Teacher Profile Allison Parker Teaches

¶ … Teacher Profile

Allison Parker teaches second grade at Lincoln Street Elementary School (LSES), Peterborough, New Hampshire. She has taught for five years, all of them at LSES. Ms. Parker earned both her bachelor's and master's degrees in elementary education at the University of New Hampshire. Over the past two years, she has attended regular staff development activities at her school. These are held in conjunction with monthly staff meetings and on teacher workshop days. Topics have included classroom management and Response to Intervention (RTI). Ms. Parker has also used professional development funds to take several workshops on her own. These included "Picturing Writing," a program for students in the primary grades that combines art and writing and an online course for Singapore Math, which shows teachers how to instruct their students in unique strategies for solving simple and complex math problems.

Ms. Parker is observed by her principal two times during the school year. Both observations are scheduled. Occasionally, the principal will walk into the classroom unannounced; those visits usually do not last longer than ten or fifteen minutes. Ms. Parker has not received any feedback from these visits and she expressed some regret about this.

Lincoln Street Elementary School, a public school, serves approximately 375 students in grades kindergarten through fifth. There are forty teachers on staff. The school is located near the center of town. Peterborough is a rural town with a population of approximately 7,000 people. For a town of its size, Peterborough is quite diverse in that it has millionaires as well as people living in public housing. As is the case with most of New Hampshire, Peterborough and LSES are not very racially or ethnically diverse.

Section II: Pre-Observation Conference and the Classroom Observation

Ms. Parker feels she has good rapport with her students. Her greatest concern is that she tends to talk too much during instruction. She also feels she talks too much in her handling of discipline issues. She remarked that she tends to lecture and feels this is the wrong approach to take with second graders. The supervisor will monitor the amount of talking Ms. Parker does compared to her students. The supervisor will use a stopwatch during the observation and record the amounts of time Ms. Parker speaks as well as amounts of time students speak. The supervisor will then calculate percentages to compare Ms. Parker with her students.

The supervisor observed a math lesson. Lincoln Street Elementary School uses a program called Growing with Math (GWM), which provides very structured lessons that teachers are expected to deliver more or less verbatim. Ms. Parker believes there are both advantages and disadvantages to this approach. Each lesson consists of an anticipatory set, instruction, guided practice and independent practice. The instruction makes use of a big book and, often, math manipulatives. Each lesson includes a simple game that is differentiated on three levels, for the average student, for the student who needs extra help, and for the student who can handle a challenge. The independent practice is in the form of a worksheet created by the publishers of the program. As second graders, the students in Ms. Parker's class have had more than two years experience with GWM and quite familiar with the language used in the program. Ms. Parker views that as a plus, but notes that students who have transferred from other schools, particularly mid-year as is the case with one of her students, the language is unfamiliar and thereby problematic. Ms. Parker believes that this is not a fault exclusive to GWM and that most students would experience some difficulty transitioning from one publisher's math program to another.

The disadvantage that Ms. Parker sees in GWM is what she perceives as an inconsistency in the program's lesson structure. The class has a daily math block of one hour. Some GWM lessons fit within that time frame. Others have more content and cannot be comfortably delivered and practiced within an hour. Still other lessons, she felt, are relatively light in content and even the extension activities did not provide enough substance to fill an hour time slot. Ms. Parker noted that the games associated with the lessons are generally good ones that the children enjoy. Since she has taught the program for several years, she has made all the games and has that resource from which to draw. She noted, though, that she made all the games on her own time (mostly during the summer) and often with materials, such as cardstock, that she purchased out-of-pocket with her own funds. She remarked that it is a lot of work for a new teacher, but worth the effort since the children like the games and learn from them, as well as the fact that the games, if laminated, last from year to year.

The supervisor observed a one-hour math lesson. The topic was addition of two-digit numbers, with and without regrouping. The second graders had already demonstrated competence in the addition of two-digit numbers without regrouping; the concept of regrouping had been introduced before the observation but most children still struggled with the concept.

