Teacher Work Sample: Lesher Middle School

Morgan Bennett
PART ONE: Setting and Context
The School Community:
Culture & Programs: Lesher Middle School (LMS) offers many
programs for students to participate in. Most notably, it is an IB school. Fort
Collins does not offer too many IB schools for middle school students, so that
makes Lesher a school of choice that is increasingly popular. According to the IB
website, there are 10 traits that all IB-learners try to embody; they are: openminded; caring; risk-takers; inquirers; balanced; reflective; thinkers;
knowledgeable; communicators; and, principled
(http://www.ibo.org/globalassets/digital-tookit/flyers-and-artworks/learnerprofile-en.pdf) . After spending a semester at LMS, I believe that this heavily
impacts the culture of the school. Since students are held to these high standards,
the majority of the time they act accordingly. Luckily enough, Lesher has many
other programs that help students understand what their passions are. After being
there for three months, I heard about: Math Club, Cheer Club, band, choir,
basketball, softball, football, a spelling bee, and, Rock Climbing Club. These
seem to be only a small sampling of the activities that LMS offers its students.
Parents also seem to be active in the education of Lesher students. After attending
Nordic Fest and talking to a parent enrolled in our 350 class, I saw that parents are
actively trying to make the Lesher experience positive for every students. Parents
are quick to support their students and show this by volunteering their time to help
students gain a foot up.
Student behaviors: As said earlier, students are held to high
standards through the IB-traits. This means that most of the students have
excellent behavior that is indicative of the 10 traits; however, these students are 68th graders, so sometimes they dont listen. LMS uses attending skills to check
student behavior. If a student disrupts class, they get two warnings to check their
attending skills. After the two warnings, the student and teacher go to a hall for a
mini-intervention and the student must fill out a worksheet evaluating their
behavior. If the student is still not listening to the teachers directions after that,
they will be sent to the principals office. Because of this behavior system,
students are better behaved and seem to not need as much teacher intervention.
Learning Climate: Overall, the learning climate of Lesher is a
positive one. After aiding to teach in a few classes, I felt like the majority of the
students come to school to learn and take that very seriously. There are always
some kids who prefer to act silly instead of learn, but that is where the attending

skills come in. I believe that since the students are all held to IB standards, they
come to school ready to learn and better their education.
School Demographic: Lesher Middle School
Student to Teacher Ratio: 17:1
Demographic:

(http://publicschoolsk12.com/middleschools/co/larimer-county/080399001408.html)

ELL Population: More than 30% of students are

ELLs
The school is on a block schedule; therefore, our
class meets for 83 minutes every other day.
Mission Statement: Our mission is to develop inquiring,
knowledgeable, balanced and caring students who will help to create a better world
through intercultural understanding and respect. (From: https://les.psdschools.org/aboutus/mission-vision)

Students and Classroom:

My Students: I had four classes this semester: 8th grade Read
180; 7th grade English; and, two reading intervention ELO classes. Since three of
the classes were intervention based classes, they were smaller (under 12 kids) and
the majority of the students were not passionate about school, but seemed to view
it more as a hurdle for life. The 7th grade class was a little bit larger with 15 kids,
and the majority of the kids were active participants. Overall, it seemed like my
students really enjoyed Ms. Ketterman and after they realized she cared about
them, they started to care about the content she taught. In most of the classes,
there was a fairly even mix of boys and girls; however, in my 8th grade class, the

