Re-Imagined Classroom

Each one of my students is different. Some are confident and some are insecure. Some come from a strong family who loves and supports them and some are lock and key kids who are on their own. Some know they are smart and some have always thought they were stupid. Some like sports, some music, and some video games. Some of my students are loud and rambunctious. Some are quiet and lonely. Some are eager to participate; some are distracted by the worries or excitements of life. I will make sure that my door is open and that the students know that I will build an environment of trust where the students feel that they can come in and talk to me about problems they are experiencing in my classroom. 

I will try my best to prevent behavioral issues by providing extra supervision during high risk periods, letting children know they can reach out for help, providing choices whenever possible and ensuring that the tasks are manageable. I will praise positive behavior more often than scolding negative behavior. Often times when a student misbehaves he or she is seeking attention and this way the student will learn that to receive attention they must act positively. However when behavioral issues arise I will handle each situation according to its circumstances. I will ignore it in some cases, promote apologies and teach good morals, or restrict privileges. I will involve the students in creating the rules and expectations so that they feel accountable. I will always accept late work with a percent deduction because the most important thing to me is that my students are learning, and to me better that they learn late than never learn that part of the material. I will assign a lot of projects that are open ended and creative, which you never really finish. This way the students can put as much time as they want into their projects but they will be personal and they will want to do it, rather than doing the worksheet until all the answers are filled in.

I am teaching the technical usage of a DSLR camera. This will be one of the first things I will teach my students in a photo class, because I want them to be able to get out there and start shooting from the beginning, to get as much hands on experience as they can. I will teach it by starting with a little history as an anticipatory set where we are inside a pinhole camera. I will cover the windows with black and only leave a small hole for the light to come in where we will see the image of outside projected on the wall. We will then briefly discuss the history of photography and then I will teach the technical and manual settings to the camera as a hands-on learning experience. The students will be taking pictures as they are learning how to manipulate the photo they want. I will adapt the lesson to available supplies. The main thing for my students to learn is how they can manipulate an image based on changing the light sensitivity, depth of field, and shutter speed. During my lessons I will show photos and video not only from my own background but the most famous work from many cultures. 

            During the lesson I am carefully reading my students. Paying attention to their cues of when they are getting distracted, bored, discouraged or engaged. Ready to throw in an anticipatory set, or activity. I am using proximity to keep my students on task. I am giving positive and constructive feedback.

Some of my students are working hard on their worksheet. Some students are confused and discouraged. Some students are talking to their friends. Some are working on other things not from my class. I am aware of them all, and I am adapting my teaching to engage my students and to help them understand the content.

I will develop my own feedback forms and value the information from the students. I will adapt and change each year to improve and meet the student’s needs. Students will learn what we test for, if we test for facts they will learn facts, if we test for problem solving they will become problem solvers. My long-term goal is to learn more about and then to implement improved mechanisms for assessment of students maybe ability based or performance based. After Information is presented I will provide opportunities to for my students to apply it and then a way both the student and myself can evaluate their progress. One way I can know if my students have learned is if my tests are open ended where the students can tell all they know about the topic. This creates greater motivation to learn everything you can and not just “the answer”. I will provide a variety of assessment tools such as tests, projects, and reflections to accommodate to different needs. I will use written reflections, quizzes and tests, projects, and portfolios in order to evaluate and assess my students. Quizzes and tests will allow me to compare between students and understand the different ability levels. While reflections will help the students to be in charge of their own learning and inspire them. Project will allow for freedom, creativity and give them the opportunity to go above and beyond. Portfolios at the end of the year will help me to see the progress of each student and give them a grade that is fair based on their unique skill levels. I will use the national and state standards to base my curriculum while tailoring it to the interests of each unique group of students. 

Single Tree
I chose the single tree because this represent the goal to also stand up for what is right even if it may be awkward or against the wave of what everyone is doing. This tree means that I will put a stop to bullying and that I wont stand by and let things happen but I will actively protect the rights of all my students in the classroom. 

Open Door

I kept this open door because I will always keep an open door policy that my students can come to me for help anytime. I think this is so important for students of all different cultures and backgrounds to feel that they are able to talk to me about any struggles in their education or problem they are having in class. 

Chameleon

I also chose to keep the chameleon because it represents change. I will change as I improve as a teacher and continue to learn more about my field. I will change with each new class because I believe each class and student is unique with different needs and styles of learning. I don’t want to ever do something the same way.

Many Cultures
The photo of many cultures together means that I will be actively anti-segregation not only in my classroom but also in my school. I will make sure that I put students in groups and make sure that they will work with everyone. 

