Positive and Negative Cooperative Learning Experiences

When I was a freshman in high school I had a great cooperative learning experience. I was in biology class and at the end of the year we had to dissect frogs...yuck! I seriously did not want to do it, frogs are cute and all and I sure as heck didn't want frog guts all over me. Luckily my lab partner, Wayne, and I had been working together all year long and we discussed what parts we would each do for the lab. He got to dissect the frog (yay for him...) and I got to record the notes during the dissection, which he really didn't want to do. I observed the entire dissection process and helped him (somewhat reluctantly) when needed. This was great because we both got to do the parts of the lab that we wanted to without the lab being compromised.

When I was a senior in high school I had a horrible cooperative learning experience. In AP Statistics we had to do a project in pairs that involved surveying other students and analyzing the data in a paper and brief presentation. We both collected the data together and combined our results. However, the night before the paper was due I had a sinking feeling that my partner had forgotten all about it and wasn't going to do his part. So I wrote the entire paper just in case that happened. The next day I come to find out that it was a good thing I wrote the paper because just as I had feared, he didn't write his part. Since I was naive and didn't want to piss anybody off I put both of our names on the paper and didn't even tell the teacher what had happened and we presented "our" work together.

My Best Teacher

1987

My favorite teacher was Mr. Spatz. I had him in 9th grade for geometry class, and I was the only freshman in a class full of sophomores. Mr. Spatz is the teacher who is responsible for making me fall in love with math again. I had some pretty awful math teachers in middle school, and so I was down on myself going into high school. However, Mr. Spatz had such a captivating presence and really made me want to learn. I was a little intimidated at first in the class because I didn't want to stick out as "the freshman" in the class. But as the year progressed I got more and more comfortable answering questions in class, and Mr. Spatz was highly encouraging of this for me. I kept in contact with him all throughout my high school years, and even into college. He even helped me on a project by filling out a survey for me during my sophomore year of college. Due to my amazing experience with him, my brother requested to have Mr. Spatz as his geometry teacher as well and was rewarded with having him during his very last year of teaching.


On the first day of class Mr. Spatz handed out a questionnaire asking about our previous math classes (what they were and what grades we earned), who we knew/were friends with in the class, and where in the classroom we might like to sit. He used this information and on the second day of class we were put in our assigned seats, where we miraculously stayed the entire school year. We were assigned homework every day except for Fridays and Mr. Spatz got us into the routine of taking out our homework at the beginning of the class period and checking our answers with those he had posted on the back whiteboard. If we had a test a day or two earlier, we knew to check the "Honor Board" posted at the front of the classroom to see who earned an A on it.

My class was during 4th period and we had lunch right in the middle of class. Mr. Spatz would teach for half an hour, we would have lunch for half an hour, and then he would teach for another half an hour. Since we had the longest class period of the day we had a little more leeway in getting back to class after lunch let out. I suppose that Mr. Spatz's best classroom management skills were knowing where to place students in the classroom to eliminate as many distractions as possible and having a big presence in the classroom. He would stand at the front of the classroom and use the overhead projector almost every day and as such he was facing the class while he taught rather than facing the whiteboard.

I plan to emulate Mr. Spatz in my classroom as much as possible. I really like how he gave out a survey on the first day of class to gauge students' knowledge/abilities as well as where to place them in the classroom. I also liked his ability to teach entirely while facing the classroom, though I don't know how plausible this will be with technology becoming more prevalent in classrooms. I hope that I can have a good presence in the classroom, and have a lot of withitness like Mr. Spatz had. I also hope that my students like me as much as we all liked him. I want to be that teacher that inspires students to like, or at least tolerate, math just like Mr. Spatz was for me.

School Autobiography

Pre-School
I attended pre-school at Play & Learn in Ambler, PA. This program is currently licensed by the Pennsylvania Department of Education and uses a hands-on method for learning that makes it super fun. I attended Play & Learn for 2 years for school and summer camp before going to kindergarten.

Kindergarten
I attended kindergarten at the Village Schoolhouse, a private school in Jarrettown, PA. My class size was relatively small, about 10-12 kids, and we all became fast friends. We got to take classes like music (in the big piano room!), arts and crafts (clay was my favorite), and the "usual" kindergarten curriculum. At the end of the year we had to take a placement test that showed our knowledge after the year of education. As I recall I did quite well on the test, but that was moot because my parents decided to enroll me in public school for the rest of my elementary school career.

