MODULE 1

 

Concept 1: Being Effective as a Beginning Teacher

Summary:

In chapter 1, Woolfolk laid out the context of schooling and psychology that teachers have to move in as they navigate teaching and learning. This brings with it a lot of responsibilities, and on page 13, Woolfolk addresses the many concerns that new teachers have regarding their new role. She says that teachers struggle to adjust to the job because there is no learning curve to teaching; they must balance all of the same responsibilities and concerns as an experienced teacher., but without the know-how that comes with experience (p. 13). In my introductory education course, my professor warned us that our first 1-2 years of teaching would be the hardest, but Woolfolk provides a little more context (and research) to support this when she says on page 5 that a teacher’s “sense of efficacy may decline after the first year as a teacher, perhaps because the support that was provided during student teaching is gone.” Also on page 5, Woolfolk says that a teacher’s sense of efficacy is “one of the few personal characteristics of teachers that predict student achievement,” and also can help promote a healthier work life. I wasn’t familiar with the concept of a sense of efficacy, and I didn’t know how crucial it was to a successful environment for learning. It’s important for teachers to seek support from more experienced teachers both to help them learn to better lead their classrooms, and to keep up a healthy sense of their role/performance. On page 5, Woolfolk says that one way that experienced, effective teachers do this is by focusing on their students’ success, rather than fixating on themselves.

Reflection:

Woolfolk’s discussion of how supports vanish, but responsibilities increase, after student-teaching is finished was interesting to me, because that problem is one that an organization I am a part of seeks to address. I’m a Golden Apple scholar, and one of the supports that the Golden Apple program offers is mentorship through the first few years of teaching. The organization pairs new teachers with a seasoned teacher mentor—usually another alumnus of the program—who will meet with, talk with, and offer feedback to their mentee. These mentors are Certified State Evaluators, so their feedback is a valuable tool for improving beginning teachers’ practice. When I entered the program, I thought that this mentorship was a good and supportive thing to offer, but I didn’t realize just how crucial it was until I read about the risks of burnout and feelings of failure for new teachers.


I liked the way that Woolfolk addressed the concerns of new teachers, but gently pointed out that one of the best ways to combat these issues is actually to focus less on themselves and their performance, and more on what is working for students. However, I’d like to address the fact that this emphasis on performance can be a stressor in of itself, as students are, in my view, incredibly over-tested—especially at the elementary and middle school levels. Especially as student performance is viewed by the state as an indicator of teacher/school effectiveness (as Woolfolk discusses in this chapter’s section on NCLB and teacher expectations), there is a great deal of pressure on teachers and schools to get students to perform, which translates to a pressure for teachers themselves to perform. One of the third grade teachers at my former elementary school complained to me that she was frustrated that because of an unrelenting slew of reading tests, she never had the full class in the classroom, and her aide was always busy testing students instead of being able to help with class activities. She said the school put a great deal of emphasis on the tests, and teachers whose students didn’t perform as well were under scrutiny from the administrators. Yet, she said that the constant disruption of testing kept her from actually teaching all of her students effectively. I still agree with Woolfolk that moving away from a focus on your own performance will lead to stronger teaching, but I think it’s important to acknowledge that if a teacher isn’t careful, a focus on student success can circle back to create more pressure and burnout.


As a teacher, I think I can prevent burnout and stress over my own performance (and student performance) by intentionally focusing on metrics of success outside of testing. This requires mindfulness and active reflection on my own thinking, but I think that those are some of a teacher’s most important tools. This was reinforced for me over the summer at my Golden Apple placement. The summer school program I worked in focused on earth science, and many of the second graders I taught struggled to master the concepts. At first, I was worried about this, because it seemed like my explanations and support weren't effective. But after reflecting with some of the other scholars, and my cooperating teacher, I instead tried to focus on the ways that students were otherwise learning and growing. My class had become very comfortable around me and sought out help; a few students who has struggled with handling frustration when they were having a hard time understanding were becoming better at regulating their emotions. Overall, they were thriving, and enjoying their time in the classroom. Focusing on this was much more fulfilling than fixating on their ability to describe erosion or identify landforms. If I seek out support, process what’s going on in the classroom, and choose to focus on all the ways that children perform in the classroom, I feel better, and my teaching is more effective.


