I've been teaching for over 2 weeks now. It's high time I let you all know how it's going.
The first thing you should know is that the only reason I'm updating at all is that I'm not teaching tomorrow. Generally I teach one half-period per day - about one hour - on my own, plus co-teaching two half-hour literacy sessions. This week is scheduled differently. We still have the literacy responsibility, but each day M-Th is assigned to a different teacher. Today was my day - two full classes, a total of four hours. I'm pretty drained, especially after an intense 2.5-hour diversity session, an English teacher team meeting, and a pretty serious talk with one of my collab members, so I decided to skip workshops and come up here to blog a bit. The "detox" playlist is getting aired for the first time since I stayed up all night writing my credentialing essays. Thank God for Sleater-Kinney.
That being said: teaching today was a lot like teaching any other day, in the sense that every minute I spend with my kids, I feel like I learn more than I did in an entire semester at Berkeley. Today I learned: how not to approach a long and difficult text, how important during-reading activities like text coding are, and, excitingly, what it feels like to be stonewalled by your students. That sounds like all kinds of bad, but it really wasn't. We got through the lesson. We made some good connections and laid a solid foundation for the week's big essay. I made some real mental adjustments per how much talking and sleeping I'm going to deal with in the future, as in beginning tomorrow. I irritated the hell out of my kids by repeating the homework over and over, and I'm OK with that, if it means it gets done. And my kids still do not hate me. Not that it really matters, but it feels nice.
One big stress today was the sheer amount of observation going on. Probably because of my classroom's location, I often go a whole period with no observers. Today I had six, up to three of them at one time: my advisor, another (particularly hostile) advisor, and our literacy specialist, all of whom I respect deeply. Stressful as it was, I have to say that constant and varied feedback has been one of the best things about my institute experience. It's an immediate check, letting you know what's working and what you can change, starting the very next day.
A little about my feedback. The single comment I receive most frequently - and actually from every single person who's ever observed me - is that I have a really positive, assertive tone with my classes, and that there seems to be a culture of mutual respect in place (alternatively described as "a great/natural/confident classroom manner.") It's nice to know that that attitude of respect and positivity is coming through, because it's something I strive for, and that means my kids either see or feel it too. The negative (or "delta," meaning "growth area" in touchy-feely Programspeak) feedback I get varies from day to day, and person to person, which is a really good thing. It means that I'm not making the same mistakes every day, that I'm advancing enough to make fun new mistakes, and that there aren't errors so outrageous that everyone who walks into my classroom dives for a pen and a feedback form to correct my egregious oversights, ASAP. For one reason or another, my advisor in particular seems to believe deeply in my potential as an educator, and therefore gives me an overwhelming amount of constructive criticism. I implement as much of it as I can, but if there's one thing I can tell you about teaching, it's that no matter how many things you have ever thought about at one time, you need to multiply it by about 30, and then you're maybe getting close. It is the hardest thing I have ever done.
For illustrative purposes, please find here a partial list of things I am already working on implementing in my classroom: Giving explicit instructions, providing visuals, consistency in classroom management policies, whole-class checks for understanding, adjusting lessons based on diagnostics, lecturing less, having more dynamic introductions, emphasizing the importance of our lessons, neither overemphasizing nor ignoring higher-achieving students.
An even more partial list of things I need to work on this week: Consequences for persistently nonparticipating students, hearing more student voices, student-to-student communication, time management, effective grading, communicating student progress toward objectives to students, addressing different modalities and learning styles, acting decisively in response to disturbances, streamlining grouping strategies, making activities more student-centered, ensuring that students know what they should be doing at all times.
Oh yeah. I'm teaching content, too.
I hope.
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7 comments:
i had the writing protion of my final exam in arabic today. i wrote it about you, and how you are changing the world.
That stupid diversity session went until midnight for us. Four hours. [I assume you're talking about "The Color of Fear."] At the time, in the TFA bubble, I thought it was pretty lame. Outside of the bubble, I think it was the lamest thing ever. What a fruitcake. Let's just say I was not surprised to hear that he was from Berkeley.
During that whole name thing (as if you have to be foreign to have a foreign name), he said, "my Spanish will come in handy as I repeat your name." The kid was like, "no, it won't. My name is Aztec." Then Lee says, "Can't you all see the Native blood coursing through his veins?"
Yes, he used that exact expression.
I have a healthy disrespect for all TFA diversity sessions.
Also, about the feedback... I think that maybe they say the same thing to everyone. Then again, we all probably have similar strengths and weaknesses.
My FA gave strange but excellent feedback. I loved him. "Amelie, why do you write so big?"
