Am I a Public Intellectual?

What does it mean to be a public intellectual?  Well if an intellectual is someone who engages in critical study, thought, and reflection about society, then I am definitely one of those.  I feel strongly about certain social issues and when in the company of my colleagues or peers I am happy to have lively debates about the topics I feel strongly about.

While I have strong opinions about many things, I think that as a teacher I could get in to some trouble if I tried to become a social activist. This doesn’t mean I will not encourage my students to gather all the information about something they are passionate about and to make a move towards the change they want to see.  I hope that I can present students with information in a way that promotes respect, peace, and the use of knowledge over blind opinion and scare tactics as we so often see.  If, for example, we look at the #idlenomore movement, a lot of people have no real clue what it is about. On the news and in the media it was made out to be this big scary thing and the movement itself was never discussed.  The media focused on what the members of the group were doing (blockades, hunger strikes, rallies) instead.  It was not presented to the average person in a way that the movement itself intended.

I intend to be a tool for the social change that my students want to see.  I know that it will be my duty to ensure that students are aware of the issues that society and community face but I do not think it would be fair for me to tell them what kind of action is necessary.  I want to teach them the options and allow them to respond on their own in a beneficial way.  I don’t know if that makes me a public intellectual or not.  I think that the injustices we see are incredibly important, and I think that change is more likely to happen now than in the past few decades.  People – myself included – are tired of not being heard or considered when decisions are being made that effect them.

The younger generation is one in particular that is itching for change.  I think the recent election demonstrates this need. Young people were excited to participate and ensure that their voices were heard. A lot of this participation occurred through the use of social media. Social media has made it a lot easier for people to get their messages out, to discuss what is important to them, and to come together.  There is however a drawback to the social media monster. While it gives people a voice, the voice presented can have a very loud, uninformed, or ignorant message. I think one of the most important jobs of a teacher is teaching students what credible information is and how to distinguish it from non-credible information.

Teachers are often bound to this standard of teaching that makes being an activist (maybe especially in an impressionable middle years classroom) dangerous.  There is pushback from all angles; administration, policy, even parents don’t want students exposed to certain things in a way that is different than their own way.  A house who does not believe in the woman’s right to govern her own body may look kindly at a teacher who talks openly about pro-abortion.  A homophobic family may not appreciate discussion of equal rights for LGBTQ families.  But as Chris Hedges says in his Vice interview, “If everybody in power doesn’t dislike you are are probably not doing your job.” Maybe there is a need to push the boundaries to an appropriate extent in the classroom.  I want to make it my job to show that you are allowed your own opinion, separate from those of your family and friends.  I want to make sure that students use information to build their stance and not just the opinion of someone who made their mind up without first seeing the information.

So, am I a public intellectual? I am an intellectual and I will be working in a public sphere sharing social information, so sure.  Call me a public intellectual. I don’t think labelling me as one will have an impact on the way I plan to teach.

Jen Chyz

Today I Feel Like a Teacher

I taught my first real life full length Math lesson today.  I was nervous.  Math has never been my strong suit.  It turns out that things as simple as adding and subtracting are done way differently than the way I learned to do it.  This makes things difficult when you are trying to teach something that relies on some form of computation, as mine did today.  Today’s lesson was about estimating differences.

These poor students were subjected to a lot of Math today.  They started with their Bell Work (written and expanded form of a number) as they do every morning, then they did their Math CAT test (which is interesting on it’s own) in place of their Daily 5, and then came my 60 minutes of Math.  Way too much, but since that is what my lesson was prepared for as per discussion, that is what I taught.  I knew keeping their attention through my direct teaching was going to be tough after so much Math focus so I wanted to get right to the game I had planned for them.

My students were supposed to have the concepts of using front-end rounding, compatible numbers, compensation, and estimating sums down from their previous lessons.  Only trouble with that was my students were behind in their Math.  This could have turned my entire lesson into a huge mess, but I tried not to let that happen.  Instead I decided to take a bunch of things out of my lesson and bring the focus strictly to estimating by rounding to the thousands position and then subtracting.  I started by drawing a bar on the board with Ballpark Estimate on one side and Close to the Actual on the other so the students could see when it was appropriate to be far off than the actual or when it is necessary to be closer to the actual number when estimating.  The students required a little prompting to come up with examples that weren’t just numbers but rather real life examples.  It seemed that by the end of that they understood a little bit better.  For the actual lesson part it was clear who were the strong students in Math and who just didn’t get it.

