Jill Thompson07/20/14

Project #2: Rigor

For this rigor analysis, I have decided to look at one of the schools I did my student teaching at, Cedar Falls High School. After analyzing all aspects of education and my experience at this school, I have given it a grade of 5 on the grading scale. When teaching at Cedar Falls High School, I taught the class ‘Fundamentals of Biology’. The students in my class consisted of approximately 30% special education students, 30% ESL students, 20% students who had been tracked to our lower level class, and 20% students who had failed the class the year before and were retaking it. Given the unique circumstances of my situation, I feel it is safe to say that this experience was very strange and rare all in itself. It was certainly an eye opening experience for me as a student teacher, and I learned so much from it.

I believe that it is these circumstances alone that allowed me to give my school such a low grade on the rigor scale. Due to many behavioral issues and other things I was unable to implement a rigorous curriculum. Coming to the realization early on in my experience that this was impossible (at least as the student teacher that I was), I immediately became concerned about my students. We were rarely able to go beyond level one or two of Blooms Taxonomy. Evaluation and synthesis were common levels to be covered in my classroom. Once we moved beyond that, many students were unable to think through problems or complete their work, as they never learned sufficient critical thinking skills before this level.

The makeup of students in the classes I taught were the exact type of classes that reminded me of my key goal: to teach these students the survival skills needed in order to become successful citizens and have 21st century career skills. My hopes were to use meaningful, authentic science lessons and do so with as much rigor as possible. In my thinking, at least if they were not able to learn and contain their science knowledge, they would at least have the necessary skills to live a great life.

Although it was difficult to implement a rigorous curriculum with my students, the reason I gave my school such a low score is because of a more complicated reason. Since I shared an office with all other biology teachers and did professional learning with them, I knew how the curriculum worked throughout the department. All teachers in the biology department followed the same curriculum, same time spent teaching units, same tests, etc. Because the lower level students were not as high achieving as higher level kids, they based the curriculum at this level. Rather than raising their ceiling, students had generally simple standards that they had to meet and they were the same across the board.

Jill Thompson07/20/14

This left high achieving students bored and taught them that they don’t have to do as much as they should have been doing. In my opinion, this is the last thing we want students to do! I believe that if they have been taught science in a meaningful way, they should naturally want to be exploring and going above and beyond more than ever at the high school level. Some high level teachers were good about giving them extra, authentic work to do, but it wasn’t required (except for the AP science classes). I often thought about how different it would be for me to teach the upper level students and all of the great project based units I could do with them.

As for my students, the most stressful part about the fact that many of my fundamentals students were unable to learn was because of their attitudes and behaviors. Many students in the classroom sincerely wanted to learn, but others continuously disrupted class and ruined it for them. In a situation like mine, I would usually say the teacher should do something about it. These problems rooted much deeper than classroom management, and I found myself exhausted and confused every day, thinking of what I could try the next day. In my situation, it was impossible to assign homework assignments and receive them when they were due. Usually one third to half of the kids were absent, and they weren’t responsible for themselves. My brain was constantly thinking of new ideas and ways I could tackle this lack of motivation. Although I didn’t succeed in my short time at this school, I have learned so many valuable skills I will carry with me on to my next job this year in Houston, Texas.

During my time teaching at Cedar Falls, I did what I could to make their curriculum more rigorous and meaningful in my high school biology class. According to data I took during my class, many students grades increased and learning occurred. To this day, I wonder about those students and hope that what I taught them in the classroom has benefited them in some way, wherever they may be in life. Like Wagner said, “Even people with what may seem like the simplest of jobs need to learn survival skills.” Tony Wagner’s article really resonated with me, and instantly had me thinking about my students. All students must experience rigor in some way. I can only hope that their time spent with me benefited them in some way and they are living happy, successful lives.