Learning from PACT

Think about the teaching strengths and weaknesses that you would like to highlight or receive feedback on for your PACT videotaped lesson. How could you capture those aspects of your teaching on video in a meaningful way that would demonstrate your teaching philosophy for your portfolio?

My next unit, which I will start teaching on Monday April 27th, 2009, will be focusing on the book Bronx Masquerade by Nikki Grimes. This work of fiction gives voice to archetypal urban adolescents who are coming of age and grappling toward a sense of identity, each in his or her own way. Through her characterizations Grimes brings to life a classroom of students whose preconceptions, misconceptions, stereotypes or internalized myths are shattered as each of these archetypal teenagers reads his or her poems revealing their pain, scars, innermost fears, hopes, goals and family issues.

Since Bronx Masquerade's overarching theme is identity and self-perception versus the perception (internalized gaze) of others, and since Grimes sheds light on these challenges that adolescents face through poetry, I will be teaching and scaffolding the major components of poetry, focusing on symbol and theme. Thus in terms of strengths and weaknesses (or areas where I have a greater learning curve) I would like to focus and receive feedback on how well I scaffold instruction of poetry. I will be asking my students to identify symbol and theme in poems written by well known authors as well as their peers so as to model for them how to write their own poems. The poems they will be asked to write will be thematically (identity and challenging misconceptions and stereotypes) inspired by the poems written by the fictional high school students in Bronx Masquerade, and will also incorporate symbolism.

One of the strengths that I would like to highlight is my ability to prepare and ask questions that will engage the students and encourage critical thinking and analysis or unpacking of poetry and literary texts. I hope this strength will come across on the video when I work with my students as they are working in groups to analyze poetry with a focus on identifying symbol and theme.

An area where I anticipate will present a challenge for me might be classroom/behavior management. My students are generally very vivacious and lively. They are at times verbally impulsive and disrespectful toward me as well as their peers. Although I have made strides and improved tremendously in the area of classroom/behavior management, it remains extremely challenging to keep many of my students focused and on task.