Archive for Student teaching
29 April 2007
Posted in Me, My education, Student teaching at 6:11 pm by Miss Fox
As a lovely parting gift, my fourth graders put together advice they have for new teachers. Some of it is surprisingly good advice, though I loved it all. (* are next to the ones I really liked):
“Don’t give homework on Fridays.”
“Don’t YELL at your students, or they won’t like you!”
“Treat your children nicely.”
“Try to give secret words on the board so the kids can earn prizes.”
“Do funny activities with your kids.”
“Get class pets, like hamsters or snakes or fish.”*
“Do something really, really special once every month, like having a picnic outside the classroom.”*
“Pick up trash every week outside.”
“Don’t make up really stupid rules.”
“Even if they haven’t earned all the letters for a prize, maybe give them a little treat one time every two months.”*
“Learn very exciting lessons.” (by one of my ESL students)
“Have longer recess time. Like 40 minutes.”
“Make two rules that kids hate. Like not having any F-U-N.”
“Don’t let your kids make announcements.”
“Pay your kids to learn.”
“Do a funny dance once a year in front of the class.”*
“Torture your kids with a song every day.”
“Make learning F-U-N-N-Y… minus the N-Y.”
“If your students aren’t listening, threaten to hang them up by their toes.”*
“Don’t kiss your students.”
“Let your students have free time.”
“At the end of the year, take a picture with your class to remember them by.”*
“Make some puppets and let your class make an interesting play.”
“Sometimes, give homework that they will look forward to.”*
“Have a pizza party at the end of the year.”
“Give your kids jobs to do like teacher’s helper and messenger.”
“Read a book to your students.”*
“Pay attention to your kids.”*
“Give this homework: Play two video games designed by the same person, and compare them.”*
“Let your kids learn a lot.”
“Play with your kids at recess.”*
“At the end of the year, have a dance contest.”
“Tell your kids that even when it’s too hard, to never give up.”*
“The class pet should be a cockatoo.”
“Have show and tell each week.”
“Don’t let your kids go to the bathroom in the middle of class.”
“Torture your kids by talking about water when they have to go to the bathroom.”
“If kids aren’t paying attention, whack them in the head with a marker!”
I’m gonna miss these kids.
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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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15 April 2007
Posted in Me, My education, Student teaching at 2:43 pm by Miss Fox
So, if you read this entry, you already know a bit about my history.
And you’ll understand why I’ve caught every cold that’s come my way since I got back in the classroom - two years away from kids really does make a difference. I want my teacher immune system to pick up. I think it’s getting better, as I don’t have it nearly as bad as my boyfriend. I don’t even think this one came from my kids, but I am damned tired of getting sick.
I should check the mail… I don’t know if they’ve mailed the student teaching information, yet, but I’m dying to know where I’ll be next year. But, checking the mail requires going all the way to campus (15 minute bike ride, 5 minute drive), and I’m sick. And it’s raining. Tomorrow…
This semester is wrapping up, and I’m so excited to be that much closer to graduation. I just need to figure out where in North Carolina I want to teach. Anybody have any suggestions? I went to the education job fair on campus, and wasn’t really impressed with anywhere. I’m tempted to close my eyes and point. *sigh* Such a big decision and no real help to make it… guess I’d better spend the summer doing research so I can start sending résumés out.
I applied for a job working at the Morehead Planetarium and Science Center. Keep your fingers crossed for me - I’ve worked there before and it was a blast. Pay isn’t much, but I don’t care. I’d rather get paid a little less to do something I enjoy.
I do need the money, though. *sigh* When will I be salaried? I can’t wait to know how much money I’ll have month to month…
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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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3 April 2007
Posted in Lesson plans, Social studies, Student teaching at 11:48 am by Miss Fox
So, not all my posts are angry rants about the world - sometimes, good things happen, too.
A couple things you should know (or be reminded of):
(1) I’m a student teacher, working with a fourth grade class. My teaching assignment this semester is to teach an integrated social studies lesson to my class. Integrated means it should include elements from other content areas (specifically literacy and the arts). I have a partner to work with, and we have to plan the entire lesson and teach it by ourselves. Totally awesome and exciting, and something we should do more often.
(2) In the fourth grade in good ol’ North Carolina, social studies revolves around the state. And only the state. Period. If it doesn’t deal with NC, it’s not taught. Social studies, itself, is often skimped on because it’s not tested - so a lot of kids don’t learn much of anything about social studies, ever.
Government being the most boring topic (others include geography, Native Americans, pirates, etc), we had a tough time thinking of ways to get the information to them without boring the crap out of them.
