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No more tears?

19 October 2007 / posted in Teaching / 6 Comments

So, I’ve mentioned once before that my school system uses Handwriting without Tears to teach handwriting. My teacher gave me her teacher’s guide at the beginning of the year, but I haven’t had much time to look through it.

My school finally got the student workbooks this month, so my teacher started teaching it one Wednesday that I was there.

And I have to say, I’m horrified.

Handwriting WITH Tears

All the reasons to not buy and implement a system like this are there: it’s expensive (a $6 workbook for every student in grades K-2 plus a $6 teacher’s guide for each teacher and whatever other materials they purchased), it’s vocabulary-heavy, and it takes just as much time (if not more) to teach them how to use the method as it does to just teach them how to write.

Plus, it’s everything I hate… cutesy phrases that only vaguely relate to their purpose, lack of meaning, and boring repetition.

I remember learning how to write in elementary school… I hated it. “Write the letter p exactly this way 10 times. Now do it again. And again. Oh, no! you didn’t bring the tail all the way down to the line (that won’t appear on any actual paper you’ll ever use for anything other than handwriting practice)! Start over!” It’s ridiculous and impractical – and kids hate it.

I realize that being able to write legibly and consistently is important, I do… but can’t we, after decades of doing it the boring way, figure out a better way to teach it? I know you have to practice, by why can’t you practice using words and situations (and paper!) that the kids will actually use? Why can’t you just model the correct way and tell them you want them to write the letters the way they appear on their nametags or on the wall or wherever you might have the alphabet hanging in your room?

And, honestly, do we need to confuse them any further with the “magic c,” “frog jump capitals,” and “up, up like a helicopter, slide down, bump”? I mean, seriously – what the fuck does all that even mean? I remember, when I was learning how to write in cursive, my teacher kept telling me a cursive “r” was supposed to look like a chair, and I kept fucking it up. I just didn’t understand how what she drew looked anything like a chair, so I tried to draw mine like a chair instead of like hers, and she kept telling me it was wrong, and I still have trouble writing the cursive “r”. All because my teacher was so concerned about the vocabulary used in whatever system my school adopted to teach cursive that she didn’t notice that it wasn’t working.

I feel sorry for any kids who come in new in the second grade that aren’t familiar with Handwriting Without Tears. They’ll be lost and confused and frustrated. The funny part – the teacher’s guide actually states (on page 23 for those following along), “…there is no strange jargon or indecipherable terminology.” HA!

Ha ha ha! Ha HA ha HA! HA!!!

I don’t know if they’re fooling themselves, but they certainly haven’t fooled me – this system is so FULL of strange jargon that you spend half the time teaching them what it means to “frog jump up” and what the fuck a “magic c” is. I tried explaining this system to some of my adult friends (both education majors and not) and they were perplexed.

I don’t know of any “standardized” alternative to the program, myself, but I’d rather just teach them how to write my own way than use this… though, I’m sure there is something better out there. Any ideas?

Life is what happens…

14 October 2007 / posted in Me, Teaching / No Comments

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.

Student Teaching, week 1

25 August 2007 / posted in Me, Teaching / 3 Comments

So, last week, I spent pretty much every day in the classroom for at least a few hours getting ready for the First Day of School, 27 August.

Quick and dirty:
Monday the 20th, I helped the Teaching Assistant and another student teacher* paint these lovely crayons on our closets!
Crayons from an angleCrayons from the front
There was also a staff meeting, in which we discussed money (or lack thereof), students (and their overabundance), and teachers (or lack thereof).

Tuesday: More meetings. They sure do love staff development at my school. Last year, they started a new system referred to as a Professional Learning Community or PLC. Essentially, it increases collaboration between teachers and grade levels, and focuses more on learning than teaching – instead of dissecting what you’re doing, you dissect what the student is doing. I also painted this wall:
Yellow Wall

Wednesday: all day staff development. All. Day. Staff. Development. It was useful, but looooooong. At the end, I felt like I was about to die… but I really love the staff at my school, so it was bearable. Better than some of the Teaching Fellows meetings I’ve had to sit through (sorry, Gladys).

Thursday: Meet & Greet. About 20 of our 27 students came in with their families to meet us, fill out paperwork, and ask questions. Apparently we had a really high turnout, and I was able to use some of my Spanish (which needs MAJOR work, but was very useful). We have 8 Spanish speaking students in my class. I haven’t looked through all their files to see how proficient they are in English, but the few I looked through showed pretty high writing and vocab, but low reading levels. All in all, an excited group of people.

Friday: A sad attempt to plan for the first week of school. There was so much distracting stuff going on, my teacher and I didn’t get much done. She’s doing all of the planning, of course, as I’m only going to be there once a week until January, but she didn’t even have Monday finished when I left at 4. Hell, we didn’t even have an updated class list! I’m sure it’ll all come together, though – it always does.

Amongst all this craziness, I’m taking my methods courses. From now through December, I’ll be going in once a week on Wednesdays. I won’t go full time until the spring semester, but I am supposed to teach at least three lessons this semester. The other days of the week, I’ll be taking my five other classes, and pulling out my hair. It’s going to be busy, busy, busy – but I’m already loving it. So far, everything I’ve done has been useful and felt productive… instead of last year when I felt like I was doing busywork that had no purpose.