Yeah, I'm actually talking about a different, yet equally lame, diversity session. We did the whole "Color of Fear" thing a week or two ago, and it did last four hours, and oh was I bitter. I think it was Lee's super-soothing tone of voice. It made me want to snap him in half. Also, no one likes being part of the Minority Parade.
Per feedback: strange as it is to think this, I think you and I just have a similar strength there. It comes from having a strong sense of self, which many of the corps have and many don't. I have observed a *lot* of classrooms where that feedback is definitely not being left: where the teacher looks scared or lost or like they don't belong there - or, like one of my colab members, where they bark orders to compensate for similar feelings. I swear she even intimidates me.
Also, I am a bad person and peek at other feedback while I am "looking for my mail folder." It says things like "WHY ARE YOU LECTURING?!?" and "YOU NEED TO RELAX." One of my CMA group got called on it by one of her students today. Ouch.
So, I believe you have a good classroom manner. And, out of the time-honored Spirit of Generosity, I ask that you believe that I do too. I've seen how my kids behave for some other teachers, and it's definitely nowhere near where they behave for me.
My FA gives the shittiest feedback ever. That is, when she's not MIA and illegally leaving me to teach unsupervised, pulling my kids out of class or otherwise undermining my authority, working on her syllabus for the fall, or reading Harry Potter.
Pamila - does the concept of "quixotic" have a concise Arabic translation?
Ok, if you've peeked at other feedback forms I'm definitely going to have to believe you (you know, out of the Spirit of Generosity and all). Honestly Jasmine, even without having seen you teach, I am really inspired by you because I remember your stories from last year. I remember how you told the stories, too, and not just what you said. It is clear that you respect your students.
I always got positive and assertive tone, and always needed to work on lecturing less, checks for understanding (not group checks for understanding, obviously), and timing/getting in the closing (I told my CMA to stop suggesting that I buy a timer because I never, ever, in a million years would do that).
That sucks about your FA. I heard plenty of FA horror stories, but Harry Potter? For Christ's sake...
My FA was great. I bonded with him. He gave me some practical advice and made me feel ok about not always doing things the TFA way. You know me, I just don't really fit the TFA rubric. I'm not on time, I have trouble keeping my mouth shut, I don't turn stuff in (I have a funny "almost CMAPed" story about lesson plans, btw), I don't work well within institutions, etc. My FA recognized these qualities and provided a nice balance for me.
Haha... the Minority Parade! It must have been strange being part of the visible parade. I was trying to represent for the disability parade without self-identifying as disabled. After telling my CS of my condition, one morning, right at the beginning of CS session, she drops a heavy book on the table next to my face to wake me up. She didn't do it to be funny; she did it to be a bitch. Well, I was super offended and had my CMA meet with her. I also found myself getting pretty annoyed during the few sessions devoted to students with disabilities. Some of the shit that came out of people's mouths... Way to assume that no one in the class is disabled just because they don't put it in big letters on their Goddamned life map...
Holy shit...You're disabled?!?
Yeah. Try and leave Being A Minority off the life map and see how far you get before someone politely points it out.
My life map culminated in my working at Strada and realizing that I have a real, deep problem with Rich White Girls. I am honest about this, and I am honestly working on it, but WOW, did I register the look of surprise on everyone's face. It's hilarious, and of course it's hyperbole, but I swear to God, some white people think they even own prejudice.
Also, I told the Aztec name story about ten times today and got some of the biggest laughs I have received since I arrived in Los Angeles. You were credited, of course.
We're about to go deeper than ever before...
Yes, I am disabled. It takes a hell of a lot of documentation to be part of Berkeley's exclusive Mobility Impairment, Speech Impairment, Acquired Brain Injury, and Chronic Illness department of the Disabled Students Program. They don't let just anyone in.
[I'm secretly hoping that I'm Acquired Brain Injury and not Chronic Illness.]
Actually, the "I hate rich white people" one was pretty common, I think. I heard about a couple of variations (one of which even included body size). The discussion I witnessed was interesting because it split into multiple factions once it was discovered that some people who hated rich people were the very rich people who the other haters hated. Someone was like, "Yes, you think you are poor because your house was in a bad neighborhood... To me, you're rich because you lived in a house. I grew up in a car." Also, it came out that the homeless white people hated other homeless white people because their parents always told them that they were "better than them." Poor black people were ok, though.
The strangest thing for me was the fact that there are so few Asians in TFA. Also, did you notice that TFA lumps Asians and Native Americans together in how it reports its number of minorities? I mean, that's really stretching the land bridge if you ask me.
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