Lessons Learned

When I was in high school Algebra was not my thing. I could not get the concept of FOIL to save my life. It’s not that I didn’t like math – I actually do – but the concepts and formulas never stayed in my brain long enough for my brain to translate anything into a language that made sense. When I took Algebra II two years later, though, things started clicking. FOIL made total sense and I kept thinking why couldn’t I understand it before? I have discovered over the years that this is how my brain works. I have to be taught things twice before they really cement in my head.

This has become very apparent to me during my student teaching. As awful as student teaching had been for me the first time around, I am now realizing all the mistakes I made and how some of them were really dumb. Like ending class five minutes early and then trying to get the students’ attention again right before the bell rang to give them their homework assignment. My CT kept telling me not to do it that way. Give them their assignments before you lose them but I couldn’t get it. I know this sounds like an incredibly stupid thing to do and now I realize it, too. For whatever reason, there were a lot of things that did not stick that first time around. I knew after that first experience that a lot of what went wrong was my fault, though the communication issues were largely not. I had so much to learn.

This second time around I have learned so much and a lot of it has to do with the fact that the first time went so horribly. NEVER give student free time. This is not just because your class room will dissolve into chaos but a teacher who gives a lot of free time is also seen by students as a teacher who doesn’t know what he/she is doing. This time around I give my students quick writes, usually with questions to think about in regards to the lesson and what they understood and things they learned. This does three things: lets the students really think about what they understand, lets you know what as a class they are not getting, AND gets the students to write. And it helps eat time at the end of a class. So four things. Four great things.

I have also learned that middle schoolers will not eat me alive as I was told they would. They will not walk all over me. I have also learned that teaching at a school that is made up of mostly struggling students is not where my talent lies nor is it something I particularly want to do. I wish I could be a better person and say I want to help students who are truly struggling but there you go. BUT I can say this knowing something VERY important: I am not good enough to work in that setting yet. I am very passionate and I know subject but I do not have the skills to work with students who are struggling in to the point of failing and also have behavior issues. My aunt taught special education for 30 years and she had the skills. I know one day I will be close to as awesome as she was but that day is not in the next year. Knowing what I cannot do has been just as helpful as knowing what I can’t do.

I have learned that I am a better teacher than I thought. I was ready to give up at the end of my undergraduate program. I have told people this and I don’t think they really believe me. I was in such an awful place that I had zero confidence in my ability. I thought I sucked at discipline which is why my students weren’t learning because there was always distraction in the classroom. But then I was helping with the summer drama program and I became the disciplinarian. What? The kids listened to me when I had to lay down the law but they still liked me. Now with my middle schoolers I find it’s the same thing. It also helps that my new CT has a defined discipline policy which my other CT did not. This makes all the difference in the world and I have already told him I am stealing it.

There is still a lot I am learning about myself and my teaching. This time around I have the support I lacked the first time and I feel freer to make mistakes and not feel like I am destroying America’s youth every time I don’t do something just right. I’ve actually been told by teachers who have subbed while I was teaching that I was really good and they could tell I would be a great teacher. One even said I was good with discipline! I have heard my new CT say to other teachers how well I handled filling in for him. Most of my students like me and were worried when I said I wouldn’t be back this year because they thought that meant the whole school year. I was touched and so happy that I would be missed.

Teaching is a learning process that never ends. Much like life. Yes, cliché but no less true.

Getting Older

Everyone gets older. Not a whole lot anyone do about it no matter how much Botox you use or plastic surgery you get. In the end, we’ll be pushing up daisies. I’ve been thinking a lot about getting older lately. At my house right now – I should say my family’s house – there is me, my parents, and my brother and sister-in-law. Under this one roof we have three different stages of life.