My plan for tonight and tomorrow (besides do reading for my methods courses), is to put together some short lesson plans that I can teach anytime this semester. I also need to review the teacher’s guide to Handwriting Without Tears, which is the handwriting program my school adopted last year.

I can’t believe the first day is Monday. There’s still so much to do!

* For a while, there were two of us – she goes to another college, and was to be full-time student teaching this semester. This proved to be a bit much for all of us, so she was placed with another teacher (in the same school). She did help us out pretty much all week, though – and was awesome.

Here it comes!

15 August 2007 / posted in Me, Teaching / No Comments

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!

286

29 July 2007 / posted in Me, Teaching / No Comments

In 286 days, if all goes as planned, I will be a real teacher.

Summer school went well. Two A’s and one B. In case you’re counting.

Student teaching fun, the prequel

17 July 2007 / posted in Me, Teaching / No Comments

So, I have to get a physical before school starts in August to prove that I won’t give the kids TB or some other disease. I understand that, and I don’t mind doing it – they even have a form to take with us to make it easier to get proof and make sure everything gets done. Hooray for the student teaching physical.

Of course, I wait until the last two weeks of summer school to schedule that appointment – *cough*procrastinator*cough, cough*. I call, today, to schedule (just got off the phone, actually), and she actually knows what I’m talking about when I say I need a student teaching physical – which surprises me, because they didn’t last time I did this (remember, I was supposed to do my student teaching in 2004, but became temporarily retarded and dropped out of school) and it took me forever to get the appointment right. This excites me.

For about ten seconds.

UNFORTUNATELY, they only do appointments in the MORNINGS.

Sounds like I’m being a whiny bitch, right – “oh, wah, I don’t wanna get up in the morning, boo-hoo”. While that is entirely possible, my main problem is that I have class from 8am-1pm all summer – wouldn’t you know it, the exact times they have appointments. *grumble* And I have to come in on two separate days, 3 days apart, due to the TB test.

I don’t fault the woman making the appointment. She even said at one point, “I don’t know why they do this – they need to have afternoon openings…” after I told her I have class every day from 8-1 (as is the nature of summer school). She was very sympathetic, and I (luckily) had time free during the reading day before exams, and during what is supposed to be the end of my tennis final (we have a take-home, so I should be fine).

Some people might wonder why I didn’t go in the beginning of the summer, before I had class. Well, my friends, UNC student health only covers you for the semesters/sessions in which you are enrolled full-time. Thus, since I was not enrolled in classes last summer session, I would have had to pay $50 just to get an appointment. So, it wouldn’t have mattered if I’d called at the very beginning of the summer to schedule an appt, the only time I could have come in would be next Wednesday at 9 and next Friday at 10:15.

I’m just glad they weren’t closed on the reading day… lucky me, I suppose.

Oh, and a PS – I really hate needles and physicals, what with the pain and the stupid questions and all. At least with a tattoo, I get something pretty to show off later. The only thing I’ve ever gotten from a vaccine is a scar that everyone assumes is a hickey… *sigh* (Oh, and maybe protection from bygone diseases…)

Head shaking and apologizing

14 July 2007 / posted in Teaching / No Comments

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.

You’re all gonna die — SIKE!

14 May 2007 / posted in News, Teaching / 1 Comment

When I first caught this story through MSNBC, I was taken aback.

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. – Staff members of an elementary school staged a fictitious gun attack on students during a class trip, telling them it was not a drill as the children cried and hid under tables.

Now, I remember doing fire drills and tornado drills in school… and even lock down drills in high school. We had bomb threats, and once we went into lock down because there was an armed suspect in a neighborhood adjacent to campus that the cops were after. Lock down lasted about an hour, until he was arrested, and then normalcy resumed. Even during that lock down experience, we were never told “there is a gunman on the loose – hide under your desks!” As a matter of fact, there was just some vague code announced, and all the teachers closed the blinds and closed and locked their doors. We weren’t allowed to leave the room without a teacher, and then only in emergencies (like going to the bathroom). Teachers continued teaching, even. Nobody said what had happened until after the guy was arrested, to prevent us from panicking.

We were never told we were in danger when we weren’t. And even when we were in possible danger, our teachers and administrators were sure to stay calm and keep us that way. Sure, we wanted to know what was going on, but we truly didn’t need to know until it was over. It only would have made the situation worse.

This situation is horrible for several reasons, not the least of which is that students were made to feel that they were in danger when they weren’t.

During the last night of the trip, staff members convinced the 69 students that there was a gunman on the loose. They were told to lie on the floor or hide underneath tables and stay quiet. A teacher, disguised in a hooded sweat shirt, even pulled on a locked door.

Now, of course the media sensationalized this a bit, but let’s think about this. These students are 11 or 12 years old… do they really need to know there’s a man with a gun on the loose, even if it’s true? In a real situation, should they have told these kids details that would just scare them and put them into panic, or could they have been more vague?

And the teacher pulling on the door? That’s going way too far.

