Veena Vasudevan

The Lesson On my way to class I stopped to try and print the documents for our lesson because of some printing restrictions at the school. Everywhere I went the lines were huge as was the wait and then when I finally found a place that printed, they didn’t have up-to-date software. With 10 minutes to get from where I was to the school, I ran down into the subway, only to realize that I was on the downtown side. I ran across the street, or so I thought only to realize I kept crossing Lexington Avenue the wrong way!All this to say, when I finally got to class, I was 10 minutes late and I walked into complete chaos. Some girls were in the back of the classroom hitting one another with bean bag chairs, others were running around and it felt like they were all yelling something or the other.It took another several minutes to get the girls in their seats and working on their “do-now” which was to do an activity in their Girl Scout handbooks. I explained the activity and asked the girls to begin working on it, but within seconds, half the class had their hands raised. I walked from desk to desk trying to explain what needed to happen. The activity was asking girls to think about all the media they consume and “Slice” a pie with pieces that were proportional to their use of those media. Looking back, I think I was so flustered, I’m not sure if I explained this really well. However, I made another observation, which is that most of the girls, even those who had mentioned their love for math, didn’t see the connection to fractions / proportions. I also observed that many of the girls also didn’t read the directions on the page, and when they did, I could tell weren’t really comprehending what they read, based on the questions they were posing as I walked around the room. It was the first time we used their books and we were just trying to find a way to get the girls settled.The next part of the plan was for us to engage in a get-to-know-each other game. My goals in designing this activity were two-fold, one was for everyone to get to know one another better because we hadn’t had that opportunity since the group had grown in size and the second was to demonstrate a participatory data collection method that could help inform their final projects. Half of the girls groaned, moaned and declared they weren’t going to play the game. I was shocked, why not? Despite this initial reaction, we persevered. One strategic “teaching move” we made was to ask a student who has been acting up in class, to be the person who mediated the game, because she always expresses interest in helping with the computer. She advanced the power point and read out the statements. We got through the first 8 statements and somewhat gathered feedback from the kids to explain their agreement/disagreement. However, at the end of the game, we didn’t really get anywhere because it still felt so chaotic and the girls couldn’t see the connection to the work.Finally, we decided to move into reviewing the PSAs. Unfortunately we spent 15-20 minutes trying to get the smartboard and the internet to cooperate with us. During this time the girls, understandably grew impatient, bored and annoyed. I heard a few comments that said things that asked us why we didn’t test this out ahead of time and why we weren’t prepared. It was so deflating because I had worked so hard in structuring this lesson and it was the first time I had the “Aha!” moment during planning. In the end, we asked the girls to gather around the other teacher’s laptop and respond to the questions that we had originally planned to print. When they saw the video, I could see the girls actually getting into the activity and writing/thinking about the questions we were asking. From our standpoint, the video, which was about teen pregnancy was provocative and relevant enough that it grabbed their attention.As things went during this class, the final bell rang just as we were getting somewhere. Another week where I felt all I had done was waste their time.Observations/Connections:

When the facilities for teachers aren’t available (e.g. access to printers, copy machines) and/or monetary resources (e.g. quotas on printing) it makes it much more difficult to be effective.
The firewalls in schools, even on teacher computers is incredibly limiting because teachers are forced to find all kinds of workarounds that take up time and energy better spent elsewhere.
In an essay written by Pedro Noguera that I read this week, one of the findings from a study he references indicates that students expressed frustration when they feel teachers are not prepared for class. This hit home for me as I reflected on this lesson. If I want them to do their job, I should have done mine.
In terms of structuring the lesson, the “do now” and game were not as connected to the end goal as I had originally thought. Had I planned the lesson a bit earlier, I could have gotten feedback from my co-teacher to make those adjustments. Unfortunately I finished at 1pm and sent it out, which was two hours before class and too late for my co-teacher to react. It made me again truly appreciate how hard it must be to have small chunks of time to do all of the planning for regular teachers who have multiple classes, students and in some cases subjects.