Elementary School
I started at Fort Washington Elementary School in first grade when I was 5, turning 6. The school was literally 3 and a half blocks from my house - easily within walking and biking distance. I was one of the youngest kids in my grade but that was ok with me because I was smart enough to keep up with them. In second grade I took a standardized test and had an interview with a psychologist in order to be placed in the "gifted program." The program wasn't an accelerated track, however. Rather, the few of us that there were got taken out of our classrooms once a week to meet with the gifted teacher. We got extra assignments, usually reading more advanced books, and learned Spanish from her. In fifth grade they tried to make the gifted program solely about politics and world events, which as an energetic 10 year-old I wasn't interested in. Instead I got to take mechanical drawing with another class during the gifted meeting time. It was super fun, and math-oriented just like I was.

Middle School
For me, middle school years were filled with awkwardness and injury. I attended Sandy Run Middle School in Dresher, PA for years six thru eight. Sixth grade I was on the "Green Team." We were sectioned into "Oceans, Rivers, and Seas" and I was a "sea." All of the students on the team who were "seas" went to their classes together except for electives like physical education, art, technology/woodworking, and family/consumer sciences. All of the sixth graders took the four languages that were offered in the district, each for one quarter of the year: Latin, French, German, and Spanish. At the end of the year we had to decide what language we would pursue for the rest of middle school. I chose Spanish. The "gifted program" started to actually mean something in seventh grade. We got to choose which subject we were most interested in - math/science or English/writing - and I of course chose math/science. We would meet once a week during advisory, the last period of the day when we got to sit around and do homework, and do puzzles and things of that nature. Sometimes we even got taken out of a class! Eighth grade was exciting, as I was one of only 10 students in the grade who got to take Algebra II. The teacher, however, was not good and so we didn't really learn anything from her. In Eighth grade I also tried out for the high school cheerleading squad and made JV with 6 other eighth graders.

High School

Freshman Year

For me, high school at Upper Dublin (aka Upper Drugland to local rivals) was a breeze. I started out at pre-season for cheerleading 2 weeks before school started and so I knew a bunch of upper classmen. As a freshman I took the usual core classes - 9th grade English, biology, US History I, and freshman physical education - as well as geometry, which was a sophomore-level class. I was the only freshman in my class, but my name was consistently on the honor board for earning A's on tests. As a freshman I also took Spanish II and photography as electives. By the time sophomore year rolled around I was on the Varsity cheerleading squad. I was still taking all college prep courses, but in math I was tracked with college prep juniors and low college prep seniors. I continued with my Spanish classes and by the time I graduated high school in 2007 I had finished Spanish V. My junior year was the first year that I took any honors classes - physics and Spanish IV. I did well in both, but decided not to pursue the AP track for either class senior year as I wanted more traditional high school experiences and needed time for cheerleading. As a cheerleader I was named Student Athlete of the Month in February 2006 and subsequently was asked to join the Athletic Advisory Council which was made up of 2 juniors, 2 seniors, 2 parents, 2 coaches, the athletic director, and the principal. I served on this committee for 2 years. I took my one and only AP class, AP Environmental Science, my senior year, the same time as I was a captain of the Varsity cheerleading squad and tutoring other high school students in math for NHS as well as completing other service projects. Needless to say I had my plate pretty full with cheering, homework, and being a high school senior in general. In December of my senior year I was accepted to Elon early admission and finally decided to enroll in late March.

My high school was an upper middle class high school with 77% of students white, 12% Asian, 7% African American, 1% Hispanic, and <1% Indian/Pacific Islander. My classes, however, were predominantly filled with white students and occasionally Asian. Rarely were there African American students in the classes that I was in and so I had no real interaction with them. After taking the PSSAs (Pennsylvania State Standard Assessment) in 11th grade, Upper Dublin was ranked 30th in the state out of 641 schools. At the time my grade scored 74.6% proficient or higher in mathematics and 86.0% proficient or higher in reading. According to the Upper Dublin website, UDHS is consistently ranked in the top 10 schools out of 501 school districts in Pennsylvania with high SAT scores. The mean SAT scores for the class of 2009 were 562 Verbal, 586 Math, and 569 Writing. About 10% of high school seniors are National Merit Finalists and Commended Scholars (my year of 381 students had 13 National Merit Finalists and 16 Commended Scholars). Also, more than 95% of seniors enroll in post-secondary education, either at two- or four-year colleges/universities, and the graduation rate at UDHS is above 99%. At the end of my senior year, Upper Dublin was named the #1 public school in Montgomery County by the Philadelphia Inquirer.