Student Teaching #1

               This semester started off with a bang, and an alarm clock that goes off way too early in the morning.  Since the 2^nd of January I have been getting up and going to work at a place that I am passionate about and learning to teach in the process.  I honestly figured I was in pretty good shape.  I read the material last semester and I spent every waking moment planning for this one.  My CT and I decided that we would co-teach for the first couple of weeks.  Then, as with everything in life, we had to change our plans.  There were the days students were out of class for assemblies and the day they were gone for the career pipeline.  Things happen, and unfortunately my students do have other classes, not to mention a life outside of school.  That being said I have been dealing with the interruptions and adapted my plans accordingly.  My CT and I spend almost the entire day together and every afternoon, during 5^th block, we reflect on my teaching together.  We look at where we were so we can figure out where we are going.  The “theme” here is intentional teaching. 

                Sure, we have all heard the phrase “intentional teaching” thrown around in our classes and in our college texts.  But, does anyone really know how to apply a theory right out of the gate?  I thought I did.  I could have expounded upon the virtues of intentional teaching, multiple intelligences, and student lead learning.  However, until you really put this into practice you have no idea how to do it.  I didn’t.   That being said, the last few weeks have been interesting.

                Earlier this week I had the pleasure of beginning to teach The Great Gatsby, one of my favorite books.  The lesson didn’t go well.  If you’re curious read my blog post from Monday.  My CT and I talked about what happened.  I had planned this for months, but I went in thinking I knew Gatsby.  While I do know the novel extremely well;  It is one of my favorite pieces of American fiction.  That being said, while I know Gatsby, I didn’t know how to teach Gatsby.  It really isn’t that hard to understand now.  I tried to stop every paragraph or so and point out everything, every little detail that makes Gatsby great.  My love for the novel got in the way.

                So what is the fix for this?  It’s easy, really, intentional teaching, patience, and trusting your kids.  I know Gatsby and I knew what I wanted to say, but I needed to be patient, let the novel unfold naturally.  You can’t force this type of thing.  And finally, trust that your kids are smarter than anyone, even their parents, gives them credit for.  I went back to my plans and my scripts and looked at where I was, where I had been (that was painful since I have a recording of it), and where I needed to go.  I looked back at my novel and used sticky notes to force me to stop and then let go.

                So to the brass tacks, I went through the rest of chapter 1 and every three pages or so, there is no hard and fast rule here, I looked for natural breaks in the narrative.  I put post it notes there.  I went through my script and divided it to match my post its.  So during teaching today I let go and let the kids read and explore the novel.  I stopped them every post it note and went back and pointed out the major characters, points that needed pointing out, symbol’s, misogynistic racist jerks, the important things.  And it went beautifully. 

               I have said before that as English majors we have seen hundreds of novels taught over the years.  We should know how to “do this” like nothing else.  I was wrong.  I’m not afraid to admit it, but I would be afraid to go back to the way I thought we should teach a novel last Monday morning.  It’s a process, student teaching.  Teach, learn, adapt, and be truly intentional.     

"The Man Who Gives His Name to this Book"

I’m not even sure that I can comprehend how badly today went.  I didn’t have any problems with behavior; I didn’t have any wardrobe malfunctions or anything else of the sort.  I had a really bad case of the brain farts.  There I said it.  I couldn’t remember anything that I needed to.  That being said, I am prone to that and prepare accordingly.  I script a lot of things I do in the classroom just to keep myself on track.  Questions I want to ask, answers to those questions, things of that nature.  I even have the time that class ends at the top of my notes so I can keep an eye on it.  But today, you just can’t fix stupid. 

I have read The Great Gatsby close to ten times.  I know the book in and out.  Heck I have partied with Tom, drank Gatsby’s liquor, and bought a car from George.  And then I tried to teach it.  I went through the great American novel speech.  I pointed out how the plot follows the standard linear plot format they all learned about in middle school, and gave them a quick refresher.  We talked about how no-one likes a speech from their father and how unreliable politicians, and narrators, can be.  And then it went the way of the stock market in 1929.  “Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book” would understand.  And that is precisely the point at which I lost it in the novel.  On the second page, to be exact, while trying to point out that our unreliable narrator was telling us he was going to be unreliable because he was telling us that his tale is a work of fiction, I said “What do we know about books?”  The students stared, unsure whether to raise their hand or laugh uncontrollably.  My CT in the back of the room knows where I am trying to go but he just smirks.  I am on my own and there is no stopping this runaway Duisenberg now.   I restate my question and one kid raises her hand, the girl who always wants me to bring her pop-tarts, and says “they tell us stories.”  I reply in the affirmative and quickly move on.  I am now so flustered that I gloss over the point of our unreliable narrator giving us the end of the story at the beginning of the book and move on to page 3 and tradition.  Oh it’s no better over here.  We discover the narrator’s last name but it might as well be etched in stone for me.  As I gloss over this tidbit of information I move on to where “we have a tradition” staring me in the face.  I can’t even formulate simple phrases now.  I must look like a deer in the headlights and I ask “what do we “know” about tradition?”  Again nothing from the students whom now, I believe, have come to understand the gravity of the situation and just watch the run-away train slam into the end of the period bell.  The girl that always wants me to bring her pop- tarts, silently gives me one of hers and walks out of the classroom.

In all seriousness this is how I felt today went with my juniors.  My AP class is going great guns and we had an awesome Shared Inquiry Discussion over the two chapters of Beloved they read over the weekend.  My CT and I discussed what happened with Gatsby and ways to prevent it from happening again.  He takes great notes and I was recording today’s lesson and was able to reflect, a little, it really is painful to watch.  We laughed and decided that I was trying to stop too often and point things out a little at the time.  I told him that I didn’t want to go over their heads and so I was trying to pull back a little and not overwhelm them.  He assured me that if they got overwhelmed they would tell me and that they would “get it” just like the seniors do.  He assured me that everyone has “those days” and that all in all I was doing a fine job, all I need to do is make a few adjustments.  I will and have made adjustments to my lesson tomorrow, I just hope Fitzgerald didn’t turn over in his grave. 

