Black Stuff All Over My Fingers --Eric

It's a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it. I use the dry-erase board. No matter how carefully I distance my hands from the pen's felt tip as I write, or from the eraser as I wipe the board clean, at the end of the day my fingers are covered in an inky grime that turns the sink black when I finally wash my hands. Teaching is about getting your hands dirty. The strongest and most valuable moments in my teaching are often the messiest, as they involved a whirlwind of activity and places which call my attention. However, these are the moments in which the most honest-to-God teaching takes place.

Sometimes my weakest moments in the classroom are when we hold whole-class “discussions,” such as when we analyze John Donne's metaphysical conceits and his sonnets broken up into discrete arguments. The text is Donne's “Holy Sonnet 10,” a poem in which the speaker challenges death itself. “Death be not proud,” it famously starts, “though some have called thee / Mighty and dreadful.” I thought I did everything right. I had them anticipate his poem through their own experience (e.g. “How many of you know someone who died?”); I even activated some schemas by having them discuss a thematically related painting (Sir Thomas Aston at the Deathbed of His Wife). Both of these went well. I taught them the Italian sonnet rhyme scheme and had them discuss the pros and cons of poetry that follows a strict structure. This went well, too, because they anticipated what I intended: by being familiar with a poem's structure, its meanings become more accessible to the reader. When we went to actually trek through the quatrains to see the Italian sonnet style in action, however, I could feel their enthusiasm alchemize to lead and sink lower and lower on their shoulders and eyelids. By the end of the activity, leaving the poem behind for good seemed about on par with candy at an end-of-the-year party.

In the same lesson, ironically, we shifted gears completely and the students did a writing workshop for a creative writing assignment they have been working on. I set the students to move forward on their own, critiquing each other's writing in a loosely structured format (“praise/question/suggestion”), while I moved around the room and addressed specific needs.

I have never felt so needed in so many places at the same time. Many of the students had incredibly deep questions that demonstrated an amazing understanding and concern for the task at hand. Many of my students who need the most love and attention to be successful in the classroom had worked their selves ragged in the name of the assignment, producing amazing work. I wanted to be everywhere at once. I wanted to spend the entire period with the same students at the same time to give them the help and the attention that they deserved. In the same instant I wanted to be hovering over the students who could not stay on task to save their lives. That comes with the territory.

These were the moments where I felt the most connected to student needs and student learning. It was the messiest, because of all the activity happening at the same time, and all the specific needs that need to have been addressed at the same time. Yet these were the moments in which I could attend to students individually and help move them significantly forward. Real learning took place here. It's ok that at the end of the days I got my hands dirty with the work. Tomorrow I'm ready to do it again.

Sometimes, it takes two -- Abri

One reason I want to be a teacher is so that I can make history, government, and other social sciences come alive for my students. Beyond just learning dates, important people, and events, I want to help students experience the past and present, and imagine the future.

I’ve been around teachers all of my life. You could say that it’s in my blood; in fact, my mom says that I used to come home from preschool, arrange my stuffed animals in neat rows, and teach them what I had learned each day. I rarely got bored in school growing up, but whenever I did, I would think about how I would have presented the material differently. Last summer I could hardly wait to apply my own life experience to classroom theory and be able to get to student teaching as soon as possible.

But if I have learned anything from life it is that things rarely turn out the way that you plan, and often that is a good thing. I realize now that my original grand plans for student teaching were missing one essential element: the influence and support of my cooperating teacher. I dreamed about all the wonderful things that I would do with my students, and of how my ideas could make the difference their lives. I knew that my cooperating teacher would be around to offer me advice and to critique my performance, but I was expecting that our roles would be kept separate. The downside to this premature vision was that I would have to navigate a great deal of my student teaching alone.

Thankfully, this is not the case. Not only have my cooperating teacher and I forged a successful working relationship, we have also been able to co-teach our classes. Co-teaching can often be a tenuous process because every teacher has a different style, yet it is becoming more popular in the era of IEPs and individualized instruction. A true co-teaching experience is a collaborative effort in which both parties fuse their skills and expertise to enhance classroom learning and make it better than it would have been if only one of them were teaching. Each teacher has a different concept of their ideal classroom and co-teaching challenges individualism for the good of students.

My cooperating teacher and I have been co-teaching for several weeks. Some days this looks like one of us leading a discussion while the other adds comments to illuminate parts of the discussion. Other days this looks like us switching back and forth with different activities throughout the class period. Most recently we have started simulations in our government classes – a Mock Election and a Model Congress. Now, co-teaching is both of us walking around our classroom or the computer lab to take note of student progress and help groups as they have need. I have even been able to lead one of the classes in the computer lab by myself!

To me, the most important benefit of co-teaching is the ability to offer individualized instruction to more students. Some of our students have had trouble with the bill writing process for Model Congress. Co-teaching has allowed me the freedom to guide one student in research about Roe v. Wade, help another improve her writing, and edit a bill on nuclear fusion written by a third, all the while knowing that my cooperating teacher is looking at the big picture. When he sits down with a student, I do the same thing.

These simulations are helping the government process come alive for my students. I do not think that co-teaching is necessary for a successful simulation, but it certainly helps. I hope that having the opportunity to work directly with my students will make them more successful when we elect a president and open the 111th Congress this week! Stay tuned!

Flexibility: Plans? More Like Guidelines, Methinks! -- Amelia

Ah, yes—that stunning word we’ve heard since day one of our teacher preparation classes: flexibility, flexibility, flexibility! The extreme necessity for flexibility was my first rude awakening in the realm of teaching. Now I know why all the other teachers sweetly smile with shaking heads at my neatly organized and dated lesson plans nestled in their shiny page protectors. My poor naïve lesson plans, gleaming with expectation, structure, and punctuality.

