Posts tagged teaching

tomesaway:

It wasn’t until yesterday that I really gave how students feel about me much thought.

I mean, it’s nice when they like you; it makes the work easier and all, but I don’t sit up at night thinking about how to get them on my side. I’m not the world’s greatest teacher by any manner of means, but I like my students, I like my job, and I think that makes all the difference. 

When I say that I like my kids, I mean I respect them as human beings, I am organized and orderly, I hold them accountable for their work and actions, I’m patient (mostly), I set good boundaries (they know I’m not their friend, but their teacher), I have a sense of humor with them, I listen to their worries and to advise them when asked, and I really know my subject area content. They believe I can make them better readers and writers, and that faith goes a long way when we get to the trickier material.

I can count on two fingers the kids who, over the past ten years, really really went out of their way to be memorably unpleasant. And hoo boy, they’re the ones who are memorable.

• The nineteen-year-old sophomore (uh huh) from four years ago who offered (quite politely, now that I think about it) to stab me when I asked him (again) to take off his hat, pull up his pants, sit down and get to work.
• The spoiled-rotten honors-sophomore from six years ago whose helicopter-parents supported him when he wrote an essay that he read aloud about how I shouldn’t be a teacher and that I’d probably gotten my job just because my mother negotiated it for me (he’s the reason, btw, that if this baby’s a boy, he’ll never, ever be named Jack). I sat through that reading with a smile on my face and thanked him graciously when it was over. It was the easiest essay to grade EVER. Whew, he was a nasty piece of work.

And that’s it, really.

Don’t get me wrong: I’ve been cursed at, called racist, and a whole pile of other things that teenagers say/scream/holler/whisper-passive-aggressively when they’re trying to hurt you. But they’d do that to anyone; it’s not personally directed at me.

The thing is: it doesn’t hurt me. They’re teenagers. I expect them to have wide-swinging emotions, hormonal highs and lows, and I expect them to say things that they don’t mean. It comes with the territory, you know?

And since I’ve seen everything they can do and heard everything they can say, nothing shocks me anymore and I can listen to their delivery with a straight face, thank them for their ideas, and then move on with the lesson.

All told, I’ve probably worked with nearly 2000 students over the past ten years. They all have a range of quirks that make them entertaining at best or interesting at worst.

They make me laugh. They inspire me to be creative. They get me to read interesting books and listen to music I never thought I’d like but do. I think about them all the time in a “hey, I think so-and-so would like this movie, I need to ask them if they’ve seen it” kind of way.

So really, when I crunch the numbers, 2 kids who hated my guts out of the nearly 2000 who liked/loved/many-of-whom-come-back-to-visit isn’t really a number I need to worry too much about. 

Yes, good.

girlwithalessonplan:

I was in grad school, taking a lit seminar undergrads were also enrolled in for 400 level credit. This guy realizes I’m an English teacher and every week is pumping me with questions and for info.

He wanted to finish his BA in English and then get a transition to teaching license. He said he just wanted to teach lit. He didn’t want to teach writing.

“We’re just going to talk,” he said. They were going to sit in a circle and the kids would share their feelings about the text, and there wouldn’t be tests either.

There was no convincing him it wasn’t going to happen. Indiana requires writing and lit taught together. You can do some discussion, but kids need guidance. You have to have some form of assessment. It doesn’t have to be a test; but a project, speech, paper, or something has to be there to demonstrate knowledge, understanding, and critical thinking.

He then had the gall to say, “We’ll, your class sounds boring.”

I said, “It sounds like you want to be Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society. If you remember, things didn’t actually go well for him. And I’ve been employed for six years.”

I ignored him for the rest of semester, and I really hope he didn’t get into a teaching program.

How do you cover your chest? I own several tank tops/camis, but no matter how short I make the straps, the top always seems to work its way down. I’m not usually personally concerned if there is a little bit showing (I mean, they’re boobs, and I have them), but I am very personally concerned about being seen as professional during my student teaching and in general. Any tips?

E.T.A: I thought it was clear when I originally posted this that the tank tops are for use underneath other tops that I own that would normally be too low-cut on me. A number of direct and (quite frankly, rude) indirect responses have indicated to me that my assumption was wrong. The tank tops are not my main clothes, but rather boob-covering devices that aren’t working for me.

tomesawayfromhome:

And by “data” I mean any information collected from a group of students in an inorganic and inauthentic manner that is then used to obfuscate and declarify (as the Car Talk guys like to say) the progress and assumed learning of those students.

The observations I make as I grade a stack of essays is useful and authentic information. It is what I imagine data was meant to be at some point in the golden past.

I don’t make bar graphs or keep a tally of who can write a thesis statement and who can’t, but when I see that students are struggling with an idea that forms the foundation of our curriculum, I know I need to revisit that concept, whether it’s in a class-wide brush-up or a one-on-one tutoring. And then I reteach that concept in a different way, or try to come at it from another point of view to make it as accessible as possible.

I am after all, a professional. I’m spend hours with my students before, during, and after school. Who would know what they need better than me? Who can deliver what they need better than me?

But somewhere along the line, “data” turned into the only valid way to measure student “progress” and “success.”

And “data” became a weapon used against teachers by increasingly hostile school administrators and “learning consultants” who use it to prove that not only do we not know what we’re doing, we must be actively plotting against our students and our school since we don’t joyfully embrace whatever silver-bullet educational theories they’re peddling today.

I am, however, willing to compromise—

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(Source: tomesaway)