Andrea RODAS-STork

Compassion was so crucial throughout my educational experiences in making me feel welcomed and accepted, and thereby more motivated to participate and put in more effort in learning. One of the ways I like to show that I care about my students is by making sure I get some individual time to see how they are doing outside of my classroom's walls. According to Toshalis & Nakkula (2012), when learning is catered so that the subject makes “sense to them in their world,” adolescents are more likely to be engaged and motivated. Because of this, it is crucial to get the student perspective on what makes up their social and emotional worlds. Given that “social pathways influence how we receive and make meaning of information” (Toshalis & Nakkula, 2012), any connection we can make as educators as to how our field of study pertains to students' daily life or perception of the world around them, the learning will be made all the more powerful.

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I like to use the time right before the period begins and the first few minutes of class as people come in to "check in" with students. Just as how I would check in after a weeknight study hall in the dorm, I greet each student and as them how they are, in the target language. It not only helps them transition their thinking into another language, and helps them feel more comfortable with basic conversation, but it helps me as their teacher know how they are doing before beginning a lesson. Oftentimes I have found out from these check-ins that they might have a big game coming up or just had one the day before and it has taken a mental toll on them. Other times they are simply drained after a long day, and, more often than we would like as teachers, they are not feeling well. It lets me know that their participation in class that day may be different and I can then work with them acknowledging their emotional-mental state rather than hold their energy or motivation against them. As a first-year teacher it makes a huge difference knowing that unresponsiveness may not be based on how effective a lesson plan is or one's inexperience. Furthermore, it has helped me avoid wrongfully assuming students do not care about the class or lack overall effort as a student.

After checking in, I use "thermometer reads" with my thumb throughout the lesson to gauge how confident students feel about a given topic, assignment, or upcoming assessment. Asking them how "easy" they found a task, holding my thumb up for "Super easy!" to shaking it around the middle for "I could handle this" to a thumb all the way down for "This was really hard, Ms. Rodas!" I can get a sense of how a particular section may need more challenging or less challenging activities to follow, or simply more review. On a concept just learned, I ask how confident they feel moving forward with this subject and allows time for students to allow the information to sink in. After these kinds of thermometer reads, students usually refocus as well, if they went off in side conversations, and also ask questions with the space and time to self-reflect. This is such a quick and easy tool that students get the hang of fairly quickly and can begin to use the target language with as well. If many of my students are responding with low energy and/or finding tasks too challenging, I tweak my lesson plan to adapt my students' needs. After all, Lev Vygotsky's model of the "Zone of Proximal Development" demonstrates that understanding the range of where students feel appropriately challenged but not threatened, overwhelmed, or discouraged is essential in knowing how much to accommodate for a given student (Toshalis & Nakkula, 2010). "Vygotsky discovered that the difficulty of skills taught must be only slightly in advance of their current level of master" in order for students to have a more positive view of themselves and the course (Blaz, 2016; Tomlinson, 2014)). Part of carrying out an effective lesson plan is learning to not exceed a student's zone of proximal development, so they can remain motivated and engaged.

Did I allow students to participate in a variety of ways? In a modern language classroom, where speaking is a component that many teachers prioritize as a way of showing comfort with the language, it can be difficult for more introverted students to participate verbally. Even in other courses, students' participation and motivation is measured by how much they speak up in class. Essentially, I prioritize including differentiated exercises to reach the variety and diversity of the students I teach. "Teachers can orient their teaching styles to meet their students' needs by providing a variety of multisensory, abstract, and concrete learning activities that appeal to different learning styles" (Shrum & Glisan, 2000). By having a range of activities that are meant for practice with a grammatical concept or vocabulary set, for example, students can still show their learning even if they are not vocalizing it in front of the class. Some of these low-stakes activities include: using paddle-boards to write out responses, think-pair-share activities, differentiated exercises where students choose which questions to respond to orally or in written format -- like Tic-Tac-Toe -- (Blaz, 2016), and online exercises -- such as Kahoot!, Quizlet, Quia, etc. Many of these students require these different ways to participating so they stay motivated, focused, and engaged with the material. 

In Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (2016), author Carol Dweck discusses the types of praise that we as educators need to use to improve growth mindset and dissuade a fixed mindset. Making sure to change feedback like "You're so smart!" to "The time and effort you put into studying for this exam, as well as using that new study strategy we discussed, really helped you succeed!" guides students to associate their academic success and tenacity with the work they put in, and get feedback on the strategies they are applying towards achieving their goals. Good encouragement should focus on praising the effort that was put in, but only when that effort was successful. If a student put in a lot of time and energy into a task but it still ended in mistakes and misunderstandings, that effort should not be praised. Instead, I encourage students to see me outside of class for review, encourage them to review certain topics to avoid future mistakes, encourage them to as questions, and encourage the formation of new or different study habits to produce better results with not necessarily more time and energy spent, but the right amount and quality of effort.