Molly HasslerPracticum Spring 2015 I remember the moment halfway through the year when Jayne asked me "what special do we have today? " A little bit short on patience, and weary I replied, “it’s Monday, do you remember what we ALWAYS have on Mondays?” she smiled, ignored my response and continued “do we have chess today?” “We have chess on Fridays Jayne, but we stopped having chess three weeks ago.” She pondered that idea for a minute and declared “oh! So we have gym?” This is the kind of interaction I had become familiar with, multiple times a day, every day, all day. Our schedule had been posted on the door since September, and everyday I changed the magnetic schedule on the board so that the students would know exactly what, when, and how long we would have for each subject. I would describe Jayne as an extremely sweet, empathetic and enthusiastic girl. Her lack of selfconfidence affected her perception of her own intelligence. She experienced this inadequacy across all areas, from creative art projects, core subjects and even during her time to share her “show and tell”. She was incredibly selfaware and also extraordinarily observant. Despite her constant need to observe everything, I do not believe that she was a visual learner. After October I decided she was not a visual learner due to the failure to improve her achievement with the use of visual learning aids. Jayne was observant in a way that was very different than most other students that I had previously encountered. She would watch and analyze everyone else, and in my opinion, in those moments she was comparing herself to them. Jayne was constantly aware of everything that other students were doing, feeling, and saying. She noticed everything from who had finished an assignment first to what I had written down on my checklist. At first, I believed that she was in control of this behavior and that she was simply making a conscious decision to observe others rather than complete her own assignments. By the end of my time with her I realized that it was something completely beyond her control. She was so focused on everyone else and possessed such a distorted view of her own abilities that she was unable to redirect herself and put her attention to the work that she should have been completing. There were many instances this year where I went out of my way to make sure that Jayne knew that I truly had her best interest at heart and only wanted her to succeed. She often became indignant when she was frustrated and would say “I can’t do this!” or “this is too hard for me!” Jayne was a student in my fifth grade gifted and talented classroom and had been tracked in the program since Kindergarten. I spent many hours a week differentiating all of the assignments across all subject areas in my classroom. There was no doubt that the assigned work that she received was within her range of ability. The tasks were meant to be challenging for her, but were designed so that she could successfully and accurately complete them, if she put her mind to it. Being a gifted and talented classroom she was surrounded by students who were eager to learn and motivated to succeed. Jayne, when sent to work independently, would sit at her table and watch all the other students “selfstarting”. They would get their work started with very little difficulty of the how and where to start. In a gifted classroom the majority of the students possess strong aptitude, high motivation and love to learn. At these moments the perception of herself became negative in comparison with how the other students approached their work. She watched as the other students had no problem with the assignment, little confusion about what they were to do and because of this she arrived at the conclusion that she had a problem. She would automatically assume that things were easy for others and that she was the only one that was challenged, and thus that she could not complete the assignment. Her feeling of frustration and struggle coupled with her belief that everyone else found everything easy led her to believe that she was less intelligent than everyone else. I found it incredibly interesting to study Jayne during certain social situations. The insight that I gained from seeing her react to other students, their accomplishments, issues, and struggles helped to explain the rationale behind some of the outbursts that she had. She had no qualms about blurting out on the rug during math instructional time, shouting things like “I don’t get this at all!” “this is confusing and doesn’t make any sense”, “I still don’t get it!” all at full volume. Sometimes I would pull her aside and have conversations with her when she would have tantrums and scream “it’s too hard, I won’t do it”, because I knew that eventually she would complete the task. She would explain to me that she thought that she was “too dumb” or not able to do the things that others could. That the other students were the “smart ones” and that she should not be in gifted and talented. After this confession, I began to notice patterns in her behavior. When it was her turn to share her writing, or even to elaborate on an item she had brought for show and tell, she would speak so quietly you could hardly hear her. It became very clear she disliked any attention on anything where she could potentially fail. The connection between her fullvolume selfdeprecation and her shyness when she was more vulnerable helped me to understand what issue she was really struggling with. She was immensely insecure about herself and was terrified of failure to the extent that she would not attempt to succeed. Building a relationship with Jayne that fostered trust and understanding took time. I wanted her to know that I was not making her do work to punish her, but