I understand what they were trying to do – I’m a teacher, I can see the importance of being prepared for a situation like this – but they handled it horribly. Scaring students unnecissarily only erodes the trust they have in you, and doesn’t really prepare them for a similar situation in real life. And, truly, it’s not the students who need to be prepared for this, it’s the teachers.

I seriously doubt any of them would be laughing had this stunt been pulled on them in a staff meeting.

However, a lot of people are saying that these teachers should lose their jobs – I don’t agree with that. I do think they should be educated on how to handle emergency situations, particularly away from school, and possibly disciplined for their lapse in judgement, but I think losing their jobs is more than harsh.

Shay [one of the sixth graders involved] and her mother, Niki Morris, said they forgave the teachers and wanted to move on. It “went too far because it was too gruesome,” Shay said. “You’d think a teacher wouldn’t do it, but they did. But they’re great teachers. If (the assistant principal) loses his job, I will break into tears. He’s the best assistant principal I’ve ever had.” (source)

There’s a response on the school’s website, as well:

Clearly, there are many versions of this situation and the coverage has been sensationalized. Regardless of the versions, this prank crossed the line in what would be appropriate to tell young children, especially in light of recent incidents.

It goes on to say that the incident is being investigated and that proper action will be taken, I just hope they are balanced in their discipline. There are a lot of teachers who have no idea what to do if such a situation was to happen for real, and that’s the real tragedy, here.

Let’s use this as a sign that we need to educate our teachers, not just punish them.

I’m interesting!

12 May 2007 / posted in Me, Teaching / No Comments

Something I meant to write about a while back, but the craziness of the semester prevented it:

Last semester, there was a grad student in one of my classes. She is really interested in social justice, and led a few lessons on the topic (some of which were enlightening) – I really enjoyed having her in the class.

Because she is a grad student, she had a research paper to write. She interviewed all of us about our perspectives on social justice: how it affects our lives, our teaching, where our opinions originated, etc. It was an interesting interview, and I should be receiving a copy of the paper soonish. It’s all anonymous, of course, but I really want to know what the some of my other classmates had to say about some of their experiences/opinions on the topic, as I think my views often differ from my peers.

In any case, she asked me (and other students, I presume) if I would mind her following me next year when I get into my student teaching and possibly my first year of teaching. I have to say, I am extremely flattered that she would find my views on social justice and teaching interesting enough to follow me, but I’m also incredibly curious about what she discovers in her research. I think it’ll be a really good experience for me, and will get me thinking about the issues. I mean, we all consider issues of social justice, but I think being part of her research will help me think about topics before they come up in my classroom, and perhaps allow me take a more proactive approach to such issues with my students.

I’m sure there will be more about this in the future, but I wanted to mention it for those who might be keeping up with the blog somewhat regularly.

Teaching the Bible?

1 April 2006 / posted in Politics, Public School, Religion, Teaching / 4 Comments

[Edited at the end.]

God’s Textbook

It’s been a debate for a long time, now, whether the Bible has a place in public schools. Several people agree that it does hold some very rich literature, but others try to push it as a historical resource, as well.

I disagree with both. While some Biblical stories are interesting, I have to say that they are too far-fetched for me. I’d rather read “The Iliad” or “The Odyssey”, Shakespeare, or Dante’s “Divine Comedy”. The Bible’s stories tend to be rather tedious to read, and rely too much on faith to be interesting to me as a nonbeliever. They are also a bit “preachy” at times, as well as repetitive and long-winded.

And as a history text, it is completely awful. There are no reliable resources, and the facts are skewed by religious influences – it was never meant to be a history book. Perhaps the Bible, itself, has made history, which is worthy of studying (the first printed book, the many translations, its affect on different cultures, etc). It was particularly interesting to study in my “History of Books” class my freshman year of college, but we didn’t study the content. History textbooks are inaccurate enough without adding the Bible to the list. Besides, I thought teachers and parents were pushing for more up-to-date history texts, anyway. The Bible was put together centuries ago – talk about outdated!

Even if certain stories do make it into a literature or history class, I think they should be a part of a course of a study, and should not make up the entire class. Most high schools don’t devote entire classes to studying any one particular work or author – the point of high school seems to be to get as much general knowledge as possible into students so they might go off to college and explore the specifics on their own. There simply isn’t time for a “Bible as literature/history” course in high schools. And the monetary resources aren’t there, either – we can barely fund music and art classes, let’s not waste time and money on textbook versions of the Bible and the teachers to teach it. Besides, I’m sure the Quran has some history and literature in it, too, but I don’t see anyone pushing for that to be taught in our schools. One or two stories in a class that focuses on literature in general is okay, but an entire class devoted to it is just ridiculous.

Disagree if you must, but make a good point for your argument.

21 March, 10:39pm EDT – I wanted to respond to Alan’s comment, below. This entry was pretty general, but there are groups (somewhat successfully) trying to get the Bible taught in schools; the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools, the Bible Literacy Project, and Bible in the Schools, among others. According the first organization, “The Bible course curriculum has been voted into 373 school districts in 37 states… 190,000 students have already taken our course.” North Carolina is on the list.

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