Jayden is a very approachable student. He is a student that all the
other students in the classroom get along with. I had asked Jayden if it was
okay for me to conduct a quick interview with him several times throughout the
semester for my class, and he was quick to agree. Jayden’s personality allows
me to talk to Jayden easily, specially if I speak to him in a friendly manner.
I treated my first interview as an opportunity to get to know what kind
of things Jayden likes and what he enjoys to do, then progressively try to work
towards more serious questions—since I did not want to overwhelm him.
I decided not to record any of my interviews since I didn’t want Jayden
to feel odd about the questions I was asking him. Jayden responds very well to
friendly environments, and thus I did not want Jayden to see me as just his
teacher conducting a series of interviews, but also as a friend.
My goal for the interviews was to be able to understand Jayden as a
person then as a student, in order to see where he come from, and to see how I
can assist him better in his learning disability.
Interview
1 (October 6,2016)
For my first interview I asked
him a series of questions that were easy for him to answer involving his
personal life, family and friends. In these questions I asked what he liked to
do at home for fun, in which he responded was being with his mother. I sought
this as an opportunity to see his relationship with his mother and he let me
know that his mom is fun and plays with him. I asked if his mother was supportive
and he said she was. Jayden smiled for a lot of this interview and because I
was our first interview he was a little hesitant to say too much, and so I
found myself leading out most of the interview for him to respond to my questions.
During my first interview I noted that Jayden responded quickly to my
smiling and my nods. It is noticeable
that Jayden seeks approval of his peers,
and when he notices the approval he is more responsive. Jayden smiled
when I smiled and he was excited when I got excited about his answers. I
was then prepared for my next interview for the upcoming weeks, because I was
going to try to make my questions something relatable for Jayden and something
he can get excited about.
Interview
2 (October 20th, 2016)
Jayden
was not at school on this October 13 and thus my interview had to be postponed to
October 20th, 2016
I was
prepared to ask questions to Jayden about his learning environment, but in
order to ask these questions I decided to bring
markers and have Jayden draw while we talked, since I had noted earlier
in the semester that Jayden enjoyed drawing, and wanted our interview session
to feel once again like a conversation, since he responded well to friend like
environments.
I asked
Jayden how he felt about school and his friends, and he responded simple and
said good. I asked how he liked school and if he thinks he was learning a lot,
he said he was excitedly and so I asked
him to tell me about something that he had learned about that made him excited. He let me know they
had just learned about wolf spiders and he began to draw wolf spiders on his
paper. He was excited about his learning and being able to share what he
thought about his learning. I then noticed that he was a student who liked to
share his learning, and his own personal
experiences.
I am
hoping to conduct one more interview before the end of the semester in which I
can have Jayden teach me. It is important that as teachers we are able to
listen to students and not always talk.
With Jayden it is very noticeable that as teachers we need to have our students
teach just as much as we do our own teaching to our class, because the more
student talks the more the student learns
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