The document summarizes Carolina Barrera Valenzuela's reflections from her fieldwork assignments at Oakton High School in Virginia. Some key points: - She observed English teacher Beth Blankenship's classes and teaching techniques, such as having students grade each other's essays. - She noted things she enjoyed, such as the structured lessons, and things she did not, such as the quiet students and row seating. - She observed other classes like art and got ideas to incorporate in her own teaching in Guatemala. - The experience helped expand her perspectives to improve empowering her own students.

1. GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY
SEMINAR REFLEXIVE PRACTICE
DR. SHERY STEELEY
TEA-PROGRAM 2009
CAROLINA BARRERA VALENZUELA
GUATEMALA
Seminar; Reflexive Practice Carolina Barrera Valenzuela

2. Dr. Steeley Date Due: Oct. 5th, 2009
MY REFLECTION ON FIELDWORK ASSIGNMENT
My GOAL…
To go through a sharing experience that broadens my
perspective and helps the teacher inside me become
better; first by empowering myself with new
perspectives, techniques, and knowledge, and as a
result being able to transmit all these through more
exciting classes in which I can empower my students;
as well as help my coworkers, my school and my
Guatemalan community.
On Wednesday the 29th of October I had my first visit to the
assigned school for fieldwork, the name of the school is Oakton High School
and it is located in Fairfax, Virginia. My mentor’s name is Beth Blankenship;
she is a teacher for AP Language and Composition in 11th grade, her classes
have about 30 students each. This visit was very interesting and it fit my
goal perfectly, and even though not all the things I saw I agreed upon or
liked, many of the things I witnessed were interesting and applicable to my
classes and that made it meaningful.
I’ll start with some of the good things I saw and some interesting
teaching techniques she applied in her classes; first of all Mrs. Blankenship
started her class explaining and projecting the agenda for that day’s and
session and also for other assignments, which I though made class
structured and easy to follow. Her session that day included: (assignments
of the week, reminder to the students on them having to take the Practice
Test 1 of Virginia Standards of Learning Assessments on Friday; reminder on
them taking notes on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter” up to
Chapter 6 and having their double entry journals with two quotes explained

3. per chapter; reminder on Quizzes on Noun Clauses and types of clauses for
the next week and also a Quiz on rhetoric and tone also for the next week’s
sessions, she also told them about the Quiz they had that day based on the
notes they took over Chapter 4 of on speech and creating opinions book
(can’t remember the exact name)). Then class started, the session was
interesting she started of by telling them to take out their essays and put
them on their desks, she collected them and re-distributed them to other
students so that no one got their own; then she gave them a piece of paper
with a guideline on how to grade each other’s papers, and so each student did
that silently until she said time was up. Then after that she went into a small
discussion on “The Scarlet Letter” up to Chapter 6 reminding them on their
journals; after that she distributed a sample essay for them to see how they
would be graded on the upcoming standardized test on Friday, she had 2
examples one of a student who had a high grade- 6 points, and one of a
student with a grade of 2 points. At the end of class she had her students
take out their notes on Chapter 4 of the “speech book” and they could use
these for their quiz. And then class was over, the next period was exactly
the same because it was also an 11th grade class. Her class periods were
double periods and I forgot to mention that every Wednesday in the morning
the teachers have their meetings, so I actually witnessed part of the AP
English Department’s discussions on several topics.
Things I enjoyed from that day’s session, students were well behaved, did as
were told, and seemed to know what they were doing. The teacher knew her
topic extremely well and seemed to enjoy what she was teaching; the themes
that were discussed in class and the topics are high level topics which the
students seem to understand well, so it reflects a higher level of education
which one would not see in all high schools in the U.S. I also loved her essay
rubrics and an excellent idea on Creative Writing by adapting one of
Langston Hughes’s poems about oneself which the teacher had done at the
beginning of the year and had displayed her student’s works. And as I liked
many things, there are things I didn’t particularly share or enjoyed.

