The Workshop Classroom (Reflection #1)

It has been an exciting few weeks for me at my placement school.  I finally have all of my students’ names mastered (I think!) and have started to really feel a part of the classroom.  The first few days are always a challenge but I feel that they have really started to see me as a teacher.  My CT and I have started co-teaching which is new for me but I love every minute of it.  I still feel slightly awkward correcting students’ behavior or even disciplining them but hopefully that awkwardness will wear off over time.  I have even asked for clarification from my CT about how he wants me to handle certain situations.  He has assured me that he wants me to be a teacher in the classroom and I should discipline or correct students in whatever manner is appropriate.  This has eased some of my concerns but I will still feel strange about it.  I have begun thinking about how I will handle these classroom management issues in my own classroom and I worry sometimes about how effective my classroom management will be.  I’m sure my first year of teaching will be a lot of trial and error.  I have started a teaching journal where I have written down ideas from my CT and most of what I write down concerns classroom management and routines and procedures.  Hopefully this will give me good idea of what works and what doesn’t before I start my first year. 

My CT starts every class period by reading aloud a chapter from a Bluford High novel. This is a series of novels written for young adults that follow students enrolled in Bluford High School.  These stories explore many issues that are relevant for today’s youth:  poverty, violence, crime, teen angst, family issues, peer pressure, drugs and alcohol, etc.  Many of the students seem to be enjoying the novel but many also either zone out or sleep during the first fifteen minutes of class.  My CT has explained why he does this every class period; he believes that many of his students have never seen or heard how an effective reader interacts with a text.  While he reads, he does it in a way that is very entertaining and is easy for the students to follow.  My question is this:  Is reading aloud for fifteen minutes a good use of class time? 

After he reads aloud, he then gives his students twenty minutes to read their library book.  I do believe that it is important to give class time to promote independent reading.  His students were able to choose any book out of the library that interested them.  Independent reading is integral to showing our students that not all reading is boring and that much of it can be enjoyed.

His classroom is very much the “workshop classroom.”  The students spend the majority of the class time either reading or writing.  In Building Adolescent Literacy in Today’s English Classrooms, Randy Bomer describes the importance of the workshop classroom:  “If we want them to read and write outside school, we have to value it inside school and also give them a chance to get engaged with the work.” (Bomer 13)  I agree with this statement wholeheartedly.  How can we expect our students to want to read and write outside of school if we don’t allow them to do so in school?

The big assignment that they have been working on is “Who Am I?”.  He had them read several short memoirs where they did before, during and after reading activities as a class. He did this so he can model for his students how they should be interacting with the text.  After they finished reading the memoirs, he had them do some pre-writing where they were able to answer “questions for memoirists.”  This was to get them thinking about their life and any memorable experiences that they may have had in preparation for an eleven sentence paragraph that they had to write.  I didn’t realize how difficult it is for freshmen to reflect upon any experiences in their life.  Many of them agonized and claimed that they couldn’t think of anything.  I do believe that my CT did a great job scaffolding the idea of personal narrative writing and this helped many students move beyond their barriers of thinking intrapersonally. 

During this assignment, I had the opportunity to work with many students and was able to read their writing.  Many of them struggle with sentence fluency, transitions, and conventions.  However, I was pleasantly surprised with their creativity and how funny many of their paragraphs were.  I look forward to seeing their improvement as the year continues.