makeup of students was 3 boys and 7 girls. After taking a Teaching Reading
course at CSU, I found this interesting and something that goes against the
average statistics for under-performing readers (Typically, there are more boys
who perform under proficiency.). In all of my classes, more than half of the
students spoke Spanish and did so throughout the class period.
Topic and Rationale:
Instructional Strategies and Assessments: Ms. Ketterman had a
fantastic relationship with her students, and her instructional strategies
represented that. She used positive framing to help keep students on track;
additionally, she used attending skills as an assessment of student behavior.
Another form of assessment that I saw commonly used was Read 180. While
teaching, Ms. Ketterman would walk around and ask students questions to check
their understanding of material.
Assessments Inform Instruction: Ms. Ketterman viewed the
essays that students worked on and then taught them lessons appropriately from
that. Another way assessment informed her instruction was by using the Read
180 statistics. If students werent doing a part of that well, she gave them
individualized aid to help them better succeed. Another example of this was to use
reading tests to keep students honest about their reading. After not having many
students do well on individual reading, Ms. Ketterman decided to do a class
reading of the book Speak.
PART TWO: Case Study Interviews
For my interviews, I talked with two 7th grade girls from different class periods.
Although both are 7th grade girls, I believe that each had entirely different things to teach a new
teacher and I learned a lot from both experiences.
The first girl I interviewed, Sarah*, is a 7th grade student who I met in the reading
intervention ELO. After having the first class with her, I was interested to interview her because
she seemed to give Ms. Ketterman a lot of grief during class. Sarah was constantly bickering
and talking back to my teacher and usually disrupting class. With that being said, she was
incredibly good at reading and I was surprised that she was a student in the intervention class.
From interviewing her I learned more about her homelife and it made me question what her
priorities are and should be. By that, I mean that she said she didnt know her dad and could
only see her mom on select occasions, so she had to live with her only Spanish speaking
grandmother and little sister. I think that it could be difficult for a student to worry about reading
a book when they have personal battles that they are trying to overcome. This was a good
reminder to me that students are people too. They have lives and issues outside of school and
sometimes, a simple talkback might not be the student upset at me, but the student could just be
frustrated with life. After talking with Sarah, it was interesting to understand her hopes and

dreams too. Although she acted like she didnt care about school, and had a lot on her plate
personally, she was telling me that she dreams of going to college and helping underprivileged
girls get into cheerleading. I loved the idea that she had to take her position in life, gain
experience, and then turn around and help others with that knowledge she gained. Finally, it was
enjoyable talking about advice for future teachers and what makes a good or bad teacher with
Sarah. She passionately listed off teachers that I should not be like and told me that they dont
care about her, so why should she care about their subject. Also, Sarah told me to not give out
worksheets all the time. She said that a lot of her teachers do that, and she just doesnt see the
point in them. Talking with Sarah was interesting and enlightening and something that I will
take with me into my future teaching career.
The other girl I interviewed, Kathy*, was a student that I could easily relate to. I decided
to pick Kathy as a person to interview because we got along during class and we were starting to
build a good relationship together in the 7th grade English class. Kathy has what society might
consider a normal middle school experience. She lives with both parents, a brother, and a dog.
Kathy seems to be a high-achiever in class and was always asking Ms. Ketterman for more work
once she completed the task at hand. Although I think there is a lot for new teachers to learn from
students facing adversity, I think there is also something to be said for helping students who have
more average lives. Kathy told me that her favorite thing to do was hang out with friends and
she said she knows she wants to go to college, but she isnt sure what for yet. It was delightful
talking to Kathy and seeing her viewpoint on life. One part of the interview that did make me sad
was when I asked Kathy what her biggest fear was. She responded to me that she was afraid of
terrorists and didnt understand what or why terrorist activities were going on in the world. It was
a mindblowing experience for me to have a student tell me she was afraid of being shot or blown
up. After talking about this with Kathy, I was reminded that as a teacher, we need to help teach
students about current events too, even when they are tough situations to talk about. Although
every class does not lend itself to open discussion about this sort of thing, I believe that the
English classroom is a great place for students to explore these fears and figure out what they
believe. It is so easy for students to overhear conversations on the news, between parents, or
even from teachers; however, if we dont give our students context about these world events, we
are ill-preparing them for the world they will one day run. As with Sarah, Kathys advice to me
was to not be a bad teacher. When I asked her what made a teacher bad, she said worksheets and
talking at the students instead of with them. Kathy told me that some of her teachers just stand in
front of the board and lecture all class. Although this can be effective for some students, Kathy
told me that she stops trying in those classes because there is no point.
It was a fantastic experience getting to interview both Sarah and Kathy. One of the best
parts was that even though these girls sound similar when you hear 7th grade girl, both were
vastly different and helped me to realize different things. But the most important thing that both
girls reminded me of was that students are people with stories too. If you take the time as a
teacher to get to know each student and care about their lives, they will care about what you have
to say as a teacher.

*All names have been changed to keep my students anonymous.

PART THREE: Teaching Experience-Lesson Plan
Content Standards: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.9-10.3: Write narratives
to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective
technique, well-chosen details, and a well-structured event
sequence.
Standard A: "Introduce characters"

Understandings:
To engage in the video lecture, students will need to have

a general idea of narrative writing. Since this is taking place after the
students got the assignment sheet, they will be introduced to the topic
of their narrative already and should have an idea of the characters in
mind. Students must also have a general idea about the mechanics of
writing a story (i.e.- dialogue, adjectives, etc.).

