Archive for Journal-related
23 February 2009
Posted in First year, Journal-related, Me, My class at 1:47 am by Miss Fox
I’ve been meaning to write. I’ve been meaning to tell about all the things – ALL THE THINGS – that have happened this year.
So much. Not enough time.
In fact, I’m in the middle of lesson planning for this week, and I really should get some sleep.
I’ve cried and yelled and nearly given up several times this year. Something is keeping me going, though…
And it’s not all bad – I love my students. I enjoy teaching a lot of the curriculum. But there is so much crap that has to be done. So much planning. So much bullshit that doesn’t matter. So much paperwork. So much ass kissing. So much… and not enough time, energy, or reward to make it all worth it.
Yet, somehow the net gain is positive. Somehow I keep getting up every day and going in. I keep smiling at my students and telling them how amazing they are. I keep planning. I keep grading. I just keep on going… I try to hang on to the positive and learn from the negative, and I just keep pushing myself to get through this year. Next year will be easier.
It seems that what attracts people to this blog continues to be the post I made concerning the sexualization of young girls. The search terms are sometimes alarming, really. I suppose I should make another controversial post to attract a new crowd of weirdos. I do want to post more often, but it’s really hard to fit everything in. Maybe I should try to make a regular schedule… where I post once a week or something. We’ll see.
I just have so much to share – so many ideas, so many successes, and so many failures. I have questions, too. Everyone with any sense knows teaching is hard work, but nothing can fully prepare you for it. Nothing. *whew*
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22 April 2008
Posted in Journal-related, My education, Student teaching, Students at 8:32 am by Miss Fox
So, I’m finishing up my student teaching, this week. Wow.
It’s been a long, hard year – and I’ve accomplished quite a bit. I wish I had documented more as I went, but I had a hard enough time keeping my head above water. Maybe over the next couple weeks I’ll be able to reflect upon my experiences and give you all an idea of what it was like.
I wish I had updated with at least a little blurb every day. I didn’t because I thought it would be annoying to just get a few sentences of “kids say the damnedest things,” but they really do. I did keep a written journal here and there, so maybe I will post some of that.
Over the summer I hope to teach summer camp at a local science center, so I will update on that experience as well as the “job hunt.” I have some places in mind, and have been to a job fair, but I haven’t seriously started hunting. That starts next week.
I’m going to miss these kids. Maybe more than I will any future classes… they’ve taught me so much about myself. I intend to visit periodically before their year ends in June.
I can’t believe that I will be graduating in exactly 20 days. It’s been a journey, and I hope you’re willing to follow along to the next one!
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14 October 2007
Posted in Journal-related, Me, My education, Student teaching at 1:53 pm by Miss Fox
I do apologize for not being very good at updating. I doubt I have any regular readers (it’s hard to have regular readers when you don’t have regular contributions), but in case you are out there, I am sincerely sorry.
My hope was to update weekly with my student teaching escapades for the week, but that hasn’t happened because… well, because life happened, instead.
My mother passed away in September, and I’ve been trying to catch up from that. I’m okay, and things are generally fine with school and teaching and all, but updating this journal has been rather low on the priority list as a result.
There are so many things to share, though – I’ve taught a lesson that went really well (I want to post the lesson plan), I’m working on a special case study that is both heartbreaking and eye opening, I’m getting ready to teach another lesson on Wednesday, my methods courses are proving tedious and only slightly useful, and I went to a math conference that was simultaneously boring and helpful and extremely crowded.
I’m growing as a teacher, and I can feel some exciting changes taking place in the way I think and plan and work with children. I am starting to feel like a responsible adult, and teaching is more and more becoming second nature to me.
Please, if you haven’t given up on me, yet, don’t. I truly appreciate your interest and input, and am anxious to offer what little knowledge I have, as well.
Thank you.
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15 August 2007
Posted in Journal-related, Me, My education, Student teaching at 7:08 pm by Miss Fox
In less than a week, I will be sitting down with my teacher, planning for the coming year. I am very excited about this. Summer camp was a classroom management nightmare, so I hope to pick up a lot of tips from classes and my student teaching experience.
