CHALLENGES
Challenge 3
While comparing the results from my surveys to my students surveys it is insanely interesting to see how different we were comprehension and passion wise. I intensionally chose a student that I knew wasn't the biggest fan of reading in order to get different results from mine. In his two surveys, he was brutally honest about how he felt about reading and how he felt about other people reading. One of the main things stood out to me was that one of the questions that reads "you make fun of people who read a lot". Obviously my response to this question was "strongly disagree" considering I am going to be an ELA teacher; however, his response was "undecided". I believe that this student has such a predisposed to the idea that reading is "lame" and it is so normalized to this day to think you are weird if you like to read. While scoring my students' Rhody survey, it came up that he had more "negative" responses versus positive, 27 positive versus 31 negative. After he took some time to complete these and I took time scoring them, me and the student sat down again and discussed his responses. We talked about why he thinks he has such a negative connotation for reading and we talked about ways we could work together to try and fix it. I expressed to the student that I knew he was a phenomenal reader I just knew he didn't enjoy doing it. After our reflection, I decided the best option would be to recommend this student with a graphic novel. He started to read the book "Hey, Kiddo" on Thursday of last week and by the time he got to fifth hour on Tuesday he had finished it and was already on pg. 100 of "New Kid". Learning this about my student and reflecting on the small amount of growth he had made really warmed my heart just to know that he was able to find a genre of book that he may end up enjoying.
Challenge 4
Throughout the conversation between the ELA group, we discussed our thoughts on the plot line chart. Growing up, I had a lot of experience learning and exploring the plot line chart. This concept was drilled in my brain throughout all ELA classes. In our discussion, we talked about the poor organization of this plot line chart in general. It was very cluttered and chaotic and the designer of this chart tried to fit in too many ideas into one chart. We also discussed how the chart lacked visual pleasure. There was no color surrounding anything in the chart. To keep your students engaged, you need to implement activities and charts that catch their attention and keep them thinking. I don't think this chart does a good job of that because it can come off as stressful, not knowing where exactly to start.
Challenge 5
"The top three things you need from your students are for them to feel seen, safe, and stretched"
Reflection:
Throughout the AMLE conference, I had the chance to hear from many different educators from all different levels of education. From pre-service teachers to first year teachers, veteran teachers, and administrators, there was something to learn from everyone. I got to hear a lot about building relationships with different students and I got to hear different perspectives as to why this concept is important to implement in your own classroom. It was an amazing experience because I was able to learn from different presenters as well as explore different answers to my question for this challenge. It was interesting to explore this question because depending on the role the person I was asking plays, they always had vastly different responses. Administrators had a very different idea of making connections than the teachers did. Along those same lines, as a first year teacher, there is so much on your plate that balancing student relationships might not come as easy as it does for veteran teachers. Same concept goes for pre-service teachers. Almost all of the pre-service teachers I came in contact with were students currently in a clinical placement. This means that there is constantly another authority in the room. Due to this, it was a common theme that these pre-service teachers do not always feel as respected by their students as the cooperating teacher is. Overall, I gained great insight into this question and I was able to do heavy reflecting based on the very different responses I received.