Further Reflections on First-Year Teaching in the College Classroom
Elizabeth Haller
PhD Candidate and Teaching Fellow
Kent State University and Editor-in-Chief
Academic Exchange Extra
E-mail: editoraee@hotmail.com
As I stated in my brief reflection published in the combined June/July 2007 issue of Academic Exchange Extra, during my first two years teaching I kept a weekly teaching journal in which I would write out some of my fears and frustrations regarding classroom performance—both mine and my students. The purpose being that perhaps I could learn from my own mistakes and/or successes. I recently let my office mate, a first-year graduate teacher, read two journal entries I wrote during this time, hoping they would provide her with some ideas as well as shed some light for her on how she is not alone in her fears. One of those short entries appeared in the June/July 2007 issue. The other is included here.
November 20, 2002
My class had its first group work day of the semester, and it was an absolute disaster. Is there a book that teaches how to effectively organize groups? I am sure there must be, so why wasn’t it a required text in my “teacher prep” course? I have always been uncomfortable with group work, perhaps because, as a teacher, I’ve never learned how to organize it effectively and, as an undergrad, I absolutely despised small groups because I was inevitably always stuck doing all the work. As a teacher, however, I believe that group work is highly influential in furthering a student’s understanding of a particular concept. Interaction among peers stimulates something within them as learners that cannot wholly be accomplished through listening to a teacher. It is similar to being a teenager and having your mother tell you it’s cold outside, so you should wear a sweater. You proceed to explain to her that you are not a child, and you don’t think you need a sweater, so you’re not going to wear one. And then your friend says, “Hey, it is cold. You should really wear a sweater,” and you say, “Okay.” Even though your mother is simply looking out for your best interests, you are perhaps more inclined to listen to a peer instead, believing they are somewhat less impartial than a parent.
Well, today served to prove that I have every right to be uncomfortable with group work, because I simply do not know how to do it correctly–if there even is a “correct” way. And what makes the whole experience even more wonderful (note sarcasm) is that today’s the day a fellow teacher, Jody, was assigned to observe my class for the department’s semester evaluation. Just perfect!
My plans for today’s group exercise looked good on paper. This is the day we were to discuss mechanics, and it is the only day I set aside this week to do so. The students were to have read a few sections in their handbook relating to proper use of colons, semicolons, commas, dashes, ellipses, and numbers—fun stuff. I know it can be an incredibly dry read, so I wanted to “jazz it up” a little with some nice competitive group work. I broke the class up into small groups of three. I gave them a minute or so to introduce themselves to the others in their group. While they introduced themselves, I wrote a paragraph on the board that they were to correct using the information from their reading homework. The first group to complete a correction was to raise their hand for a chance to correct it. If they were incorrect it would go on to the next group and so on until the paragraph was completely corrected. Whichever group was able to completely correct the paragraph would receive a point.
My problems started when I failed to take into account the fact that each group was able to correct portions of the paragraph, but no group was able to correct the entire paragraph completely. What did this mean as far as assigning points? Well, my students wanted to know the very same thing. They put in effort, shouldn’t they get a point? Some only missed one or two items, so shouldn’t they get a point? I ended up giving each group that provided at least a partial correction half of a point. My problems continued when, as tends to happen in groups, those that already had a chance to correct became bored when it was another group’s turn to correct, so they began to talk amongst themselves, loudly. I could sense on Jody’s face that she was completely unimpressed with the way my class was progressing. So was I.
I had never organized a group activity like this one before (pertaining to mechanics), so I had yet to work out any kinks. However, it seemed like the entire class was one big kink. Students were complaining that they didn’t understand the point system and wanted to know what they should do when they were done trying to correct the paragraph. I answered their questions in the best seemingly knowledgeable fashion that I could, all the while wishing I had never done this group activity, because I truly did not find it beneficial in the least.
At the end of class Jody shared her thoughts with me, and they contained nothing I hadn’t already thought of myself. I want to incorporate group work into my class, but I want it to flow a whole lot better than it did. I think I have a plan, but I am not sure how it will turn out. For homework tonight, I asked the class to write out their own paragraphs in need of correcting. I’m going to use them on Thursday–giving mechanics one more day.
November 22, 2002
I think my plan was a success. I explained to my class that group time was to be constructive time, not “what are you going to do this weekend” time. I then broke them into their groups. In breaking the class into groups of three, I had a total of eight groups in my class. I asked each group to pick one of their paragraphs to write on the board. I then asked groups one through four to choose a spokesperson to go to the board and write out the paragraph for their group. Once complete, I assigned a paragraph to each of groups five through eight. While groups five through eight were correcting, groups one through four were to be analyzing the corrections made to their paragraphs. This kept the noise level down, and the groups really stayed focused on the task at hand. Once groups five through eight were finished, they defended their corrections, and then groups one through four enjoyed telling them if the corrections were right or wrong and why. Once this was complete, we started the whole process again with groups five through eight writing their paragraphs on the board and groups one through four providing the corrections.
There was a lot of active conversation as to why certain mechanics were correct or incorrect, and I could see that they really understood the discussion. I also enjoyed that they were able to actively refer to the handbook to defend their responses. For instance, one male student said, “I know my answer is correct. Just look at page 429, it states . . .”. Other students flipped to page 429 to follow along with what the student was discussing. A female student said, “But I thought you started a list with a semicolon.” I didn’t even have to respond. Another female student addressed the statement saying, “No. Page 250 in the handbook states that a colon can be used when listing, not a semicolon. A semicolon, though, can be used to separate items within a list.” The students turned to page 250 in the handbook, and then another discussion ensued as to the proper use of the colon. I mediated the discussion instead of lead it, and it was great to see them learn through interacting with each other. In fact, we ran out of time to do a second round, and they were actually disappointed and wanted to know if we could finish on Tuesday.
As a result of this new interaction wherein they wrote and corrected their own work, they were, in a small but effective way, teaching each other, and I think they liked it. We will continue the work on Tuesday, and I am confident that future group work will run much more smoothly now that I know to give the students a bit more responsibility in creating their own assignment for correction.
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