4. Now some of the things I didn’t really see or liked were; the kids behaved
well, but there was almost no feedback from them, if the teacher asked a
question and they didn’t answer it was ok and she would just keep on going,
the students were extremely quiet and I though that was not good for such
a long class. Also the class arrangement is just a normal rows arrangement
which is not inviting for discussions but structured, but I suppose it is
because of the number of students and the limited space. I also noticed that
the kids don’t even salute the teacher as they come in or go out of the
classroom, they didn’t even say Hi to me at the beginning until I broke the
ice; it is an extremely cold environment. And the last thing that caught my
attention was that as the kids were taking their quizzes I walked around the
classroom and started reading their own Langston Hughes “Theme for Essay
B” Poems and as I did so I noticed that some heads started to roll after
they were done with their quizzes and they started reading the poems and
commenting on them, I don’t know but it seemed as if they hadn’t shared
them among themselves previously, which if it was the case is sad because
they were absolutely wonderful. And that was the end of my first
Wednesday’s fieldwork…
On Friday I got to Oakton and had the privilege of Ms Blankenship
arranging a super schedule for me, I had mentioned to her that I love
History and Art and that I would also love to see English taught in other
grade levels, so she was really nice and had me attend several classes; this
was actually great because all her classes were to take the Virginia
Standardized Practice Test for English Writing; and one class of those was
enough. So the first period I did get to witness the 11 th graders take the
sample test, and then I was off to see a regular 10th grade English class, and
after that an Art class. The 10th grade English class was good, the teacher
had good ideas for making the students participate, but I think that she
lacked experience and afterwards I was told that she was new and so yes
you could notice she had a hard time managing the group. Her class also
started with the agenda of the day, which included a SNEEZE AND
WRITING activity for a 20 minute period, this was the first time the
students were doing this and it was related to their reading on “Antigone”,

5. the title of the entry was “An incident that has demonstrated my values…” –
before the kids started writing she gave out the rules to the activity, and
the kids pretty much followed them, mainly at the end. Then, the next part
of the class was reading and discussing a chapter of “Antigone” so she had
some students come up to the front of the class to read a part, this was
good though one could hardly hear them, and she never told them to raise
their voices, or didn’t correct them on how they were reading or
pronouncing. And after that, she had the students stand up with their
homework of vocabulary open and as they were getting wrong answers they
had to sit down. She did have good ideas, got the students involved but she
should also correct them and not just say everything is great and ok. It is
absolutely great to give positive reinforcement, but I do think as teachers
we can also give input on how to become better. And finally I went to an art
class, I loved the environment, how the students loved and enjoyed the class,
I got to see 10th graders and 12th graders, and I saw how the teacher was
PASSIONATE about what she did and she transmitted that to her students,
I loved her class and got really interesting ideas from it.
So my search for more techniques and ideas for teaching continues,
and my learning process is precisely in process…

6. Seminar; Reflexive Practice Carolina Barrera Valenzuela
Dr. Steeley Date Due: Oct. 6th, 2009
MY REFLECTION ON PORTFOLIOS IN GUATEMALA
In general portfolios in Guatemala currently are not used so much by a
large percentage of schools or Universities. The schools who do use
portfolios are usually the ones that have some link with the American
culture. The way in which these schools use them is mostly the way
portfolios are used here in the U.S., which is for keeping physical or
technological records of teachers’ or students’ works and knowledge proven
accumulation over a certain period of time. The basic goal behind them is to
keep these records and basically be able to see progress through them, or
also to be able to keep a record of people’s works and be able to go back to
them and use as reference for ideas, techniques, strategies, and so on. With
kids I’ve also seen portfolios used as a tool for journal entries and
reflections.
Some Universities like the one I attended “Universidad del Valle de
Guatemala” has some of the strongest emphasis in Education Careers and it
does promote the use of portfolios and actually teaches you how to do them
and makes you practice doing them as the courses develop. Though, I know
that most Universities don’t teach this topic in detail yet. The Guatemalan
National Curriculum does suggest the use of portfolios, but it is not yet
demanding its full use… so we’ll see if at some point it would…

