1. Five images of my future classroom.
As a future wood working teacher I imagine my classroom being in a large woods lab with high ceilings and plenty of room to allow for a safe working environment.
I imagine having work benches with 2-3 students per workbench. I want to have the students work in group so that each student can benefit from the cultural differences of their group members.
The tools will be separate from work benches in a open space that allows students to use each machine with out disrupting the next.
I imagine will have access to a regular class room as well. where students can learn the safety and theory needed for each project. I hope to develop visuals for the walls that will help be a reminder of safety procedures and protocols. To help students who don’t speak english as a first language I will make the same visuals for the languages that students speak.
I imagine The class room will have lots of natural light incase of power outages to prevent injuries with equipment.
Photo Credits:
Diabloswoodworking.com, Designshare.com,
Evergreenmontesori.wordpress.com, Chickensmoothy.com, Finewoodworking.com
2. Imagine the surrounding in your classroom. What does the room look like? See pictures above: A large high ceiling wood shop with wooden work benches a section for all the major power tools, a tool bench that has tools with labels and outlines.A separate class room for theory and safety instructions (in all languages needed.. I have thought about working with students who speak the needed languages and having them help develop the safety instructions and procedural instructions for extra credit). What resources are available for students? well maintained woodworking machines, Routers, bandsaws, table saws, surfacers, shapers, planers, panel saw, wood bending technology, hand tools, stock of wood supply. I will also provide access to standard to metric conversion graphs and tape measurers to help those who may have grown up learning and using the metric system. How are the resources used during the lesson? Students square a board from stock lumbar, using the planer and surfacer to machine a working face and side. students will also use the table saw to cut boards to final width and a panel saw to cut boards to final length. Students will use the hand tool set: hand dovetail saw, marking gauge and tri-square (Metric tri squares will be provided if needed) and to map out and hand cut a dovetail joint. Written procedural instructions will be provided with sample pictures and additional instruction. I will work with translators to provide procedural instructions in what ever languages are needed each semester.
3. Describe the students in your classroom. What are their backgrounds? They come from many backgrounds the majority are white male sophomores and juniors, with a smaller representation of black, hispanic, and european students. The class probably consists of 2/3 male and 1/3 female. I have noticed that the woodshop programs struggle to attract female students. I will make sure that additional effort is put into providing projects that will interest more female students in the class. I will work with the home economics teachers to show this as a true option for a class that female students can take. Some examples of projects may include jewelry boxes, jewelry it self, more ornate shelving. What are their interests? some are hands on learners that enjoy problem solving and are interested in learning to be makers, most are those interested less in the lecture based academic classes and are looking for a learning environment that does require as much traditional homework and class work. Some are looking for a refuge from the struggles that being a minority have in other subjects such as english, math and lectures sciences. With this in mind I hope to create a safe space for these minorities. Those who grew up working with their parents to repair and build in their home. What are they doing during the lesson? During instruction most will be listening and watching demonstrations intently, knowing that they will have to complete the tasks of the lessons on there own once the demonstrations are completed. The students who have language barriers will work with a translator provided. I will try to learn key words and phrases needed to help instruct these students depending on the language demand. The demonstrations will be short and to the point allowing students enough time to work on there projects and allowing me as a teacher more one on one and small group help when different problems arise. I hope by having the students work in small groups the students will get to know the different cultures around them. I will make sure the groups are as diverse as I can make them. This is a great opportunity for the lower income students who have grown up watching their parents repair and work more hands on to show the they to have cultural capital especially when it comes to technical wood working skills and experience. I hope that the group setup will help each students learn that people with different cultural backgrounds are an invaluable asset to buiding and designing as well as the most important part of engineering and building which is innovation. This one on one approach will also help me as a teacher understand what issues caused by cultural, economical, and personal differences has caused and make plans for correction.
4. Describe you classroom policies. What are you classroom rules? The classroom saftey policies are as follow: No long sleeves, hands to above elbows are clear of clothing and jewelry, long hair tied back in ponytail, loose clothing not allowed, safety glass worn at all times in woods lab. one person on a machine at a time, can’t use machines until written safety test is taken and cataloged and student is passed off on the machine by teacher or T.A.