There’s me, the grad student who will soon be going out into the real world. I am not dating anyone but am perfectly happy to be that way until the right person comes along. I have a job at a retail store in the next town over. I have a car payment. Other than school, job, and a car I have no real responsibility in my house. I mean, I do the trash – most of the time – and do dishes, help clean the house but outside of chores I do not have to worry about paying rent, buying groceries, or even gas. Then you have my brother and sister-in-law. They have been married for little over a year now. They started out married life in Chicago and then because it’s hard to find jobs that also allow you to pursue your theatre passion – among other reasons – they ended up moving back here to live with us because my brother knew he would be able to find theatre work in the area. I’m not pretending to know everything about my brother and sister-in-law and the ins and outs of their marriage but this is the situation as far as I see it. This is not where they thought they would be right now. Watching the two of them, it seems clear to me they are unhappy, not to say that they mope about the house but like I said, this is not where they thought they would be after a year of marriage. My brother is looking at grad school now. The plan is to mot be here at the end of the year. And then there’s my parents who have been working for the last 30 years or so and are beginning to think about retiring. My dad is in his 60s and Mom is not too far away. They are beginning to think about retirement but with one child in grad school – which they are paying for – and another living at home as well, it would seem that is far in the future. My dad spends a lot of time being frustrated with his job. This is not to say that he doesn’t like his job but let’s just say retirement could not come too soon. My mom loves her job, loves what she does. It’s clear that neither of them thought they would be living with their daughter, son, and daughter-in-law in the same house at this point but for the most part they have been very supportive. There has been the occasional problem, mostly stemming from miscommunication. The big problem I see is that the five of us are all at different points in our lives. My parents have been adults for a long time, my brother and sister-in-law are adults but trying to figure out to be independent adults, and I’m an adult but not really quite there yet.

Added to this is the fact that my Mom’s mother is 88 years old. She lives in the one of the neighboring towns and while she lives on her own in an apartment she is very quickly getting to the point where living on her own will not be an option within the next few years. Physically, she is doing very well for 88. She has some circulation problems in her feet and is not as thin as she once was but overall not bad. Mentally is another issue. She’s been very depressed all of her life. Her childhood, while it makes for wonderful stories, was fairly traumatic and she never really got over it. She forgets what you tell her and then deny the conversation ever happen, which to her it did not. She goes to doctors’ appointments without my mother because she doesn’t want Mom to know how bad she is but then can’t remember what the doctor said exactly and usually has some story about how awful it was. She has changed doctors for various reasons, not all of them unfounded, ever since she moved down here about 10 years ago. She calls Mom at work every day, usually crying over something that is not the important but to her it is because right now her world is very small. She has a cat who she is convinced is losing weight but has in fact only dropped two ounces in the last year. It’s the healthiest cat I have ever seen and no cat is more loved. My mom has become the sole caretaker for my grandmother since my aunt and uncle had to move up north for business reasons. Every day Grandma asks when they’re coming back and every day we tell her that they will come back when they have done what they need to do but that answer is never good enough.

My dad’s parents are on the other spectrum of old age. While my grandfather is same age as my mom’s mother he both physically and mentally healthy. My dad’s mother has lost a ton of weight within the last decade and has helped my grandfather maintain a healthy lifestyle. My dad’s family has a history of heart problems and my grandfather has had two or three in his life. One was after he was told about my little brother dying which was very scary. My grandmother has battled breast cancer and has been healthy for over a decade. I am always amazed at how fabulous they look every time I see them. They are a very stark contrast to my mom’s mother.

All of this, my brother and sister-in-law, my grandparents, has made me think more and more about what exactly my plan for life is. I know I want to teach and write but the thought of even interviewing for a job terrifies me. Being financially responsible is not something that worries me believe it or not. Having a car payment has made me aware of this fact. I can handle it. Last year made me dread teaching, to the point where I was wondering whether or not it was something I could do. Now, while I am still not 100% sure of my ability, I feel like grad school is preparing far better than undergrad ever did. This is not to say that I didn’t have great teachers but senior year was rather horrible.

I remember thinking when I was little that I would never get to where I am right now. Being adult was so far in the future that it might as well never happen. Now I am here and I am surrounded by examples of what I have to look forward to when I get there. Even though I know there are difficult times to come I also know that good times are on the way, too. I realize I am further along than I thought I was. This realization brought on by people I have had classes with who are on the same track as me. I know I can do it. I am exercising again and after very horrible summer for me I am back on medication. I’m crazy or anything but when I started college I was about 75 pounds thinner than I am right now and realizing that was a wakeup call. My little depression was keeping me from being happy and healthy to the point that people were noticing, especially my mom who has always been more aware of me than I think. Thanks to my “happy pills” I have lost weight and begun exercising again. I started this blog with an entry about losing weight and I feel I am back where I began. Sometimes we have to start a few times before we really get going.

