Today marks exactly a month until I gradute with a degree in Secondary Education - English. Before that happens I still have to get in some of my study abroad paperwork, send my school my AP English scores that should already have but I'm trying not to get upset about it, finish my final essay porject for student teaching, and put together my ADEPT presentation. It may seem like a short list but in actuality each task - with the exception of the first two because otherwise I don't graduate - is going to take me until the end of April to complete and it's summertime... and the nothing.
Currently I am looking for a summer job. Most of my friends seem to have their summers lined up but student teaching has been taking up so much of my time that I haven't been able to give it much thought until now. I have put out some feelers for a couple of things I would really like to do but both of those emails have basically been asking for each group to invent a job for me. I know the groups well enough that this isn't as incredibly presumptous as it may sound. They are both groups I have worked with before but in the past I have had a smaller role in the organization and now I want to be more involved 1) because I like both of these groups and want to continue working with them and 2) I need a job that will carry me through at least most of the summer. I could have applied to be a summer RA at my univerisy but I still haven't actually sent in my application to the graduate school. That will happen tomorrow.
I'm not really sure what the point of this post is now that I have written out a whole two paragraphs. I think what it boils down to is that I'm stressed about what's next. I haven't even finished my undergrad and already I'm worres about what the summer will hold. I have had a summer job since the summer before my sneior year in high school and not having a job is not an option but I want it to be something that will look good on a resume and that I'll enjoy. This is going to be hard I relize. It seems that few people these days are working in a job they actually enjoy but I plan on always doing something that will help me further what I want to do. This means teaching or writing.
With that said, I need a job and there will come a point where I just have a get a job, any job, that will carry me through the summer.
And then there's writing. This summer would also be a great opportunity to do some serious writing. I have a feeling a writing schedule of some sort will need to be set up. I would love to set the goal of having the novel done by the end of the summer and then begin editing once the fall semester starts up.
Ok, since this blog is becoming increasingly pointless, with no real insights to give on my part, I am going to end it. Maybe later I will be able to write a post explainging what I had wanted to say in this one.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Observations of a Student Teacher
I have begun my student teaching here in upstate South Carolina. I have been paired up with a wonderful cooperating teacher who shares my enthusiasm for teaching. The school I’ve been placed in is in the county seat but is probably the school that has the lowest test grades of all the school in the county. Most students won’t go on to college and a large percentage will drop out and either get their GED or go into a job where a high school diploma. Most of the ones who drop out are most likely young girls who have gotten pregnant – if my tenth grade English classes are any indication – during their tenth grade year. The sad truth is that South Carolina education is quickly falling by the way side. Our Governor seems to be too busy jetting off to Argentina on the taxpayers dime to notice. Our Lt. Governor isn’t much better. When speaking about children on the free and reduced lunch program offered in our state he was quoted as saying "My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals," Bauer told a Greenville-area crowd. "You know why? Because they breed." Sounds like something out of ‘A Modest Proposal’, right? The worst part is that I have heard teachers at this school talking about how they agreed with that statement.
*EDIT: Here is the full quote. "My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed! You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better."
Education in this state is rough and it takes teachers who are willing to work with the students to get them to pass even just your class. The best advice I have been given by my cooperating teacher has been to stay out of the teachers’ lounge. Wiser words have rarely been spoken. This does not mean that you never go socialize with other teachers because hearing others’ experiences will help you when you come up against a similar situation; however – and this is a big however – you have to ignore the teachers who have nothing but negative things to say about their jobs and their students. Today was a perfect example of that. I went in to make copies – the first time I have done so on my own and I could not for the life of me figure out how to use the damn thing – and there was a group of about six or seven teachers in the lounge talking about teaching at this school is bringing themselves down as people. One teacher thought her student teacher was talking down to her students by asking them if they knew what the word ambition meant. I happened to know who her student teacher was and also knew that she was teaching Macbeth, a play in which ambition is a key theme. Asking them about ambition did not seem like a stretch to start a discussion about it. There was also a math teacher who was complaining that her students didn’t know how to “enter exponents in their damn calculators.” To be honest I had trouble learning how to use my damn calculator when I graduated from a four function to a TI-83. I don’t know how the teacher taught them t enter it but if I was her I would have another quick crash course on how to do it. I remember it not being that hard but still having to ask fellow students the first few times before it stuck.
Now that I’ve said that I do want to say that at this school I feel like there are more teachers who do like teaching than ones that don’t. This is a comforting thought to be sure.
