My pre-student teaching semester began this week.  I reported to my Cooperating Teachers classroom last week and we discussed expectations, the types of classes I will be involved with this year, went over the syllabus/curriculum, and talked about the WSU education program.  The expectations are on par with what I would expect from Highschool students.  Being that the 4 classes I will eventually be involved with are Senior AP and Honors classes I don’t expect any real behavior problems.  However, I do expect them to be engaged and sometimes, even when students are on topic, the conversation can get out of hand.  That being said, I expect the behavior issues that I have observed and dealt with as part of my job over the last three years in middle school to be pleasantly absent during pre-student teaching.  The curriculum for an AP and Honors classes is difficult even for College English students.  The AP classes read Beowulf and Grendel over the summer and were required to write an analytical essay about the texts.  Some students exceeded my CT’s expectations but most fell short.   The page length requirement was at least three pages and most students barely made three pages and they were poorly written.  However, the essays are not final drafts, as the students thought, but are rough drafts.  Beginning on Monday they have been given back their essays and an example essay my CT uses to teach the students how to edit a paper.  Tomorrow he is teaching them about transitional phrases.  Throughout a 75 minute class about half is dedicated to instruction and the other half to peer editing, heavy individual editing and rewriting.  Attention has been, or will be, given to sentence structure, punctuation, diction, spelling, MLA formatting and citation, introductions, titles, genre, contextual factors, and clearly defined thesis statements.  All of this instruction is based on the AP essay requirements that the students will have to adhere to when they take their AP exams.  What I have observed in the first few days of the semester makes me think about my goals as a teaching candidate.

I have quite a bit of middle school language arts experience and I am excited to get more experience in a Highschool English classroom.  Middle school, in my opinion, is about teaching students the foundation material that they will need as they move on into Highschool.  That being the case, I have not had very much experience teaching novels or literature and it is my biggest goal this semester to learn how to teach this upper level material.  Furthermore, I know that as a college student I can write A papers but teaching someone how to write the same A papers and to think in an analytical way about literature is something that I need experience with.  I am also looking forward to becoming familiar with Highschool curriculum and exploring any options available in regard to teaching this curriculum.  Another goal I have this year is to have a little more fun teaching than I have had in the past.  I am going to now have the opportunity to co-teach/teach authors and texts that I love.  Hamlet is the first text on the syllabus for next week, followed by Camus’ The Stranger, Kafka’s Metamorphosis, Joyce’s Dubliners, and Orwell’s 1984.

The next school year is finally here and I hope to be a sponge so I can soak up everything my CT and students have to teach me.