In three weeks I will be the one in charge of educating nine students who other teachers could not handle.  I will have to figure out the best teaching strategies to keep these students actively engaged in the learning process. The trickiest part is that not only do I have to figure out what teaching strategies will work best for me and my students; I also have two other adults to guide through the process. The Para’s I will be working with seem open minded and ready to follow my lead, I just have to trust that all of this knowledge will team with my natural abilities and take us all to a place of success. It is a daunting task as I try to take everything in and find that balance of varied strategies and methods but I know it is a process that will continue to evolve throughout my career.

Single subject design- (text pg 241) individual behavior recorded before and after an intervention. I will use single subject design as my approach to changing student behavior within my classroom.

Talking about single subject design today has made me excited to get back in the classroom. I am ready to be interacting with kids and trying to figure them out. I love seeing a deficit in a student and working toward helping them overcome that deficit. The study of behavior is my passion and today helped me to connect this class content with that passion.

Today as I was cleaning up after class I wound up talking to Dr Kline about data keeping within my previous classroom and how difficult it was to have everyone on board. We talked about observer biases and instrumentation. We talked about possible ways to make the data collection successful. I found myself suddenly interested in what we were talking about in class. I am actually a little excited for Monday’s class on single subject studies. I wish that more of the course had focused on what these topics mean for us as educators. Wouldn’t everything we are learning be more useful if we understood where this information might come into play in the future and how it might affect our teaching?

I am beginning to pull together, in my mind, what I would like the first few days of school to look like in my classroom. It still feels like a pretty vague concept but I know that I want to help my students find successes where they have previously failed.

I want to examine the character education statement of my new school and have students define what these things mean to them.  Of course I will have an idea of what this will look like in our classroom so I am prepared to guide students in the right direction but the goal will be to help them have ownership. I want our classroom to become a place to be proud rather than a place to be ashamed. I want to give my students a sense of community where they have responsibility and learn accountability. Students will have jobs in my classroom. They will play their part in whatever way they can and everyone’s role will be integral. 

Maybe I am just a young new teacher thinking I can change the world, or at least the worlds of a few kids. Right now I firmly believe there are no bad kids. I believe that they have learned the wrong lessons in life. In the past their negative behaviors have been reinforced by negligence or naivety. I believe every child wants to be good and to be successful, some have just never been taught how. Maybe this time next year I will decide that it was me who was negligent and naïve in believing these things. The possibility exists that these kids will eat me alive and I will have to quickly change my philosophy or move on but I don’t believe that. I know in my heart that ownership and a sense of community with consistent modeling and feedback is the key. My students will follow my lead and my attitude is what will determine how far we all go. I’m ready!

Today I was feeling much more lost than usual. Part of the problem is I am having a lot of trouble focusing on the lectures. The information is feeling less relevant and the I am having trouble relating it to my classroom. I can intellectually understand the importance of having this background knowledge but getting myself to focus is becoming more challenging as the end of the quarter due dates quickly approach.

I did, however, really appreciate the activity with M&M’s. I know that it is probably hard to organize such activities but I learn so much more from doing. I enjoyed the action and interaction as well as having the ability to see what we were examining through real charts and graphs. This activity allowed me to understand and analyze the idea of error within a study to a greater level.

Due to some bad planning on my part I was unable to be in class today. However, I have reviewed the literature and posted lecture.

Today’s chapter and lecture went more in depth with validity and experimental design. Validity makes a lot of sense to me. I can relate it to my everyday study of behavior. As a teacher whose focus is on students with extreme behavioral needs I am constantly studying and analyzing in an informal way. The information on validity reminds me of all the questions I ask myself when I see changes in behavior. I’m constantly questioning the root of a change and if there is truly a change.

While I understand that there is some level of expectation that we will have mastered such tasks before reaching this level of education the disappoint remains as I continue to do the same assignments over and over.  The assignments that I completed this year that made the most impact for me were the ones where we were given more freedom. It was occasionally hard to find structure and focus on the more creative assignments but they are also the ones that will stick with me the longest. The creative presentation of my teaching philosophy which I prepared for Dr. Espinor’s Students as Learners class was probably my favorite assignment ever and I still show it to anyone I get to watch. Similarly, the lesson plan creation for our Diversity class was used throughout my internship last year as a tool to educate General Ed students on my students with special needs. Most of my other assignments, reflections and research papers are not likely to ever be looked at again. While I know that learning took place writing those assignments, they just aren’t what I feel is the most useful tool for myself as a learner. Had more professors practiced what they preached, I believe, they could have provided us with a more comprehensive educational experience.

Creative Presentation of Teaching Philosophy

It was also interesting to think about how we judge the values of testing outcomes. When we consider a norm, the demographics must be evaluated to ensure that we are comparing like items. It does not make sense to compare the math scores of 1^st graders to those of 5^th graders if we are trying to determine student success within their norm.

Overall I think that today’s class drove home the point that we must think about our goals and objectives in everything we do. If we are assessing students, it is important to think about our choice of instrumentation and if the results are likely to give us the desired information.

Today we discussed the various forms of research. It was interesting to think about the differences between research and experiment. An experiment must include some manipulation and control whereas research simply studies what has happened.

We also discussed extraneous variables and how important it is to eliminate such factors whenever possible.  The best way to control variables we are unaware of is through random selection and assignment is the best way to eliminate the extraneous variables.

Validity is another important point to consider. We must ensure that the test we are presenting measures what we are looking to assess.  We must also ensure that observed changes are not from an independent or unknown variable.

Today I am feeling significantly better. I am not sure why I was so irritated yesterday. Maybe the lack of sleep is catching up to me.

Today I was able to find some better research articles using the Google Scholar search engine. This search engine felt much more user friendly to me especially when combined with the specific publications held by SPU’s library. I am still not 100% sure that the articles I found are peer reviewed and quantitative but I at least feel like I have more direction.

In class we talked about the various terminology associated with research. Most of this was a review as we studied similar topics in undergrad statistics classes and, more recently, our Special Ed Assessment class. Reviewing these topics is always a plus as they can be a bit complex and become intertwined in my mind. I especially appreciated Dr. Kline’s explanation of the differences in various types of scales. By using height we were able to have a visual and physical representation of the definitions which I believe will help me to have a more lasting understanding of these terms.