Susan Jaffe
T&L 611 201
Summer 2012
Curriculum Revision Project
Narrative
I recently
completed my student teaching experience in English at Riverside
Brookfield High School.
The population of learners is quite diverse at RB because it combines some more
affluent Riverside homes with bordering Brookfield
which is more urban and is home to many lower income families. RB has a strong
academic record and was ranked by U.S. News and World Report as one of the top
15 schools in Illinois because
its strong population of AP test takers but the school also struggles with some
readers in the bottom five percentile for their grade. I worked with Sarah
Johnson, a reading specialist who has been teaching at Riverside Brookfield for
about 10 years. While I was with her this spring she was named the English
department chair. I had an enriching and excellent student teaching experience
with Sarah; she was supportive, helpful in my job search process, and always
took time to help me reflect on my teaching.
While at Riverside
Brookfield, I had more preps than many of my student teaching peers because
Sarah Johnson is a reading specialist and her day was a bit unusual. We never
repeated a class so I had to prep for each class separately. This was a
challenge but also one that made me a better preparer of lessons. I taught a
regular junior level American Literature course, another junior American
Literature class that was co-taught with a special education teacher (and had
32 students!), a remedial reading course for sophomores which was co-taught
with a special education teacher, an AP Literature and Composition class with
juniors and then a push-in period of one-on-one tutoring with the school’s
bottom readers during their study halls. This day was never boring and gave me
a lot of opportunities for creating lessons but not many (or any) opportunities
to revisit or revise lessons.
Revisiting
my lesson plans for my unit on Tim O’Brien’s Vietnam
novel The Things They Carried was especially helpful to me because it gave me
the opportunity to take the time on the lessons that I lacked during student
teaching. Often during my time at Riverside
Brookfield High School
as a student teacher, I was trying to survive day-to-day so the idea of
reworking lessons that were complete seemed unhelpful and an inefficient use of
time. It was really refreshing and nice to get to return to a unit and see what
went well and what could be improved and I think that each year that I will get
more experience as a teacher, I can and should do this process of reflection
and revisiting my lessons to make them better and better each year.
One
thing that I changed in my lessons for The Things They Carried was a stronger
introduction to major themes in the first few days of the unit. We started
reading the novel on the first day of the unit when I student taught but I
think that the students would have had a better frame of reference on the
Vietnam War and on Tim O’Brien’s story if they had more information beforehand.
This would give them the schema they need to put their learning into context of
why we were studying it instead of starting on the literature right away and
then asking them to put it in context as we went along. This is a change that I
discussed with my cooperating teacher and would definitely change if I were
given the opportunity to teach this again.
I also made the
unit more streamlined to focus on just one or two major themes throughout the
entire novel instead of looking at each chapter/story separately. I think that
this would help them to have a strong take away instead of having so many
disparate parts of their novel experience. By narrowing in on two or three
themes, students would be able to focus their reading and attention on the
elements of discussion I want to cover most importantly instead of having to
cover a multitude of issues.
All in all, this
project was a great experience for me because it allowed me to take the time to
revisit my lessons without the daily pressure of being in school currently. I
was able to think about my lessons strategically instead of trying to cope with
my short resources of time and attention during the school week. It also was
helpful for me to think about what went well and what could be improved and I
believe that this reflection process is really important for all of us early
teachers.
My professional
goals for the next three years are that I stay reflective and take the time to
revisit my lessons in this thoughtful way. I hope to be self-analytical to
learn about what works for me and what doesn’t and to take the time to review
how things go instead of just planning for the day ahead. I hope that in three
years, I am a leader and a major contributor on my department team and that I
create a reputation of hard work, content knowledge, and common sense for
myself. I hope that I am involved in extra curriculars and still find time for
passion in my work. I think that my experiences in the professional world will
help me give my students perspective on life outside of the classroom and
encourage them to become strong communicators no matter their post high school
ambitions.