Essential Questions:
How can characterization affect the way your audience perceives
your story?
As an author, do you always want to create a likeable character?
Evidence Outcomes (ABCD):
A-Audience: Students will be able to
B- Behavior: Expected actions to meet outcome:
write dialogue
C- Condition: Given what resources, what does
teacher expect students to know how to use?
D- Degree: Level of achievement
When coming to class students will be able to:
Characterize important people in their narrative by using the 5 methods of
characterization (showing the reader, not telling them!) and write
grammatically correct character dialogue.

Assessment of Evidence Outcomes:

Assessment of evidence outcome is seen through discussion with
students and the worksheet they had to fill out (Attached below this document.).
While the students were completing the video, I was walking around to help as
needed. This gave me a chance to see which students really understood the
material, and who needed extra help. As the end of the class, Ms. Ketterman and I
collected the worksheets to review. During the next class period, the students
discussed in groups who their characters were and how they planned on using
them in the story.
Teacher Feedback:
I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to teach this lesson to
two different groups of kids. After my first time, Ms. Ketterman asked me to
revise the worksheet so it would make more sense to the students. I re-wrote the

worksheet with more explicit directions for the next class. Although Ms.
Ketterman reviewed the worksheet and thought it would be better at explaining
what students needed to do, about half of the class still struggled with the
directions. Reflecting back on this experience, I think it would have been
beneficial to students if I read the directions out loud to them before starting and
then could answer questions for the students before they watch the video.
PART FOUR: Narrative Reflection
In every education classroom, we have a lot of hypothetical students that we must create
lessons for. This feels very arbitrary though and like something that wont aid us in the
successful career as a future teacher; however, getting to teach real students real lessons changes
that. When creating hypothetical lesson plans, it is easy to say what you will do, but once you
are with real students that all changes. I was lucky enough to be given the chance to teach one of
my hypothetical lesson plan about characterization in Ms. Kettermans class to two different
classes. My lesson started with a video and a worksheet, then concluded with a group
discussion. In theory, this lesson was great! Once I started working on it with students, it was a
little rough around the edges. The students seemed very interested in the idea of a video and
liked that I was the one narrating it; however, the students had some trouble understanding my
worksheet. They also thought that it would be best to fast-forward through the video once they
finished the notes, which left some parts of characterization unclear to them. Since I got to
practice teaching this lesson twice, I revised my worksheet for the second class. It seemed that
the revision helped about half the class better understand the content, but the other half of the
class did not read the directions, so the revision didnt help them much. Through this experience,
I learned that I am patient with students even when they dont follow my directions. I also
learned that to be an effective educator, you sometimes have to leave your lesson plans and teach
on your feet. Although this can be tricky, I believe that it is something that comes easier with
time and practice.
As an educator, I have many strengths and weakness. I love showing the students that I
care about them, and that investment in their lives makes them care about what I have to say.
With that being said, its hard to find the balance as a student teacher of being in charge and
being a friend to the students. I made the mistake of not taking charge of student behavior the
first day, which is something I struggle with, so for the rest of the semester, some students didnt
take me as seriously; this is something that I plan on working on for 450. Although I dont want
to step on the toes of my host teacher, I want to have the respect of students and I want to help
keep them focused with their material. A strength that I have, as mentioned earlier, is patience. I
love helping students work to get the ah-ha! moment, which can be a challenge. When
students get frustrated and dont follow directions, that can be hard. But I love working through
that with students to see what we can accomplish.
I was excited to start the semester at LMS because I got to see firsthand how Ms.
Ketterman set up her classroom management. After teaching in a preschool for two years, I have
some ideas about classroom management; however, it is completely different when you go into

another teachers classroom. The first couple weeks were rough since I didnt really have the
chance to have students check their attending skills. Once I fell into the swing of things though,
it was easier for me to ask students to follow the directions. I did learn that once you let students
get away with stuff, it is hard to bring them back. For example, since I did not ask one boy to
stop talking during the first few weeks of class, when I finally did ask him to be quiet, he felt that
he didnt have to listen to me.
Overall, teaching at Lesher was a fantastic experience that helped shape me as a future
teacher. From working with real students on real lessons that I have created, I learned more
about who I am as a teacher and how I can best help my students succeed.
PART FIVE: Field Notes
Sent to Janice Martinez via an email