So I’m getting older. The people around me are getting older and while we are not all where we want to be, we’re getting there. One start at a time.

The Learning Cycle

My last post was about how I got to where I am now as far as my education in education was concerned. I have now been in the MAT program for close to a month and was beginning to get worried. I wasn't getting that sense of "I can do this!" that I had been hoping for and I realized part of the problem was I wasn't sure what I was hoping to get from the MAT. I mean, the big picture, yes, is how to teach middle school which I am getting because I have brilliant teachers. What I needed was not how to teach but how to plan to teach. One of the criticisms I got from my professor at the end of my student teaching last year was that I apparently had a "resistance to planning" that I was not aware I had. I felt I had done an enormous amount of planning what with lesson plans, picking stories, activities, etc. but this was not enough. What was she looking for? I never found out.

Today, though, today I found my "I get this!" moment. I may have found it sooner if I hadn't been putting it under so much pressure. Today in my Content Area Reading (READ) class our teacher modeled a lesson to explain what she had wanted us to take away from last week's class. A lot of my classmates had left confused. We've been talking about Disciplinary Literacy, which may be something that non-education folks don't know about so let me give you a quick definition as far as I know it: Disciplinary Literacy is basically using literature in all content areas, not just English. It's teaching a student how to read. The example I came up with was that a Math teacher is not teaching a student how to read but is teaching the student how to read Math. See the difference? I could but others not so much.

Back to today: our teacher modeled a lesson about Christopher Columbus. The lesson made sense to me and I enjoyed being a student student again, meaning not a student who will be a teacher but a student who is just a student. It makes sense if you're an education major. Anyway, the lesson was great but my "I get this!" moment happened at the end of the lesson when our teacher explained how she formulated the lesson. She handed out a sheet of paper with a diagram on it(I'll post a picture of it when I can get home and scan it). This simple diagram told me everything I had been doing wrong when student teaching. This was it! It was not that I hadn't been planning; it was that I had not been planning correctly! It was amazing. I began thinking about the few lessons I taught where the students were truly in a flow and looking at this diagram I realized why.

The basic idea if you follow the flow of the diagram is this: Prior Knowledge generates Purpose which directs Attention and Selects the New Information. The Students then Construct Meaning and create Understanding which then modifies their Prior Knowledge. In sentence form I don't think it has the same effect but you get the general idea.

I realized that my professor at the end of my student teaching had never really taught us how to plan. We were given a format - which can be very helpful - and told to create a lesson plan for a Gateway Activity. A Gateway Activity is basically something to get the students into a flow of learning, to get them into the lesson before you get to the meat of if. Most of us did well on this first lesson plan but as the semester went on and we pressed for more help with planning from - I'll call her - Dr. B we did not get much more than the format. My cooperating teacher, as you learned from my last post, was not too much help in this department after her medical emergency. I felt very much on my own and when I feel this way I have a habit of not getting help, not because I am too proud but because I am always afraid whoever I ask will tell me how I should know this already. I have a fear of appearing stupid to people in authority, to looking like I don't deserve to be where I am. Dr. B was one of those people that you were afraid to ask because you would get either a slightly helpful answer or get grilled on why you don't know how to do something and how she's questioning why she gave you such good grades in the past. This has happened before and it will happen again.

But my READ class today changed all that. I got it! At the moment I am no longer questioning whether or not I should be a teacher as I had been since last April. I couldn't believe how one piece of paper could change my whole life. I can do this! I feel like I have gone through a learning cycle of my own.

What comes next?

I was sitting in the University Center in G'ville waiting for my next class to start when I remembered I had this blog and had not written a coherent post in a while. So here goes: This is my second semester in Clemson's MAT program and over the course of the last semester I have been wondering if I am meant to teach. Over the last year I have thought over every failure I had student teaching and I have thought about all the obvious solutions to those problems I encountered. Things I should have done, things I knew I could have fixed.

