Went to a Small Schools Fair in San Francisco over the weekend. What a wash that was. I'm glad we had plans in the City that night, or we would have been mad about the wasted trip.
Let me get this straight, folks. You call yourself a small school, but you're housed in a massive, prison-style building with four other small schools. And you have no restrictions on teacher-student ratio beyond what is mandated by the state. And you're run by SFUSD. Riiiight. I think that I would rather work for one of the bigger schools, because then at least there might be more resources.
(and, and as an aside, I went in to make some last-minute copies before class today, and both copy machines were broken--both! And, yes, that means that for a school of 1200 kids, there are two photocopy machines. One, actually; the other is an electric gestetner. Wondering what the hell a gestetner is? Three clues: chunk-chunk-chunk!)
So, I was talking with one representative of a "small school" and she was saying that for next year, they need a teacher who can teach 10th grade English, a 12 grade elective, and a newcomer class. What's a newcomer class, you ask. It's for ELL students who have been in the U.S. for less than a year. What grade levels in the section? 9-12. How many kids? 37 at last count.
Thirty-seven! 37 kids from 10 different countries, I imagine, with performance abilities all over the map, each with a particular set of strengths and challenges, all crammed into a room with one teacher. Can you think of another profession that would require its professionals to do such a ridiculous and impossible task day after day?
And then, while we're in the car, listening to NPR (state-mandated required listening for liberal educators) and there's some kind of panel talking about the state of education. How timely. People are wringing their hands, wailing about how we're failing our children, gnashing their teeth and groaning with confusion and despair. One guy flat-out blamed the teachers. Teachers today, he bemoaned, are more worried about their contracts than providing excellent education for our kids. Grumbles of assent from the panel.
Teaching is fast approaching police work as the lowest paid, hardest, and most thankless profession in the nation. The "Small Schools Fair" was not my brightest day.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Procrastination: Is Lesson Planning Any Good Without It?
I'm heading into a new unit on the short story. I'm using Gary Soto's Living Up the Street as the cornerstone, and bringing in a few of my favorite shorts. The idea is to get the students to understand what goes into a short story--elements such as voice, plot, and point of view; devices such as metaphor, use of imagistic detail, foreshadowing and symbolism.
Who knows if and how this is going to produce many good stories. My hunch is that those students who turn in good stories would have done so before the lessons I'm poised to give. That's always the big question for me as a teacher: how much difference am I making? I'm going to try to answer that here in a stream of consciousness manner.
First, although the already good writers may learn little directly from me, there is rarely any harm done in practicing what they already know--and usually some good comes of it. I'm helping in that way: I'm providing practice, as well as demonstrating that this sort of thing is okay and worthwhile to think about and do... which is a kind of modeling.
Second, of the students who frankly don't give a damn about how to write (or thoughtfully read) a short story, I might be getting through to one or two with some aspect of my presentation I may not even be aware of. Hurray for accidental influence!
Third, for those students in between apathetically unskilled and apathetically skilled--the majority who are most prime for learning--the art and craft of teaching really comes into play. It's for them that I have to make calculated moves; present rubrics and exercises that are full and engaging, but not too complex; assignments that are challenging, but doable... and repeatable.
I know that if I were a really good teacher, I would be burning the midnight oil every night, trying to figure out how to reach every single one of my students with every single letter of my lessons, but I'm not there yet. For now, I'm limiting myself to gearing my lessons for the middle majority, and catching the others as I can. Would George Bush be proud of me? I wonder.
Who knows if and how this is going to produce many good stories. My hunch is that those students who turn in good stories would have done so before the lessons I'm poised to give. That's always the big question for me as a teacher: how much difference am I making? I'm going to try to answer that here in a stream of consciousness manner.
First, although the already good writers may learn little directly from me, there is rarely any harm done in practicing what they already know--and usually some good comes of it. I'm helping in that way: I'm providing practice, as well as demonstrating that this sort of thing is okay and worthwhile to think about and do... which is a kind of modeling.
Second, of the students who frankly don't give a damn about how to write (or thoughtfully read) a short story, I might be getting through to one or two with some aspect of my presentation I may not even be aware of. Hurray for accidental influence!
Third, for those students in between apathetically unskilled and apathetically skilled--the majority who are most prime for learning--the art and craft of teaching really comes into play. It's for them that I have to make calculated moves; present rubrics and exercises that are full and engaging, but not too complex; assignments that are challenging, but doable... and repeatable.
I know that if I were a really good teacher, I would be burning the midnight oil every night, trying to figure out how to reach every single one of my students with every single letter of my lessons, but I'm not there yet. For now, I'm limiting myself to gearing my lessons for the middle majority, and catching the others as I can. Would George Bush be proud of me? I wonder.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
It Begins in Earnest + This and that
Last semester, the program I'm in was heavily front-loaded--which is to say that there was a lot of reading and work in the first half of the semester. This semester seems like the opposite. As a result, I'm just coming out of what feels like an eddy of serenity in a raging river of academic chaos.
Can there be such a thing as an eddy of serenity? Perhaps.
It's the kind of thing I'd be tempered to underline in one of my student's papers.
Funny aside: I was talking with a friend of mine last Friday night and he pulled out his mobile phone to check the time or something. Before I realized what I was doing, I reached out and started to take it away from him. As I would one of students. Now, that's a tired and confused teacher.
I'm hearing exacerbation and disillusionment from many in my program. It's sort of the opposite (again!) of last semester. Back then, I was one of only a few students who were teaching at the time. For everyone else, all this stuff was merely academic. They didn't mind spending every class session discussing the subtleties of Vygotsky at length while I quietly ransacked my weary brain for what to do for my next day's classes.
Now, this semester, I've got a bit more experience, and I'm having an easier time, while my compatriots are taking their first dives into the classroom in earnest. The first few class sessions for our program were stressful--teachers were edgy, eager to get to the meat at the center of the theory... eager to get some practical help.
I have no illusions about teaching being for everyone. It may, in fact, not be for me. I have a feeling that some in my program will ditch out before the end of this semester. I wouldn't blame or look down on anyone who did this. Teaching is in some ways the most absurd job in the world--as anyone who has just begun the occupation can tell you.
Can there be such a thing as an eddy of serenity? Perhaps.
It's the kind of thing I'd be tempered to underline in one of my student's papers.
Funny aside: I was talking with a friend of mine last Friday night and he pulled out his mobile phone to check the time or something. Before I realized what I was doing, I reached out and started to take it away from him. As I would one of students. Now, that's a tired and confused teacher.
I'm hearing exacerbation and disillusionment from many in my program. It's sort of the opposite (again!) of last semester. Back then, I was one of only a few students who were teaching at the time. For everyone else, all this stuff was merely academic. They didn't mind spending every class session discussing the subtleties of Vygotsky at length while I quietly ransacked my weary brain for what to do for my next day's classes.
Now, this semester, I've got a bit more experience, and I'm having an easier time, while my compatriots are taking their first dives into the classroom in earnest. The first few class sessions for our program were stressful--teachers were edgy, eager to get to the meat at the center of the theory... eager to get some practical help.
I have no illusions about teaching being for everyone. It may, in fact, not be for me. I have a feeling that some in my program will ditch out before the end of this semester. I wouldn't blame or look down on anyone who did this. Teaching is in some ways the most absurd job in the world--as anyone who has just begun the occupation can tell you.
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