Originally, I wanted to go over the branches and such, and then do a mock election - the kids could make posters and give speeches (hello, art and literacy!) and they would get to learn the voting process. I still think it’s a good idea, particularly for state government, since a lot of kids that know what an election is think you just vote for the president. To have them run for governor or mayor would give them both insight on the election process and the executive branch, as well as awareness of voting for local officials. Alas, our teacher thought it was beyond them (I really think, in this case, she is selling them short - though she is a great teacher), and decided a mock debate would be better.
So, on Tuesday we taught them the branches of North Carolina government. We started by going over what they already knew (mostly dealing with the federal government) and questions they had, then showed them a Powerpoint slide as we explained the branches:
Sadly, it was really hard to find pictures to put in my slide, so that picture of the justices is Maine’s Supreme Court. Ours doesn’t have a group photo - must not be how they roll. Regardless, the kids seemed to understand (for the most part). We did a short activity to explain the concept of checks and balances, and then we closed by having them all write down issues that they might want to debate next week. It went really really well.
The next day we were there (Thursday), we assigned their groups and gave them their issues (”we should stop cutting down trees”, “pools should be open in the spring”, and “we should be given more challenging homework”). They got started on the research and everyone seemed excited! Score!
Today, Tuesday, we did the debate - and every group had great ideas on both sides. We had to cut off the kids for time, and we were worried they’d run out of things to say! The class voted on each issue (21-3 to stop cutting down trees, 20-4 to open pools in the spring, and 14-10 in favor of more challenging homework), and we talked about majority and tied the debate into lawmaking and such.
There are lots of things we could have done better - we should have tied government in a bit better at the beginning, gone over the logistics a bit more, etc, but overall the lesson went so so much better than expected. AND, after revising it a bit, I’d love to put it online somewhere (because there are NO good NC lessons online, since it’s only taught in North Carolina.)
We taped the first and last lessons, and I’m currently putting them on my laptop so I can watch them and edit them into a nice video for the class (maybe) or at least my teacher and professor.
Rock on, happy lesson time!
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24 March 2007
Posted in Controversy, Feminism, Sex, Student teaching at 11:28 pm by Miss Fox
This is an old argument - the sexualization of little girls. Where does it come from? Why is it encouraged? How can we stop it?
A quiz on PBS (“Is Love in Our DNA?”) referencing another article (named below), makes a good point:
Beautiful young women are sexually attractive to men because beauty and youth are closely linked with fertility and reproductive value. In evolutionary history, males who were able to identify and mate with fertile females had the greatest reproductive success … A 14-year-old woman has a higher reproductive value than a 24-year-old woman, because her future contribution to the gene pool is higher on average.
–David Buss, “The Strategies of Human Mating,” American Scientist, 1994
It’s not a pleasant thought, but if you think about it scientifically, it makes sense. A 14 year old girl is (typically) sexually mature… in nature, that’s usually good enough. So, if you look at it that way, it’s pretty much going against nature to say being attracted to young girls is wrong.
Does this mean we need to encourage it? Of course, not. It’s an evolutionary thing that has, like pinky toes and the appendix, become obsolete in the human race. Why? It’s not like we’re hurting for people, here - there is no immediate, urgent need to perpetuate the species. So, while there are reasons why men are attracted to younger females, there aren’t really any good reasons to act on it.
So, then, we tend to view men with this attraction as evil predators. While I agree that men who actively pursue underage girls against their will are wrong, I do have issues with this. It’s perfectly natural for men to be attracted to young girls. It’s how they act (or don’t act) on that attraction that makes the difference.
Dressing little girls up in “sexy” clothes and putting all the responsibility on men is a problem. Again, there are some men that actively pursue young girls… but the girls aren’t always innocent in the matter. Today, I heard a story about a group of fifth grade girls who saw their teacher’s IM window, in which she had been talking to her boyfriend during downtime. A few days later, said teacher gets a call from her boyfriend, asking her who all these girls are who are IMing him. Apparently, they were having a sleepover, and one of them remembered his name, so they IMed him pretending to be adult women and hit on him. He was smart enough to know that something wasn’t right, but I’m sure that this isn’t the only time that men have been pursued by underage women. Just because these girls wouldn’t have known what to do in the event this man really did show up at their house ready to have sex, doesn’t take the blame off of them completely.
So, who is to blame? Mothers? Fathers? Advertising? All of the above?