instead because I believed that she was capable. This involved many “go take a walk” moments, or “do some jumping jacks”, “you will miss recess”, and “I am emailing your mother right now”. These interactions although tough for me, actually provided her with a boundary that I do not think she had encountered before. I learned from conversations with her mother that at home Jayne did whatever she wanted. Additionally, her mother had modeled the same defeatist attitude I saw in Jayne by saying things like “Jayne knows I can’t help her with her math assignments because I was never good at math”. This kind of attitude from her mother just added to the warped perception that Jayne had of herself. Adding to her fear that her mother at 45 could not do the math, certainly Jayne would never be able to do it. One of the many things that Jayne struggled with throughout the year was assignment completion. In order to help her start completing the assignments punctually, I had her create a daily checklist. This began with me writing a list that laid out the various assignments and tasks that she was expected to complete daily. As she completed the assignments she would check them off. Eventually, she started writing her own list and checking them off herself. This strategy led to her being able to regulate herself and develop time management skills. She went from being weeks behind to days and then finally on schedule with her assignments. Moreover, to aid in her inability to plan her time, I had Jayne use a timer to count down the minutes she had left to work on an assignment or task. The timer would flash a blue light when her time was up, which was great because it did not draw attention from other students. I would let her know when she got started on an assignment how much time she would have for the activity and she was then responsible for setting the timer and stopping it when the time was up. This worked for quite some time until she began to call out to let the class know that their time was almost up. Jayne made an important discovery when she realized that she could accomplish whatever task was given within a limited time period. As an extremely disorganized, scatterbrained child, Jayne struggled with keeping track of her work and what she needed to get done. This year, my school partnered with NYU to provide instruction on organizational skills to a select group of students who were eligible to participate. The program trains a school staff member on how to implement the system and then the staff member works with the students twice a week during lunch and recess. I was extremely lucky that my mentor teacher, the speech and language pathologist, Jessica, was the staff member who was selected to run the program. I frequently met with Jessica in order to discuss various strategies for working with Jayne and therefore she was already aware of Jayne's strengths and weaknesses. I suggested to Jayne’s mother that she participate in the program and she brought back the consent form the next day. Part of the organizationtraining program required Jayne to keep an accordion folder with all of her assignments, a calendar where she wrote down important dates for homework, as well as goals for when things had to be completed. Every morning Jayne brought me her DAR (Daily Assignment Record) to sign. She had to show me that she used the DAR and her accordion folder and she would receive two points on her chart. At the end of the week if she used the DAR every day and she received the full amount of points for having everything filled out, Jessica gave her a prize. Prior to using this system, Jayne had a single folder that she would bring back and forth to school. Her folder was overflowing with old homework sheets, notices and flyers that she never gave to her parents. She would have to dump the folder out in order to find something when she needed it. The DAR helped Jayne immensely in planning her time for longterm assignments. Jayne loved that all of her papers had a different section in her folder, and that everything was labeled and organized neatly. Whenever she needed to get something she knew exactly where it was. The consistency with which she began keeping up with her assignments, and the pride she gained from accomplishing small goals made an incredible difference in her confidence level. Multistep directions proved to be problematic for Jayne. She was not able to sustain attention for the duration of the instructions or would forget them by the time she needed to start the task. When I would verbally explain anything she would constantly ask, “what are we doing?” “what’s going on?” sometimes she would even ask while I was still giving the instructions. It went as far as me having her repeat the directions and then her forgetting when she got to her table. At the beginning of the year I provided her with prewritten instructions for each assignment. This clearly could not continue for every single lesson of every single day, and evolved into her writing down my verbal instructions in a designated notebook. The notebook for her directions made a huge difference in her understanding of what needed to be done. If she still felt confused about the directions once she had written them, I told her to circle and underline the key words or parts of the directions that were most important. This significantly reduced the amount of time she spent asking what she was supposed to be doing and was a strategy that she could use for every single word problem, question or task that she encountered. Math was exceptionally challenging for Jayne. I had to reteach her every single lesson. Immediately following my wholegroup instruction I would sit with her on the rug by herself, the students knew that anyone who needed additional