What I know so far: I’ll be student teaching in first grade, with a fairly experienced teacher. Based on the Kindergarten class from last year, the class size will be large (possibly 26 students!), but they had less behavior problems than the first graders last year, so it might not be too bad. My teacher seems eager to help me, and willing to let me take over where comfortable. I’m glad I’ll be with her in the beginning, since it will make the class feel a bit more like mine.
So, there will probably be many posts on my actual experiences in the coming year, and I’ll likely be begging for advice on occasion. 
Hopefully, I’ll be able to do some current-event type posting, as well… my intention for this blog was never to be completely about me, but about the world of education in general, too. I’ve got lots of things I want to write about, I just have to find the time to sit down and write about them. Feedback would be awesome!
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14 July 2007
Posted in Journal-related, My education, Special needs, Students at 8:17 pm by Miss Fox
First, the apology: it’s been quite a while since I’ve made a post. That makes me a bad, bad journal-writer. I’ve been busy with work and summer school – there is no shortage of things I want to post about, rather a shortage of time with which to prepare decent posts. I hate the idea of slapping half-assed, unresearched posts up here just for the sake of posting. So, I do hope that you will forgive the lull. I’m hoping it will start picking up.
Now, for the subject at hand.
Last night I went to a low-key party at a friend’s house. Before you get all excited, there were board games involved – I suppose a more appropriate term would be “get-together”, but none of this is truly important. One of my friends, K, is a teaching assistant (elementary school), and something she said to me struck me as odd and frightening at the same time.
We were talking about summer school, and she says, “Oh, yeah! My teacher from last year is teaching summer school this summer, and I ran into her, yesterday. I asked her how it was going and she says, ‘I have seventeen kids and none of them are on medication!’ All I could think was, ‘Should they be? You had 22 last year and none of them were on medication, either…’”
K also found this teacher’s statement odd, and just kind of ended the conversation with her. She went on to explain that this is a first year teacher, who was inconsistent and never really handled discipline or communication with families her entire first year of teaching. K, the teaching assistant, did all of that for her.
Because of things like this, and other reasons, K left that school and will be a teaching assistant at a very small (80 kids) elementary school next year.
This caused me to react in several different ways:
(1) What are they teaching people at East Carolina University (from where the teacher graduated) about special needs kids, classroom management, and family communication? (I’ve heard great things about ECU’s school of education from many different people, and am guessing that this person is an exception to her peers.)
(2) Why do people still assume it’s their students that are the problem when they have issues in the classroom? And why is the hoped-for outcome medicated students? What ever happened to thinking, “Hmm… my students aren’t doing well and going crazy… perhaps I should change what I’m doing.”
(3) Why is it okay to abuse your teaching assistant by letting/making them do all the classroom management? This teacher is going to be in a world of trouble next year, when she has to do all of that stuff herself.
(4) Speaking of that, why don’t school of education programs mention teaching assistants? I just realized that I have not once learned what a teaching assistant is actually supposed to do. I can guess, based on prior experience, but isn’t that kind of important? Shouldn’t I be learning how to properly utilize my teaching assistant, if I get one? They’re kind of a mystery to me.
Anyway, just some observations… some of which have been rolling around in my head for some time, but came to the surface last night. I hope to develop a more detailed, researched post about students on medication in the future, but didn’t have time to do that, tonight.
I hope you are all well.
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26 April 2007
Posted in Journal-related, Me, My education, Student teaching at 1:49 am by Miss Fox
I feel bad for not keeping things up around here, lately. School is coming to a close, and due dates are flying at me like crazy monkeys. It’s just as scary as it sounds. truly. I just finished the big project for the semester, and have a few papers to write and two take home exams to complete by the end of next week. I can do it, but goodness knows it’s been frustrating and exhausting.
I also have my student teaching information – I’ve been placed with 1st graders at the same school at which I student taught this semester. I met my teacher on Tuesday, and she seems amazing. I truly can’t wait!
I have so much more swimming around in my head, but it is late, and I’m so ready to go to bed. More soon, I promise – there is never a shortage of things to say!
Side note: I’ve been checking up on the search terms that are leading people to my journal, and it’s kind of an entertaining little mix of things, now. It used to be mostly about sex and little girls (gross times infinity!), because of my post about the sexualization of little kids. Now, people are finding me for good things – some have even searched specifically for my journal. It makes me happy. That is all.
