5 years

As of tomorrow night at about 11:15 pm, I will have lived in North Carolina for 5 years. I find it curious that the eve of one of the most monumentally important days in my career, my first day of student teaching, coincides with the anniversary of one of the most life changing events in my personal history.

I moved to North Carolina after spending the summer working as a Director of the ceramics department at a sleep-away summer camp for girls in Maine. I taught girls ranging in age between 6 and 16, seven classes per day for 6 days per week. I got that job because I had “some” experience teaching afterschool art classes when I was working on my undergrad degree in Fine Arts.

That job hasn’t crossed my mind in months, mostly because I have been so busy with summer classes and preparing for student teaching. But today I can’t help but think about how it was the pivotal moment where I began to realize that teaching is something that I enjoy doing and do very well. To be honest, I had no idea about what tasks are age appropriate, classroom management, let alone curriculum. I remember spending the first few days before camp obsessively organizing the space and thinking about systems for firing and glazing. I made a notebook for lesson planning and drew pictures of projects I thought I could make with each age group.

To say the least, it was exceptionally difficult. I worked all of the time and struggled with loneliness and burnout. But my students were productive and enthusiastic. At every age the campers wanted to try new things and many returned during open studio hours to spend more time working on their projects. I remember helping a 7 year old make a gigantic hand-built teapot- she cried but I refused to do the work for her, only showed her how to proceed, and encouraged her not to give up.

And now as I am thinking about that experience, I wonder what it was that made my students feel so successful. For the first class session with each group, I purposefully used a sweet clear voice and when it was time to go over the rules I changed to a very serious, low tone when I told them my main rule: “No negativity.” I explained to them that there is no right or wrong answer in art and that they would most likely experience difficulty, and the reason I was there was to help them through it. I encouraged them to persevere, and they accepted my challenge. A few weeks later, I heard a 15 year-old girl chide another when she was complaining and I was surprised that they remembered.

In my personal life, I think a lot about cycles and patterns. Tonight, as I am relaxing after one of the busiest and most confusing weeks of my life where I prepare for what is to come over the next four months, I find myself in the same place I was 5 years and 10 weeks ago. Just like right now, I felt like I had absolutely no idea what I was doing and was just using what I knew to survive. The difference is now I know about differentiation, age appropriate tasks, curriculum, planning, and integrating content. For the past few days I have felt like a deer in the headlights, but my spirits are lifting, I am feeling more comfortable, in control, and am beginning to understand the complexities of what is to come over the next few weeks.

Blogging about blogging.

For my last blog assignment, I have been asked to reflect on my blogging experience thus far.

I am very glad to be using this blog as a place to chronicle my ideas and links related to my professional life.  I have saved so many links to articles or resources that I have wanted to post, but have not had the time this summer with my busy school and life schedule. Time is the most difficult aspect to blogging - I don't want to rush through writing a post because I have a real audience (including my Dad) so I feel like I have to share my best work. I also like the idea of using this blog as a way for future employers to get a better sense of who I am and what I am interested in. I also hope that this will continue to be a method for me to keep in touch with my cohort from Meredith.

In the end, I am thankful that my professor required me to start a blog because it was something that I had wanted to do for a long time.

Excited!

I finally received my student teaching assignment via email tonight! It's late, and no one in my neighborhood wants to hear me shout and there is no one around to see my happy dance. So, I am going to shout it out on my blog:

I AM STUDENT TEACHING THIS FALL IN THIRD GRADE!!! YAHOOOO!!!


I am not sure how to do a "virtual happy dance". Goodnight.

History and Bias in the classroom.

When teaching history, a teacher needs to consider and plan for varying points of view and perspectives in his or her classroom. These biases can come from three places: the textbook, the teacher, or the students. It is important for every teacher to emphasize that there is ALWAYS more than one side to any story.

It is pretty much a fact that textbooks in the United States are written from a Western, “pro-america” perspective. But, it is frightening that many teachers still use the textbook for most of the Social Studies instruction in their classroom. In my program we use the phrase “mile wide and an inch deep” when we talk about textbooks because they only cover the surface.

A few months ago, Texas changed their history curriculum standards. It was in the news but I’m not sure if many people really knew why the issue was getting so much attention. The reason is because Texas buys one textbook for every student in its state, and since the textbook industry is for-profit, it means that they write one textbook for Texas and tweak that textbook for other states. The problem with the changes is the fact that the committee was comprised mostly of special interest groups with an agenda to bring a religious tilt to the curriculum. It may sound like I am just pointing fingers and carrying my own bias here, but when you read the proposed changes, its pretty clear what these groups were trying to do. They succeeded in making these changes, like taking Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson out of the spotlight when teachers talk about the Founding Fathers, and instead focusing on clergy members who may have not been as important. It just doesn’t make sense to me.

Teachers also need to be aware of their own biases and prejudices in the classroom. In fact, it is illegal and unethical for teachers to use their position of authority in the classroom to express their own political or religious beliefs. Because of this, teaching history puts teachers in a precarious situation where they have to think carefully about the things they say and the perspectives they personally support in the classroom. The best thing for any teacher to do is to plan ahead and prepare questions that would help the students think about the multiple perspectives.

And then teachers must always remember that their classroom is diverse place, with many differing and possibly conflicting perspectives. The teacher needs to balance respect in the classroom with respect for home cultures. The only way to maintain this balance is to make the classroom a neutral zone where students feel free to express themselves and free to try another idea. In math, we know that there is more than one way to solve a problem, therefore in Social Studies there must be more than one way to look at a problem.