Concept 2: Plasticity & Enrichment


Summary:

In chapter 2, Woolfolk digs into cognitive development, and its implications for teachers. On page 25, she says that the brain is plastic, because its connections change as we learn. She later says on page 44 that because of this plasticity, students need “enriched, active environments and flexible instruction strategies…to support development,” especially in young children, for whom, she states on page 39, self-directed stimulation and exploration-based learning is best. I had learned about the necessity of cognitive stimulation in my Life-Span Development class, where we discussed how early deprivation of this stimulation can lead to stunted development later in life. For children, especially very young children, to form the synapses they need for learning, they need a flexible, varied teaching strategy that allows them to engage with the world in multiple ways, and on multiple levels, and to explore and discover on their own. I’ve been working on a project to provide “cognitive kits” to under-resourced parents, which includes information on the importance of stimulating their young children’s brains, as well as tools like books, symbolic play toys, blocks, and drawing/coloring materials to help parents do so. Woolfolk’s information on how this kind of learning continues later into life, and her examples of how it might be incorporated into the classroom, were helpful in expanding my understanding of this topic.


Reflection:

I really appreciated Woolfol’s in-depth look at specific ways that teachers can incorporate plasticity and enrichment in the classroom. I agreed with her that one way to enrich and provide variety in their lessons is to use stories to teach, which are both easier to remember and engage us on many cognitive levels. I think that stories also cover another effective teaching strategy that Woolfolk mentions: the emphasis on big ideas over small details. I experienced this when I read a book about the Impressionists after learning about them in history class. The book focused on stories of the individuals at play in the movement, but to tell the stories, the author set up the setting and the context of the historical background that led up to the movement. I came away with a far better understanding of large concepts like the Impressionist movement and the 19th century European political contexts as well as smaller concepts like individual artworks and artists from the period, by reading than I did from the history lectures and textbook readings, because I was able to fit them into a story, and that story into the wider history of the world. Applying those big ideas to my other classes, and talking about them with other people, also helped me to remember, because doing so took advantage of the plastic nature of my brain by engaging what I’d learned in different settings and methods. It also encouraged further self-directed learning, because I pursued more reading, which further strengthened my knowledge by causing the connections I’d made to increase and evolve. As a teacher, I can aim for this same effect by going beyond lecture/textbook-based learning and approach content from different angles, encouraging my students to make a variety of strong connections that will help them remember the material.

Over the summer, I was able to see self-directed stimulation and enrichment at play from a teacher’s perspective when working with my students. Each morning, students would grab a “STEM box” as soon as they came in, and they would work with it for the first 15 minutes of the day while the class filtered in. Every STEM box contained some sort of craft material and a list of prompts; some boxes had styrofoam balls and toothpicks, others had Legos, blocks, index cards and tape, or magnet tiles, and the goal was simply to make something. I watched my students experiment with their boxes, figuring out what could be done with each material and what kinds of properties it had. Sometimes they didn’t like what they had to work with, or became frustrated when they couldn't make what they wanted. But my cooperating teacher and I encouraged them to keep trying, and reminded them that they needed to put in the work to learn and get results. I liked that in this chapter, Woolfolk was careful to acknowledge that students do need this sort of reminder sometimes, and while teachers provide the tools, the guidance, and the environment, ultimately students are in charge of their own exploration and learning.

