Building a better teacher

In the article “Building a Better Teacher” by Elizabeth Green, she emphasizes the fact that education and certification are not the only ingredients needed to make a good teacher. There are many statistics proving that students are failing despite the fact that teachers have master degrees and passed all required testing. There have been different models tried over the years. But most have failed to change the basis caliber of the teacher. Even giving merit raises and recruiting more elite teaching corps like Teach for America has not seemed to reliably improve student learning.

One of the most intriguing studies seems to be the Mathematical Knowledge for teaching test (M.K.T test) brought to light by researcher Deborah Loewenberg Ball who concluded that “teaching even third-grade math requires intricate skills and complex knowledge about math.” Ball felt that you have to understand not only how to teach the right way to do math problems but also to understand how the students might understand or misunderstand it.

Another great mind in helping to better our teacher is Doug Lemov. His book version of Lemov’s Taxonomy “teach like a champion: the 49 techniques that much students on the path to college” is loaded with new ideas to help teachers succeed in getting all students to learn better. While both Mathematical knowledge for teaching and Lemov’s Taxonomy are proving to have much merit, more time is needed to get enough teachers to the level where they can effectively make a difference.

autistic boy

Have you ever wondered how autism affects a child’s life? Well I was lucky to learn more about it when I was given the opportunity to observe a classroom, at a catholic school, of 16 first graders with 1 boy that has autism. The boy’s name is Shawn and he is considered to be a very high functioning autistic child. Shawn is able to talk but it is hard for him to express himself using words. He reacted to his surroundings in unusual ways; a normal sound would bother him sometimes so much that he had to cover his ears.

Shawn is tiny for a 6 year old; he is an adorable brown haired, blue eyed, very small statured child. At first observation, you wouldn’t really think that there was anything wrong with him. Upon further observation I was able to see that he didn’t interact properly with the students in the class. He tended to isolate himself and play by himself instead of joining in with what all the other students were doing. There was a teacher’s aid in the room that worked with Shawn to try to get him to play more with the other students and she was also able to calm him down the couple of times that he got upset that week.

When I first started going to the classroom Shawn wouldn’t even look at me when I said hi to him, he would just turn his back to me and go back to what he was doing. After a week of seeing me on a daily basis he finally began to at least acknowledge that I was in the room by giving me the cutest little smile. On the last day that I was there, Shawn actually very shyly came up to me and gave me a hug when the teacher announced that this would be my last day visiting the classroom.

When I was in the classroom it was really surprising to me how Shawn was able to draw better than the average 6 year old. He put so much detail into the drawings that a child wouldn’t usually think of at such a young age. The other thing that I noticed Shawn was especially good at was putting together small puzzles that many of the other kids in the class had much difficulty with. These observations correlated with articles that I read online regarding how there are certain areas in which autistic children seem to almost have genius abilities, but then in social situations they can have what is referred to as “mind blindness”. This “mind blindness”, refers to not being able to recognize and understand body language and facial expressions like the average child can because of that even high functioning autistic children like Shawn, need to be taught the social niceties in a much more in depth way and constantly reinforcing these behaviors. This was extremely obvious to me, not only as I mentioned above with the smiling, but also in how he seemed to hurt the other kids feelings so intentionally and not really understanding why.

In my overall observations of the classroom settings I noticed lots of small activity stations which really are helpful because they allow each child to move at their own pace and keep their attention for short periods of time. This was very helpful to Shawn because he really didn’t seem to be able to sit still for very long. They had a reading station with not only an assortment of books but also with magnetic letters to form their own words, a math station with many different unique ways to explore numbers. In another area there was a sand table and a table where they were able to play with toys in water. I noticed that both of these tables were very popular with all the other students, but Shawn would avoid them as much as he could. This seems to be another issue for children with autism; they seem to have much more sensitivity to texture and need to be firmly encouraged to engage in these activities.

As my final observation, I noticed that from day to day when something was done at a different time or in a different way Shawn appeared to get upset. That seemed to correspond with what I read about the fact that most children with autism don't like changes in routines. They like to stay on a schedule that is always the same. Sometimes even a change in the way the objects and items at each activity center were arranged seemed to upset Shawn if it was different from the previous time that he had been there.

Based on my observations for the most, the classroom situation he was in seemed to be appropriately meeting his needs without isolating him from the rest of the classroom. The one thing I feel he could really benefit from would be an aid specifically assigned to him to help him deal with whatever situations may arise. You may have to try many different people before they find someone who he is comfortable enough with to be able to trust. It is also important that it is the same person all the time for him to be able to form a bond.