WARNING: This is an extra long post! My supervisor wanted a detailed description of what happened this week, and here it is, minus the names.
Friday morning, my master teacher and I had our regularly scheduled meeting. She had the same expectation as always, that I have a detailed lesson plan for each day for the week ahead. I brought the problem on myself by not having that for her. I had a plan for 3 days ahead.
When I gave her the plans, I asked her if we could switch our meetings so that we met for half the time on Friday to discuss the first part of the week and then again for half a period on Monday to discuss the second part of the week. This would allow me to incorporate her changes from the beginning of the week as I plan for the rest of the week, as well as for me to have the weekend to do more planning. (She had actually mentioned last semester when we were discussing having our regular meetings that it might be better for us to meet on Mondays to give me the weekend to do planning, but then we decided that it wouldn’t be enough notice to make changes to the week’s plan if we met the day of the first lesson.)
I felt like that was a very fair request. Am I wrong? Well, at that point, my master teacher freaked out. She said that if I were her student that I would have a D right now since I’d given her just 60% of what she’d asked for. I explained that it was hard for me to plan 5 and 6 days ahead since we are starting a new book (To Kill a Mockingbird) and I haven’t had much opportunity to assess their comprehension of longer texts. (We’ve been doing mythology these past weeks, so we’ve been doing a lot of short myths, which is different than asking students to read 20 or so pages per night, especially for English language learners.) I also told her that I wanted to reread the book (I reread half of it this weekend) but that I hadn’t had time to do that this week. She told me that teaching 5 classes is way more work, and that she doesn’t know what SFSU is having me do that’s taking up so much time that I haven’t had time to do all this. I felt like I needed to defend myself, as it was a very antagonistic conversation, and I know that I have been putting in a tremendous amount of work each day. At the same time, I was committed to behaving professionally and courteously. I hate behaving professionally and courteously.
She said that in the past she’s asked me for things and I haven’t had them for her (although I have for the past 2 weeks), and that in the past the only “consequence” for me not having it was “an unpleasant conversation” but that now there would be a real consequence. She was going to give me the week off.
The conversation took a different turn when she then said “Given our history, I’d think you’d just have what I’m asking you to have,” and I actually thanked her for bringing that up, as that had been in our space for months now but I had never really addressed it with her directly. I told her that our history (her speaking to me in a very confrontational, punitive, and unprofessional manner that made me feel very uncomfortable, and her doing so on several occasions) actually made it much harder for me to produce what she wants. Whereas I enjoy preparing for and teaching the other class—although I don’t have the level of prep done for that class that she wants either—I dread her class, and I feel so much pressure to produce plans that will please her that I find myself feeling uncomfortable and stressed just thinking about the class (not to mention teaching it). I told her I’ve never in my life been spoken to the way she has spoken to me—even as a kid if I did something wrong, my parents never would have spoken to me the way she does. I had tears in my eyes at various points. Ugh. That is so not a presence I want in my life.
She told me that if I want to talk to my supervisor or try to get placed with someone else that I should go and do that, seemingly daring me to do so. I told her very politely that she could give me the week off or try to get rid of me if she wanted but that I’m not a quitter and that I had no intention of giving up on that class. (Sounds like an after-school special: "I'm not a quitter!")
She also kind of threw in my face a criticism of my lesson plans for last week, arguing that they were vague. I was shocked by this since she did not give me this criticism last week when we discussed them. In fact, I felt I did a really good job with those lessons. Last week the students did presentations on creation myths they each researched, which took up Tues, Wed, and Thurs (no class Mon bc of the holiday), and we’d have a review and quiz on Fri. My dilemma with those lessons was that the presentations were to take 3-5 minutes each plus a minute each of possible question time, and there were 5-6 students each day, so there was some uncertainty about how much time there would be each day after the presentations. (3 minutes x 5 = 15 minutes vs. 6 minutes x 6 = 36 minutes; classes at our school are an outrageously short 40 minutes.) So, in prepping for each day and the week ahead, I developed objectives and several possible activities to do in the remaining time. I wrote objectives for the rest of class each day and plans for if there were at least 15 minutes left and had a couple of short things planned for if there was less time so we could use that time wisely. I also had homework contingencies if we didn’t get to things in class. This level of planning was helpful, but most of it went out the window since almost all of the presentations took the entire 5 minutes plus questions, and that took the entire class. Anyway, I felt very prepared for last week, and I felt like it went really well. Meanwhile, this Friday my master teacher criticized these plans for my not having things better planned out. Ugh. I defended myself on this and pointed out on those lesson plans the examples of the objectives and plans for each day, at which point she relented. It seemed like she'd just been trying to gather evidence about me and skewed the facts in her mind to prove her story right.
She said something about having the impression I didn’t even have a skeletal plan for the week, and I argued this point. I told her that I had planned the first three days and that I had a lot of ideas for the book, but that I hadn’t plugged each of them in to a particular day or worked out exactly how they would go. I gave her some examples of my ideas, and I think this may have given her more confidence that I had given this some thought. I told her that I felt a lot of pressure to have things set in stone because she yelled at me when I gave her my plan a couple weeks ago when I had Mon-Wed planned but had three possibilities for Thurs and Fri that I needed to decide between. She said this made her feel I was unprepared.
When the conversation began (we were in the English department office), the room was empty as far as I recall. During the course of the conversation, though, people came in and out. I’m not sure who heard what (I was obviously very focused on our conversation), but I know several teachers and the dept head were in at various points (though they may not have heard the more heated parts of the conversation—I just don’t know). One teacher who I hardly know called me aside on Monday to tell me that she overheard part of the conversation and that she was appalled at the tone of the conversation. She said she almost interrupted but that she doesn’t really know my master teacher (who has only been at this school for 2 years) and decided it wasn’t really her place to do so. She said that I shouldn’t allow her to get to me and that when she was a student teacher and that when she’s had student teachers that it was the master teacher’s job to be supportive, and that she was sorry that that is obviously not my experience. Finally, she said she was going to talk to the department head about it. I don’t know if she did, but the department head approached me today for the first time to check in with me about how things are going. She said that she had a sense that something was wrong based on an intuition and seeing the look on my face a couple of times. My nice master teacher also reported that she could sense that something was not right when I walked into her classroom to teach a few minutes after that "I'd have a D" conversation. When she and I debriefed class that day (which I was shocked went well) she asked me about the meeting and was shocked by what was said. She said she would talk to her.
I don’t know if she did talk to her, but the way my master teacher and I left it that morning was that we would meet again later in the day during a free mod. When we met at that point, it was a completely different conversation. She sort of apologized—not saying sorry for her behavior but for the impact of it (sorry that I got upset)—and spent a good hour with me, giving me some great suggestions for structuring the unit. Finally, some help!! That conversation went great. During that time I also gave her a typed list of activities I had referred to earlier and typed up during my prep. I’ll attach that too. She told me she had changed her mind about the week off. She also gave me a sample of what she called an “acceptable” plan—I guess acceptable meaning that she wouldn’t bite my head off if I gave her a plan at that level. That plan included a goal for the week and a rough layout of the plans for each day, rather than a breakdown of the whole class. That feels much more doable for me!
This weekend I reread half the book and did a bunch of planning, but my priority was not planning out exactly the plan for Thursday and Friday but developing a more general plan for the next 2 weeks, based in good part on the suggestions she gave me. When I got to school on Monday, she was in the English dept office, where she hardly ever is, and asked to see my plans for next week. This was about half an hour before my other class, and I really did not want to have another conversation with her about this, esp before teaching. I also knew I did not have my plan structured out in the way she wanted it (minute by minute), but I gave her a handwritten calendar of the next two weeks and went over it with her, and she gave me helpful feedback on it. I had the sense that she wasn’t happy I didn’t have my full 5 days spelled out for her—I could just sense her getting tense and frustrated, though it may have been my imagination—but she didn’t give me a hard time.
The interesting thing is that I actually agree with her that I should be more prepared, and I would like to be, but that is not as easy for me as she makes it seem. I come home at 8:00 from SFSU 3 nights a week and do grading (I give writing assignments almost every night for HW in my 10th grade class—which I have stopped doing this week to give me more time!) and prepping for the next day (rereading the chapter assigned for HW that night as well as the next day’s). Thursday night I am preparing for my meeting with her—actually, I admit I spend some time procrastinating that because I dread it so much—and over the weekend I do more grading, more reading of the books, and reworking or planning additional lessons with the occasional social activity interspersed in. It’s not like I’m off partying every night or something! I wish! I’m working really hard but feel the stress of working with her, which I know is having an impact on my teaching that class. The stress of her observing me each day in the beginning of the semester, and my feeling nervous with her doing so, really affected my performance in the classroom. There were a lot of little things that didn’t go well bc of my nervousness (as well as my being new) that, I think, led the students to doubt my level of professionalism, esp given that she was in the room each day taking notes. While there have been little things that didn’t go well in my 10th grade class, I never have felt like that has affected my students’ confidence in me, my own confidence in myself, or in the overall feel of the class, which I feel has been going really great. On the other hand, I do feel like that has had a huge impact in my 9th grade class.