Cade's Arcade 

photo credit: 
tree: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d4/ICS_Quebec.svg/2000px-ICS_Quebec.svg.png door: http://www.fggam.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/open-door.jpg chameleon: http://www.lizardtypes.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/chameleon-picture4.jpg many cultures: http://homesdesign2016.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/american-high-school-classroom-1.jpg cadesarcade: http://homepages.se.edu/act/files/2014/08/VA-iMac-Lab-Fronts.jpg

Things that I changed:

Instead of taking things out or changing things I mostly added to my original. (sorry that is why this post is so long) I had started this assignment earlier and I was struggling to find what I needed to change. It wasn't because I thought I didn't need to change I was just unsure of what it was. Then in class when Dr. Draper said maybe the question you need to ask is what isn't in your classroom that should be? and that question is what really got me thinking of the new ideas. Also the activity we did in class with a partner was helpful and that inspired a lot of these ideas.

Under the description for the picture of the chameleon I wrote "each student is unique." I acknowledge that everyone is different but i do not talk about what i am going to do about that.

I talk about group collaborative projects but I don't talk about if I will group the students and how to prevent segregation.

I will show photography and video examples and inspiration from many cultures not just from my own background.

How do I define beauty? How can I teach photoshop and beauty retouching and also teach good morals and true beauty?

material costs of my imagined classroom:

These aren't necessarily materials needed to be successful in my classroom, but there are many materials and resources that if some students have they will appear successful and students without those resources don't even stand a chance at comparing to better technology.

We will have a mac lab in class but many students will have macs at home with the adobe cloud on it and they will be able to get more practice and work on their assignments when other students are only allotted class time to work on their projects.

I want to give students opportunities to learn and experience but many students will never be able to go on certain trips.

I can stay after class do my preparing and do my grading in the classroom so that students can wait after school there and use our equipment.

We can take a day where we go to the library whether the school library or a community library and we can learn how to use it so that the students will have that as a option.

Ways that we can address poverty or make money and materials less of an object.
We can show examples of great work that required no resources. For example, showing examples of low budget music videos, or showing cases where people have been successful when they had little or nothing. For example there is a video of a boy who made a cardboard arcade and got famous a lot of people would go and spend money and support him and he was inspiring kids all over the world to make their own toys out of cardboard.

Community Experience

For my community experience I interviewed someone that works at the mental hospital. They said that it was an amazing experience working there and that they have seen many miracles as well as many tragedies. She told me many stories. One of them that really stuck out to me was the story of a 12 year old boy who was a light to the other people there. She said it was amazing his positivity and how he reached out to everyone there. She said they have a meeting where everyone was able to get up and tell a little bit of their story. After each person was done talking to young boy would raise his hand and tell them that they were amazing tell them not to give up hope or tell them that he thinks they are strong. 

She told another story about a girl there who was struggling with drug addictions. She told that she had lost all of her friends because they thought that she was going to steal money from them and that they didn't trust them anymore. She said she loves her friends and that she would never steal from them and that she has never stole from anyone except her mom. She said that her friends mean so much to her and she would never do anything to hurt them. She said she feels so lonely with no friends and that she wants to kill herself. This was disrupting because I know it is easy for me to lose trust in people and I realize know how much that can hurt someone. It was also disrupting to me to think of how this girl is being deprived of her basic human needs, She needs friends and love like all of us and in a time when she is struggling with a drug addition is the time she needs it most and this is the same time where she loses it. It made me think of all the girls in my high school who when they got pregnant they lost all their friends, or the girl who was popular before she pulled her hair out and had to wear wigs. I thought of all the people I knew and how when a tragedy happened to them everyone around them abandoned them, and I was a part of that abandonment. 

Another story she told was a girl who was struggling with severe eating disorders. She told how she would lie all day long and what she would do to fake and stage meals. She said that she wants to cut her fat off her body and that she has suicidal thoughts all the time and that they never stop. When the school called her parents to tell them that she wanted to kill herself and that it was very severe, her parents said, "oh no, she's doing it again?" This broke my heart. I feel like one of the only things anyone could do to help her right now is love her, and she isn't getting any love from her parents, where she needs it most. 

I think what was the biggest disruption for me through all of this was the common link of these people feeling loneliness, abandonment, and helplessness. They didn't feel love from anyone, and almost every time they had lost their friends. The risk in considering this for me was challenging my faith. As an LDS youth I was always counseled to choose my friends wisely. I was told to choose friends that had the same values as me and to stay away from those who were making bad decisions. This is a big disruption for me because I can see truth in how friends will affect our decisions but at the same time after hearing these stories I feel so conflicted as to what to teach my children. I know that we can have such a great influence on our friends and that our friends that are making bad decisions are the ones that need us the most in those moments. It is risky to consider this conflicting view from my religious upbringing but I think it is worth considering and really pondering. 

In my classroom I know that I will have students who will struggle with all of these tragedies and even a lot more, I know that a lot of times I will be unaware and I want to always give love to my students, as much as I can. I want them to at least feel love in the classroom if not anywhere else.