On the road to being an educator, Melanie Rodriguez has learned a lot about grabbing a classroom of elementary students’ attention.
A student at Mingus Union High School, Rodriguez uses the Valley Academy for Career and Technology Education’s courses in education and acts as a teacher’s assistant for Denise Daigle’s fifth grade math class.
“For high school, I do this link crew thing where, basically, I introduce freshmen to school and stuff,” Rodriguez said. “And I learned a couple of games from that and Ms. Daigle, if we have like five minutes, sometimes she’s like, ‘OK, now, go do one of your games.’”
The trick is to be engaging to her students, Rodriguez said.
She’ll do a callback to quiet them, where she’ll say something and then all her students have to echo the response.
“I say, ‘no bees, no honey,’” Rodriguez said. “And they say, ‘no work, no money.’ So that’ll quiet them.”
Daigle said she defaults to “Clap once if you can hear me,” but has been using Rodriguez’s more.
“If they don’t, I say, ‘Miss Melanie taught you this so that you would … calm down and get back focused.’” Daigle said. “And they hear ‘Miss Melanie,’ and they’re like, ‘OK, well, do it again. Do it again.’ Even though she’s not here, they still want to please her.”
The senior decided she wanted to be in Daigle’s classroom because she liked the management.
“I like the children to take ownership of their learning, so I give them a certain amount of freedom, but then sometimes I have to tighten the reins,” Daigle said. “And I think the first two days that Melanie was here, we had to do some sort of district wide test.”
She said the technology wasn’t working and Rodriguez hadn’t seen it before, so she couldn’t help.
“I said to her, ‘these are all the things you don’t do,’” Daigle said. “She said, ‘but the management is really good.’ The kid, she noticed, the kids were responding, even though I was anxious and I couldn’t get it to work, the children were respectful. They were patient.”
Rodriguez said they toured several other classrooms before choosing the one they wanted.
“I want to be like eighth grade-ish,” Rodriguez said. “I couldn’t really find an older teacher that I liked, but I don’t know, I really liked Ms. Daigle. I liked her class.”
“I met them in the beginning of August,” Rodriguez said. “Then I did a whole lesson where I introduced myself and basically told them that I was going to be coming in and helping with the class for the next about semester, because we have the option to change every semester. I’m going to stay because I like them.”
Daily, she will get to know the students to have meaningful interactions.
“Guys kind of come in every morning and kind of see what Ms. Daigle has planned for the day, and then usually she tells me to do a warm up, or she’ll ask me to write a quote, or just do something like good things.”
Good things is just a part of the day where a few kids will share something good that happened in their lives, usually outside of school.
“They love opening up with Melanie,” Daigle said. “They love sharing their good thing. … They share something special that’s happened in their life. And they really do. They respond so well to Melanie and she’s so fun. She’s like, ‘they like me. They like chatting with me and sharing with me.’ And I’m like, ‘of course they do.’ They look at her as a teacher, which is wonderful.”
VACTE
The VACTE teachers program is built to provide high school students with the experience of being in a classroom before going to college or looking for a certification.
Genna Adams, the course director, started out in San Jose, California, and worked as a teacher for three years before moving to the Verde Valley.
She’s taught in local school districts for about 43 years, working many schools and many grade levels.
“I cover introduction to education with it, which is the ethics and the professional standards and basically the things that they can and can’t do,” Adams said. “And once I have covered the content, and I feel that … they’ve matured in their content and their skills, I place them.”
Once the students are placed, they’ll spend a couple days a week in their placed classroom and a couple days in Adams’ classroom, learning more about what Adams can teach them.
There’s currently two years of classes for the program.
“Their practicum hours [for] semester one are around 70 hours of classroom, practicum work, teaching lessons, supporting kids and assisting teachers,” Adams said. “We delve deeply into … why are some teachers highly effective and some teachers struggling?” Adams said. “And a lot of times, it’s in their practices. Best practices are easily observed.”
Yavapai County Superintendent of Schools Steve King met with her about four years ago with hopes of getting this program started. She said both of them share the goal easing the teacher shortage locally.
“I have kids right now that are at Dr. Daniel Bright, Cottonwood Community School, Clarkdale[-Jerome School] and West Sedona [School],” she said. “But that varies. I’ve had kids in Camp Verde, Oak Creek, Mountain View Preparatory. I even had a kid last year at [Sedona] Red Rock High School. So I do multiple placements, and right now I’m managing four different cohorts of about 30 kids.”
