Retail Space Movie

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Emily Smith's Comparison Video

Creating a classroom for all children

I think the important aspects to take from this week is the idea of different setting for different purposes. There are times when students are going to better suited to work in a collaborative environment, when there needs to be space given and creative examples around them. There are also times when a classroom needs to be more conducive to working as an individual. Then it is important to have segregated spaces. I think it is also important for the space to be reflective of the student’s personalities, interests, abilities and backgrounds. The students need to be able to feel safe and take ownership in the space.

Another bridge is that students as they are learning learn in different ways and think in different ways, from child to child, subject to subject and even from assignment to assignment. There are times when different approaches are called for different purposes, not just in setting, but in delivery, content, intensity and creative ability.

No matter what the assignment or subject the environment of the classroom and the assignment the students need to feel safe, important, and capable and those factors should be the starting point and ending point of everything we do in education.

Designing a classroom

As I was reading and listening to the content this week I was thinking more about my preschool classroom that I had a couple of years ago, than my 4^th grade classroom of today.  It is so important for children who come to preschool to feel welcome and safe.  For many it is their first experience in a school and part of our goal was to make it a positive one.  Many of the concepts that I read about this week were innately incorporated, or maybe not so much innate and trial and error of what the kids like.  For example, the reading corner started out with bookshelf and a couple of chairs.  Over the course of the two years I taught preschool it became a corner first of all with a “lowered ceiling” we eventually put up material to make it more like a tent, after we found the kids were liked it better.  The physical room set up was one key part of our evaluation as a program in the county.  We had to have clearly defined areas using furniture and rugs and anything we could think of to define one area from the next.

            As a 4^th grade teacher I still want to create a safe and inviting area.  If a student is turned off by an area or distracted by it, (sometimes it is the window, like the first snow of the season) it makes for a hard environment to teach in.  The design of the classroom as a space then in very important in the overall environment that is created physically and mentally, which in turn affects learning.

The Nature of being Compelling

Ok, so with the chance of this negatively affecting my grade, I must confess a bit here.  Being compelling on command is HARD and a bit frusterating.  Although maybe that is the point.  I am struggling to put something together that is compelling, and it is starting to stress me out.  For me being compelling is something that happens through a different process than getting an assignment and attempting to "ace" it, although this two-week I am feeling more like just trying not to fail is the goal. I think part of the goal of this class is to get us thinking differently about assignments as teachers and what it means to be compelling, to shape our definitions of compelling in an attempt to help us understand better of what the goal is for our students, because ultimatley every teacher wants students to leave with a broader understanding and opened mind.  So far as we have been doing readings, and watchings and listenings, my definition is shaping up like this (at this point, but part of being compelling is that the definition is not always stagneant):  To be compelling means to use many senses to experience something in a new or different way from how one might have viewed or experienced something previously.  To enlist a new way of thinking about something based on new experiences.  It is something along those lines anyway.  So here is were I am struggling as a student and as an educator.  It feels like there is a right answer that as students we are supposed to get to, and as an educator, sometiems there are right answers that need to be learned.  2+2=4.  There is a process for learning it but no matter what you use, for the most part it is taught first with concrete objects and then it moves to abstract.  Maybe, though, it is the process that you learn it which is in and of itself compelling.  I don't know.  Perhaps I should have posted this on a discussion board rather than a blog, or maybe I don't really want my questions answered, or my musing looked at as readily so somewhere inside I posted it here because it is slightly "safer."  Or maybe this is all the point getting us outside our comfort zone and trying to push us, or I am missing the point completely and the professor is thinking "how did she make it thought undergrad" (I truely hope that isn't the case, and actually did quite well in my undergrads :) )  Either way, this was a much harder module as a student than photography...although like I tell my students, if it is easy then I am not doing my job because apparently you already know it and I shouldn't be teaching you something you already know.

Director’s Commentary:

             When I first started thinking about all of this I was overwhelmed.  I had no idea where I was going to go, or even what idea to start with.  After reading the assignment over and seeing the where to start ideas, I began thinking about education, because I am passionate about that and unlike my family which I am also passionate about would be less likely to turn my video into an awe video.  I decided to focus my video then around one thing that is frustrating to me as an educator: tracking.

            So, I had an idea, then I just had to come up with what I wanted to do.  I started writing my ideas about tracking or the lack there of in schools and what that means. I do not want to track because I think kids are unable to do things, I think tracking is important because all kids are different and we are disservicing a lot of kids but expecting them to all become one thing.

            I started writing down thoughts I had about this idea, not knowing where I wanted to go with it, or how I wanted to make my statement.  I decided I would make a commentary using words that have to be read.  I wanted to use simple black and white for two reasons.  One it is the medium through which many children learn to read and write.  It is also two concrete opposite “colors”.  I knew I wanted to use a font that was not type writer-ish.  I wanted the “a” and “g” to not look like a typed “a” or “g” but rather how a child might print it. 

            My thoughts all came down to questions, which are in nature compelling.  They are asking the audience to think about why something is the way it is.  This idea of evaluation is one of the higher order thinking skills that we try to teach kids.  This is something that all kids need to be able to do, ask questions.  Evaluating and questioning are things I think all kids need to be taught regardless of their chosen careers.

            I decided too to put children in the beginning telling what they wanted to be when they grow up.  This is something you hear lots of kids talk about.  ( A couple of years ago when I was teaching preschool I had a student tell me he wanted to be a lion when he grew up and I wished I had that on tape to add to this)  I wanted the audience to hear from students that they don’t all want to be the same thing as they get older.  I wanted them to have a connection to the children I was trying to prove don’t all need to grow up to be the same thing. 

            When it came time to put the clips of the kids talking in the video I had tried changing it to black and white.  I decided quickly against it. The color made a difference in the children being real.  In real life kids are colorful.  Plus this was a contrast to the black and white of the words that was going to follow, which was my point. 

            Brevity was more challenging that I had originally anticipated as well.  My original video was 2 min and 30 seconds. I had each word slide play for 7 seconds.  I also had two other kids in the beginning.  I shortened each slide to 4 seconds and cut two kids out of the video.  I also cropped some of the beginnings of the videos of the kids talking out.  This got it down to the required time limit.

            I watched my video without music and it still worked but not as well, so I decided to leave it in even though we were cautioned against it.  I just think that the more senses that are used the more compelling something is.  Silence can sometimes be more compelling, but for this because there was no moving action on the screen, there needed something more.

Video

Honestly, I am struggling with this week's ideas.  The best I've got is that in my classroom I attempt to be a storyteller.  Now naturally and with adults I am an AWFUL story teller.  I can't tell a joke to save my life and I get all confused and uneloquent when I try, but in my classroom I am much better.  I don't know if it is my comfort level in a classroom rather than social situations (I am a very introverted person), but for some reason I do much better with my students. I think some of it is that I am teaching. The basics of the story are concrete, I just have to jazz it up and I have lots of tools to help the process. Technology, literature, and the students themselves all lend help to the story and lesson being taught.