I’m not sure where I even want to go from here. Part of me would love to just not work with that teacher anymore. Well, actually, all of me would love that! But I don’t feel good about switching classes in the middle of the semester. How would that even work? And maybe it’s just a matter of me doing more planning ahead, at which point my master teacher wouldn’t even be an issue anymore?
The whole thing with my master teacher has taken up way too much of my time and energy that I should be putting into getting better prepared as well as to recharging my own batteries—getting enough rest, having some non-work time, etc., which is very frustrating. I'm committed to focusing on my class, though, and having the confidence and mind control to not allow myself to get sidetracked by her anymore.
Hence, off to do prep! This is a thorough update, though, for the scrapbook. How ridiculous this will all seem soon enough....
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
What a week...
So many ups and downs since my last posting that I don't know where to start, nor do I feel I should allocate the time given my workload at the moment. So, for now I'll just give a very quick update on my classes and then in a separate posting paste an email (minus names) to my advisor detailing the master teacher situation. Ugh. (Well, that's the intention--it will likely be comical how long it ends up taking for me to give this quick update: Quiet, Bobby!)
So the 10th grade class is still SO great. I actually have so much fun in that class, and I know that at least most of the kids are into it--and today one kid who typically seems disengaged was so excited about what we did today and was bummed that he's not going to be in class tomorrow bc of a field trip he's taking for another class.
I attribute my success in the 10th grade class to a few things. the first and foremost is definitely the book we're reading. Black Boy is *such* a wonderful book and just a joy for an English teacher to teach. There are so many things to talk about, it's amazing. There are all of the social and interpersonal issues on the micro and macro level (bc the characters are very influenced in complex ways by the racism that was rampant), and there is just brilliant writing. Text-tapping galore--which I actually haven't done at all on the sentence or paragraph level, but I totally want to. In fact, the book basically begs for it.
Other factors for my success in that class: the kids are awesome, I felt good from the start working with that teacher and being in that classroom, and the kids are awesome. And Black Boy is just basically foolproof. I feel so comfortable and confident in that class--such a difference from my other class! :(
Today in the 10th grade class, they were in small groups and had to answer study questions I created about half an hour before class. To take a little bit of credit, the questions I came up with were really good, and--it was so dorky of me--I actually reread them about 20 times (proudly walking with a smile and a skip in my step) after class. I also had a last-minute idea to have 2 groups do a macro-level text-tapping activity. (By the way, I find it frustrating that (as far as I understand) the term text-tapping is applied to two very different things and there is no distinction in name (which is why I say micro and macro level). For the uninitiated, micro-level is students imitating sentence- or paragraph-level writing of expert writers. Macro-level text tapping is filling in gaps missing from the text, which is what we did today. In the reading last night, Richard gives a speech as the valedictorian of his middle school. His principal tried to blackmail him into reading a speech he wrote, but Richard proudly refuses and insists on reading his own speech. Meanwhile, he doesn't include the speech in the book! So I had two of the small groups (these groups volunteered when they heard the option) write the speech they think Richard would have given. That's what that student got excited about.
The homework for the 10th grade class tonight is SO great! (It's ridiculous how excite dI am about it.) We've been talking about internalized racism and defining an Uncle Tom (Richard has an Uncle Tom in the book who just happens to exhibit characteristics of an "Uncle Tom") the past couple days, and tonight their reading deals with Richard trying to figure out how he should behave with white people and whether he should "be an Uncle Tom." Their homework is to read the chapter and then write at least one "thoughtful paragraph" (we discussed what that means) responding to Coretta Scott King's statement from an essay we read of hers that "He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it." FUN!!
Tomorrow's homework is so cool, too. They are going to do a values assessment of Richard. This activity is taken out of the Kahn book we read last semester (p. 30) and is such a great activity, I think.
Love this quick update! It's obvious how much I'm enjoying that class, though.
Update on my 9th grade class: It's going better.
See next posting for master teacher drama.
So the 10th grade class is still SO great. I actually have so much fun in that class, and I know that at least most of the kids are into it--and today one kid who typically seems disengaged was so excited about what we did today and was bummed that he's not going to be in class tomorrow bc of a field trip he's taking for another class.
I attribute my success in the 10th grade class to a few things. the first and foremost is definitely the book we're reading. Black Boy is *such* a wonderful book and just a joy for an English teacher to teach. There are so many things to talk about, it's amazing. There are all of the social and interpersonal issues on the micro and macro level (bc the characters are very influenced in complex ways by the racism that was rampant), and there is just brilliant writing. Text-tapping galore--which I actually haven't done at all on the sentence or paragraph level, but I totally want to. In fact, the book basically begs for it.
Other factors for my success in that class: the kids are awesome, I felt good from the start working with that teacher and being in that classroom, and the kids are awesome. And Black Boy is just basically foolproof. I feel so comfortable and confident in that class--such a difference from my other class! :(
Today in the 10th grade class, they were in small groups and had to answer study questions I created about half an hour before class. To take a little bit of credit, the questions I came up with were really good, and--it was so dorky of me--I actually reread them about 20 times (proudly walking with a smile and a skip in my step) after class. I also had a last-minute idea to have 2 groups do a macro-level text-tapping activity. (By the way, I find it frustrating that (as far as I understand) the term text-tapping is applied to two very different things and there is no distinction in name (which is why I say micro and macro level). For the uninitiated, micro-level is students imitating sentence- or paragraph-level writing of expert writers. Macro-level text tapping is filling in gaps missing from the text, which is what we did today. In the reading last night, Richard gives a speech as the valedictorian of his middle school. His principal tried to blackmail him into reading a speech he wrote, but Richard proudly refuses and insists on reading his own speech. Meanwhile, he doesn't include the speech in the book! So I had two of the small groups (these groups volunteered when they heard the option) write the speech they think Richard would have given. That's what that student got excited about.
The homework for the 10th grade class tonight is SO great! (It's ridiculous how excite dI am about it.) We've been talking about internalized racism and defining an Uncle Tom (Richard has an Uncle Tom in the book who just happens to exhibit characteristics of an "Uncle Tom") the past couple days, and tonight their reading deals with Richard trying to figure out how he should behave with white people and whether he should "be an Uncle Tom." Their homework is to read the chapter and then write at least one "thoughtful paragraph" (we discussed what that means) responding to Coretta Scott King's statement from an essay we read of hers that "He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it." FUN!!
Tomorrow's homework is so cool, too. They are going to do a values assessment of Richard. This activity is taken out of the Kahn book we read last semester (p. 30) and is such a great activity, I think.
Love this quick update! It's obvious how much I'm enjoying that class, though.
Update on my 9th grade class: It's going better.
See next posting for master teacher drama.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Back for more: My first call home and redeeming myself following a boring class
So, I just finished tomorrow's lesson plan, which I'm actually really happy with, and now I get to write more!
I made my first phone call home to a parent this evening, and I feel kind of awkward about it. Poor kid. So, in my 9th grade class, the students are doing presentations on creation myths they researched. Today, one of the students scheduled to present was absent. I asked my (mean) master teacher what she thought I should do about this, and she felt very strongly that I should be very tough about this. She suggested that I dock her grade by 2 letter grades, so if she gives an A presentation tomorrow, she'll earn a C, and if she gives a C she gets an F. OUCH! I asked her what if the student has a readmit form (a legitimation of an absence) saying she was really sick or someone died or something. She said that if someone died, yes, but that people need to learn that they can't just blow something off because they're not feeling well. She even asked me, "Have you ever come to school even though you were sick?" knowing full well that I had, and I of course answered yes. "Students need to learn that that's what you do in life: you honor your responsibilities even if you're not feeling well."