explanation was welcome to join. In essence, she needed to make it through the wholegroup instruction and resist the urge to burst out “I’m confused!” until I could go over it step by step while the other students were set up to work independently. Interestingly enough the other students in the class were actually attuned to the fact that after I would dismiss them to their seats, I would be busy working with Jayne. Generally, the class enjoyed this time to themselves because they were a particularly mathematically inclined group and it gave them time to work on a subject loved. It also meant that Jayne would not be disrupting them while they were trying to work, and I think they were empathetic to the fact that she needed help. I assigned my students to reading and writing groups in order to differentiate for the diverse range of abilities. On one hand I had a student who wrote a 12page research paper on Benjamin Banneker that included text features, illustrations and an MLA formatted bibliography. I had only mentioned to this student once that I would show him what MLA format was and subsequently he went home, researched it, and did it correctly. Conversely, I had students like Jayne who would get an assignment and would not know where to start. The students would go to their assigned groups after a read aloud or any type of instructional input. I modified the grouping based on continual assessment of their understanding of the required skill. The prompt or task would always focus on a specific topic, skill or understanding. The group with my highest students (group blue/green) would be given an evaluative question that required them to critically think and use the knowledge they already had. The middle group (group yellow/red) would be practicing their knowledge of the concept with an analysis question and would explain their thought process. Lastly, with my lowest group (group orange) I would have them start to apply the skills that they have learned and would be focus on how it could also be applied to similar situations. The orange group always received a highly scaffolded question that usually guided them to focus in on a specific area within a text or provided an organizational structure for how they should respond. This was especially beneficial to students like Jayne because instead of spending time rereading the text to find the quote, example or piece of figurative language, she would know exactly where to look. She would then be able to focus on how it made sense, why the author used this type of language or other pertinent things. The students were allowed to work together to help each other if they got stuck, which was great for teaching them how to collaborate. Most importantly, because the lesson was always centralized around a specific theme, I would have the students share out and then have a group discussion. Surprisingly it was during this share and discussion time that Jayne began to grow her confidence. When they first started sharing aloud what they had written, there was a lack of confidence in their ability to produce an exemplary piece. This feeling of inadequacy was something that Jayne could really relate to. Through receiving positive feedback from their peers and listening to their classmates work, they actually developed a stronger understanding of how to write topic sentences and what transitions help to make writing flow the best. To sum up, a lot of my students were complimenting Jayne’s growth specifically. Another subject that was a struggle for Jayne was reading, she would constantly start and skim different books without ever finishing them. She never immersed herself fully in a text, or read a book long enough to actually get into the story and develop her reading skills. In order to help her gain confidence with reading I introduced her to various leveled texts from the Reading AZ Program. These texts are much shorter than many of the books she was attempting to read yet never finished and they were level appropriate. Jayne began the year as a level T according to her fourth grade TC Running Records. However, in September when I administered the running record test she was actually an R. I provided her with a few text options that were at level R and she was allowed to read each book over whatever time span she wanted. After she read each book I administered the comprehension test to see if she understood the text. If she got above an 80% she moved on to the next level and was awarded a prize. She quickly became interested in the shorter texts. She gained satisfaction from the passing grades and was able to see her own growth as she moved from level to level. Soon I noticed that she participated more when we read aloud in class. I allowed any student who volunteered to read aloud, but I also prompted them that I would like to hear from new people when the same students consistently raised their hands. She read aloud quite often and despite how choppy and quietly she read my other students demonstrated incredible patience and never interrupted her when she struggled. She was gaining confidence in her ability as a reader because she was aware of her improvement and wanted to prove herself to the other students. Throughout the year I was constantly in contact with Jayne’s mother, who was extremely concerned and wanted to help as much as she possible. Although it was clear that her mother was extremely permissive and fostered certain behaviors that could have been avoided with a firm no, she truly intended to help her child to the best of her ability. I would talk to her about different strategies for homework completion, study habits and even developing focus while reading. Jayne ended up doing most of her work in the morning. Jayne having two younger siblings, one