Learning to Describe, Describing to Understand

“When we conduct descriptive reviews of children in our reflective eminar, these undergraduates often express surprise at how much they thought they knew about their own students, but were perhaps wrong, or they notced how they jumped to characterizations before they sat down and really took the time to describe what they saw of a particular student in various situations.  A common framing question for our child studies are variations of ‘How can I make a better connection with this student?’  After presenters have detailed what they know about the interests of students, what this child finds fascinating are frustrating, with whom they may work well, and when they tend to find trouble, student teachers return to seminar to report ‘updates’ on how the child is doing in class and in various relationships” (Knoester, 151).

Reflection: This passage reminds me the teaching experience in my early years of teaching.  I planned a series of class activities and assignments that I thought my students would be interested in and had fun doing them.  But I realized that my plan did not work well when I carried it out in class.  So ideal is different from the real.  Observation plays an important role of testing out our acknowledgement and at the same time recieving feedback.  What we observed, which we can call field notes, always give us unpredictable answer and enlightenment.

As for teachers, teaching and learning is not a one way process.  It is a two-way process.  Observation is the bridge connecting these two actions.  When teacher is teaching academic knowledge to students, he or she is learning if his or her teaching strategy works and how well the students adapt to the method he or she uses through observing students’ reaction to his or her teaching.  According to the observation, teacher learns to adjust the teaching method and approaches and make the teaching more easy to be understood by the students.  I think this is what “Learning to Describe (Teach), Describing (Teaching) to Understand” means.

Noguera, P. A., Sadowski, M., Fowler-Finn, T., & Tatum, B. D. (2008). Joaquin’s Dilemma. In M. Sadowski (Ed.), Adolescents at School: Perspectives on Youth, Identity, and Education

“In addition to reinforcing stereotypes, grouping practices, which teachers and administrators often say are not based on race but on ability or behavior, often have the effect of reinforcing racial separation. Unless the adults in a school are conscious of how this separation influences their own perceptions and those of students, over time this separation may be regarded as normal. For example, black students may assume that, because there are no black students in advanced or honors courses, they cannot excel academically. Of course, black students can distinguish themselves in sports, because there are numerous examples of black individuals who do. Similarly, white students may assume that they should not seek academic assistance from tutorial programs, especially if those programs primarily serve black or brown students. When these kinds of norms associated with race take on a static and determining quality, they can be very difficult to counteract.”

I hated school. I drove to my high school graduation listening to Alice Coopers’ “Schools Out” on the radio, and promised that I would never set foot in a school again. Now, I find myself preparing to be a teacher and reflecting on that promise. The grouping described in the above passage was a large factor. I went to a smaller high school. My senior year, I had class with more or less the same 30 students. I witnessed two friends, the only African American student in the AP program and a student from the poorest part of town, struggle with teachers’ slights and assumptions that essential information was ‘common knowledge’. The reason that I chose foreign language education is that those classes seemed less affected by academic grouping. In my lower level Spanish classes we worked in groups of mixed academic levels. With each other’s encouragement and support, we all advanced together. Students should have the opportunity to form relationships with people different from themselves and to encourage each other’s growth. Academic grouping often discourages or even makes this impossible. School should be a place of inclusion, not alienation. If this were the case perhaps Cooper’s song would be a lament instead of a rock anthem.

Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out”

I would like to share my own experience of observation and my concerns towards it.

Last semester, when taking the class of Inquires Into Teaching, I was required to attend at least 3 courses in PS 42 and complete observation logs to keep track of the class. Our professor asked us to record only the general procedure and major student activities in the class. Even though my observation is not as “professional” as Knoester and Malley &Hawkins have suggested in their articles, I still learned something helpful to my future teaching. I agree with Knoester’s opinion about observation notes, that they can be very helpful to polish your teaching strategies.

However, the drawbacks, or “limitations” (according to Knoester), are also obvious. Observing would take out too much time from teachers, which should have been used for class preparation or homework checking. On the other hand, it would be very difficult for facilitators to avoid mixing in subjective interpretations while observing students’ behaviors. Teachers’ bias come from various ways, like stereotype, ethnicity, cultural manner etc, which will lead to misunderstanding between teachers and students. For example, last class Prof. Doucet mentioned the stereotype of Asian kids like being quite in class, whereas, the kids might have other issues so they don’t feel like to talk that much in school. Therefore, it requires teachers to obtain sharp perception to cognize students’ thoughts under their behaviors. If teachers fail to do so, the practice of doing descriptive review would become meaningless.

Personally, I think taking field notes is very helpful, especially to student teachers, who haven’t acquired much teaching experience. By looking at real class setting, and collect students’ reflection and response in class, they would be better prepared for the start of their future teaching career. As for experienced teachers, taking field note can help better know your students, and find out good approaches to reach to students effectively.