I suppose that's legitimate in terms of a lesson for a 14-year-old to learn, but it's so punitive that I really don't feel comfortable coming down that harshly. Anyway, so I asked my nice master teacher. She suggested that I call home to find out what happened. Great idea. Except that it was actually scary for me to do that! I don't know why. I procrastinated for a good 15 minutes thinking through what I would say if the student answered, if a parent answered (I looked up on her info sheet to see that English and Cantonese are spoken at home, and I envisioned an awkwardness if the parent who might answer did not speak English well), if I got a machine, if an alien answered the phone, etc. I decided that I would potentially lower her grade by one letter grade, meaning she'll start at a B, unless there was a really good excuse (meaning something really bad happened). I wanted to be prepared to let her know of this punishment if it came down to it.
The mom answered and spoke perfect English and said the student had been in school today(!). So she cut. She then put the student on the phone for me to talk to (after I overheard a painful conversation between mom and daughter trying to get her to come to the phone--it was agonizing to listen to, really). I told her I was calling because I was worried about her since she wasn't in class today, and I was wondering if she's ok. Yes, she's ok. Were you in school today? Yes. How come you weren't in class? I wasn't feeling well, so I went to the Wellness Center. Do you have any concerns about your project? No. Do you want to talk at all about your project now over the phone? No. Will you be in class tomorrow? Yes. Will you be ready to present? Yes.
God, quotation marks are so overrated.
So I explained to her that I'd lower her grade by one letter grade, as I felt that was only fair for the other students who presented on time. She said ok, and I said I'd see her tomorrow, and that was that.
As soon as I got off the phone, though, I imagined all kinds of terrible things. Is mom yelling at daughter for cutting class and getting in trouble (if that's what she might consider what just happened)? Is this student, who is very shy, agonizing over having to make this presentation? Is this/am I causing some major trauma? Ugh.
In other news, my 10th grade class today was really boring. It's the only class I can say that about so far. I didn't do enough prep for it, so that was entirely predictable. I basically figured we'd do a mellow whole class discussion since their essays were due today, and we'd just kind of get back into the book, but it basically ended up with me pulling teeth and with lots of really bored faces staring at me. It was brutal. At the end of class, I acknowledged how bored they all looked today, and that that's something I'll be thinking about until tomorrow and take responsibility for.
I knew my master teacher would be observing me tomorrow, and I also knew I wanted to stem the tide of today's really low-energy class, so I have come up with an active and interactive class for tomorrow that I feel good about. We'll start with a written reflection on a dense one-setence quotation from the reading. That quote is an example of a sarcastic tone that the author takes. When we discuss the reflection, we will define tone and characterize what tone we think it is. (It's sarcastic, I tell you.) Then they will get into groups of 3 and look for examples from the text of the author taking a sarcastic tone. They will construct a well-written paragraph (including topic sentence, evidence, context, commentary--gotta love Jane Schaeffer) as a small group using the examples they find. What could be more fun???
Anyway, I think it will be an interactive class where they learn a lot of valuable info (tone, going over paragraph structures, finding evidence), and are active as readers, writers, speakers, and listeners. We'll see how it goes!
Now I'm off to bed. Tomorrow I need to bust a move to do some major planning for beginning To Kill a Mockingbird in my 9th grade class next week, as I'll be meeting with my (mean) master teacher Friday morning to show her my (yet unwritten) lesson plans for next week. Thankfully, I don't have class tomorrow night, and next week I don't have class Tuesday or Wednesday!! AND it's a short week, so we're already amazingly at Thursday. Sweet!
I made my first phone call home to a parent this evening, and I feel kind of awkward about it. Poor kid. So, in my 9th grade class, the students are doing presentations on creation myths they researched. Today, one of the students scheduled to present was absent. I asked my (mean) master teacher what she thought I should do about this, and she felt very strongly that I should be very tough about this. She suggested that I dock her grade by 2 letter grades, so if she gives an A presentation tomorrow, she'll earn a C, and if she gives a C she gets an F. OUCH! I asked her what if the student has a readmit form (a legitimation of an absence) saying she was really sick or someone died or something. She said that if someone died, yes, but that people need to learn that they can't just blow something off because they're not feeling well. She even asked me, "Have you ever come to school even though you were sick?" knowing full well that I had, and I of course answered yes. "Students need to learn that that's what you do in life: you honor your responsibilities even if you're not feeling well."
I suppose that's legitimate in terms of a lesson for a 14-year-old to learn, but it's so punitive that I really don't feel comfortable coming down that harshly. Anyway, so I asked my nice master teacher. She suggested that I call home to find out what happened. Great idea. Except that it was actually scary for me to do that! I don't know why. I procrastinated for a good 15 minutes thinking through what I would say if the student answered, if a parent answered (I looked up on her info sheet to see that English and Cantonese are spoken at home, and I envisioned an awkwardness if the parent who might answer did not speak English well), if I got a machine, if an alien answered the phone, etc. I decided that I would potentially lower her grade by one letter grade, meaning she'll start at a B, unless there was a really good excuse (meaning something really bad happened). I wanted to be prepared to let her know of this punishment if it came down to it.
The mom answered and spoke perfect English and said the student had been in school today(!). So she cut. She then put the student on the phone for me to talk to (after I overheard a painful conversation between mom and daughter trying to get her to come to the phone--it was agonizing to listen to, really). I told her I was calling because I was worried about her since she wasn't in class today, and I was wondering if she's ok. Yes, she's ok. Were you in school today? Yes. How come you weren't in class? I wasn't feeling well, so I went to the Wellness Center. Do you have any concerns about your project? No. Do you want to talk at all about your project now over the phone? No. Will you be in class tomorrow? Yes. Will you be ready to present? Yes.
God, quotation marks are so overrated.
So I explained to her that I'd lower her grade by one letter grade, as I felt that was only fair for the other students who presented on time. She said ok, and I said I'd see her tomorrow, and that was that.
As soon as I got off the phone, though, I imagined all kinds of terrible things. Is mom yelling at daughter for cutting class and getting in trouble (if that's what she might consider what just happened)? Is this student, who is very shy, agonizing over having to make this presentation? Is this/am I causing some major trauma? Ugh.
In other news, my 10th grade class today was really boring. It's the only class I can say that about so far. I didn't do enough prep for it, so that was entirely predictable. I basically figured we'd do a mellow whole class discussion since their essays were due today, and we'd just kind of get back into the book, but it basically ended up with me pulling teeth and with lots of really bored faces staring at me. It was brutal. At the end of class, I acknowledged how bored they all looked today, and that that's something I'll be thinking about until tomorrow and take responsibility for.
I knew my master teacher would be observing me tomorrow, and I also knew I wanted to stem the tide of today's really low-energy class, so I have come up with an active and interactive class for tomorrow that I feel good about. We'll start with a written reflection on a dense one-setence quotation from the reading. That quote is an example of a sarcastic tone that the author takes. When we discuss the reflection, we will define tone and characterize what tone we think it is. (It's sarcastic, I tell you.) Then they will get into groups of 3 and look for examples from the text of the author taking a sarcastic tone. They will construct a well-written paragraph (including topic sentence, evidence, context, commentary--gotta love Jane Schaeffer) as a small group using the examples they find. What could be more fun???
Anyway, I think it will be an interactive class where they learn a lot of valuable info (tone, going over paragraph structures, finding evidence), and are active as readers, writers, speakers, and listeners. We'll see how it goes!
Now I'm off to bed. Tomorrow I need to bust a move to do some major planning for beginning To Kill a Mockingbird in my 9th grade class next week, as I'll be meeting with my (mean) master teacher Friday morning to show her my (yet unwritten) lesson plans for next week. Thankfully, I don't have class tomorrow night, and next week I don't have class Tuesday or Wednesday!! AND it's a short week, so we're already amazingly at Thursday. Sweet!
Where to begin?
I feel like that--Where to begin?--sometimes in approaching my work, but in this case I am wondering where to begin in terms of catching up on what I've been up to since my last post, which was, it seems, a very long time ago!
First of all, everyone will be glad to know I had a great long weekend--a perfect mixture of fun and work. (Well, I suppose I might have liked a little less work, but that's for another time.) And, before going on, let me just thank the Lord for George Washington and Abe Lincoln. Amen. So, I spent all day Saturday (in a tank top and shorts getting sunburnt at the park) and Sunday (at home under some covers) grading my 10th graders' short stories, and I decided pretty early on, when recognizing the massive grammar problems that some students have and the contrast between those problems with some of the other students' writing that is really great, that I would create what worked out to be an individualized grammar plan for each of my students. (What a terrible sentence that was, but whateva!)
