Archive for the ‘ Guest Blogger ’ Category

Where’d He Go?

Friends, families, and visitors.

For the past couple weeks I have experienced many stories in my new field. However, I did not want to rush telling any of the stories because I believe they deserve to be fully articulated…not thrown together. I will begin next week with detailed stories on my adventure, but for now, here is my roommate’s adventure. His blog is
http://tomgiar.wordpress.com/ if you would like to read more from him.

Here is Your Life, Part Two
By Tom Giardino

Here is your life, young teacher:

It is 8:26AM, on August 24th. There are 7 children in your classroom. None of them are your actual students.

It is 8:29AM, and there are 34 children in your classroom. 29 of them are your actual students.

It is 8:33AM, and there are 28 children in your classroom. All of them are your actual students, but you are still missing one, who chased a boy down the hallway. When she returns, you’ll tell her that she’s tardy. She will care none. How much care will she have? None care.

***

Here is your life:

It is 11:23am. Your 2nd block class consists of 24 girls and 4 boys. A cockroach the size of Danny Devito just scurried across your classroom floor.

Good luck regaining control, sucker.

***

Here is your life: An assistant principal has asked you whether or not you’d be interested in being the faculty advisor for drama club. Your athletic director just dropped in to inform you that unfortunately, as it turns out your coaching job will not include a stipend. The Greenville Arts Commission has emailed you, asking if your theater class is interested in putting on a play for the local elementary school children.

You look up “overwhelmed” in the dictionary and find a photograph of yourself, disheveled but smiling. You put the drama/theater stuff on the back burner for now.

Coaching for free seems only fair, considering how outrageously overpaid you were for coaching soccer back in Seattle. It dawns on you: that particular avenue of employment will eventually turn into a zero-sum game.

***

Here is your life:

It is now 2:12pm. There are about 18 students in your classroom. Some of them are probably your students, but you have no way of knowing because you are too busy herding children away from the massive fight that broke out down the hall. Police officers are hurling teenagers into offices. Administrators are slamming doors. Must be Tuesday again.

After gathering up as many of your students as you can, and attempting to start class in spite of the ruckus on the other side of your door, your principal pokes his head inside your classroom. Because of the overflow of students being detained and parents being called, your classroom has been requisitioned. This is war, martial law is in effect.

You don’t complain. These things happen. You woefully escort your entire class down the hall, up the stairs and into another teacher’s empty classroom.

This is really not that big of a deal, you realize, as your Theater I students perform their own carefully crafted mini-skits.

Grateful that none of your children were involved in the actual fighting, you breathe a sigh of relief when the bell finally rings.

***

Newspaper story about the fight:

Click to enlarge.

Lockdown — Click to enlarge. I really recommend you read this newspaper article. “A centralized location” = Mr G’s classroom

***

Here is your life:

It is 4:18pm. The school day has ended. Three items are sitting on your desk.

One is a small scented candle from Wal-Mart. The next is a tupperware container full of candy. The third is a spicy pickle in a plastic package.

In your exhaustion, you are utterly befuddled by these objects. A beat passes, and you remember that they are presents that other teachers gave you throughout the day.

Because today is your twenty-second birthday.

You remember your 17th birthday because you kissed a pretty girl that night, and your friends threw you a surprise party. You remember your 21st birthday because you were in San Francisco, en route to Big Sur on the road trip of a lifetime.

Will you remember this birthday? Maybe. Maybe not.

***

It is 10:18pm. You fall asleep with a stomach full of cheescake and a heart full of regret, missing your old life and cursing your new life.

But you wake up realizing that you wouldn’t trade this new life for anything in the world. Not even a spicy pickle in a plastic package.

***

My roommate works with a student after school

The view out my bedroom window.

2010
08/31
POSTED BY
Garrett Hedman
CATEGORY
Guest Blogger
TAGS
6 comments

Principles vs. Popularity

by guest blogger, Nancy Wang. Nancy just finished her first year with the UCLA Graduate Teacher’s Program. She taught AP Language and English Comp at a high school in Compton, Los Angeles.

Having just finished one school year in a teaching program that strongly emphasizes reflection, I have spent many long commutes thinking about my identity and my goals as an aspiring urban educator.  After five months of planning lessons, grading papers, and pushing, challenging, demanding, coaxing, cajoling students to work and to learn, I am no master teacher, but I think I have at least gained some insight into the novice teacher experience.

One aspect of teaching that I have spent some time in reflection is the issue of teacher motivation.  I am not talking about the goals and philosophies that, as aspiring teachers, we articulated for our various applications and interviews, but the inner desires that drive our day-by-day teaching decisions.

See if any of these teaching “goals” resonate with you:

  • Be every student’s favorite teacher
  • Be seen as a “cool” teacher
  • Have every student tell you how much you changed their lives
  • Gain the ardent admiration of your fellow teachers and the administration
  • Lose the ardent admiration of your fellow teachers and the administration because they fear your brilliance and passion
  • Work yourself half to death, only to come back and have all of your students score ridiculously high on some standardized test, regaining everyone’s ardent admiration
  • Then, of course, have a movie made about you

As silly as these goals might sound when explicitly stated, I think many novice teachers, myself included, implicitly and instinctively gravitate towards them as the benchmarks of urban schooling success.  After a semester of student teaching, I have realized how frequently I fall into the trap of the above pattern of thinking, guiding my teaching decisions by popularity rather than principles.

For example, my own inconsistency lies at the root of any difficulties with classroom management.  While part of the cause of being “too soft” on students comes from a desire to be kind, if I am completely honest with myself, the deeper reason is that I do not want their resentment.  However, if I truly cared for them and sought their best, I would firmly hold them accountable for their actions, even if they misunderstand and resent me.  Another example of how we can neglect principle for popularity is the issue of trust.  Sure, we all want our students to trust us, but what are we more concerned about, that we have our students’ trust, or that we are trustworthy?

Last summer, The Washington Post published an insightful Op-Ed piece entitled, “Schools Need Teachers Like Me. I Just Can’t Stay.” (August 9, 2009).  In this column, the author admits that she went into teaching because, like many others, she had “fallen in love with the idea of the job.”  She writes, “Urban classrooms struck me as seductively gritty.”  Four years after she began teaching, she was ready to leave the profession.  In her astute analysis of why teacher turnover is so high, especially for young, eager recruits, she writes:

“…[S]ociologists Neil Howe and William Strauss characterize the members of my generation as “engaged,” “upbeat” and “achievement-oriented.” This is why we become teachers. We seek to challenge ourselves, and we excel at pursuing our goals. Howe and Strauss go so far as to call us a “hero generation.” Our engagement also explains why we are leaving the classroom. We are not used to feeling consistently defeated and systemically undervalued.” (emphasis added)

This quote is a sobering reminder of the danger of those unspoken aspirations, where the end goal is my own glory and not my students’ good.  So as I anticipate my first year of full-time teaching (that is, once California starts hiring teachers again), I will enter the profession with this conviction—to be guided by principles, not popularity, to teach not for societal accolades, but for the One who will ultimately say to me, “Well done.”

2010
07/03
POSTED BY
Janessa Jordan
CATEGORY
Guest Blogger
5 comments