Last semester was my first as a grad student. I quickly realized I had no idea how to be a grad student. There is a certain level of thinking that goes into this level of higher ed that I seem to be lacking in. Two of my professors suggested that maybe teaching English is not what I really have my heart in... and they would be right. Teaching was never my first choice when it came to careers. As long as I can remember - which is pretty far back - I have wanted to be a writer. I even have a novel going, a real novel with a real plot and a real ending. I have been working on this novel for the last year now and I am so close to finishing it.

The question I find I am asking myself these days is what am I doing? Is teaching what I want to do? I love the age group I want to teach - middle school - and I have worked with the age group before but when I was student teaching high school students I found a lot of the things I had enjoyed about school were all the things these students hated. I was getting good feedback from my teacher until she had a medical emergency. When she came back a week later after I had to teach all the classes on my own, usually without a sub in the room, her feedback became practically nonexistent and I could tell she was getting frustrated with me. Our conversations stopped leaving me empowered and left me thinking there was something she was not telling me. After the mid-terms she informed me that my lessons were boring - her words - and that she, me university supervisor, and my professor - who was also my adviser - were all concerned about the work I was doing. This had apparently been something they had all discussed with each other but not me. For a whole half a semester I had been doing something wrong and no one had told me. She also said that her students were not making the grades they should have been. Later it was discovered that she hadn't been putting the grades in correctly. Students who were making As were getting Fs on their report cards. I was close to tears after this conversation. I couldn't speak when she asked me if I had anything to say. What could I? She had made up her mind that I didn't belong in the classroom. She even said she thought that maybe I was not meant to be a teacher, although she tried to say it a little nicer than that.

I want my students to be as excited as I am about reading and writing. I want them to enjoy looking closer at a work of literature and taking it apart. Everyone else in my graduating class seemed to be able to inspire their kids to love whatever their unit was they were teaching. My end result was getting my students to write a short story and to understand what goes into crafting one. At the end of the year when my professor decided that maybe she should sit in on one of my lessons I had already finished my unit and my teacher and I had begun another unit that we were both really excited about teaching. After watching the lesson my professor told me that out of all the students in our class she had the highest expectations of me and that I had failed to meet them. My teacher defended me and I was grateful, if not a little surprised. She told my professor about one of the lessons where the students had really loved it.

We were reading "A Wife's Story" by Ursula K. LeGuin which is a werewolf story with a twist. We talked about what the students already knew werewolves: what they look like, what the transformation process was, what are their weaknesses, their enemies. Then we watched clips from famous werewolf movies like the old and new Wolfman movies, Twilight - not a fan but a good example of the transformation process- and Harry Potter. Then we talked about the differences in what we had seen and what we had already talked about at the beginning of class. Then we read the story. I broke it up into sections and after each section we stopped and discussed what we had just read. I wanted to make sure that when we got to the end everyone would be on the same page for the twist ending. The students loved it and talked about it days later. My B day kids came in excited about the story because they had heard about it from kids in my A day classes.

This was not good enough for my professor. I had decided after I had graded the test I gave that I had done a good job with the kids. I got wonderful stories at the end of the unit and the test scores were better than I had thought they would be. I still got an A in the course because my professor would never give anyone a B because that would reflect on her as well as us. Everyone got an A. Other students in my class - as well as years before us - felt like they had failed on some level as far as our professor was concerned. But we all got through it and came away having learned valuable lessons.

Now I am about to start the whole process all over again. I will begin observations this fall and then I will student teach for the last time a year from now. Since my student teaching experience a year ago I have realized a lot of the mistakes I made and have made notes about what to do the next time I run into a certain situation. I can only hope that going through the masters program will prepare better for what to expect. I have already been encouraged by what I have seen in my classes - all two of them that I have had - and I know I'll be ready this time.

And if I find myself getting overwhelmed again - and I'm sure I will - I will have a cup of tea, relax, and figure out what I'm doing wrong and what I can do better. Luckily for me, I have people around me now that will tell me what they think rather assuming I can read their mind. Communication is something I am always working on and feel it is one of my strong suits but getting people to communicate with me is another thing altogether.