So, I gave each student 1-2 grammar points to focus on until further notice. I explained each point and included examples from their own writing to show what I meant. I didn't actually grade them on their grammar (just on their proofreading, so if they missed blatant typos I deducted because it showed carelessness, but if they repeatedly made grammatical mistakes it just showed something we need to work on), which I hoped would relieve some stress of getting lots of comments on their grammar. When I handed back their papers yesterday, I explained that some people might be very confused by my comments, and that they shouldn't feel bad if they are.
For homework tonight, they have to write me a note explaining two things: (1) the one-two things they need to work on grammar-wise, according to their own understanding (meaning, if all they got from what I wrote is that they should do something or other with commas but they weren't sure what, they should write that) and (2) to finish the sentece, "When I read your comments, I felt _________ because ______________." I gave examples of what could fill in those blanks: I felt frustrated because I didn't understand what you meant; I felt appreciative because I see you spent a long time thinking about my writing; I felt relieved because now I know what to work on, etc. We'll see how that goes.
Today they had their essay due. Before handing them in, I had them write a short self reflection and evaluation about how they feel they did. I'm so glad I did this, and I plan to do it for every major assignment. The responses were so interesting. Several students said they didn't do their best bc they procrastinated or bc of other outside activities; a couple mentioned things they were confused about related to the assignment (and which they did NOT ask me about, which is frustrating; I practically beg them to ask me questions, but most don't); and some mentioned their own thoughts about their essay-writing ability (weaknesses they know they have) or about things they know are weak in their paper (e.g., a couple people mentioned they knew they should have used more quotes to support their arguments). It's so great to read a paper w/o a lot of quotes, for instance, and know that the student knows they should have used more quotes but just procrasatinated and didn't put in as much time as they know they should've, versus wondering if they don't know that they're supposed to use quotes, if I didn't explain this well enough, etc. It's probably a valuable thing for them to self reflect (we do so much talking about metacognition--thinking about thinking--in our program), but that's a little fuzzy for me, whereas it is clear to me that I benefit from reading their reflecitons.
That's it for now, though I have a lot more I want to write! I'm prioritizing my lesson plan for tomorrow, which my (nice) master teacher will want to see bc she's observing me. I was actually struggling with plans for class tomorrow, and I had a revelation on the bus! There's part of me that would like to have a car to have the convenience of driving to and from school, and there's part of me that would like to bike to and from school for the exercise and awesome feeling of biking, but I get SO much done on the bus each day.
O.K. ttyl
First of all, everyone will be glad to know I had a great long weekend--a perfect mixture of fun and work. (Well, I suppose I might have liked a little less work, but that's for another time.) And, before going on, let me just thank the Lord for George Washington and Abe Lincoln. Amen. So, I spent all day Saturday (in a tank top and shorts getting sunburnt at the park) and Sunday (at home under some covers) grading my 10th graders' short stories, and I decided pretty early on, when recognizing the massive grammar problems that some students have and the contrast between those problems with some of the other students' writing that is really great, that I would create what worked out to be an individualized grammar plan for each of my students. (What a terrible sentence that was, but whateva!)
So, I gave each student 1-2 grammar points to focus on until further notice. I explained each point and included examples from their own writing to show what I meant. I didn't actually grade them on their grammar (just on their proofreading, so if they missed blatant typos I deducted because it showed carelessness, but if they repeatedly made grammatical mistakes it just showed something we need to work on), which I hoped would relieve some stress of getting lots of comments on their grammar. When I handed back their papers yesterday, I explained that some people might be very confused by my comments, and that they shouldn't feel bad if they are.
For homework tonight, they have to write me a note explaining two things: (1) the one-two things they need to work on grammar-wise, according to their own understanding (meaning, if all they got from what I wrote is that they should do something or other with commas but they weren't sure what, they should write that) and (2) to finish the sentece, "When I read your comments, I felt _________ because ______________." I gave examples of what could fill in those blanks: I felt frustrated because I didn't understand what you meant; I felt appreciative because I see you spent a long time thinking about my writing; I felt relieved because now I know what to work on, etc. We'll see how that goes.
Today they had their essay due. Before handing them in, I had them write a short self reflection and evaluation about how they feel they did. I'm so glad I did this, and I plan to do it for every major assignment. The responses were so interesting. Several students said they didn't do their best bc they procrastinated or bc of other outside activities; a couple mentioned things they were confused about related to the assignment (and which they did NOT ask me about, which is frustrating; I practically beg them to ask me questions, but most don't); and some mentioned their own thoughts about their essay-writing ability (weaknesses they know they have) or about things they know are weak in their paper (e.g., a couple people mentioned they knew they should have used more quotes to support their arguments). It's so great to read a paper w/o a lot of quotes, for instance, and know that the student knows they should have used more quotes but just procrasatinated and didn't put in as much time as they know they should've, versus wondering if they don't know that they're supposed to use quotes, if I didn't explain this well enough, etc. It's probably a valuable thing for them to self reflect (we do so much talking about metacognition--thinking about thinking--in our program), but that's a little fuzzy for me, whereas it is clear to me that I benefit from reading their reflecitons.
That's it for now, though I have a lot more I want to write! I'm prioritizing my lesson plan for tomorrow, which my (nice) master teacher will want to see bc she's observing me. I was actually struggling with plans for class tomorrow, and I had a revelation on the bus! There's part of me that would like to have a car to have the convenience of driving to and from school, and there's part of me that would like to bike to and from school for the exercise and awesome feeling of biking, but I get SO much done on the bus each day.
O.K. ttyl
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Forgiving myself for mistakes and trying to catch up
So I had this burst of inspiration in the bathtub two nights ago. It was a romantic tub experience--just me and Bridging English--which I was reading for ideas and inspiration for teaching ideas. I got really excited about this "authentic assessment" I came up with--an assessment that isn't the typical artificial, arbitrary school assignment but that's something adults actually do in real life. Students are to imagine they work for Child Protective Services and are investigating whether Richard (main character of Black Boy) should be removed from his home or allowed to remain with his mother, who is very violent and neglectful with him, but this is in the backdrop of a very violent time period and, in a lot of cases, she's trying to give Richard tough love.
I was really excited about the assignment, which I made the relatively insane decision to give the next morning (yesterday), when I realized that it was the most suitable time to give the assignment because of where we are in the book.
While I did think of a lot of questions they would have, there were some that I hadn't fully thought through, which took a lot of time yesterday that I had hoped to use for other things. Then, today, admittedly I wasn't as prepared as I would like to have been. (Do I really have to trade any kind of social life away to be a good teacher?) I did do two really productive hours of work in the morning before class, when I actually wrote my own rough draft of the essay to think of what problems the students might have.
It occurred to me when I was doing this just how easy this process was for me to write a strong response to this essay and at the same time that it was probably very scary and daunting for some of my students. As a result, I decided to give them a rough outline of what an essay could look like. I went over two outlines (by outline I mean giving the topic sentence or main idea of each of the 4 paragraphs)--one for each stance the students could take (leave Richard with his mom or remove him). This is what I regret. First of all, it took more time than I planned (due to my own wishful thinking, really--in retrospect it's not surprising this all took the amount of time it did), which meant they didn't get peer review time, which I had told them they would. Second of all, I feel like I kind of gave them "the answer" in that they will substitute whatever approach they had for my very formal one. (Well, it actually wasn't *that* formal, relatively speaking, but it was pretty formal.) I guess I was just concerned that some of my kids would have no idea what they hell they were doing, and I thought this would be really helpful. Maybe it was--except the room got very quiet when I did all this outline stuff: not a good sign.
Now I'm concerned because we are supposed to have a debate tomorrow, which will help them with their essay, but we haven't done peer review, which I told them they would do. When I told them we'd do a debate tomorrow, one student called out "That actually sounds really fun," so I am definitely going forward with that, and I don't want to short-change that, but I also want to give them time to do peer review. Thus, I think I'll do the full debate tomorrow and give them an extra day (Wed instead of Tues) to finish their essays, and we'll do peer review Tues (after the holiday Mon; I am so thankful for George Washington and Abe Lincoln). My only concern there is that I want them to move forward with the reading, and yet, if they move forward with the reading but we don't discuss it then we fall behind and don't cover so much of what there is to cover in the book.
I suppose it's a nice problem that there is just so much I want to do with this book. I strongly recommend those of you who teach English to teach Black Boy if you are able to. There's such great text-tapping potential on the big picture level (like with my assignment), as well as on the sentence level.
