Is KIPP a Solution

Well, I went to my final morning advisory period. Now that Travis Boubel took over Mr. Larson's advisory, there are no amazing talks or special lessons for the day. I basically sit in the gym for 20 minutes, walk with them to get breakfast, then sit for another 20 minutes until class starts. After talking to Joyce, I am happy to report that tomorrow I will be sleeping in an extra 45 minutes to be at school by 8:15 when block 1 begins. I observed Joyce teach block 1 about complentary and supplementary angles and took excellent notes to better prepare myself for when I would teach the lesson. I took note of the amount of time it took her to do each thing and organized a review to begin the class. The students have extremely messy, unorganized notes because Joyce does not write specific information in a neat pattern on the board so if students do not have the skills to organize their own notes, it may be incredibly difficult for them to find notes two days later. I am a student who likes instructors to organize information because they know how much space I need for each section. I understand Joyce's point about not writing all the definitions and lecturing the whole time, but I still think helping the students organize their information is beneficial. In block 2, I observed Ms. Starr teach a lesson about polygons and classifying polygons by their number of sides. Her first block class drove her crazy with multiple disruptive students and so she warned her block 2 that they were already on thin ice. While she was demonstrating that a polygon must be closed a student rudely critiqued her drawing saying, "well that one's not closed" and another student would not obey her request for him to move to the front of the room. She proceded to give the class a little lecture on easing up on their teachers. She explained that all of their teachers were stressed out by their behavior and had few solutions left to try. Although I have not been in many 5th grade classrooms, the empowerment these students feel to be so rude and disrespectful to their teachers is outrageous. They question authority and give attitude completely overstepping the boundaries. It will be interesting to compare the relationship with students and teachers at the other locations I visit. Anyways, during lunch I helped the inclusion teacher, Mrs. Duran, work on homework for a college math class she is taking. It was fun to deal with her kind of math. Then I went to teach 6th grade math. The first half went really well as far as management was concerned although I think it was because they were waiting for Joyce to walk in. About 40 minutes into the class when they realized Joyce was not coming, they began acting up a little. It was not as bad as the first time, but still not perfect. The review at the beginning of class went over really well. It was nice for the students who were absent and even for those that were in class on Friday. Today's lesson involved less discussion so I didn't feel quite as bad talking through most of it. I now know all the students' names so that helps to call on those not participating. I had to move some students and give quite a few marks for misbehavior, but I was more stern today and said, 'please' a little less. I think the students understood the material and took organized notes. At the end of class I asked Laura, a student who is very smart, pretty popular, and can be disruptive, why she was talking in class. I explained that we need to have a better relationship so she does not feel the desire to talk while i'm talking and disrupt the class. I told her that I do not enjoy moving her and giving her marks, but if she continues to disrupt class I will have to. She kind of laughed it off, but I know she understood what I was saying so hopefully it goes better tomorrow. For the last 20 minutes they worked with partners on lifework which was probably a mistake. If they weren't behaving very well individually, I shouldn't have let them work with partners. After class, Mrs. Hirsh, that gave me my teaching critique last week, gave me another one today. She agreed that today went better but gave me so more tips. She told me that I needed to completely stop for a small disruption to set the tone. If a student is talking or refuses to obey, I should stop the whole class and wait for the student to behave. She also told me to never allow group work if I was having problems managing them individually. I really do appreciate someone taking the time to let me know what they think. After that came 5th grade math, which went wonderfully. Although I like the experience and challenge of taking on both teaching and managing, it is a nice break to teach for Ms. Starr and only worry about how I am delivering the information. The lesson about polygons was a lot of fun and I felt comfortable standing in front of the students. There were hardly any pauses and I involved the students quite a bit. We learned about the three features that make a polygon a polygon which are no curved lines, no crossing lines, and closed lines. We also learned that polygons are named by their number of sides. While Ms. Starr was teaching, I learned why the Pentagon has five sides or five wings......each wing represents a different part of the military: army, navy, marines, air force, and coast guard. Very interesting. Overall, this block has been my best teaching experience. Well see what tomorrow brings!
~~To explain the title of my blog, that is the question I am pondering most right now. I have the name of a middle school that most of these students would go to if they weren't at KIPP. I am going to try to contact the school to see if I can observe there for a day. It would be interesting to compare the student teacher relationships as well as the instruction time that takes place. I think what they are doing at KIPP is wonderful, but I am just not convinced that it is the best solution.....