Differentiation & classroom management

This seemed to be Ms. Crabapple's primary classroom management strategy.
(photo courtesy of carnagerules.wordpress.com)

When I think back on my educational life, a big difference I notice between what I experienced and what we're learning in class is transparency. Blaz Ch. 2 talks about explaining differentiation to students after handing out a "cultural capital" survey. While there were times for me to share who I was in high school in various ways, I don't remember it being a formal part of the lesson, occupying a place that would hold great value. Something I feel that I've learned from the readings this week is that the partnership between students and teachers is a microcosm, and that partnership needs to be present in the "small stuff" of daily classroom life to be felt as genuine and authentic. Relationship seems to be at the center of differentiation.

Importantly, part of honoring that relationship with students is being prepared with meaningful lessons. I really enjoyed watching the class period with teacher Tyler Hester. After watching, I looked up his corresponding blog post, Tyler Hester's 7 tips for better classroom management, which are as follows:
1. Love your students
2. Assume the best in your students
3. Praise what and when you can
4. DO sweat the small stuff
5. Identify yourself
6. Forge a class identity
7. Have a plan

This list of tips points out the balance for teachers as we strive to always keep students at the center of our work. Students need to know that they are respected, loved, and trusted to achieve their full potential. To do so, we need to create structures in which they understand what is being asked of them, and feel safe in taking risks. I was fascinated by the tight grip Tyler kept on whispering in his classroom. "Isn't that overkill?!" I thought to myself. But as I read through these points, he talks about "sweating the small stuff" as the way to really create a world for students -- a world that is specific to my classroom, but also translates into real-world skills students will need, like the ability to turn on a laser-like focus to the task at hand. Tyler scaffolds his students all the way in that high expectation he holds for them. He is constantly reminding, encouraging, and not negative or mean in his responses to error. He has planned every part of his lesson down to the minute, and his students are co-creators of those moments -- watching the timer and self-regulating, participating in the structured turn-and-talk, but ready to come back when called. It's amazing to see.

Watching Tyler's class makes me think of the classrooms I have seen get out of control. I wonder what this teacher does if chaos erupts -- or has he never lost control in that way? I wonder, with a caseload of 150 students, is it possible to differentiate and meticulously plan from Day 1 so that my classroom never hits the point of chaos? And if not, how do I help restore the structure that gets lost a little every time chaos erupts?

Goals & Dreams / Language In The Attic

Goals and dreams for becoming a language teacher:

I want to help students explore and discover who they are and how they belong to the world. Language is both an art that helps us reflect and express our deepest selves, and a tool to share ourselves with others. I want to help students become empowered to take social risks in language by instilling confidence in them that they can be multilingual, and the desire to enrich their communities and human experiences in this way. Meeting new people, while traveling in a new country or stepping across the street, hearing them speak on a Youtube video or reading about their lives a hundred years ago, is a special opportunity that language offers us. For English learners in the US, learning an L2 doesn't seem like a choice. For world language learners, learning an L2 doesn't seem necessary. It can be extremely overwhelming, and may even seem impossible to begin. I would like to work with my language students to break down these preconceived notions, and help guide them in their second language journey by providing a map. My dream for my "map" for students, a marriage of content and language, is to help them see parts of the English-speaking and French-speaking worlds that they might not get in other classes. I want to help students see themselves and people like them. I want to empower students to tell their own stories, and to learn to listen deeply to the stories of others.

Language In the Attic:

As can be seen in the chart below, all four of my grandparents spoke English as a native language, even if they were native bilinguals (Albert "Ace"). Each of my grandparents had the opportunity to go to post-secondary school of some kind (Lenore went to 2-year teacher's college, Donald used the GI Bill to get a BS in Agriculture, Olivia and Ace met at Wartburg College in Iowa where she studied music and he studied theology). My grandfather Ace, who grew up speaking German with his parents and working the family farm, was the first of his siblings who was able to go to college (he was the fourth child of six -- the younger two also got to go to college). For all my great-grandparents, education was an important family value and it was an expectation that my grandmothers went to college before they became wives. In these working class and middle class families, it was both needed to seek employment to contribute financially, and a status symbol that elevated or maintained the families' status in their communities to have children who were college graduates. What we have learned in other classes about the history of education in the US tells me that my grandparents' second or other languages were not taught in their classrooms. As I made this family tree, my mother shared that while her mother understood some Norwegian, she realized that she probably was not able to speak it. She married a man who only spoke English, and whose English family goes back to the 1670s in in the US colonies. While she continued to hold on to Norwegian cultural practices in some ways, she did so significantly less than many other Norwegian-Americans I know -- the reigning home culture was definitely "American." My grandfather Ace maintained his German throughout his life because of his career as a Lutheran bishop and missionary work to the German-speaking area of France after WWII. While he and Olivia both grew up in German-speaking families, they did not expect or encourage my dad and his brothers to learn German. It's interesting to see that my parents learned second languages in the world language learning structure when they were in middle and high school in the 1960s-early 70s. My parents learned languages other than their heritage languages, and encouraged me to do the same. My parents taught my sister and I some of our cultural heritage, but I think it's a sign of the times we grew up in (the 1980s-90s) that they were much more focused on the cultural diversity of the city we were living in, and wanted us to focus on others' cultures more than our own. 

My Language Family Tree.