Part of the intention for the subject of this posting in terms of "trying to catch up" is trying to catch up always with this book, but more is in terms of not falling behind each day so there's a crazy scramble every night or morning to really be prepared. I have yet to have a day with absolutely zero scrambling, where I had done 100% of my prep (including making up all overheads and photocopies made--ugh; I hate the photocopying process) more than an hour or so before class. I think about these things when I go to bed at night (or in the afternoon, like I did for 45 minutes today as soon as I got home), first thing when I wake up, and at every imaginable inappropriate time in between. Ugh. I need to bust a move this long weekend to get ahead of the game.
I was really excited about the assignment, which I made the relatively insane decision to give the next morning (yesterday), when I realized that it was the most suitable time to give the assignment because of where we are in the book.
While I did think of a lot of questions they would have, there were some that I hadn't fully thought through, which took a lot of time yesterday that I had hoped to use for other things. Then, today, admittedly I wasn't as prepared as I would like to have been. (Do I really have to trade any kind of social life away to be a good teacher?) I did do two really productive hours of work in the morning before class, when I actually wrote my own rough draft of the essay to think of what problems the students might have.
It occurred to me when I was doing this just how easy this process was for me to write a strong response to this essay and at the same time that it was probably very scary and daunting for some of my students. As a result, I decided to give them a rough outline of what an essay could look like. I went over two outlines (by outline I mean giving the topic sentence or main idea of each of the 4 paragraphs)--one for each stance the students could take (leave Richard with his mom or remove him). This is what I regret. First of all, it took more time than I planned (due to my own wishful thinking, really--in retrospect it's not surprising this all took the amount of time it did), which meant they didn't get peer review time, which I had told them they would. Second of all, I feel like I kind of gave them "the answer" in that they will substitute whatever approach they had for my very formal one. (Well, it actually wasn't *that* formal, relatively speaking, but it was pretty formal.) I guess I was just concerned that some of my kids would have no idea what they hell they were doing, and I thought this would be really helpful. Maybe it was--except the room got very quiet when I did all this outline stuff: not a good sign.
Now I'm concerned because we are supposed to have a debate tomorrow, which will help them with their essay, but we haven't done peer review, which I told them they would do. When I told them we'd do a debate tomorrow, one student called out "That actually sounds really fun," so I am definitely going forward with that, and I don't want to short-change that, but I also want to give them time to do peer review. Thus, I think I'll do the full debate tomorrow and give them an extra day (Wed instead of Tues) to finish their essays, and we'll do peer review Tues (after the holiday Mon; I am so thankful for George Washington and Abe Lincoln). My only concern there is that I want them to move forward with the reading, and yet, if they move forward with the reading but we don't discuss it then we fall behind and don't cover so much of what there is to cover in the book.
I suppose it's a nice problem that there is just so much I want to do with this book. I strongly recommend those of you who teach English to teach Black Boy if you are able to. There's such great text-tapping potential on the big picture level (like with my assignment), as well as on the sentence level.
Part of the intention for the subject of this posting in terms of "trying to catch up" is trying to catch up always with this book, but more is in terms of not falling behind each day so there's a crazy scramble every night or morning to really be prepared. I have yet to have a day with absolutely zero scrambling, where I had done 100% of my prep (including making up all overheads and photocopies made--ugh; I hate the photocopying process) more than an hour or so before class. I think about these things when I go to bed at night (or in the afternoon, like I did for 45 minutes today as soon as I got home), first thing when I wake up, and at every imaginable inappropriate time in between. Ugh. I need to bust a move this long weekend to get ahead of the game.
Monday, February 12, 2007
I actually cannot say anything bad about today!
I did a shockingly teeny amount of work this weekend, and yet today went really well.
Friday night I stayed up till 3 am drinking wine and playing chess with Bobby, and then walked home tipsy in the ridiculously pouring rain, got in bed, and graded papers! I was actually really excited to read my 10th graders' homework responses from that day!
Saturday I helped Luke move and then went to Berkeley for Faith's birthday, where I ate vegan truffles and got the BEST 5 minute massage, which has been keeping me going ever since!
Sunday was my big day to do work. I started grading the stories the students wrote for their real writing first assignment, and I realized again how hard it is to grade, especially creative writing. I developed a rubric from the form I gave the students about what I was looking for, as on the form I didn't give a point value to each thing (like, is having the story be told in the first person worth the same amount as having sensory details?). That was hard, but I feel like I came up with a decent way to score them. Trouble is it took me about an hour to grade 5, and I have 47 of them! (I'll get quicker, I suppose.) Then I went to an activist-related talk for a couple of hours and had Bobby back over for dinner and chess. I entered my grades and then passed out.
Anyway, I did just a small amount of prep this weekend because I felt fairly lazy--ahem, I mean confident about things at the beginning of the week, although I will need to spend some more time prepping for Black Boy tomorrow or the next day. (I'm too tired tonight.)
Finally, for what you've all been waiting for, my meeting with the "mean" master teacher today went really well. I had given her a full week of lesson plans for this week, which she gave me really helpful feedback on. She also asked me to reflect on what's going well and not going well in the class. She told me that if she has a fully worked out lesson plan for the week ahead then she doesn't feel like she needs to sit in on the class, and that she'd jsut do that once a week or so, and that I could choose when I'd want her to do this, which is great. She wasn't in the class today, and I feel like that freed me up a little and I was definitely more at ease.
The only things I feel like didn't go perfectly today were that we didn't finish all the things I was hoping to in both classes. In the 10th grade class, there was a fire drill, which was really annoying because it delayed for another day finishing talking about something they worked on in groups on Friday. One thing I learned from the fire drill, though, is to make sure to give students the homework at the beginning of class so they can write it down (whereas the fire drill was 5 minutes before the end of class, so some students didn't come back for the HW). Also, in my other class, we didn't finish reading the myth we're going over in class, but we'll do that tomorrow. We did other good things today, like checking in about their creation myth projects.
I am really frustrated that instead of going to sleep right now (~9:30), I have a paper that was due this past Wed that I didn't do that my professor told me to have for her by this weekend, which I did not do, and I want to get that off of my to-do list even though I'm so tired I really don't care about it. I actually fell asleep with my head on the desk during our 15 minute break from class at SFSU. (I was dreaming, though I've already forgotten about what.) My classmate needed to wake me up once class was about to resume. Ugh. I guess my class is something I could say something bad about, but I'll refrain.
Friday night I stayed up till 3 am drinking wine and playing chess with Bobby, and then walked home tipsy in the ridiculously pouring rain, got in bed, and graded papers! I was actually really excited to read my 10th graders' homework responses from that day!
Saturday I helped Luke move and then went to Berkeley for Faith's birthday, where I ate vegan truffles and got the BEST 5 minute massage, which has been keeping me going ever since!
Sunday was my big day to do work. I started grading the stories the students wrote for their real writing first assignment, and I realized again how hard it is to grade, especially creative writing. I developed a rubric from the form I gave the students about what I was looking for, as on the form I didn't give a point value to each thing (like, is having the story be told in the first person worth the same amount as having sensory details?). That was hard, but I feel like I came up with a decent way to score them. Trouble is it took me about an hour to grade 5, and I have 47 of them! (I'll get quicker, I suppose.) Then I went to an activist-related talk for a couple of hours and had Bobby back over for dinner and chess. I entered my grades and then passed out.
Anyway, I did just a small amount of prep this weekend because I felt fairly lazy--ahem, I mean confident about things at the beginning of the week, although I will need to spend some more time prepping for Black Boy tomorrow or the next day. (I'm too tired tonight.)
Finally, for what you've all been waiting for, my meeting with the "mean" master teacher today went really well. I had given her a full week of lesson plans for this week, which she gave me really helpful feedback on. She also asked me to reflect on what's going well and not going well in the class. She told me that if she has a fully worked out lesson plan for the week ahead then she doesn't feel like she needs to sit in on the class, and that she'd jsut do that once a week or so, and that I could choose when I'd want her to do this, which is great. She wasn't in the class today, and I feel like that freed me up a little and I was definitely more at ease.
The only things I feel like didn't go perfectly today were that we didn't finish all the things I was hoping to in both classes. In the 10th grade class, there was a fire drill, which was really annoying because it delayed for another day finishing talking about something they worked on in groups on Friday. One thing I learned from the fire drill, though, is to make sure to give students the homework at the beginning of class so they can write it down (whereas the fire drill was 5 minutes before the end of class, so some students didn't come back for the HW). Also, in my other class, we didn't finish reading the myth we're going over in class, but we'll do that tomorrow. We did other good things today, like checking in about their creation myth projects.
