Introduction

Hello New Classmates!

My name is Joanna and I live in San Diego, Ca. I decided to become a high school teacher because I believe that education is one of the most important aspects within society. Helping young adults learn how to think critically about the world is something that I hold dear to my heart, and it excites me when I have helped someone learn something important.

When I was out of high school I spent a lot of time with my little brother who was still in high school. I used to help him with "common sense" things that our mom did not teach us. I helped him understand his homework assignments, and how to write well organized essays. I loved when he would ask for help. This is how I knew I wanted to teach high school. However, I was nervous because I was not the smartest kid in my high school. I officially felt confident going into this profession when my brother asked me for help several times one week, and I did not know the answers for biology or how to complete the calculus problems. With a little bit of research we were able to figure it out, and he got A's on all the assignments!

In 11th grade I took AP U.S. History and I had an incredible teacher. Although I have learned that differentiation is key to teaching a broad range of students, this teacher in particular only lectured, and would write about 5 key terms on the board each day. This worked for me specifically as a student, and I fell in love with history. I am not great at memorizing information, so when people say "Oh you're a history major? What year did Andrew Jackson take office?" I am stumped. (And yes, this very question was posed to me in a social setting once!) But, I do not let this affect me. I am great at analyzing information and drawing connections. I am confident in this, and I know that when I am researching I need to write dates and other information that is difficult for me to remember down in a place that is easily visible.

I currently wake up at 4:30am each day to substitute teach at a local high school until 3pm, and work at a restaurant each night from 5pm to midnight. I know that teaching will be hard, especially during the first year, but I am looking forward to the mental challenge and also looking forward to exiting my time working 20 hours/day - plus school.

Substitute teaching has been an invaluable experience and I suggest it for all future teachers. I have seen many classrooms and spoken with many teachers and students about how things work, what the teachers do to keep their class under control, how teachers deal with prominent cell phone use in the classroom, and things that students appreciate and do not appreciate about their classrooms.

I know this post is a bit late (had plenty of trouble with the new system) but I am sincerely looking forward to the remainder of this class with all of you!

Best,
Joanna Koppang

Saturday, March 28, 2015

Assignment 3B- Field Experience



The Lesson:
I was lucky enough to substitute in a U.S. classroom at Granite Hills High School in which the teacher did not leave a lesson plan because their absence was not planned. This provided me with an opportunity to teach my lesson to the students. I decided to teach my lesson from Day 5 because I already had a PowerPoint that fit the lesson. Also, because I am not a teacher yet, I do not have the power to give students grades or assign homework. I adapted my lesson plan to fit this situation.
This lesson is about human death tolls in relation to the Great Depression. 

Instructional Strategies
The instructional strategies for this class include a short video from YouTube. This video has photographs of the time period (primary source documents) and a short PowerPoint that has graphs to show death tolls and poor living situations. this video has an interesting perspective because it is also has Ken Burns talking about making a full length documentary about the Dust Bowl.
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClyBKz4sQ28

Assessment tasks
The assessment tasks for this lesson, as adapted for teaching it to students who are not my students, is to initially have a class discussion about times in history that had high human death tolls. The first thing the students brought up was the holocaust. This is one of the most well-known events in history that had a huge death toll. Students also brought up Stalin’s regime that lists nearly 2.9 million dead in official records. The students also brought up the American Civil War and the Plague. Then we guided the conversation to the death toll during the Great Depression to see what the kids know about it. This is the pre-assessment. We discussed how many of the other events that we mentioned had much greater rates of death and destruction, but that led to a conversation about what an impact this still had on the nation. If it were to happen again today, most people would be devastated.
The ongoing assessment will be to ask students questions throughout the PowerPoint- such as asking for a quick summary, or asking what certain students think of things that happened. As I went through the PowerPoint, the students and I had a discussion about each slide. The students were very interested in this presentation, asked questions, and provided commentary. I showed several graphs on the board, without much explanation, and randomly asked students to explain what we see on the graph. Then I would reiterate and further explain each slide. This ongoing assessment seemed to keep kids motivated, and the students seemed to understand the information as it was presented.
The post-assessment, as adapted for this situation, will be for the kids to draw a picture of what they learned, that depicts how poor people were, how sick people became, and how many people died much earlier than the average death age of the time. The students had about 20 minutes to complete their drawing. I kept some of the photos up on the screen and also allowed them to use their phones to look up more photos if they so wished. The classroom had a large box of colored pencils, but I did not require the students to use them if they would rather sketch in regular pencil. There were some really great drawings. 

What did you Learn?
I learned that speaking to students like they are smart, asking them questions instead of simply talking at them, keeps them engaged. Showing them photos of periods in history that were drastic also helped keep them engaged, because this is not something in history that they are trying to imagine in their minds- they see real photos of starving people, poor people, endless lines, and plenty of food with starving people around. It is a sad part of history, but I was able to see the faces of these students absorbing the information, realizing that this happened not very long ago.

What did you Enjoy?
I enjoyed the pre-assessment the best. It was so much fun to sit and talk to the kids about their knowledge of history. The kids brought up so many interesting times in history where a lot of people died. Times I had learned about but had forgotten, and the kids reminded me. It has been a while since I discussed the Plague with anyone, but some of the kids just read about it and shared with the class.

What would you change?
Of course, I would do things differently with a class of my own. I would have the students work together in pairs, I would have them complete a project that takes more time, thought, and effort than a 20 minute drawing. There is so much to learn about this that cannot be done in a 52 minute class period.
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