Week 11 Reflection

November 2nd - 6th, 2009

After almost four weeks of brainstorming, researching, and drafting, the personal narrative due date has finally arrived! Normally, a teacher wouldn't be so enthusiastic about receiving stacks of papers to grade, and I sure do have stacks: students turned in everything involved in their writing process. The reason why I'm happy to finally collect them is because I was sensing a lot of frustration and boredom from the students. While I did give students the opportunity to rank topic preferences and tried to give them one of their top three choices, the majority of students were uninterested in their assigned topic. I know from experience that students won't put as much effort into writing about a topic that they feel indifferent about or dislike. And this is the root of why so many students associate negative feelings with writing.

However, I have a feeling that they will appreciate these personal narratives so much more when they see the finished product of their digital stories. There is so much work involved in creating a multimedia project like this, and last year I saw the pride that the eighth graders had when they presented their digital stories to their classmates. I just wish I could have shortened the time it took to create this assignment without losing the quality. It was necessary for me to spend time explaining the process of brainstorming, researching, and drafting. I was surprised with how confused these students were when it came to incorporating information into a paper without actually writing a research paper. It took a lot of time to explain how to balance first person accounts with relevant information from primary and secondary sources. But thankfully, this writing assignment is over -- for now.

This was the first unit project that I've ever created and used in a classroom, so I was bound to make some mistakes with the execution. One lesson that I learned was that students can help teachers avoid 'busy work' by doing simple organizational tasks. For example, I gave them a checklist with seven items that they needed to turn in on Wednesday. I thought that the checklist was a very effective method for students to understand the gravity of the assignment, but I only used this paper as a reminder of what was due. I should have told them to staple the papers in the order of the checklist and actually check off the items that they have, but I just collected stacks of papers. It might not sound very important, but I spent at least two hours that night organizing papers, stapling, and keeping track of who turned in what on a roster. This could have been avoided by simply passing around a stapler and giving them a few minutes at the beginning of class to organize and complete the checklist.

I am learning every day that there are so many aspects in teaching that seemed minuet, but prove to be otherwise. I've already mentioned in previous blogs how stressful it is keeping track of overdue and make-up homework, helping students organize their binders for class, and reteaching skills that should be mastered. Before I had first-hand experience teaching at my PDS, I never considered the interruptions to a teacher's original plans. I'm slowly learning that organization and flexibility are some of the most essential qualities that a teacher must have. I can imagine that this would be especially true for a teacher's first few years, when they begin developing these procedures to avoid chaos down the road.