I am really frustrated that instead of going to sleep right now (~9:30), I have a paper that was due this past Wed that I didn't do that my professor told me to have for her by this weekend, which I did not do, and I want to get that off of my to-do list even though I'm so tired I really don't care about it. I actually fell asleep with my head on the desk during our 15 minute break from class at SFSU. (I was dreaming, though I've already forgotten about what.) My classmate needed to wake me up once class was about to resume. Ugh. I guess my class is something I could say something bad about, but I'll refrain.
Friday, February 9, 2007
Somehow it's Friday already--and good news to report!
I've been praying for Friday all week, and finally my prayers have been answered! (God works in mysterious ways. He does not like to be rushed.)
I set my alarm for early this morning so I could do a bunch more prep for today, but I'm finding myself tempted to blow that off (somewhat--at least for a few minutes) to write here, even though my wrists are really hurting from revising my lesson plans for next week in preparation for my meeting with the mean master teacher, which she just postponed until Monday because of a migraine. By the way, I love that I just call her "the mean master teacher"--all in the spirit of anonymity of course--and that you all know who I'm talking about. (And, just so you all know who I'm talking about, when I say "you all" I mean those of you in my inner circle who are privy to my daily chronicles. You lucky bastards.
My tone in this blog interests me, if nobody else, as this is different writing than I've ever done.
Anyway, back to the good news--and not just that it's Friday.
I put in A LOT of work the past few days. (Thankfully the evil CAHSEE (California High School Exit Exam) was this week, which meant that I had a bunch of free time during the day when there was no class, and I used this wisely--well, if you consider it wise to do nothing but work.)
I feel like it paid off. For my 10th grade class, we started reading Black Boy, by Richard Wright, this week--a beautiful book, if you can make time to read it!--and I really hadn't thought through what I was going to have them *do* while they read it. If you think back to high school, you probably never just read a book. You had to make annoying charts and pictures and other stuff, and I needed to think of some of that to have them do. I don't believe in giving students purposeless things to do, so I wanted this to be useful for them in writing their essays at the end and to improve the quality of reading they're doing. So, first I sat down and came up with four possible essay topics that I think I will give them to choose from (nope--I'm not telling! Actually, maybe I will another time.) . Then I thought about the reading strategies that I had seen, and none seemed to really fit with the essays. I thought about what would be useful, and I came up with something I really like. Each night, they're keeping what I called a timeline, which is a chart that looks like this:
Age Incident Significance of the incident Most important quote(s) about incident
This has them looking for things that happen to Richard that have an impact on his life (which is really what this autobiography is about) while analyzing that impact using quotes from the text--which is what you do in an essay. I asked them in class yesterday why they thought I was having them do this, and they had all kinds of great answers, including that it would help them for an essay. I asked them what essay it would most help them write, which was really cool. I would've loved for my English teachers to have done this. (In fact, they may have, but who remembers high school anyway???)
Anyway, yesterday was the first day my nice master teacher observed my class, whihc I knew was important. She hadn't observed my class at all yet, and, because of negative things my other master teacher has said, I think she may have been concerned that the positive things I've been saying about how her class has been going may be less than true. Well, I put in a lot of work Wednesday night to make sure she saw a good class, and it went SO well. It was the first day we really got into talking about the book, and also the first day I've ever really led a discussion analyzing a text (other things I have done have been an intro to a book, a writing activity, analyzing a myth (totally different), and of course lots of classes in my other life on humane and envi ed. So, yesterday was SO fun. I had one student give me an incident from her timeline, and we went over it together as a class. Her "significance" wasn't as much about the importance of the incident but the reason leading up to the incident. When I asked other people for suggestions for the significance, one girl had a great answer and quote to go with it that really had us go deeper in our analysis. It's pretty dorky how exciting that was for me.
I think one strenth I have is (I think) I always praise students for participating, even if they say something that's not quite right--or totally wrong--and manage to never make anyone feel like they said something dumb. I hope I did that weel with the student who offered up her incident.
I also came up with an idea I love called "Words of Wisdom," which is a list of great things students said in their written homework responses, which I get to read (look at that--I said "get to" instead of "have to"!) but they do not. I think they really liked it--and my master teacher did too.
Other good news is that Luke made me dinner last night (and then forgot it at home--or at work, or in his imagination), and we got delicious Thai takeout that we ate by the fire, as I blew off work for a couple of hours. I'm so CRAZY!
Have more work to do before heading to school in a bit and then can celebrate the Gift that God calls The Weekend.
I set my alarm for early this morning so I could do a bunch more prep for today, but I'm finding myself tempted to blow that off (somewhat--at least for a few minutes) to write here, even though my wrists are really hurting from revising my lesson plans for next week in preparation for my meeting with the mean master teacher, which she just postponed until Monday because of a migraine. By the way, I love that I just call her "the mean master teacher"--all in the spirit of anonymity of course--and that you all know who I'm talking about. (And, just so you all know who I'm talking about, when I say "you all" I mean those of you in my inner circle who are privy to my daily chronicles. You lucky bastards.
My tone in this blog interests me, if nobody else, as this is different writing than I've ever done.
Anyway, back to the good news--and not just that it's Friday.
I put in A LOT of work the past few days. (Thankfully the evil CAHSEE (California High School Exit Exam) was this week, which meant that I had a bunch of free time during the day when there was no class, and I used this wisely--well, if you consider it wise to do nothing but work.)
I feel like it paid off. For my 10th grade class, we started reading Black Boy, by Richard Wright, this week--a beautiful book, if you can make time to read it!--and I really hadn't thought through what I was going to have them *do* while they read it. If you think back to high school, you probably never just read a book. You had to make annoying charts and pictures and other stuff, and I needed to think of some of that to have them do. I don't believe in giving students purposeless things to do, so I wanted this to be useful for them in writing their essays at the end and to improve the quality of reading they're doing. So, first I sat down and came up with four possible essay topics that I think I will give them to choose from (nope--I'm not telling! Actually, maybe I will another time.) . Then I thought about the reading strategies that I had seen, and none seemed to really fit with the essays. I thought about what would be useful, and I came up with something I really like. Each night, they're keeping what I called a timeline, which is a chart that looks like this:
Age Incident Significance of the incident Most important quote(s) about incident
This has them looking for things that happen to Richard that have an impact on his life (which is really what this autobiography is about) while analyzing that impact using quotes from the text--which is what you do in an essay. I asked them in class yesterday why they thought I was having them do this, and they had all kinds of great answers, including that it would help them for an essay. I asked them what essay it would most help them write, which was really cool. I would've loved for my English teachers to have done this. (In fact, they may have, but who remembers high school anyway???)
Anyway, yesterday was the first day my nice master teacher observed my class, whihc I knew was important. She hadn't observed my class at all yet, and, because of negative things my other master teacher has said, I think she may have been concerned that the positive things I've been saying about how her class has been going may be less than true. Well, I put in a lot of work Wednesday night to make sure she saw a good class, and it went SO well. It was the first day we really got into talking about the book, and also the first day I've ever really led a discussion analyzing a text (other things I have done have been an intro to a book, a writing activity, analyzing a myth (totally different), and of course lots of classes in my other life on humane and envi ed. So, yesterday was SO fun. I had one student give me an incident from her timeline, and we went over it together as a class. Her "significance" wasn't as much about the importance of the incident but the reason leading up to the incident. When I asked other people for suggestions for the significance, one girl had a great answer and quote to go with it that really had us go deeper in our analysis. It's pretty dorky how exciting that was for me.
I think one strenth I have is (I think) I always praise students for participating, even if they say something that's not quite right--or totally wrong--and manage to never make anyone feel like they said something dumb. I hope I did that weel with the student who offered up her incident.
I also came up with an idea I love called "Words of Wisdom," which is a list of great things students said in their written homework responses, which I get to read (look at that--I said "get to" instead of "have to"!) but they do not. I think they really liked it--and my master teacher did too.
Other good news is that Luke made me dinner last night (and then forgot it at home--or at work, or in his imagination), and we got delicious Thai takeout that we ate by the fire, as I blew off work for a couple of hours. I'm so CRAZY!
Have more work to do before heading to school in a bit and then can celebrate the Gift that God calls The Weekend.
Monday, February 5, 2007
...and colleagues too
First of all, in my last post I think I neglected to fully convey just how ridiculously supportive my friends have been, listening to all my stories and pandering to my every neurosis and insecurity about teaching. Bobby, especially, deserves mad props, as he has heard just about all the stories there are to tell--and has been superwonderful. Thank you, Bobby! You're my number one fan! (And I'm not just kissing up because I haven't been practicing guitar as much as I'm supposed to.)
