John Appenfeldt's Blog

First and foremost, I think that teachers should try their best to make an actual connection with their students. This connection will be something that the students will remember forever. This kind of connection will benefit students’ attitude in the classroom as well as with the students’ learning. Students will come to class and be ready to learn with a teacher they love. This connection is so important to me due to one of my favorite teachers in high school. I excelled in most of my classes, but German class was my favorite by far. Although the teacher was great at teaching, the environment of his classroom was superior to any other I have ever been in. He talks to us like we are people rather than talking to us like a robot and I truly think this allows for students to excel in his class.This relationship is something that will allow for expanded student learning and extra engagement in the classroom.

Another philosophy that is important to me is understanding why you are there and what you’re doing. There have been plenty of times in my young life where I make mistakes because I don’t know exactly what I’m doing or why I’m doing it. So far I have learned a decent amount about what I will be doing, and have figured out that teaching is bigger than me. Since we are trying to create hard working individuals who make our community a better place, I think it is important to have the students work together! Having our students collaborate and communicate to figure out natural phenomena, what they believe, and other aspects of life is very important to me, even if we are teaching young students. Giving students the opportunity to learn in different ways is one of the most important aspects of teaching. 

Along with the other two, another philosophy of mine is to make the students better learners and workers. Anyone can remember something for a short period of time, I want my students to be able to learn rather than memorize. This will happen through specific teaching strategies and memorable activities. This will expand their memorization skills, and will also allow them to learn whichever topic we are on. Along with this I want to implement a good work ethic in my class room. I will do this by rewarding students for doing their work in a reasonable manner. This is in hopes that this will continue outside of school and allow them to be the best version of them possible. I know that rewarding students all the time is not an appropriate strategy for teaching good work ethic, but if you look at life, you’re almost always doing work for something. Whether it is working for money or homework for grades, I think it’s important that students receive positive reinforcement through physical rewards as well as verbal praise. 

Finally, I hope that I have a welcoming classroom. An example of this is a kind of classroom where students are willing and want to ask questions. What I observed throughout placement was nothing short of amazing. My CT’s classroom welcomed questions, correct answers and students willingly shared incorrect answers. A classroom where students don’t feel unintelligent for asking questions is something I will thrive for. This will be attained by encouraging questions and supporting the students to ask questions as well. With a welcoming classroom, students will feel comfortable coming to me when they need assistance and learning in my classroom. Hopefully this will lead to students helping each other out more often as well.

I am excited to add to this in my last year of student teaching here at St. Norbert College. Thank you for the opportunities you have given me over this past year.

The past four weeks have allowed me to grow in more ways than I thought I would. One example of this is learning how significant age gaps and grade levels are. There are certain situations where a student may fall behind due to being pushed ahead a grade level. Another important aspect that came to light was incorporating student interests in teaching. One of the biggest parts of teaching include making sure that students are retaining the knowledge. One way to do this is by incorporating fun assignments rather than assignments the students dread doing. As students develop, it is not less important, rather students may have the will to do assignments they dont want to do. When they are young like my kindergarten class, there is a fine line of enjoyable activities which need to be carefully selected. I say this because they can either be fun and educational, or too fun which can prevent it from being educational. Fun activities can create engagement with the students allowing for the knowledge to be better retained. Finally, one of the most important things I observed throughout these four weeks includes promoting educational learning. Students absolutely need to feel comfortable in the space their given in order to be able to learn. Without a safe learning environment, students might not go outside of their comfort zone, and learning only occurs outside of one’s comfort zone. This can be achieved by using tools like positive reinforcement and promoting questions to be asked.

As we talked about throughout our course, the development of the brain is very important when it comes to the first years of a child’s life. I have been granted the opportunity to observe a kindergarten classroom which allows me to see how these early important developmental years. One situation which has shined a light on how important this development, is the age of which you send your kids to school. There are two students who barely made the age requirement for being in kindergarten. Both of these students parents were asked to hold them out until the next year but they decided that they wanted them in kindergarten anyway. This has allowed me to notice the small but important differences that can show through only a years difference. Although this is not for all students that may be younger, in this situation I have found that these students who are younger are less mature and their listening skills are far less than their other classmates. This could be for a long range of reasons, but here are some of the reasons I believe it may be, they have had less time to mature emotionally, mentally, and physically. Although parenting skills could play an important factor in a situation such as this, I would not be surprised the years worth of maturing is the biggest factor to why these students lack certain skills that other students have.