that was diagnosed ADHD, struggled with a noisy environment, and as a student who clearly had issues with focus, was challenged when it came to doing work at home. For a while her mother had her working in her room with the door closed, which provided a completely unrealistic work environment. This negatively affected Jayne’s ability to focus in the classroom where different things were taking place around her. She began to sit in the corner and face the wall, at times even on the floor. She insisted that she needed to sit away from her peers and refused to work unless she was removed from everyone else. To help ease the transition I suggested that Jayne listen to classical music in headphones at home while she completed her work or read, but still be in the same room as others. She needed to learn how to be around different situations without being distracted by them. She absolutely loved this, she came in the day after she tried it so excited to tell me about how she felt so smart and focused, and that classical music made her think more clearly. Over time her homework completion and accuracy improved greatly. This actually led to me being approached by her mother who informed me that after many emails, meetings and phone calls, she finally would have Jayne evaluated for ADD. To supplement my classroom management system I put in place may different reward systems. For example, I would award student of the week and table of the week each Friday afternoon. There were always two students of the week, a girl and a boy, and the table of the week was awarded to the table with the most points. Students would win the awards for various reasons, including coming to school on time, having completed their work to the best of their ability, being kind to their classmates, or if they followed directions well. The prizes in the “Treasure Box” varied from week to week and included things from erasers and pencils to funky glasses, rubber stretchy frogs, and different knickknacks that students enjoy. Jayne worked very hard to become student of the week, and continued to work hard thereafter to try and earn points for her table as often as possible. On multiple occasions I arranged with her that if she met or exceeded behavioral expectations she would receive certain prizes that she had told me she wanted. For quite some time she would roam around the room and discuss with other students what they had done, how far along they were in completing assignments and refused to do her own work. When I spoke with her about it she would just say that she wanted to see what they were doing because she didn’t understand or she had a question. I explained to her that when students were working independently that she had to let me know when she was confused or needed help and that she could not distract her classmates. When her interruptions of other students continued, I placed the reward that she wanted on the top of my desk. She knew that if she made it through the week without distracting the other students she would receive the prize she wanted. After that week she never wandered aimlessly or interrupted students while she was supposed to be doing her work. This system worked for her because the reward was in sight and attainable and despite occasionally needing a slight reminder, she knew what the expectations were and felt accomplished when she did what she was supposed to. The school in which I taught Jayne is a New York City public school, therefore it was subject to NYS standardized tests. Due to the increasingly high reliance on the state test for middle school admissions, teacher evaluations, and overall student records it has now become acceptable to include test prep as part of the curriculum. Jayne had a very hard time using the test prep materials as well as preparing for the test in general. She could not understand the wording of the questions in either the Math or the English Language Arts test prep books. She hated the multiple choice questions and felt as though the test prep makers were only out to trick her. In addition to the stress she was experiencing with this, she was extremely nervous that she would not be able to complete the test. Even with extra time that was provided as per her 504 Plan she told me how concerned she was that it would be too hard and that she would not do well. Three months before the test I requested administrative approval to hold afterschool exam sophistication twice a week for 10 weeks. I was approved and allowed to enroll 5 students from my class provided I spend one day a week on English Language Arts and one day on Math. Being able to work with Jayne in a small group setting after school without the distraction of a full class truly made a difference for her. She was able to ask as many questions as necessary for her to comprehend the concept and I could review the topics that I knew she struggled with based on assessment data that I had collected. I essentially created my own afterschool curriculum that addressed all of the gaps in the foundation of her knowledge of the fifth grade standards. After the 10 weeks I noticed enormous improvement in her ability to problem solve with more fluency and break down word problems. In English Language Arts her short response paragraphs began to include topic and conclusion sentences as well as 3 details and citing text evidence. She had come so far in such a short time that I was extremely disappointed that I did not have the opportunity to do this the whole year with her, as I am sure that it would have given her the extra push that she truly needed. Overall, the benefits of a gifted and talented program were not beneficial to Jayne. Furthermore, I am left feeling certain that there are many more students like her, who get carried along