I think that the question of how much self-direction is too much is very important in today’s discussion of learning. As we move away from more memorization-based instruction, and transition from more rigid instructor-focused models of learning to a model of co-creating knowledge, some people are concerned that when given charge of their learning, students will choose not to learn anything at all. While Woolfolk addressed how the brain seeks to collect, organize, and analyze information, I wish that she would have touched on this question more thoroughly. It can be difficult to balance managing meeting objectives with space for self-direction, and getting it wrong can lead to students missing out on. During my summer placement, I saw an example of this when my cooperating teacher led a landform-modeling activity. Because some students were struggling with some of the core concepts, like erosion, that we were covering, and one student had difficulty self-regulating, my teacher chose to heavily direct the activity. She told the students what to do at each step to make the “landform” in the sand and then “erode” it with water, and explained exactly what happened and why. I wonder, though, if the students would have gotten something more out of the activity if she allowed them to explore first, and then discuss what happened to form their conclusions and explanations together. In my teaching practice, this is something for me to explore, and to monitor as I go through different placements. It’s important to create a safe and productive environment, but it’s also important for students to build lasting knowledge, and I think that only experience can inform how to strike that balance.


Concept 3: Responsiveness to Family Context


Summary:

In chapter 3, Woolfolk looks at the influences that shape our development socially, and in our sense of self, including the influence of family. On page 83, Woolfolk states that parenting styles can be influenced by culture, and that it’s easy to misread the implications of some parenting styles, like those commonly found in Asian and Latino families. In particular, Woolfolk presents some research that challenges the usefulness of Baumrind’s 4 parenting styles in understanding those families (p. 83). I learned about Baumrind’s parenting styles in a previous psychology course, but this criticism was new to me. I didn’t consider how different cultural philosophies, and notions of family, frame Baumrind’s aspects of style completely different from Western ideas. Woolfolk also discusses on pages 84-87 how our sense of attachment and security in family influences our understanding of ourselves and our interactions with others, which underpin learning. Notions of family and parenting are just that, notions, and these will differ as a result of cultural or other contextual differences. She says on page 85 that “divorce is never easy for anyone. But it can be a better alternative for children than growing up in a home filled with conflict and discord.” I agreed with Woolfolk’s framing of the issue, because while divorce can be better than constant strife, it still isn’t a good thing. I think that right now, there is some conflation of divorce being better than conflict with divorce being a good thing, and I think that this overly-positive spin on divorce muddles and invalidates the disruption to the children who are affected by it, and how they may be reacting to that disruption. The issue needs to be approached with sensitivity and support to all involved.


Reflection:

Sensitivity to student cultures, especially among marginalized communities, has always been important to me, so Woolfolk’s centering of researchers and voices from those communities was great to see. It can be difficult to engage with cultural differences between teachers and students, and between students themselves, effectively, which is why I agree with Woolfolk that the best approach is to co-create strategies with families. The only way to understand what cultural context is to become more informed about it, which is why getting to know your students and their communities is essential; you have to be aware of cultural differences to educate yourself about them. This means being aware of your own culture, and the dominant culture, in addition to marginalized cultures, so that you can be sensitive to historical issues and the nature of power structures. Asking students and their families what they need, and how they operate, will allow us to understand how to be supportive of their schooling goals.

One of my professors told me that at his previous school, he had an international student who would never make eye contact with him when he was being redirected or reprimanded. In some students, my professor had learned to understand this behavior as a sign of stubbornness or disrespect, but instead of reacting, he gently asked the student to look at him. The student seemed surprised and confused, which surprised my professor. Later, he looked into the issue, and learned that in this student’s country, making eye contact when being disciplined was incredibly disrespectful. The student was actually showing my professor respect, and that he understood the redirection, rather than being uncooperative. Without knowing this student, and without putting in the effort to get to know him more fully, my professor wouldn’t have been able to effectively teach him.

In my practice, I want to show sensitivity and care to students, to build a relationship with them so that I’m better able to form support structures around them. If I know my students, I’ll be able to identify when a seemingly demanding parenting style is harmful, or when I’m simply misunderstanding a philosophy of parenting because it’s different from my own. I’ll communicate with students and families, monitoring their behavior and performance so that I notice when something changes, and have the relationship foundation needed to reach out and find out if something like a divorce is negatively affecting a student, and how to support them in that change.