Being in my specific classroom has helped me focus on the development of students through one year difference. There are a pair of students who barely made the deadline to be put into kindergarten this year. These two students developmental differences from the rest of the class are very apparent from all of the other students. For starters they are physically smaller, and less developed. Mentally they are noticeably behind as well. These two students have not yet developed their proper abilities when it comes speech, listening and cognitive processes. I asked my CT about this and she said that their test scores reflect the same patterns. They lack in certain areas that other kindergarten students who made the kindergarten class by a wider margin. I find this specifically interesting because of how much we talked about early development throughout our course. I am able to see small areas of what we talked about and although I cant be sure that they directly relate to our course content, I can infer and try to make my own hypothesis about why these students may be lacking in the classroom.

The setting of my school is a very unique one. I walked in on the first day and was told that I have a horrible classroom. Horrible meaning that they have the most write ups in the whole school. When I heard this I automatically thought about parenting and their early development with social skills and behaving properly. Although I will not get to know their parents and their parental styles through my four weeks of observations, I am excited to notice changes in the students behaviors. There is a wide variety of students in my classroom, this includes very well behaved students who are proficient in their studies and students who can not go without disrupting the class for a period of 10 minutes. The students who are well behaved, I would believe that they have had proper parenting leading to proper development of the students learning skills. The opposite goes for the other students who are not able to focus on their studies. I would chalk most of this up to parenting styles because of the age of my students. However when I look deeper, I notice that there are multiple students who likely have some sort of learning disability. This could be a large factor involving the outbursts and failed learning tactics as well.

Village project is an after school program that provides SNC education majors the opportunity to ensure that this is the correct major for us. Here are my top 10 takeaways from village project throughout this past school year.

1. One of the most important qualities of the village project is the reassuring the college students that this is something that they want to do. As a sophomore I was concerned with joining a major I wasn’t totally sure I wanted to stick with. However, doing the village project has proved to me that this is indeed something that I am interested in continuing. It really gave me an appreciation for all of the in class time that SNC gives us.
2. Another takeaway from the village project is the important connections made between the volunteers and the students. Although we weren’t there everyday, the consistent appearance from volunteers creates a connection that makes students much more comfortable with the volunteers. This allows us to be mentors for the students. This also provides a great feeling for the volunteers creating a connection that we normally wouldn’t find unless we worked in a classroom.
3. Provides positive habits for students. My mom always said being busy is a good thing because it prevents you from getting in trouble. This is one reason why I participated in any event I could. Having a habit of doing school work/ playing with friends after a full day of school can be exhausting but also great. It can lead to students being more efficient in school and keeping up with their work much more. I am proud to be a part of anything that helps build positive actions for students.
4. Learning feels more fun. One project that we worked on involved trying to get a plant to grow without using soil. This allowed students to extend their knowledge on multiple science content areas while also enjoying the subject with their friends. This experience provides entertainment due to group activities which is a great experience for volunteers. It really helps us see that learning doesn’t have to be pen and paper but it can be activities as well.
5. Builds confidence in the volunteers. Going into the village project I only had the backing of “you would be a great teacher” behind me. The village project gave me the idea that I actually could be a good teacher. Despite people telling me this I wasn’t sure until this semester. I took this opportunity to reassure myself and it really helped build my confidence.
6. Small things that matter. Along with building the volunteers building confidence, the village project gives us an opportunity to learn how to do some of the little things. These would include using a teacher voice, accepting that you will have to discipline students every now and then, and many more things.
7. Opportunities arise! There have been multiple opportunities that have arisen for me throughout the past couple months. One that I am very excited about is an opportunity to coach football. A teacher came up to my friend and I and asked if we would be willing to help coach his football team. This is a dream of mine so I am definitely taking advantage of that!
8. Creates patience that a teacher needs. Throughout this year there were multiple moments where my patience was tested. Despite always being a very patient person, it can be difficult after a full day of school. This definitely helped grow the amount of patience I have. Especially the days that the students were emotional and crying a lot, or trying to be funny by hitting us with a ball. These little things helped me a lot!
9. Along with that patience, the afterschool program gives us a feeling of what its like to be a teacher. Obviously we aren’t there for all of the day with these student, but adding these few hours to my day could be exhausting. It is like having the job without doing all the work. It definitely helped reassure that this is something I will be able to do.
10. Finally, my last take away from the village project is how it stretched me out of my comfort zone. I am comfortable with most situations I am put in but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a little nervous going into a situation like this. It turned out to be a great learning opportunity. Some of the most valuable knowledge to have can only be learned by being in a classroom and this significantly improved my motivation to become a teacher!

