1: What tips would you like to share for keeping students engaged in your classroom?

 A couple of things: be engaged yourself - interested in/excited about material you are teaching;
kids really do feed off of energy you bring to material. Be mindful about what is happening in
class - kids feed off of each other; heads down on desk is contagious, so notice when kids are
losing engagement; find ways to re-engage early.
2: Do you have suggestions for classroom configuration/layout for summative and/or formative
assessment activities?
 I like to have some sort of collaborative configuration - if kids can work with 2-3 other people,
that’s the most conducive to group work. We have 10 laptops, so I like 3 sets of 10 desks; helps
with working in 3 stations during lesson, way to break down instruction and have more resources
for class.
 Some activities work best with a certain configuration (i.e. socratic seminar no desks necessary,
group work pods work well, assessments rows might be better) -- in my class there aren’t all that
many standardized assessments, so we don’t spend a lot of time in rows
3: What do you do to address the diverse learning styles in your classroom/How do you change
instruction for individuals?
 Ability: important to start at middle point and assess from there, pushing kids to grow from
whatever point they’re at; hard in a blended class because kids are at such different levels; decide
what learning looks like for each of these different students. When assessing work, I leave
individualized comments on each student’s work; maybe different rubrics. Scaffolded
expectations, not really scaffolded work - everyone is trying to get to same level of achievement,
difficult to differentiate when it’s a skill
 Learning styles: important that kids are engaged (pacing), making sure instruction is both verbal
and also that they can see it somewhere; all kids are more engaged when they are doing
something tactile - practice skill they are meant to be practicing, actively working on whatever
skill is; incorporate movement into class (find new partner, move around the room - refresh brain)
4: How would you describe your teaching style?
 Concerned with 2 main things: emotional environment for students - hope kids understand that
their experience is valuable, heard, recognized, and important in the room; skills - making sure
instruction feels relevant and can be valuable and transferrable, always trying to make sure plans
and activities feel relevant to life
5: Do you incorporate project-based learning and multiple-choice tests into each unit?
 Project-based learning, yes. Try to have end of unit assessment to be project-based. Try to have
skill learning be assessed through project they create. Multiple choice used every 2 units to have
more standardized version of results.
6: Do you agree with the statement "Assessments are not the end of the teaching and learning
process, but should be the starting point"? Explain.
 Yes, we can’t look at our kids like they’re an empty vessel; they have often learned the concepts
before they get to me; check prior knowledge with assessment, how much do you know? Then
teaching really begins and we can start working on building upon those skills. End of unit
assessment more for reflection than planning.
7: How do you check for student understanding prior to a quiz or test?
 Don’t really give quizzes, but prior to end of unit test, formative assessments help show what
students know and understand; practicing limited number of standards on unit test, so formative
assessments build up to this
8: What have you gained by cooperating with other teachers in a PLT?
 Being in a PLT allows you to reflect on your practice in a different way. When working
independently, the only thing you have to compare to is yourself. Being in a PLT allows you to
see different teaching styles and approaches, helps you see how to reach learners in a new way;
 someone going through something similar, similar expectations; sounding board to see if you’re
headed in the right direction, support you along the way

Reflection:
Ms. Kost’s answers in the interview were not all that surprising to me. The way that she teaches
and the activities and assignments she uses in the classroom are all very skills-based, and she clearly
values seeing growth in those areas rather than the ability of her students to memorize facts and content.
As far as the actual classroom environment, her answers were also expected. She keeps her desks in pods
and does a lot of “think-pair-share” type activities where students work individually and then discuss their
answers as a group before talking about them as a class. It is clear that the configuration of her desks is
well suited for these types of activities, and Ms. Kost clearly prefers this setup. In regards to
differentiation, Ms. Kost is clearly aware of different learning needs, which is evident in how she keeps
information up on the screen/board in addition to saying it aloud. However, it is not always clear how she
is differentiating for her honors students or struggling learners. While I agree that it is hard to differentiate
expectations when all students need to get to the same point of learning a skill, Ms. Kost’s answer to this
question left something lacking. She seems either unaware or uninterested in providing her students with
the challenges or extra help that they might need. Obviously if her expectations for students are different
and she uses different rubrics to grade them, then their grades will reflect their own ability level.
However, I fear that a lack of differentiation in the actual teaching and learning process might prevent
some students from getting the engagement or enrichment that they need. For example, some of the
honors students may be bored due to a lack of challenge. Without being able to see the grades or even be
with the students every day, I am obviously running on assumptions and predictions, but it will be
interesting to have a more firsthand look at the students next semester when I am the one teaching and
grading.
As I think about my own future experience teaching, it is difficult to say what I might implement
in my own classroom. I am exposed to only one teacher each week, and I can definitely see both strengths
and weaknesses in her approach, but I do not feel prepared to claim that I know what would work better.
In addition, since I will still be in Ms. Kost’s classroom next semester, it is difficult to know how much I
will really be comfortable changing. I agree that the classroom configuration works well, especially with
the nature of many of the assignments that students must complete, and the fact that as 9th graders they
need to feed off of each other’s knowledge and understanding to be able to grasp things more deeply. I
also agree that focusing on teaching skills rather than content is an effective strategy, and that texts should
be used to supplement teaching, rather than as the basis for it. This will really affect how I approach the
unit that I teach. I was planning to decide on a text (To Kill a Mockingbird) and form my unit around our
reading of it. However, Ms. Kost has made it clear that she does not think this will be an effective way to
teach the standards, and that I should consider teaching excerpts of the novel in order to more directly
focus on teaching skills. While I completely understand where she is coming from, I want to find a happy
medium where I can do both the novel as a whole and focus on teaching skills rather than the book itself.
This will take some reordering of my own thoughts and expectations, because I have strong assumptions
for how novels are taught in English classes. This experience will help me grow as a teacher, and I hope it
will be something I can take with me into my future classroom. I need to be open to approaching units
and concepts in different ways that others have found more effective.
This experience with the novel I want to teach is very revealing of my own assumptions about
planning a unit. In many of my classes, we have practiced backwards design, where you start with the
standards and align the entire unit to those. This means creating and thinking about assessment before
planning actual lessons. This way of planning a unit is much more effective, because it focuses on the end
goal and then on the steps for getting there. Much of my previous understanding of units driven by a
novel was that the structure of the novel should determine the order of what you teach. This might mean
going by a certain number of chapters and structuring each lesson around what occured in those chapters
and what other elements you can talk about (characters, plot structure, literary elements, etc.). However,
planning backwards from assessment is a better way to ensure that all activities, assignments, and lessons
align with the end goal of the unit, and help students build on skills that they will be tested on. I plan to
keep all of these lessons in mind as I move forward and begin planning my own units for student teaching
and my own classroom beyond that.