Ephiphany

   After reading this weeks assigned readings I had an ephiphany.  In high school, my junior year we had to complete a research paper in Enligsh class.  My teacher assigned us a topic a piece and then proceeded to allow us to research it.  After doing some research we started our first draft. When we thought we were getting near finishin our first draft we were aloud to make appointments with her to look over our work so far.  During our appointment she would look over our paper, ask us about the topic and what made us chose the facts we did to put into our paper.  Looking back now I see that she was using this time to look at what we had done with our paper.  I was struggling with citations within the text whether it be from a non fiction book, website, dictonary etc.  During my appointment she taught the how to cite correctly and make a bibliography.  I enjoyed my time I had with my teacher because it was one on one.  No other students were around and I felt that I could be real with her.  I tend to be a shy person so this made it easier for me to open up.  What I mean to say is that this week after reading about conferences it triggered memories for me of high school and my own expereince in a conference.  I do agree that they should be focused on the student but I do not think that the teacher should ignore all of the other students.  I love that the author suggests seeing different people all the time so that everyone gets an opporunity.  What I am not so sure about is not allowing opportunites for students to come to you instead of the teacher always choosing whom to conference with next.  I think I would like a few slots for people who really need to talk their piece over with me and then have the other slots for people I have not seen in awhile.
    Something else that I learned about that intrugied me is this idea of making time to share. I do not normally like to share anything I write or do.  I am a very private person when it comes to sharing things I have written because I know how others ridicule each other behind their backs.  However, I really would like to try the idea of having students share pieces of their work instead of the whole piece.  By having students pick their favorite sentence or paragraph from the text then we all get to see little clips of the big picture.  It makes it kind of exciting if you think about it because you do not know anything more than what is being read.  I imagine I could have picked one sentence from my entries to share and not been too embarrassed.  I plan to use this as an option for people who do no want to share their entire work.
   Lastly I would like to talk about this idea of grading or evaulating.  When I was younger and even in the 1st grade classroom that I worked with last semester there was a place for students to grade themselves.  Children and adults know what they do and do not do.  I think by having this element in evaluation of the work, we as teachers can get a better handle on what students are doing and how well they are doing it.  By this I mean if the work is kind of lower than expected and the student writes that he/she did not work on it very much then we know why the work is of less quality.  In my first grade classroom that I worked with last semester each student was very responsible and honest as to what she/he had completed.  Students were not ashamed to write no I did not do this or no I did not do that because my teacher made an atmosphere with her students as long as they were honest she would not get mad.  I hope to have that kind of patience when I teach.  In turn she allowed them to finish what they did not do in their spare time.  In short I do think it is important to have self evaluation of work in the grading process because it helps hold students accountable for their work.