BACK ON THAT SCHOOLWAGON, Y'ALL. It's nice to get back into the swing of school and learning and teaching and all that jazz, but I feel like I'm starting from scratch a little on my blogpostin' style. I should force myself to blog more than just once a week because I know it's a good habit--I tend to internalize bits and pieces of teaching thoughts that I always forget to record anywhere. Plus, I could reduce the monstrous size of the callous on my right hand.
So, anyway, I'm enjoying the Christenbury book on "Being and Becoming a Teacher of English Language Arts." Parts of the introductory chapters seem a little basic--like, I'm pretty sure I can figure out that I need to eat food at certain times of the day--but I really appreciate her inclusion of the thoughts of actual student teachers. She doesn't try to gloss over any parts of the teaching experience, and she admits that it's both exhausting and exhilarating. When the author mentioned times that she confronted school violence, it was a little scary but also a necessary reality check. I mean, this stuff will happen--you'll get knocked into, intentionally or not--so new teachers need to understand that this is an aspect of being around people approximately the same size as you. I mean, I almost got knocked over by a 7th grader last week. Seriously.
The chapter that I want to discuss the most is the one on "Those Whom We Teach." Christenbury notes that in order to be a teacher, you actually have to like young people. And to like young people, you kind of have to understand where they're coming from. She included a study down by the National Center for Educational Statistics from 2004 that found four factors that characterized difficulty in school achievement: a household income below poverty level, a primary language other than English at home, a mother with an education less than a high school diploma, and a single parent household. After getting to know my students from last semester, I would say that most of them dealt with at least two of those factors. And despite these factors, I know that those students have the ability to succeed, as long as they are encouraged by a positive school environment and teachers who believe in their ability to succeed. In addition, the author's notes on alienated students really hit home with my high school experience. I remember having three tracks: honors/AP, college prep, and regular. Now, the titles of these tracks were a little inflated, because regular usually meant that you would prepare for a vocational career (or, in the eyes of staff and my peers, try to simply graduate), and honors/AP actually meant that you were preparing to go to college. So what did that mean for the "college prep" track? They certainly weren't the focus of guidance counselors who were preparing the honors track to get into college, and they didn't have the advantage of being able to leave school early to go to a vocational internship like the regular track did. I guess the college prep track, or really, average track, had to figure out their futures all by themselves.
The "alienated average" is a really interesting concept that I hadn't thought of before. My experiences last semester were in remedial classes, and my prior experience of teaching composition at a university would probably equate to teaching a honors class in high school. However, this semester, I am mostly engaging with those "average" students (there's a pre-AP class even in 8th grade; that seems a little like overkill). And so far, it seems that my CT is amazing at engaging all of her students. Even the librarian, on library day, was able to engage with all of them! Something's in the water at Ojeda, and I'm trying to drink it up.
P.S. The classroom set-up that my CT has goin' on is amazing. There's lots of round tables with chairs, a couch, papasan chairs, window seats (!), and rugs. I'm sure that it depends on the space that you have and what your school will allow, but it's my dream classroom. I know that doesn't actually have to do with anything, but it's a far cry from the classroom last semester, where we had to cram in extra desks during certain periods, and kids were sitting on top of each other. And windows! Did I mention real windows??
No comments:
Post a Comment