7. Seminar; Reflexive Practice Carolina Barrera Valenzuela
Dr. Steeley
INCIDENT(S) THAT CAUSE REFLECTIONS ON MY TEACHINGS
Related questions: How does that reflection inform your teaching? Do you
share your reflections with colleagues? Supervisors?
Recently my seniors had their standardized Michigan and ELASH
tests and they scored very highly, at least the majority. I was really proud
of them and excited because this means that they won’t have to take English
at University level, and automatically this certifies them to be eligible for
graduating from University with English proficiency. So, yes this made me
reflect and see that what I’ve been doing in class is working, sometimes I
feel frustrated with grades and attitudes coming from them, but in the end
the information and skills were been obtained and managed. And yes, I did
share this with my colleagues and my Principal and all of them were happy
and congratulated me on the manner.
One aspect that I’ve also been reflecting about is a comment some of
my 11th grade students made on a lesson related to “Animal Farm” and they
said that they felt it exciting in the beginning and middle, but towards the
end they got fed up and lost interest; this also made me think that I need to
adjust some assessment and activities for my future lesson plans in this
topic.

8. Seminar; Reflexive Practice Carolina Barrera Valenzuela
Dr. Steeley
WHEN PLANNING WHAT FACTORS DOES THE TEACHER CONSIDER?
I think that when planning a teacher should consider many things but most
importantly I would say the following are a must:
 Lesson coherence and alignment with curriculum.
 Good activities to make each lesson meaningful, exciting and
interesting for the students to learn.
 Good strategies for addressing the lesson in a righteous manner.
 Meeting individual needs, considering multiple intelligences and
different learning styles.
 Good assessments to go along with activities and strategies.
 As one plans, a teacher must already think of the Evaluation process.
 Lots of creativity should be involved while planning.
 Consider school policies and established standards to look for
alignment.

9. Seminar; Reflexive Practice Carolina Barrera Valenzuela
Dr. Steeley
HOW DO YOU USE LEARNING STRATEGIES IN YOUR TEACHING?
I think learning strategies are really useful, many people consider them a
waste of time or that they could take away from the time which should be
dedicated to lecturing or just getting to a topic as fast as you can. When in
reality learning strategies can actually motivate learning and make a more
meaningful impact con the students’ learning process.
I use learning strategies most of the time because I see them as powerful
tools to enrich my classes. I usually use Journal Entries for reflection on
certain topics related usually to literature we read or any other topic been
taught at the time. I also like to use concept maps, tables, Venn –diagrams,
different graphs, artistic ways to do renditions or to elaborate on some kind
of reflection, KWL tables, etc. I also believe that certain warm up activities
can HELP in getting students to feel motivated and ready to learn, such as
the many ones I already knew before coming to TEA but also some new ones
I learned like Tea Party, shoulder partner, etc.

10. Seminar; Reflexive Practice Carolina Barrera Valenzuela
Dr. Steeley
HOW CAN GROUP WORK AID YOUR TEACHING?
I think group work is very important when teaching. I consider two types of
group work that come into my mind. First the group work a teacher should
create or have with other teachers of her own subjects, but also with other
teachers of other subject areas. This is important because a lesson plan can
become richer and more effective when another person provides backup or
insight, for instance those that teach the same topics can give new ideas or
perspectives on how to approach a certain topic. Also teaming up with co-
workers with different subject areas than your own is also good because you
can plan wonderful holistic lesson plans together that can target many
subject areas and can be evaluated at the same time by different teachers.
Also a group work inside a classroom with students being teamed up, can help
in making the class more involved in teamwork and learn how to work in
groups is a skill that must be acquired today, because in real life that’s how
everyone works, or at least the vast majority.

11. Seminar; Reflexive Practice Carolina Barrera Valenzuela
Dr. Steeley
HOW DOES A TEACHER USE OBJECTIVES IN PLANNING IN YOUR
INTERNSHIP? ARE THERE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN YOUR COUNTRY
AND THE FIELDWORK SCHOOLS HERE?
In the school I attended to here in Virginia- Oakton High School, the
teacher always had her agenda of the day posted at the beginning of the
class and the objectives of why students are doing the work they are doing.
She actually sometimes not only talks about the day’s work but also future
objectives and tasks to accomplish. Which I consider great because
students know what is expected from them and to which direction they are
aiming at. Knowing objectives is great because they are like guidelines that
help you close gaps.
In Guatemala I can’t generalize because it depends on schools, but in the
majority of schools students don’t know the objectives and this would be the
usual case, but again it depends on the school and teachers.