With two real weeks of teaching left this semester, I’m both
relieved and sad at the same time. I
mean, I (mostly) love all of my students, and I definitely want to see where
they’re going and how they’re doing in the future, but the business of student
teaching is definitely a difficult endeavor.
I’m not going to pretend like I’ve had it that bad, since my CT is
definitely one of the best teachers I’ve worked with and he’s given me a lot of
free reign to try out different things and be myself in the classroom. (Also, I got a really sweet thank you note from one of my seniors since I helped her with several college essays...it doesn't seem like a lot, but it's the little things that make me feel appreciated.) Still, I think it’s always tough to balance
out with another teacher on a daily basis as well as trying to assert your
teacher-ness. That sounds silly, but my
name isn’t over the door. (Technically,
neither is my CT’s, since it was his wife’s old room and he doesn’t want to
change it. But at least his name is on
their schedule.)
And I’m also planning for a future that I’m not going to be
a part of. If you’re planning with the
end in mind, it kind of throws your game off when you know you won’t be there
for the end. Also, we just have
different styles. I think that we’re
very similar when it comes to temperament with students and our level of care
and involvement, but we ultimately have different goals and conversations in
mind that we want our students to get at.
Maybe it’s the perfect situation, since they’re getting to experience a
variety of approaches to English Language Arts.
This is all to say that while it’s been a blast, I will really enjoy
some down time to reflect on my semester at the end of the month.
As for reading material for this week, I’m in a book club
with Christine, and we’re reading What’s
the Big Idea? by Jim Burke.
Christine did the dirty work of finding the book, but I’m really into
what he has to say about question-driven units and teaching. In the introductory chapter, he goes into a
lot of background for why these critical units are more necessary than ever,
and I was really getting pumped up for the rest of the book. Now, I haven’t finished it yet, but I was a
little disappointed in the actual “unit suggestions” chapters. Basically, Burke will discuss a specific kind
of unit that he’s taught around different types of inquiry projects. However, he mostly focuses on work that he’s
accomplished with AP English IV students.
While this is definitely a valid class to focus on for some teachers, I
think it’s highly unlikely that we will teach very many of these classes until
much later in our careers. (And that’s
obviously a personal issue because many other teachers may need examples for
these kinds of classes.) Also, he does
an entire chapter on teaching Crime and
Punishment. Really?? I know he wants them to read it because it’s
a difficult text, but geeze. I can think
of so many other texts that are difficult but seem a lot less like slogging
through muck just to get to the other side.
Still, there are some helpful tools that Burke presents,
such as his list of types of questions to begin good dialogue, and I’m looking
forward to the chapter on meaningful conversations. I do think it’s difficult for students to
know what kinds of questions to ask about a text, and I’ve found myself
(especially in my poetry unit) doing some really heavy-handed steering. I’m also excited to use Burke’s tools in
guiding some discussions of short stories that my juniors will be doing in the
next couple of weeks. I’m hoping to get
them to this “big idea” realm before I leave so that they remember that the
point of ELA is not just annotating texts but having authentic conversations
about them.
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