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10 April 2007
Posted in Journal-related, Me, My education, Student teaching at 6:50 pm by Miss Fox
It’s time for a little bio…
I knew I wanted to be a teacher in high school; the decision being a result of my own education, experiences with (good and bad) teachers, and many other things. Shortly after I made this decision, my high school offered a class for people like me that involved going to a local elementary school for an hour every day. I took this class for three semesters, working with 2nd, 3rd, and 5th graders – it was a great experience, and I’m fortunate that my school had the resources to offer it as an elective.
Teaching Fellows was introduced to me during high school, as well, and I applied for the highly competitive scholarship, not expecting to get it. Not only did I receive the award, which (at the time) provided $26,000 over four years to 400 recipients in North Carolina per year, but I got it for one of the most competitive schools, UNC Chapel Hill. Thus, when I graduated high school in 2001, I was kind of an elite member of the education community. I’m not saying this to make myself sound awesome – I’m often still surprised when I think about it. Mostly, I’m just giving some background.
In college, as part of the UNC Teaching Fellows program, I was in the classroom for an hour every week my freshman year, and about 3 hours a week sophomore year. Junior year, I entered the UNC School of Education, and began my professional coursework. Unfortunately, the strain of school and a job I’d taken on my sophomore year, in addition to my inner struggle with depression, anxiety disorder, and ADHD, caused me to falter toward the end of my junior year, and I dropped the semester and took two years off of school.
That two years, in many ways, would prove to be the least productive, and most boring and horrible years of my short life, to date. I did not work with children. At all. I worked two retail jobs at the mall, which sometimes meant back-to-back 12 hour days (with random 15-30 minute breaks) during Christmas. I was yelled at, broke, tired, and made to feel inferior for not being a sleazy salesperson. To put it simply, it sucked. A lot. Even when I got a better job, it still wasn’t what I wanted to do.
So I came back to school last fall, and am currently finishing up the previously dropped semester of my junior year. I’m happy to report that I’ve got, at the lowest, a B average this semester. And, while it was certainly strange to come back into the classroom (to the classes I was taking and the classes I was teaching), it felt like home. I felt like I knew what I was doing, that was where I was supposed to be. All the worries that I might not be able to do it, that I might fail, again, or not cut it in the classroom have melted away.
I find myself thinking like a teacher much more than I ever have – I dream about it, I jump out of bed in the middle of the night to jot down ideas that keep me awake, I think about teaching with (nearly) everything I do – I even blog about it.
I’m excited about teaching, again. Student teaching starts next year – I’ll have the same class all year, one full day a week in the fall and every day in the spring. I find myself anxious to find out in which grade and school I’ll be, so I can start thinking about what I’ll be teaching.
I find myself assuming the position.
And I like it.
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5 April 2007
Posted in Controversy, Journal-related, Religion, Theocracy at 4:46 pm by Miss Fox
Many do it, anyway. Because we’re fed up and we want honesty in our government, again. But – there is a movement. One that I will be joining with my insignificant internet presence.
I encourage anyone else who would prefer to go back to the good old separation of state and church that we are promised by our Constitution to write about it this weekend. I will be.
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4 April 2007
Posted in Journal-related at 2:58 pm by Miss Fox
So, I’ve decided to allow anyone to comment. I did this because I understand why people don’t want to have to register. We’ll see if I have trouble with Spam comments – in which case, I’ll see what other things I can do to prevent it. I’m even allowing anonymous commenting.
So, comment. Lots.
(You can still register, but you don’t have to.)
Edited at 7:33pm to add: Your first comment will go to moderation, don’t worry – after I approve a comment from you, you should be able to leave comments after that without moderation. If you notice that you’re leaving comments and they’re not being posted, send me an email at: owner [at] starwidget [dot] net.
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21 March 2007
Posted in Journal-related at 10:38 pm by Miss Fox
First of all, I’ve updated the rules and added a little blurb about me.
So, the biggest change is that I’m no longer concerned with the kid-friendliness of the journal. I decided that I didn’t want to censor myself, or others, when there are so many things I want to discuss on here that aren’t kid-friendly.
Also, I’d really like to be part of community of teachers that have online journals. Not only because none of my friends read this, but also because I’d love input from others in the field. So, if anybody knows of an educators “blogring” or other such place, do point me in that direction, please.
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