After providing the students with a couple examples that we worked through together and introducing the concept of Benchmarks (without mentioning the term itself) we moved on to the game.  There were some students who performed really well on their own and didn’t need much instruction and others who needed a lot of instruction.  One of the most rewarding parts was seeing how excited a couple of students were when they went from admittedly not knowing what I was talking about to coming up to me to show me that they had gotten one or two completely on their own.  It was such an awesome feeling.  It is what made me feel like a real teacher today.

One thing that I really need to work on is watching the time.  That hour flew by! I would have loved to have had more time for the game and I missed my exit slip completely.  I think I need to carry my phone to buzz and notify me when I need to go from set to development to my closure.  I think I will continue to learn something every lesson, and I am okay with that.

Since I missed what was supposed to be my awesome Halloween Art lesson, I am up for Art again in two weeks!

Have a great Remembrance Day and I look forward to any feedback!

Jen

 

My First Mini Lesson

Today was only my second time in the classroom and so it was my first time taking a crack at “teaching”.  I over planned a 15 minute pre-Daily 5 lesson about a couple of Word Attack Strategies to use while reading to self.  I would say that overall it went pretty well.  The students were really responsive to my prompting questions.  Part of my over planning was in anticipation of me being at the front of the classroom asking questions to absolute silence.  That was not the case at all!  I started by telling the students that I would only be taking answers by people with their hands up and went on to asking the questions.  Lo and behold, I would ask a question and a bunch of little hands shot up in the air!

While the lesson and participation went well, I don’t feel like the students truly understood or retained any of my little strategies.  Some strategies they were already a little familiar with and others could have probably filled an entire lesson.  I don’t consider this any sort of failure on my point, rather it just makes me so much more excited to have a classroom of my own.  It is hard being in a classroom only once a week because you don’t really know what the students know and understand already.  Or even more important, you don’t know how they learn.

We have a great Co-op who is so flexible on what we want to teach, but I can see how with such little time in the classroom the draw of more structure might seem easier.  I am not letting this discourage me.  At this point we are all way underprepared to have our own classrooms full-time and so we are just currently dipping our toes in the proverbial waters.  This is why next week I have decided to jump on a Math lesson; something I am the opposite of familiar with.  Try them all while I can!

Wish me luck!

Jen

You can call me Mrs. Chyz

Well guys, I made it out of day one alive!  To be honest, I was pretty nervous for today.  Actually really nervous.  Would my co-op like me? Would the kids like me? Would I like them?! These were just a few of the 100 questions I was asking myself and aside from one hiccup with my criminal record check (I brought it, it’s a long story) the day went off without a hitch.  Sarah and I were placed in a grade 5 classroom with 25 students and our co-op could not be any nicer.  She is open to letting us teach whatever subject we want, including having a try at all of them.  I look forward to gaining some of the expertise she has.

We planned a fun introductory game based off of Switch Sides if… but the classroom we are in turned out to be a lot smaller than anticipated.  Rather than having a clear space in which students could switch sides, we adapted and had them sit or stand instead.  The activity itself went over really well and the students responded the way we hoped to our contrasting statements and follow up questions, but it was not perfect.  We should have started with a little more direction.  I think we were too excited to get to the fun stuff and make them like us so we weren’t too focused on the rules.  We had a few students who talked at every opportunity, when we were really trying to pick individuals to talk so we could get to know them all a little better.  We ended up scrapping our second activity (get the students to make name cards) because they already had them.  Lucky us!

Feeling the student love on day one!

During Math, Sarah and I each took some students to play a game in the hallway while the other half of the class were receiving their lesson.  The first set of students were a little wild. Trying to keep them quiet in the halls while other classes were going on was a bit of a challenge. By the time I got the second group I figured out my initial mistake; I was not making the rules clear enough at the beginning again.  With the second group, before I gave them their dice and calculators, I made sure everyone understood what the point of the game they were about to play was.  Before I even explained the math game, I made sure to lay down the expectations for their behaviour as well.  I will get this classroom management thing eventually.

There were some pretty surprising-in-a-good-way things going on that we got to observe.  One, the grades 5 to 8 students happened to be “voting” in the Federal election.  They were all really excited about it and had some strong opinions about who the right party is.  There was a polling station including Elections Canada voting screens and ballots that they got to use.  It was very cool to see kids interested in Canadian politics. It turns out maybe we are educating for engaged citizens! The second exciting thing happened when our co-op asked her students about what important thing happened in the 1930’s (in reference to a book they were reading), one student answered with “Residential Schools”.  She wasn’t on track for the “right” answer, but the fact that a student answered that first shows that Treaty Ed is making its way in to the schools.  Very awesome to see.

Next week I will teach my first class, Art! If you have any tips on working something Halloween related into the grade 5 curriculum, I am all ears!

See you next time,

Mrs. Chyz

PS

Go Jays Go!