The students here are very different from the students I went to high school with just thirty minutes down the road. My high school was half university brats – I count myself among them – and half good ole boys and girls who wore shirts with the Confederate flag on them. At this school – the one I am student teaching at – most students where camo everyday either on clothing or backpacks and the Confederate flag on belt buckles. My brother pointed out to me that what we think of as the Confederate flag is actually the Battle Flag of the Army of North Virginia. He told me that next time I saw someone where that to ask them if they were from Northern Virginia and who they were fighting. My brother is also a smart ass, if you hadn’t noticed.
The point of this side story is that these students are different than what I am used and yet still familiar. These are true southern kids. Most people who have heard of this school would say these kids aren’t worth teaching and that it’s a waste of my time to think about teaching in a public school period. I disagree. I have been so surprised by some of the students I have had.
There is one kid, Jake, who is your stereotypical country boys. I had my students write advice poems after reading Neil Gaiman’s poem “Instructions” and like most of the boys in my classes Jake wrote his on hunting. Then when we began our short story unit we read “October in the Chair” by the same author and I had my students write an alternate ending to the story. Jake’s ending blew me away and when the class voted on whose ending was the best Jake’s ending won. He had spent about twenty minutes on an assignment that was only suppose to be ½ to 1 page long. He is not my only student like this. There are at least a few in every class I am teaching right now. These students are the ones who make me realize that teaching in a public is worth it because these kids are not ones who would ever be able to afford – even with vouchers – to go to a private school.
These are just some early thoughts I have had about my student teaching experience. I realize to most I sound like the typical green English teacher who wants to save the world. I don’t want to save the world. All I want is to help my corner of it.
I will leave you with a quote of my own to counter the one from our Lt. Governor.
"We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today." - Stacia Tauscher
*EDIT: Here is the full quote. "My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed! You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better."
Education in this state is rough and it takes teachers who are willing to work with the students to get them to pass even just your class. The best advice I have been given by my cooperating teacher has been to stay out of the teachers’ lounge. Wiser words have rarely been spoken. This does not mean that you never go socialize with other teachers because hearing others’ experiences will help you when you come up against a similar situation; however – and this is a big however – you have to ignore the teachers who have nothing but negative things to say about their jobs and their students. Today was a perfect example of that. I went in to make copies – the first time I have done so on my own and I could not for the life of me figure out how to use the damn thing – and there was a group of about six or seven teachers in the lounge talking about teaching at this school is bringing themselves down as people. One teacher thought her student teacher was talking down to her students by asking them if they knew what the word ambition meant. I happened to know who her student teacher was and also knew that she was teaching Macbeth, a play in which ambition is a key theme. Asking them about ambition did not seem like a stretch to start a discussion about it. There was also a math teacher who was complaining that her students didn’t know how to “enter exponents in their damn calculators.” To be honest I had trouble learning how to use my damn calculator when I graduated from a four function to a TI-83. I don’t know how the teacher taught them t enter it but if I was her I would have another quick crash course on how to do it. I remember it not being that hard but still having to ask fellow students the first few times before it stuck.
Now that I’ve said that I do want to say that at this school I feel like there are more teachers who do like teaching than ones that don’t. This is a comforting thought to be sure.
The students here are very different from the students I went to high school with just thirty minutes down the road. My high school was half university brats – I count myself among them – and half good ole boys and girls who wore shirts with the Confederate flag on them. At this school – the one I am student teaching at – most students where camo everyday either on clothing or backpacks and the Confederate flag on belt buckles. My brother pointed out to me that what we think of as the Confederate flag is actually the Battle Flag of the Army of North Virginia. He told me that next time I saw someone where that to ask them if they were from Northern Virginia and who they were fighting. My brother is also a smart ass, if you hadn’t noticed.
The point of this side story is that these students are different than what I am used and yet still familiar. These are true southern kids. Most people who have heard of this school would say these kids aren’t worth teaching and that it’s a waste of my time to think about teaching in a public school period. I disagree. I have been so surprised by some of the students I have had.
There is one kid, Jake, who is your stereotypical country boys. I had my students write advice poems after reading Neil Gaiman’s poem “Instructions” and like most of the boys in my classes Jake wrote his on hunting. Then when we began our short story unit we read “October in the Chair” by the same author and I had my students write an alternate ending to the story. Jake’s ending blew me away and when the class voted on whose ending was the best Jake’s ending won. He had spent about twenty minutes on an assignment that was only suppose to be ½ to 1 page long. He is not my only student like this. There are at least a few in every class I am teaching right now. These students are the ones who make me realize that teaching in a public is worth it because these kids are not ones who would ever be able to afford – even with vouchers – to go to a private school.
These are just some early thoughts I have had about my student teaching experience. I realize to most I sound like the typical green English teacher who wants to save the world. I don’t want to save the world. All I want is to help my corner of it.
I will leave you with a quote of my own to counter the one from our Lt. Governor.
"We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today." - Stacia Tauscher
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