Parents need to pay attention to their kids. Easier said than done, but still true. They need to say no, and enforce it, when girls want to do/wear/watch things that aren’t appropriate. They need to be honest and open with their kids about sex (boys and girls), so that they learn more from their parents than from a porn site. And, they need to stop letting their little girls wear things like this:
(Yeah, that says “wink, wink” and “eye candy” - and they’re sized for girls ages 10-16)
and this:
It’s not “cute”.
There are others, but I (obviously) can’t find pictures on the ‘net without going through some rather unsavory channels. And, quite frankly, I don’t want to see little girls who could be my students wearing skin tight ass pants, shirts with phrases like “little hottie” and “sexy princess”, and padded bras for six year olds.
Alright, so what does this have to do with education? All this came from an experience I had with my fourth graders. They are all learning how to write letters for a purpose - they’re writing to somebody to ask for something. One girl is writing the president to ask for peace, a boy is writing his apartment manager to ask them to clean up the apartment complex he lives in, and several are writing celebrities to ask for autographs.
A rather large group of girls has decided to write Hannah Montana (warning: link goes to a Disney.com site) (or, more correctly, they’re writing to Miley Cyrus, the actress that plays her). I had no idea who she was (I really should brush up on my pop culture to keep up with the kids), but I learned very quickly that finding her address was hard.
Actually, it was impossible.
The Disney website says on its FAQs page that they can’t “…provide contact information, forward e-mail, or grant meetings or interviews on their behalf…” because “the performers you are referring to are not permanent employees of The Walt Disney Company…” and, instead, they recommend you “start your search [with the] Internet Movie Database.” So, knowing the joy of imdb, I decided to go there. I had to click on the link to her official site pretty quickly, though, because at the bottom of the page, where the discussion forums are, there happened to be a topic titled “She’s Got a Really Great Ass!!!” This girl is 15.
But, when you dress her up like she’s 18+:
I can see how people might be confused.
So, yeah, I finally got so frustrated with having to tell the girls, repeatedly, “no, that’s not really her address” and “that’s not really her website… you really shouldn’t send your letter there” that I gave up.
I’m not really surprised that Disney is using sex to sell its kids’ shows… I mean, look at The Cheetah Girls:
So, yeah… anyway. This post has been entirely too long, already… mostly, I’m angry because (1) the girls in my class deserve better female role models than that (2) Disney should take some responsibility and at least give an address to send mail to the studio - I wonder how many little girls have written letters to creepy pedophiles trying to get to “Hannah Montana” (3) viewing women as sex objects is already a problem - do we really need to shift this pressure to 10 year olds?
I do hate to sound prudish, but seriously, this is a problem. My 10 year old girls are wearing ass-pants and writing letters to girls who look like they should be starring in porn. What ever happened to characters like Clarissa?
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20 March 2007
Posted in My education, Student teaching, Violence at 11:59 am by Miss Fox
Me, either. But, apparently one of my fourth graders was opening boxes before he came to school this morning.
That’s why he had a knife on him.
Apparently.
Why he was showing it to classmates in the lunch line, I have no idea (since, you know, he accidentally stuck it in his pocket after opening that box, this morning, and didn’t mean to bring it to school). Luckily, the girl next to him in line had the sense to come tell me, and I had the sense to tell a real teacher (having no idea what the specific policy for “a kid in the cafeteria has a knife” is for my school). I was able to prevent mass hysteria by keeping the same girl from telling the rest of the cafeteria, and the other teacher was able to get the pocketknife (one of the foldable kinds with a 2″ blade) from him without a problem.
I remember when I decided to be a teacher. I got a lot of reactions from people when they heard the news, most commonly comments like, “But you’re so smart!” and “Oh, you’ll change your mind with your first paycheck, har har!” There were a few people, though, that remarked, “Well, I hope you don’t plan to teach high school, because those kids bring weapons to school - you’ll get shot or stabbed.”
Guess what! Elementary kids do it, too.
*sigh*
Remarkably, I didn’t really freak out. It helped that it (1) wasn’t really a threatening situation and (2) was caught pretty quickly. My biggest reaction was, “Poor Kevin*, I wish I knew what was going on with him…” You see, I only spend four hours a week in the classroom, and was actually getting ready to leave at the start of the knife incident. This kid has obvious issues (he’s mopey, depressed, negative - has apparently made comments about hurting himself), but I don’t know the specifics. There hasn’t been time to discuss it with my teacher.
There’s lots of reasons why it could have happened… to get attention is the most likely one I can think of… still, I can’t help but wonder how common the issue of weapons/depression/suicidal thoughts is in schools - particularly elementary schools. And, what’s the best way to handle it? (As an individual teacher, an entire school, and/or a community…)
*Kevin is, obviously, not his real name.
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