The math block followed lunch and recess, so students were a bit rambunctious at the start of the math lesson. Ms. Parker urged them to come to the carpet area and sit quietly so that they could get started "with something fun." Ms. Parker repeated her request numerous times in a calm yet somewhat quiet voice. Most students complied with her request, as the routine had been established since the beginning of the school year. Two students dawdled at their desks, whispering and giggling. They ignored Ms. Parker until she spoke sharply. One student them complied immediately while the other started arguing about something he had to do first. When Ms. Parker wrote his name on the board, he started to cry and restated his reasons why he could not come immediately to the circle. Ms. Parker explained that it was math time and pointed out that all the other students had come to circle right away. The boy continued to cry and complain. Ms. Parker asked him to sit down at his desk, telling him he could come to circle when he was ready. As soon as Ms. Parker started the math lesson, he joined the group, for which Ms. Parker praised him.

Ms. Parker engaged the students at the onset of the lesson with a logic puzzle she had found on the Internet. The puzzle was not part of the GWM program and did not relate to the lesson, but Ms. Parker had explained to the supervisor beforehand that the children were familiar with logic puzzles and the class did them from time to time as a pre-lesson warm-up to get students thinking mathematically. Ms. Parker was animated as she worked through the puzzle with the students, who all seemed to enjoy the warm-up very much.

GWM provides a script for each lesson, but Ms. Parker did not refer to it when presenting the lesson. As she explained earlier, she has taught GWM for several years and is quite familiar with the lessons. She has made notes in the margins of her teachers' guide that remind her which aspects of the lesson went well and which did not. She has made a habit of mentally rehearsing each math lesson daily while students are at recess so the lesson is fresh in her mind when students come into the classroom. She feels that she follows the script fairly closely but has, over the past several years, "tweaked" each lesson to fit her teaching style and to appeal to her students.

The lesson began with pictures and problems in the GWM big book. Ms. Parker demonstrated how to solve problems using magnetic coins as well as magnetic 10-rods and unit cubes. She called students to the board so that they could have turns using these manipulatives as well. Most students were engaged in the lesson, but there were several students who required continual redirection from Ms. Parker. One student, "Trevor," was particularly exasperating, and Ms. Parker stopped the lesson to discuss the importance of paying attention during math. She also talked about his behavior as a distraction to other children in the class. Trevor was temporarily subdued but by the end of the lesson he had resumed his antics. Ms. Parker reminded him of the classroom rules and threatened to keep him indoors for the second recess.

The class spent considerable time using the manipulatives to solve problems, so Ms. Parker did not introduce the games as she had planned. Instead, she showed the students the worksheet they would complete in class. She discussed the various problems and strategies students could use to solve them. She enlisted the aid of several students to pass out individual sets of manipulatives that students could use at their desks to help them find solutions.

Almost immediately after sitting down, a number of students (nearly half the class) complained that they "didn't get it." Ms. Parker invited those having trouble to return to the carpet area for additional instruction. She asked these students to get clipboards for their worksheets and to bring their manipulatives as well. There was some time wasted in this transition, but the students were generally eager to comply. Ms. Parker guided the students through each of the problems on the worksheet. She used her manipulatives on the board, either coins or cubes, and encouraged the students to do the same. One boy complained that Ms. Parker was "going too fast" but another student moved next to him and provided some assistance. By the time the math hour was over, most students had finished their worksheets. Ms. Parker did not require those that had not finished to stay in for recess. She collected the unfinished papers and promised the students that they would work on them together the next day

Section III: Post-Observation Conference

The supervisor asked Ms. Parker to reflect on her interaction with students as they prepared to gather for the math lesson. She agreed that she gave instructions too many times and that, as a result, some students tend to "tune her out." The supervisor showed Ms. Parker the results of the stop-watch test and she was surprised to learn she did eighty-five percent of the talking vs. The fifteen percent of her students. She remarked the results confirmed what she suspected: she lectured too much to her second graders and did not give them adequate time to orally process what they were thinking and learning.