While I was quite aware of the need for flexibility, the term was much more surreal and distant, like a tropical island—until now. You’ve heard that Jamaica has beautiful beaches, green luscious landscapes, and warm weather, all of which you can picture in your mind’s eye. However, you can’t quite fathom its impact until you experience it for yourself.

It all began with the rescheduling of Benchmark testing, which ended up being a month ahead of schedule. So I planned accordingly. Then came the rescheduling of the SOL practice Writing test. First, it was March 4th. I planned accordingly. Then it was March 11th. I planned accordingly. Then it was March 18th. I planned accordingly. Then it was back to March 11th. Yep, you guessed it. I planned accordingly. Then back to March 18th. Yes, it was finally given on March 11th.

I must admit: I’m a sucker for schedules. I plan and prefer that things go according to plan (at least the big things). So in the beginning of all this, I was having quite the panic attack. Somehow, I managed to rearrange my brain. I realized that I was viewing lesson planning as some sort of code of rules. Once planned, lessons are immutable procedures that have been set in stone, probably because I invested so much time in them. Then I heard a voice echoing in my head… It was Captain Barbossa. He was saying, “The code is more what you'd call ‘guidelines’ than actual rules. Arrrrrg. Matey!” Okay, I added that last part.

But I realized that I have to view my schedule and lesson plans as mutable, flexible guidelines. Perhaps teachers are more like pirates than you might think at first glance. (Not the pillaging and plundering aspect, of course.) As teacher, we must ride the waves, or go with the flow, or whatever cliché works for you. Just like pirates, there is a greater force guiding our sails. We can either work against that force or work with it. Personally, I’ve learned that working with it is much more sane.

Cross my heart and hope to die, I will never be absent again! -- Lizzie

Recently I was out because I had a job interview. While this should be something to celebrate and I should hope for more days like this in the coming future, I am absolutely dreading ever having to miss a day of school again. Who knew how much work it was putting plans together for a substitute?! Every little detail has to be explicitly stated and every minute occupied in an effort to lose as little time as possible. It takes lesson planning to a whole new level!

Usually I like to come home after school and take a little breather before jumping into planning for the next day, but when you are going to be absent, everything must be taken care of before you leave school for the day. Everything planned. Everything explained. Everything sequenced and paced. Everything copied. When I plan for myself, of course I take all of those things into consideration, but things don’t have to be so set in stone yet. Often times I even think of better ways to do things while I am in the middle of them and end up changing things around. Even just explaining all of my ideas for one class and explicating them on paper takes so much more time than I ever would have imagined!

Even though I’ve spent the last two paragraphs basically complaining, part of me is rather sad about missing school. It will be my first day away from my students since beginning my student teaching. While I know that they will all be fine in the capable hands of my cooperating teacher and probably will not falter at my absence, I will miss them. When I was putting together my plans, I couldn’t help but think how fun and engaging some of the activities were and how it really did sadden me a little that I was not going to be able to be there to see my students engaging in them. As much as this disappointed me, it also made me smile because I realized that even though I’ve known them for a short time, they are becoming a part of me. I am falling in love with teaching and with my students. I never thought that I would actually look forward to getting up at 5 am, but I truly do. I am eager for each new day with my students and never ceased to be both amazed and entertained by them. So for now, I might be away from them for a day, but I will be thinking of them and will be ready to get back and pick up where I left off on this crazy journey known as student teaching.

A Student in Need; I’m a Teacher Indeed -- Kelly

The math department offers lunchtime tutoring in my classroom every day. Members of the Math Honor Society, as well as a few teachers, come and help students study. Wednesday looked like any other normal tutoring day; the rowdy clique of honor society students came in and circled up, eating their lunch. One or two timid math students approached and nervously asked the teacher on duty for help. I sat off to the side and worked, munching on my lunch. Then, one of the honor society students walked in with a girl I hadn’t seen before. “Guys, this is Rosa.* She’s a new student here; she’s from Honduras and doesn’t speak much English. I’m showing her around and she wanted to come eat with me.” Rosa seemed shy and hesitant, as many do when immersed in a completely foreign culture. The math clique asked her a few questions in broken Spanish but for the most part let her be. I speak mediocre Spanish and briefly considered jumping in, but hey, I guess I still find it hard to break into the cool kids’ clique at lunch.

Later that afternoon I got an email forward from fellow blogger Cati, who is also placed at my school. Rosa is a recent immigrant and, beyond speaking very little English, has had little in the way of math education. She can add and subtract but has not been taught multiplication, division, fractions, basic shapes and their properties, etc. The Spanish department head had sent this email to a number of teachers in the school asking them to brainstorm ways they could collaboratively help Rosa succeed.

I was appalled that a high school student could be so critically behind. Add that to the fact that she does not speak the dominant language in the school, and the number of people who are able to help her is limited. My heart naturally bends toward students who are faced with big obstacles, and I feel acutely for Rosa. I wish I had more skills to offer help to her. I did what I could; I emailed my math advisor to ask about Spanish recourses, but beyond that I don’t know how much help I will be able to offer.

Rosa’s situation caused me to reflect. Her case is the first one that has really made me feel that gut-wrenching “Ah! This is terrible! What can I do?” feeling that teachers get when they desperately want their students to succeed but are at a loss as to how. Certainly I care about all my students and hope they all will achieve something in my class, but it is those special students who are faced with so many more challenges than their peers which makes me feel like a teacher. Rosa was my first case. I’m sure I will come across many more such students in my career. They will each have their own unique heart-wrenching story and seemingly insurmountable challenges. I only hope I am able to help as many as I can.

*Name has been changed.