get help or the answer from someone and then answer the question themselves. I don't want the student to be shut down cause they messed up. I even guided some students to the answer. The tone of the classroom was then more lively and participatory. I checked for understanding by asking questions first and then pulling namesticks for the answer. We finished map reading and then we talked about timelines. I talked a bit about the terms B.C./A.D. and B.C.E./C.E. and the Christian centrism.

After that was all done we began reading the text "Undermining oppression". I am really wondering how this text will be for them. Will it be accessible to them? It's a fucking great reading and I absolutely love it. But people seemed to get into it today. We'll see.

I wasn't able to get too far into the text. When I had to stop the class to do contracts. I went out yesterday and bought rubber stamps with numbers so now I can stamp contracts instead of writing on them. I'm realizing that most of the pedagogical strategies that worked with the elementary school kids work with the high school kids. They are both still kids and want attention and praise. At the end of the day I posted up their "I am" poems on the back wall.

About my CTM... good bunch of kids. I started the morning off with asking them to help me make up rules, rewards, and punishments for them. There wasn't much participation from the younger and newer students. I guess they don't feel comfortable speaking up yet. But I want them to have a feeling of ownership in the classroom. I want them to start to feel that the classroom is ours. At the end of the day, I kept students after to do their homework and let some go after calling their parents. I talked to parents before and I'm usually at the school till around 4:00 so I said that I'd keep students there and have them do homework or read a book there.