And on to my colleagues. I just got back from class, where I vented a bit about how stressed and unprepared I feel, and I was relieved (a) to hear that others feel similarly, and (b) to get lots of good ideas and suggestions. The one I'm most excited about is the 13 section accordian folding files, which I bought right after class, and which I'm so excited to fill with all the papers I still need to grade, which are now in, like, 8 different manila folders.
Off to do that! And then to grade some. And then to do the reading I assigned my tenth grade class to prep for our lesson and figure out the reading strategy I want them to use for the upcoming chapters. And then to figure out the plans for my 9th grade creation myth project so I can give the librarian the lesson plan for that. (I was hoping *she'd give me* a lesson plan since she did the same presentation last semester!) And then post a response for my class at SFSU (due at midnight--shoot; I should do that next). And then download the readings for my SFSU class tomorrow. And then maybe remember to brush my teeth before collapsing.
And on to my colleagues. I just got back from class, where I vented a bit about how stressed and unprepared I feel, and I was relieved (a) to hear that others feel similarly, and (b) to get lots of good ideas and suggestions. The one I'm most excited about is the 13 section accordian folding files, which I bought right after class, and which I'm so excited to fill with all the papers I still need to grade, which are now in, like, 8 different manila folders.
Off to do that! And then to grade some. And then to do the reading I assigned my tenth grade class to prep for our lesson and figure out the reading strategy I want them to use for the upcoming chapters. And then to figure out the plans for my 9th grade creation myth project so I can give the librarian the lesson plan for that. (I was hoping *she'd give me* a lesson plan since she did the same presentation last semester!) And then post a response for my class at SFSU (due at midnight--shoot; I should do that next). And then download the readings for my SFSU class tomorrow. And then maybe remember to brush my teeth before collapsing.
Sunday, February 4, 2007
Hold on to your friends
Teaching is so solitary and can be a big hit to your confidence if it doesn't go well in the beginning and if you interpret that to mean something bad about you. This has helped me see the importance of being with and relying on friends to remind myself that I'm more than the harsh way I judged/am still sort of judging myself for my 9th grade class.
(Incidentally, I've been listening to a lot of Morrissey/The Smiths lately (probably my favorite ever--and despite the reputation for being overwhelming depressing and sad he/they actually make me happy). I listened to him/them all the time in college but haven't really in a few years until recently, and I've had the song "Hold on to Your Friends" in my head all week, perhaps for a reason other than that it's a great song.)
So Friday night I had dinner with my great friend Ari and gave him the rundown of my first week. I had had a meeting earlier Friday morning with the mean master teacher to discuss my plans for next week, and that was tough. I had had some question marks in my plans for next week, which were going to depend on talking to the librarian to finalize when we could use the room we'd need to begin the research for their creation myth projects. I told my master teacher my plan for Monday, which is basically set--we're going to start discussing mythology and looking at why esp. Greek mythology is still prominent in our culture today. (e.g., our planets, some corporations, products, even some songs refer to them) We have no class Tuesday (thankfully, because of the exit exam schedule), and I have my plan for Wednesday basically set--to go over the reading from Monday's HW (an intro to world mythology). Thurs and Fri, I told her, we'd either start on reading and interpreting a couple of Greek myths, doing an activity from this book that another teacher had just given me, or go to the library. She was irritated that I hadn't finalized this. "Just put yourself in my position. We can even switch chairs and role play. How would you think I would feel about how sure you are for next week? What would you say if you were me in response to what you said?" she asked. I told her I'd say, "It sounds like you've got some good ideas and have the week mostly worked out and just need to make a couple decisions to finalize the plans." She seemed to not really be able to argue with that, but the whole meeting I felt like she was judging me, like I should be more prepared, like she could at any moment yell at me (like she did a couple months ago) about not having myself together, etc.
When I told Ari this story, he really challenged me in such great ways. I don't remember most of what he said, but I remember what I came away with. First, I realized how much I'm trying to please this teacher--or, if not please than at least appease. It's like I'm motivated in that class by my fear of her. How ridiculous! Ari asked me such a great question: What is your intention in teaching? While there is some practicality involved in terms of the master teacher evaluating me, which could have an impact on getting a job next year, but that's such a conventional concern. My reason for student teaching is not, if I really think about it, to get a job. It's to learn, to grow, to help young people think critically and to be able to express themselves confidently and to empathize and relate to others.
My experience with that teacher has also brought back a lot of memories of a really abusive relationship I've spent the last couple of years getting over: that with an old boss of mine who has made probably half of his employees cry *in the office* at one point or another over the years. My analysis of him has been that his own vision of himself grew/grows as he put/s down and minimized/s the skills and contributions of others, and I have been warned that some master teachers do the same thing in order to preserve their authority as *master* teacher. It's been like 3 years since I left that job, and I have spent the time since then rebuilding my self esteem. I am present to the impact of that boss on the way I'm relating to this master teacher. I'm practically cowering to please her, wanting her acknowledgment and praise, fearing she'll yell at me--as if I'm a puppy still trying to figure out the rules of the house and how my "master" will punish me if I make a mistake. This is just not who I am and not who I want to be. It doesn't help my students and it doesn't help me. I am going to talk to her about this. I want to spend some time to work out exactly how I want to approach her--she's a tough cookie--because I know she could react really harshly and make my life more difficult. Either way, looking at and approaching the class as my own and her as a mentor and resource rather than a boss--or freakin' master, as her title calls her--will begin to shift this dynamic.
A classic sports analogy seems apt (and timely, on Super Bowl Sunday) : play to win rather than play not to lose.
I had some great QT with friends this weekend, which has helped to ground me and remind me how petty and unimportant my concerns are for my class in terms of my own self esteem or anything I should take personally. Now I'm going to go for a walk with two of my closest friends who have always been there for me--my friend Jeannie, who's biking over here as I write this, and my dog, who is napping on her dog bed at the moment but is about to be very excited.
Then I've got to get to work.
(Incidentally, I've been listening to a lot of Morrissey/The Smiths lately (probably my favorite ever--and despite the reputation for being overwhelming depressing and sad he/they actually make me happy). I listened to him/them all the time in college but haven't really in a few years until recently, and I've had the song "Hold on to Your Friends" in my head all week, perhaps for a reason other than that it's a great song.)
So Friday night I had dinner with my great friend Ari and gave him the rundown of my first week. I had had a meeting earlier Friday morning with the mean master teacher to discuss my plans for next week, and that was tough. I had had some question marks in my plans for next week, which were going to depend on talking to the librarian to finalize when we could use the room we'd need to begin the research for their creation myth projects. I told my master teacher my plan for Monday, which is basically set--we're going to start discussing mythology and looking at why esp. Greek mythology is still prominent in our culture today. (e.g., our planets, some corporations, products, even some songs refer to them) We have no class Tuesday (thankfully, because of the exit exam schedule), and I have my plan for Wednesday basically set--to go over the reading from Monday's HW (an intro to world mythology). Thurs and Fri, I told her, we'd either start on reading and interpreting a couple of Greek myths, doing an activity from this book that another teacher had just given me, or go to the library. She was irritated that I hadn't finalized this. "Just put yourself in my position. We can even switch chairs and role play. How would you think I would feel about how sure you are for next week? What would you say if you were me in response to what you said?" she asked. I told her I'd say, "It sounds like you've got some good ideas and have the week mostly worked out and just need to make a couple decisions to finalize the plans." She seemed to not really be able to argue with that, but the whole meeting I felt like she was judging me, like I should be more prepared, like she could at any moment yell at me (like she did a couple months ago) about not having myself together, etc.
When I told Ari this story, he really challenged me in such great ways. I don't remember most of what he said, but I remember what I came away with. First, I realized how much I'm trying to please this teacher--or, if not please than at least appease. It's like I'm motivated in that class by my fear of her. How ridiculous! Ari asked me such a great question: What is your intention in teaching? While there is some practicality involved in terms of the master teacher evaluating me, which could have an impact on getting a job next year, but that's such a conventional concern. My reason for student teaching is not, if I really think about it, to get a job. It's to learn, to grow, to help young people think critically and to be able to express themselves confidently and to empathize and relate to others.
