Field Placement at Thurmont Middle School - September Observation #1

* For confidentiality purposes, a pseudonym will be provided for the observed student and mentor teacher *

    On September 15th, 2022, I began my field placement at Thurmont Middle School observing a 7th grade Medieval History class. For some insight about the students in this class, my mentor teacher, Ms. G, informed me that around half of the students in this class had IEPs and were performing below grade level. While working with below-grade level students is not foreign to me as I have had the pleasure of working in an inclusion classroom in my previous field experiences, I was eager to see how this group of students engaged with course content, their peers, and their teachers. For this first observation post, I have decided to discuss a student by the name of George. 

    Before getting to my observations and interactions with George, let me provide context into the lesson that was being conducted. The lesson here was conducted over the span of a week, and luckily, I was able to be there for the first and final day of the lesson. The lesson was geared toward helping students establish thesis statements and preparing them for their county benchmark examinations later in the school year. On the first day, Ms. G provided students with a small packet that had information on Byzantine Emperor, Justinian the Great. During this class period, on the first page of the packet, there was a paragraph of background information on Justinian the Great along with the compelling question students were to investigate in order to establish their thesis statements (the first page of the packet was the only page reviewed on this day). Once students had their packets, Ms. G read the paragraph of background information aloud. After she was finished reading, she asked students to review the text again and highlight evidence from the text that supports their individual answers to the compelling question - Did Justinian the Great revive the old Roman Empire or create a new Byzantine Empire? After several moments, she began to call on students to read aloud some of the evidence they gathered. This is where my observations of George began because I was thoroughly impressed. George was very vocal in class discussion, frequently raising his hand and providing several lines of evidence to support his claim. His engagement was fantastic, and he even provided additional context from previous lessons to support his claims on the information he had just read. Again, I was really surprised by what I had seen not just with George but with the rest of the class, considering that Ms. G had informed me beforehand that this group of students struggled to stay on task and engaged in class activities. 

    In the days following, students continued to work on gathering additional evidence to support their answer to the compelling question and formally writing their thesis statements. When I returned to class the following week, students were going to be writing a paragraph with the thesis statements they established and the evidence they found to support their thesis. When I arrived, Ms. G asked me if I could work with George and help guide his writing. To be honest, I was quite surprised when she asked me to work with George because he seemed so ahead of the game when I was in class the week before. However, once I started to work with George, I could understand why Ms. G wanted me to work with him individually. It was clear right away that George had no interest in writing his paragraph. Matter of fact, he told me at one point that he thought the writing was "stupid" and proceeded to play a game on a different tab on his computer. George's behavior here reflects a statement made by Tovani regarding student masks, in which she states, "In reality, these masks of anger and apathy give students a way to hide and cover up their academic insecurities and how they really feel" (Tovani, pg. 51). Looking back, this statement from Tovani speaks perfectly to the situation here. In the class session prior, George was engaged, answering questions, and providing quality insights. When reviewing the notes he took while helping him, his evidence and thesis were excellent. So, what was the problem here? He had all the information right in front of him to write a high-quality paragraph. Then, it clicked - maybe he did not know how to start. According to Tovani, in chapter 2, one of the reasons students disengage is because they have "no idea where to start" (Tovani, pg. 24). After this, I tried to redirect George by drawing a diagram of how to start his paragraph. I first drew an arrow to the first line on the paper to show him where to write his thesis. I then drew a bracket encompassing the next three lines showing him where to put his evidence. Lastly, I drew a final arrow on the last line to show him where to put his concluding sentence. I could see right there that things started to click for George. While he still struggled to remain engaged in the writing, he was able to complete four sentences by the end of the class period. I was very proud of George and I could tell George felt better about himself. After discussing my interaction with George with Ms. G, she stated that she was surprised George wrote one sentence let alone four which made me feel a sense of gratitude. 

    Reflecting on what I saw and did with George, what I would do moving forward to support literary achievement not just with George but with all students is to model the desired task and show examples of what the desired task looks like (Tovani, pg. 76). While Ms. G did a great job of verbally modeling what she was looking for, as teachers, we have to remember that all students to not respond well to just verbal modelization and when a student does not understand what they are doing, they will struggle to remain engaged. Based on my observation of George and how well he responded to my diagram, I would make sure to not only verbally model the task to him but provide visual models as well to ensure that George, and students alike, could build a clear understanding of the task at hand so that they can complete the task confidentially and successfully. 

After reading my post, my question to you all is have you experienced a student similar to George in your field experiences who participates really well in class discussions, but struggles to engage and work independently? What strategies did you use if you encountered a student like this? 

I look forward to hearing your comments below! 😀