The village project is an amazing eye opening experience and I have learned so much from the students while only being there for a couple hours every week. Here is my list of important things that I have learned while being at the village project.

1. You NEED to meet them where they are at. This is so important for so many reasons, but the thing I learned was that if you walk in, expect them to like you and try to teach them things right away, your insane. The students wont look at you as a pre-service teacher until you prove to them that there is a reason why youre at the after school program.
2. The world is bigger than your town of 700 people you grew up in. Although coming to college itself was an eye opening experience the way it is, I appreciated being able to get a different perspective of students rather than the 500 kids I had in my class. Along with these differences in experience, come forth different problems which need different solutions.
3. Everyone’s situation is different. Working with students that are of a young age, you over hear a lot of different things. There were some students who would complain about not getting the newest Xbox while others would be happy if they were given a stick to play with outside. The extremes from both sides could be heard at this one school I went to, and it was nice to learn that kids are still kids no matter their situation.
4. Consistency is key to building relationships with students. To build relationships with the students, you will need to work on it over time and really will have to try. One day the students will be excited to see you when you walk through the door, but until then you just need to be there consistently. The shell will break eventually and then all the hard work pays off.
5. Create meaningful relationships. In my time with the village project, I have mostly been spending time with kindergarten and 1st grade levels. One day, one of the girls saw my lock screen with my girlfriend and dog. They then asked if they could draw her and the puppy. With them taking interest in my personal life, it really made my heart warm. We now have multiple pictures and even an ornament from these students who I would have never known if it wasn’t for the village project.
6. Be open to new jobs/experiences. Coming into the village project, I was dead set on being an upper elementary teacher with absolutely zero chance of becoming a lower elementary teacher. However, while the village project was going on, I found myself interacting with kindergarten/1st grade far more than the older grades. I didnt want to be a teacher of very young students because I figured they would be afraid of my size, but you never know. Which brings me to my next point of not making assumptions.
7. Do not assume anything. Along with the assumption above, I am sure I have made plenty of assumptions even when I have not met these students. One thing for myself to remember is that these kids are kids. You can think you have them figured out and then a curve ball will come from out of nowhere and all of a sudden youre back to square one.
8. Listening is important. The village project taught me that sometimes all kids want you to do is to listen to them. Even if youre looking at them but not really listening to the random thing that happened at 5:32 last night. Sometimes they just want to be heard and have a friend to talk to.
9. Patience is key. Everyone can have a rough day, especially the students. Whether you want to or not, you must have patients with these students. They may have had a bad day and just blew up from everything boiling over. It is always good to have the patience for these kids otherwise it can lead into much more of a pain for the teacher.
10. Respect them and they will respect you. There are always a couple students who the teachers will have to yell at more often than others. One thing I have found helpful is to create a bond with the student where they understand that their teacher isnt a robot programmed to teach, but rather they are a person. Sometimes students can get overwhelmed with school and forget that you are a person. A reminder of this can be helpful sometimes.

Overall, I really appreciate the challenges that the village project brings as well as the connections it create with wonderful students. I am excited to continue this journey next semester!

Some of the common good I can do as a teacher is making my students better in their community. Not only community service, but showing that going out and helping in your community not only benefits you, but helps you make great connections. I want for my students to be intelligent of course, but my biggest goal when I am a teacher is teaching them how to be good people. Along with this, trying to get them out of their comfort zone and becoming good “talkers” will allow for them to be friends with everyone they meet. These will help with the common good of themselves, and more importantly their communities!

I am excited about being a teacher because of the connections I am going to make along the way. I think it will be a great profession for me and I don’t really know what else I would do. It is one of those professions that I have always been told I would be good at, and until now I never thought it would be great. However, the more and more I go to schools, I really appreciate it.

One of the biggest fears for me is that the cost of college tuition. In my mind it doesn’t make any sense how the cost could be considered “affordable” for a student that is not getting financial support.

More focused on school, I am also worried about what we teach our students. This far into school I have not really figured out how much this is depended upon myself. What I mean by this is do I decide what to teach everyday? Or is there some kind of timeline, and if I do decide, how do I know if I am doing it right. It is the little things in teaching that concern me.