My experience with that teacher has also brought back a lot of memories of a really abusive relationship I've spent the last couple of years getting over: that with an old boss of mine who has made probably half of his employees cry *in the office* at one point or another over the years. My analysis of him has been that his own vision of himself grew/grows as he put/s down and minimized/s the skills and contributions of others, and I have been warned that some master teachers do the same thing in order to preserve their authority as *master* teacher. It's been like 3 years since I left that job, and I have spent the time since then rebuilding my self esteem. I am present to the impact of that boss on the way I'm relating to this master teacher. I'm practically cowering to please her, wanting her acknowledgment and praise, fearing she'll yell at me--as if I'm a puppy still trying to figure out the rules of the house and how my "master" will punish me if I make a mistake. This is just not who I am and not who I want to be. It doesn't help my students and it doesn't help me. I am going to talk to her about this. I want to spend some time to work out exactly how I want to approach her--she's a tough cookie--because I know she could react really harshly and make my life more difficult. Either way, looking at and approaching the class as my own and her as a mentor and resource rather than a boss--or freakin' master, as her title calls her--will begin to shift this dynamic.
A classic sports analogy seems apt (and timely, on Super Bowl Sunday) : play to win rather than play not to lose.
I had some great QT with friends this weekend, which has helped to ground me and remind me how petty and unimportant my concerns are for my class in terms of my own self esteem or anything I should take personally. Now I'm going to go for a walk with two of my closest friends who have always been there for me--my friend Jeannie, who's biking over here as I write this, and my dog, who is napping on her dog bed at the moment but is about to be very excited.
Then I've got to get to work.
Thursday, February 1, 2007
I have almost survived the first week
So, interspersed between an overwhelming sense that I have absolutely no clue how to teach English has been a lot of fun and maybe even some learning, both by me and my students.
Today is only my fourth day, so I am clear that I am taking things way more seriously and personally than would probably be in anyone's best interest, and yet that is so.
Yesterday was a tough one. My first class (10th grade) went great--as it has each day so far. I don't know what it is about that class, exactly, but I feel super comfortable with those kids. They are such sweethearts and really great kids, and (not but) they definitely have lots of energy that could get out of control, but that's just how I like it. My 9th graders are timid and quiet and look at me like I'm a combination between a scary monster--too intimidating to ask a question to in front of the whole class or something--and an incompetent idiot.
So, in my 9th grade class, I hadn't explained something adequately on day 2 (I said it once and thought they got it, plus thought they would know this from previous classes, but they didn't), and nobody asked me any questions about it or indicated they were confused, which meant that on day 3, they didn't really do their homework properly and just gave me blank stares as I tried to put them in small groups to discuss what they'd done for homework (which I had not checked yet). Anyway, I suppose what happened was not a big deal and happens one way or another all the time in school--where a teacher didn't explain something well enough and then needs to backpeddle to explain further--but I feel like I got a little flustered since I really hadn't wanted to spend a long time on this point and felt some self-imposed pressure to move along since we have a lot to cover. I think if my master teacher hadn't been observing me, it wouldn't have been as big a deal to me, although she was actually really helpful. She even raised her hand to ask a question: "Could you give another example and write it on the board?" she asked. That was amazingly helpful. I somehow just don't think to write things down sometimes. But so the class was about to come to an end and I realized that the homework I had told them they'd have at the beginning of the class now wasn't totally appropriate, but I only had a minute to change my mind, and I wasn't thrilled with what I ended up telling them. I also forgot to tell them to bring their textbook with them the next day (today), which we actually wouldn't have gotten to today anyway, but I didn't know that at the time.
Anyway, today went really well. My mean master teacher (as I refer to her to friends) and I resolved the journal issue well yesterday, and I told the students today, and that went well. I told them I changed my mind and wouldn't be checking their journals, but their journals were still theirs to keep and my gift to them. One student asked cutely if they could count for extra credit, but I had to tell him no. I gave them some encouragement to write anyway, though, and told them I'd check in with them at various points about whether they were writing. But that went well. I had been concerned they might see my changing my mind as just another example of me not having my shit together, but I think I explained it well (and did so by not giving any reason whatsoever for why I had changed my mind).
I also knew yesterday that I'd need to bring my best game today to the 9th grade class to wrap up the confusion from yesterday's class and move on quickly, and I think I managed to do that really well.
Today was also great because I had two students come see me for extra help. They are SO cute! One girl, a 9th grader, is from Honduras (just moved here 3 years ago) and wanted me to look at what she'd written so far for her short story, which was about her life in Honduras. What she wrote was so beautiful and touching--reminiscing about her grandmother throwing her surprise parties and big family dinners and vacations on the river. She definitely had lots of grammatical mistakes, especially with tenses, but I offered to meet with her regularly for extra help with this, which, as it happens, is actually a requirement for one of my classes at SFSU.
Also, two students didn't have their homework for me yesterday, and I talked to them both and they both had it for me today, which I was glad to see.
This is a crazy long post that ignores the tendonitis in my wrists, the prep I need to do for tomorrow (finish my assessment sheet for their story and prepare my lesson plans for next week in preparation for my weekly meeting with the mean master teacher tomorrow morning), and how badly I just want to go to sleep, even though it's only 8:30.
I do want to keep this blog current for myself (and all of you fans at home), and I feel like what I wrote above is what there was for me to say.
Lila tov
Today is only my fourth day, so I am clear that I am taking things way more seriously and personally than would probably be in anyone's best interest, and yet that is so.
Yesterday was a tough one. My first class (10th grade) went great--as it has each day so far. I don't know what it is about that class, exactly, but I feel super comfortable with those kids. They are such sweethearts and really great kids, and (not but) they definitely have lots of energy that could get out of control, but that's just how I like it. My 9th graders are timid and quiet and look at me like I'm a combination between a scary monster--too intimidating to ask a question to in front of the whole class or something--and an incompetent idiot.
So, in my 9th grade class, I hadn't explained something adequately on day 2 (I said it once and thought they got it, plus thought they would know this from previous classes, but they didn't), and nobody asked me any questions about it or indicated they were confused, which meant that on day 3, they didn't really do their homework properly and just gave me blank stares as I tried to put them in small groups to discuss what they'd done for homework (which I had not checked yet). Anyway, I suppose what happened was not a big deal and happens one way or another all the time in school--where a teacher didn't explain something well enough and then needs to backpeddle to explain further--but I feel like I got a little flustered since I really hadn't wanted to spend a long time on this point and felt some self-imposed pressure to move along since we have a lot to cover. I think if my master teacher hadn't been observing me, it wouldn't have been as big a deal to me, although she was actually really helpful. She even raised her hand to ask a question: "Could you give another example and write it on the board?" she asked. That was amazingly helpful. I somehow just don't think to write things down sometimes. But so the class was about to come to an end and I realized that the homework I had told them they'd have at the beginning of the class now wasn't totally appropriate, but I only had a minute to change my mind, and I wasn't thrilled with what I ended up telling them. I also forgot to tell them to bring their textbook with them the next day (today), which we actually wouldn't have gotten to today anyway, but I didn't know that at the time.
Anyway, today went really well. My mean master teacher (as I refer to her to friends) and I resolved the journal issue well yesterday, and I told the students today, and that went well. I told them I changed my mind and wouldn't be checking their journals, but their journals were still theirs to keep and my gift to them. One student asked cutely if they could count for extra credit, but I had to tell him no. I gave them some encouragement to write anyway, though, and told them I'd check in with them at various points about whether they were writing. But that went well. I had been concerned they might see my changing my mind as just another example of me not having my shit together, but I think I explained it well (and did so by not giving any reason whatsoever for why I had changed my mind).
I also knew yesterday that I'd need to bring my best game today to the 9th grade class to wrap up the confusion from yesterday's class and move on quickly, and I think I managed to do that really well.
Today was also great because I had two students come see me for extra help. They are SO cute! One girl, a 9th grader, is from Honduras (just moved here 3 years ago) and wanted me to look at what she'd written so far for her short story, which was about her life in Honduras. What she wrote was so beautiful and touching--reminiscing about her grandmother throwing her surprise parties and big family dinners and vacations on the river. She definitely had lots of grammatical mistakes, especially with tenses, but I offered to meet with her regularly for extra help with this, which, as it happens, is actually a requirement for one of my classes at SFSU.
Also, two students didn't have their homework for me yesterday, and I talked to them both and they both had it for me today, which I was glad to see.
This is a crazy long post that ignores the tendonitis in my wrists, the prep I need to do for tomorrow (finish my assessment sheet for their story and prepare my lesson plans for next week in preparation for my weekly meeting with the mean master teacher tomorrow morning), and how badly I just want to go to sleep, even though it's only 8:30.
I do want to keep this blog current for myself (and all of you fans at home), and I feel like what I wrote above is what there was for me to say.
Lila tov
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