Classroom behavioral policies are as follows: RESPECT. Respect people in the class room students and teacher. There will be a zero tolerance to bullying of any kind in my class room. Bullying because of cultural differences (wether that be race, economics, gender, or sexuality) will be dealt with in a more harsh way. Respect machines and tools, fellow class mates, work benches and other school property. What is your discipline plan? Any violation of safety procedures will not be tolerated, immediate removal from lab after 2nd warning. student will then be in the classroom retaking safety exam. disrespect of any kind will not be tolerated, lab time will be taken away from students involved in any violation of class policies. Discrimination of any kind will be reported to the principle, the students parents and if needed the police. What are your homework policies? students must complete all wood working assignments during class time, no outside lab times are offered. If student is struggling with work because of a cultural or language based barrier I will work one on one with them to help them get the resources needed to complete the assignment. Assignments accepted on time and up to one week after, but there will be a deduction in points for late work, unless student has discussed with me their special circumstance. students will be allowed to rework projects to make up points as long as it was turned in on its due date and the student is ahead on the next project.
5. Describe a typical lesson you will teach in your classroom. What will you teach? I will teach basic wood working techniques. What is the topic? engineering and prototyping with wood. Why did you choose this topic? I have worked in the woodworking and construction industry and have found a passion for this field and want to help the younger generation feel this passion. How will you teach it?through a mixture of teaching techniques: lecture, demonstrations, think pair share, hands on doing and one on one questions and problem solving help. What is the main thing you want students to learn during this lesson? how to square a board and layout and cut dovetail joints.
6. Imagine your work as a teacher during this lesson. What are you doing during the lesson? I am teaching, asking questions (what is you assignment? how deep should the planer be set to?, what additional help do you require? can you repeat the instructions back to me? what are the safety procedure for ____ maching?), demonstrating, having students help with the demonstrations by preforming the cuts (Have upper class students who have low cultural capital in the hands on wood working skills help preform cuts in front of class to help them have more confidence in there kinetic ability). observing as students square the board, help one on one with issues and small groups with similar issues. Having students who have strong cultural capital help students who may be struggling to understand the concepts needed to complete the task.
7. Imagine your students again, what are they doing during the lesson? they are listening and asking questions, they are working and asking questions and for help and using the engineering design cycle to solve problems and answer questions. Students with communication barriers will be working with translators. and will be allowed to be up close and in front for visual demonstrations so they will understand the task at hand. Students who have strong cultural capital that will most likely finish the task early, They will then help me as a teacher in helping students who have questions or need help.
8. Imagine how you will assess your students’ learning and achievement. How will you know they have learned? I will assess the students learning by having the students turning in there dovetail joint with a grading sheet and rubric that they have gone through and scored their own project step by step, I will then score there project while considering there own scores they gave them selves. I will know if they have learned how to cut a dovetail joint if they are able to cut a dove tail joint. I will have the students keep a problem solving log. Students will write down the problems they came across will working on the task and write down their solutions to these problems. To help student view the test and grading of assignments as a learning experience I will have student turn int he assignments with their own assessment of their work and discuss with them what went wrong and how they could improve. I will allow the students to take this feedback and rework any thing they wish to for more points.
Reflection:
Why Did I make the changes and why I didn’t make other changes.
I feel my imagined classroom that I had previously created was pretty good when it came to not being unfair to the students of different backgrounds. The classroom pretty much has to be set up in certain ways to keep the students safe. Being a very hands-on class, students get to escape out of the educational norms that cause frustration to students who struggle because of their cultural back ground. I am blessed to be teaching a topic that is very task oriented learning. With that in mind I still made several changes and gave more explanation as to why I had set up my classroom and lesson the way I had.
I feel the biggest oversight I made in my original imagined classroom was the language barriers. It is very important for each student to understand the safety rules. I had not provided a plan for what I would do if student don’t speak english and can’t read the safety posters on walls. I made a change to this and to offer an incentive for help from students who speak different languages to help me make safety rules as understandable as possible. I also didn’t consider how students of other cultures don’t use the same measurement system that we do, to help with this I will have conversion charts provided, as well as having measurement tools that measure in both standard and metric systems.
Another change I made was to provide written operational procedure to each student. I will have these procedure written in english and other languages of those who are in my class. I will always provide english and the other language needed in tandem to the student who need both. This will help them understand the task based on the visual representation of the task and by having an accompanying instructional procedure written in their language.
I also changed my discipline and class rules section. I felt I was not specific enough and that I didn’t have a plan in place for bullying or discrimination. I added a zero tolerance to discrimination plan. Students in my class need to understand that discrimination and bullying are crimes of hate and ignorance and the they are not allowed in my classroom.
I also changed the way I was teaching the lesson to help students of different backgrounds to better understand what is being taught. I noticed I didn’t provide translators or special treatment for those who needed to visually see what was being done. I also added in a SOP in languages needed for the students to have while making their boards and joints.
I changed the way that I assess the students knowledge to focus more on a learning experience rather than just a points based assessment. I also added in plans to help students with cultural disadvantages and advantages to help the class be more successful all around.
jasondallastidwell 