Prompt # 4: Reflect on your time in the classroom to this point. How are you feeling emotionally, physically? Do you feel that you are getting through to your most difficult students? What strategies are working? What strategies are not? What are your next steps with student engagement within your classroom?

It hasn't been that long since I started the class and to describe the roller coaster of emotions in a paragraph would be tough. I've gone from laughing, disappointed, frustrated, ecstatic, and apathetic in that short of a time span. The good news is that are more jubilees sentiments than unpleasant. On some day the students seem eager to participate and engage in the classroom and on others its a struggle to even have them take notes.

The difficult students in class are becoming less troublesome. Since most do not have an idea of what economics is about, once we connect the real world to the material in class they are the ones most interested in participating; some even become so enamored that they blurt out questions and distract when lecturing, but that's a win in my book. I have to attribute the success catering the material to their reading and writing level and giving positive reinforcement when they participate. One of the biggest problems in my class is confidence, or lack their of, in students' school ability. Economics is not all mathematics, it actually studies human behavior as a whole so when a student is asked a question, most of them know the answer intuitively. I attempt to always ask questions that they would rationalize by just being themselves.

My next step in engaging the students in the classroom is to provide current data and intertwine the lesson plans with relevant world events. Most of the concepts in beginning economics is fundamental and finding information to relate is a bit difficult.  

Prompt # 3: What are you doing to meet the needs of your special education students? If you do not have special education students, how are you meeting the needs of your low students? Have you met with your school's pre-referral group about these students?

As mentioned in prior discussions, most of the students in the high school I instruct in are deficient in some core subject and it will most likely be either reading and writing English. While I have cater my classes to individuals that lack reading comprehension and have evidenced success, I find it very difficult to assist students that have verbal communication problems. Firstly, while they know I can understand them when they speak to me in Spanish, I legally cannot respond to them in their most proficient language and thus speak to them in English. Secondly, stopping instruction and focusing too much time on the few students these circumstance would take an enormous amount of instruction time. As a remedy, I allow students to work in groups so that they can use their partner as a resource to solve simple issues, and always attempt to explain normal words, used casually in conversation, and explain them so English deficient students know what was said.

When I do sense a students has a problem that is not typical of other students, communication with the school's SPED instructor is started and eventually observations begin to identify if the students does need special instruction. Unfortunately, I am new to teaching so the few conversations I've had with the SPED instructor have only mentioned testing after observations are finished; after that I have no clue of what the next steps.  

Prompt #2: This year what has worked and what hasn't in your classroom? What will you do differently?

     One of the expectations for the the classes I teach was believing students, as uninteresting as the material was, would still attempt to finish it. Economics is an elective class and most students know they could make up the credit with another elective. At some point within the first half of the six week term students stopped doing the classwork. Another idea that has not worked was conducting the class in a mixed high school\college style where I have a notes on a Power Point and instruct them to takes notes in which ever manner they feel is best. None of my students have any note taking ability and have always been instructed to copy word for word what is presented and ignore the information verbally instructed.

What has worked really well was modifying the worksheets and book assignments to a level adequate for the students. I use problems straight from college books and rewrite them for English deficient students and have seen a general decline of questions typically asking "what does the question mean" and more of "does this look correct to you" which is exactly the question I want to hear.

In order to fix the parts that aren't working in my class I may have to adjust my syllabus and point values to increase the weight class assignments have on the overall grade; incentivize the students to do class work by risking possible failure. To fix the second problem, a small class time in note taking instructions in the beginning of t he term would be acceptable to prepare students for this course.