Teacher Evaluation of the Program
School: Westmoor High School
Teacher: Jeffry Weathers
School Year: 2001–2002
Overview
I feel fortunate to have been part of the CAPI project this year and to have worked with SFSU teachers/professors, and feel that my students benefited from my involvement in it. Everyone was very helpful and supportive, and the Saturday Workshops were helpful and informative.
Do you think your students have benefited from your collaborations in the CAPI project?
Yes; not only have my students benefited, but I have, as well. Having Jenna Palmer sit in on my classes on a regular basis allowed me to try several teaching strategies on the students and to have her observations and her feedback on what to do next. Additionally, she prepared materials for me and taught/modeled some of the lessons we planned. The students responded well to her presence and the idea that she was a visiting professor from a university had considerable weight.
One specific lesson she helped me with is Christianson’s Sentence and Paragraph modeling (from the Bay Area Writer’s Project) in which a train-of-thought method is used to teach students how to convey ideas in writing. Jenna prepared overhead transparencies and modeled how to teach it to the students.
I, then, followed suit with the next class, and continued referring back to this approach throughout the school year. The students expressed that this method helped them to make their ideas clearer and to catch when they were shifting topics or ideas without completing the first.
Of my 175 students, I saw improvement in more than 3/4 of their writings and in their attitudes towards it. Knowing that this method works, and having created much subsequent material from it, I plan on starting the next school year with it and adjusting my curriculum so that it builds from it.
Which, if any, of your teaching practices have changed or been influenced by working with your SFSU collaborator? What was the most useful/valuable practice you implemented in your classroom?
Without a doubt, the sentence and paragraph modeling mentioned above most influenced my teaching practices. I have carried the little yellow Sentence and Paragraph Modeling book in my teaching bag for several years wanting and planning on reading, extracting and developing ideas from it to use in my classroom. I mentioned this to Jenna and she said that she used it with her freshman college classes, and then she did some of the work for me.
I have many ideas as a teacher for bettering my own practices and my students’, but little time to develop these ideas. The CAPI program, through Jenna, allowed me to try some of these ideas. I have my students write daily, one-page journal entries based on a poem or quote that is thematically related to our class readings and/or discussions. I believe that these daily journals are a breeding ground for student’s ideas and reflections, but I know they are limited since I cannot feasibly read and monitor every page of every student’s journal.
By implementing the train-of-thought method at the beginning of the year, before I implement the journals, my students will have the tools and confidence to express their ideas in the journals, and in their essays, too. In addition to the train-of-thought approach, I will also teach my students questioning techniques for understanding text, especially the poems and quotes used for journal prompts.
What can you suggest as further methods of improving student proficiency for entering the CSU campuses?
Reduce tuition fees for parents who trade in their children’s televisions for books. Other than that, the middle and high schools need to create schools within schools where teachers teach the same students and they have more time for collaboration and the exchange of ideas and lesson plans.
That, however, is up to each school and district. Something that CAPI can do that is more immediate is to meet with all the English teachers (and other departments) at a school and help create a structured plan where certain skills are taught at certain grade levels and the teachers are more integrated in their ideas and their curriculum. I know that the State standards call for this, but they place too many unrealistic expectations on the English departments. If the CSU system gave guidelines or goals that were more immediate to their needs, the high schools could prioritize them and address them with their students.
Because writing is a difficult thing to teach, many high school English teachers and departments support teaching the five paragraph essay. From my own experience in high school, whenever I had to write an essay, especially a timed essay, I reverted back to the five paragraph essay out of pressure and assumptions that that was the way I was supposed to write.
Understandably, I was always frustrated when I scored poorly on the essays. When I found out that colleges tend to grade them down because of their limitations, I was furious. I was always trying to reduce what I had to say or force it into five paragraphs to fit what I was taught. This is why I refuse to teach it to my students.
I think the train-of-thought model mentioned above is the best approach because it teaches kids to make their ideas clear and then allows them to arrange their sentences in the “best” order they see fit, and also allows them to use as many or few paragraphs as necessary, as long as they fully develop all their ideas and give support and be creative (and being creative is not something the five paragraph essay allows).
Did the Diagnostic Writing Service (DWS) help you or your students? Why or why not?
The service only helped me in that it confirmed the level of my students’ writing abilities. It helped the students see that others recognize their weaknesses. But they already know they have weaknesses in writing; and even though they don’t want to work on them, they want to be better. The service is ineffective to the students if a different grader is used the second time around, unless that grader has their first effort in front of them.
Maybe the service could be altered so that the students keep writing the same essay, but just keep improving each draft. Then it wouldn't matter if the graders were the same or not. The students would just have to keep improving each draft.
What other assistance or involvement would you like to have from San Francisco State University?
I think it would be beneficial if SFSU could send out tutors to the high schools to work with students in the classroom or after school. I also would like to be able to have some follow up time with Jenna next year, if that is possible. Additionally, I would be interested in presenting the train-of-thought Sentence and Paragraph model to next year’s CAPI program, and to have a workshop of sorts.
|