in the current of a tracking system. Her mother told me that many times Jayne went home and would cry and explained that she felt that she was the “stupidest in the class” and that she “shouldn’t be in the gifted program”. Her mother tried to console her with the response “but you scored in the 95% percentile in Kindergarten”. I do not see how that would be any consolation to a child who feels inadequate, or how it holds any validity with regard to her current achievement level. This was a perfect example of how children being tested in Kindergarten does not do anyone a service. The ability level of a five year old does not predict the ability level of a ten year old. It is wrong to assign children to a tracking system. They should be retested annually based on their knowledge of the content of the year to come. I believe that her attention problem, compounded by her confidence issue led to her giving up before trying anything. This was also directly associated with the fact that she constantly compared herself to her classmates. The placement of Jayne in a gifted classroom for the first six years of her education put her at a disadvantage. As a student who had clearly been pushed along and temporarily removed from various schools for behavior issues, gifted education failed this student. It became even more evident when my students applied to middle school. There were three major schools that my students applied to, she was the only one who did not get into any, and was automatically assigned a poorly performing district 3 school. Again, I believe this was directly connected to the fact that she was being compared with students who performed highly on their entrance exams, aced the interviews and had perfect grades. When the school looked at her portfolio, test scores and interviewed her, they compared her achievement to the other students in my class. In this comparison they decided that she was not a good fit for their school. It is terrible that the school system failed her so blatantly. Had she been placed in a general education or even an integrated coteaching classroom that was more appropriately paced she would have gained a more solid foundation of knowledge. A solid foundation would have enabled to her to not be in the lowest performing quarter of the class for every subject, which had an extremely negative impact on her selfesteem. Questionnaire: 1) What is your favorite subject in school and why? "My favorite subject in school is writing and reading because I like to learn things about the text. I like reading because I like reading the story and then answering the questions." 2) What is your least favorite subject in school and why? "My least favorite subject is math test prep because it is very confution. Also, I do not like art because I get fustrated when I can not draw something." 3) What type of books do you like to read and why? (ex. Stories about animals, friendship etc.) "I like to read about slavery, orphans, and eny thing else nonfiction. because I like to learn new facts" 4) What kind of activities do you like to do outside of school. "I do Hebrew school and martial arts. For fun I go on car trips, play ground and going bike riding in central park." 5) What kinds of rewards would you like for positive behavior, why? "For positive behavior I would like to be the teachers helper because I like to do things for the teacher. Also, I like to clean things because I feel good when I do something nice for the teacher." 6) How do you feel during wholegroup learning, why? "I feel fouces (focused) and sometimes out in space because somethings are interesting and somethings are not. Also, I can read what I wrote alode to the class." 7) How do you feel during smallgroup learning time, why? "I feel like I can ask a question to my table but I can also do my own work. Also, I can share my writing with my table and they can give me ideas when I am stuck" 8) How do you feel when you are working independently, why? "I feel that I am really confused because I can not ask eny one at my table. And ask question like what are we doing?" 9) How do you feel when you get stuck on a problem or task that you are having trouble with? "I feel fustrated because I do not get the problem and everyone else dose." 10) What strategies do you like to use to help you get unstuck? "I like the strategies underlining and circling are read the problem over" 11) What strategies that we have worked on throughout the year do you think work the best for you, and why? "the best strategies for me is, listening to classical music, circling/underlining and DAR. The classical music helps because it blocks out the nosie of people talking and it calms me down. Circling/underling helps me because I do not have to read the question again. The DAR helps me because it makes me orgenitied (organize) things and not forget things." 12) How do you view yourself as a student, why? "I view myself as a good student and sometimes a bad student because I do not get good grades but I try my best." 13) In what ways do you think you have grown as a student this year? "I have learned to be more focos (focused) and learned more stradagies (strategies)/ different ways to do things. For example I have learned many ways to divide and multiply." 14) In which areas do you think you still need more help, why? "I need help in divition (division) of parterl (partial) quotients because I do not understand how they work and how you use them to divide." 15) What kind of activities would you like to do in class? "I would like to do an animal poster because I want to learn more about animal because I want to be a vet when I get older." 16) Is there anything else you would like to let me know? "I like getting my hands dirty and love to go on aventers (adventures)."