Don’t Rob Yourself

“You have the nerve to ask me when I will have your assignment graded?” 

“Well yeah, like, I have to keep on top of my grade so I can pass this class, ya’ know?”

“Yeah, I know.  I also know that you didn’t complete the assignment.  You obviously had better

            things to worry about than your grade.”

“Oh, well I just didn’t get it.”

“Why didn’t you come and ask me for help?  You know, I am here every day at 6am and you

could have come before class.”

“I ride the bus and so I don’t get here until the last minute.”

“I cut myself shaving and I couldn’t get it to stop bleeding.”

“My mom didn’t wake me up in time.”

 “I am here early and I have an email address.  You have all of the resources you need to be successful; all you have to do is take advantage of them.”

“Hey, I don’t need a lecture.  I just asked about my grade.”

“You received a C.”

“What!?  How can that be?”

“I can’t get lower than a B!”

“I will get in trouble with my team!”

“All of the answers you chose to complete received full credit.”

“So you know that I know the material. Can’t you just bump my grade?  Please!”

“A thief can take away money, a car, and property from a person but it is certainly impossible to

take your education away.  I won’t rob you, your coach wont rob you, don’t rob yourself.”

Interpretation

     Hectic is characterized by intense agitation and excitement.  I would define the past few weeks as just such an experience.  My pre-student teaching week went well.  There was quite a bit that I would change about the lessons I taught and I made note of that.  One of the most valuable things that is now in the front of my mind is that kids, even seniors, have extremely short term memories.  I tried to activate prior knowledge for bellwork using a cartoon from the gulf oil spill and they had no idea.  I changed the cartoon for block 2 to one satirizing the government shutdown and it worked much better.   From that point I have been working on my semester plan for student teaching.  I am about 2/3 of the way done and I feel rather good about that.  I am hoping to have a draft for my CT to review over Thanksgiving. 

     There has been a situation that has taught me a lot in the last week.  The question is about interpretation.  When should you teach a piece of literature from a certain point of view?  Furthermore, should you teach an interpretation on a character’s sexuality based solely on what you, the teacher, have self analyzed?  The answer I have come up with is no.  If there is literary, textual, and academic basis for including sexual orientation in the teaching of a work then do so.  For example, one cannot teach the Catcher in the Rye without talking about Holden’s sexuality.  However, if a characters sexual orientation is not mentioned in the text and if it does not alter student’s analysis of the narrative then leave it alone.  The situation really comes down to whether or not you can defend the position that you are taking.  Scholarly journal articles, textual evidence, and other such sources can serve to help you defend your position, use them.

     On a lighter note, I am teaching Beloved in the spring and I talked to one of my English professors.  She gave me some great ideas on a project to help my students analyze the novel.  I ended up using two professors ideas and modified a project to make it more accessible to high school students.  I try to post my version here when I am done.  The basic idea is that the students, instead of reading day after boring day in class, work on the project during class and read outside of class.  The project involves students by having them teach the class using their own guiding questions and prompts.  Students are divided into groups of three and four and then come up with a 15-20 minute lesson over a specific prompt/guiding question they have been given.  They are instructed to use different media if they would like and NOT to read from a text.  I got positive feedback from two of the students who read my project outline.  I gave a copy to my CT on Friday and I will hear from him tomorrow.  I hope he likes it! 

     Overall, my pre-student teaching semester has been extremely valuable.  I feel like the concepts and ideas I learned in previous college classes and observations are coming together in exciting ways.  I still have quite a bit to plan, but it doesn’t seem as daunting as it did before because of the tools I now have to work with.  School politics is a necessary evil, but if you do your homework and back yourself up you will come out on top.    

Genre Reflection #1: Erasure Poetry

Core 3 scene 1

The following poem, or soliloquy as it were, has been inspired by three distinctive texts and/or events.  The first, without a doubt, it Shakespeare’s Hamlet from whom the original text was borrowed.  The second inspirational text is by Janet Holmes and is entitled “The Ms of My Kin”.  This book was originally “The Poems of Emily Dickinson” to which Holmes applied the art of erasure poetry.  Thirdly, this poem is inspired by the students in my pre-student teaching AP Literature and Composition course.  Through them I have come to love Shakespeare all over again.

To be, or not to be,

‘tis Nobler

The slings and Arrows

Against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them.

The natural shocks

That a consummation

Devoutly to be wished.

To dream,

For in that sleep what dreams may

Come,

When we have shuffled

Give us pause.  There’s the respect

That makes so long life:

For who would bear the Whips and Scorns of

Teaching?

Who would bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

The undiscovered Country, from whose bourn

No Traveller returns,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have,

Than fly to others that we know not of.

Thus conscience does make us all,

And thus Resolution

Is o’er the cast of Thought,

And enterprises of great moment,

With this regard Currents turn

And name Action.  Soft you now,

Be all my sins remembered.    

Absurdity and Satire

            Over the past couple of weeks the class has finished Hamlet and is now moving on to Camus’ The Absurd Man, The Stranger, and Metamorphosis.  The students seem to be excited about reading these works.  They have been asked to acquire their own copies of The Stranger and Metamorphosis for two reasons.  The first reason being that the schools copies are from the 1970’s and are falling apart, and the second that my CT is teaching them how to annotate texts and wants them to annotate these two novels as part of that lesson.  These works will continue and eventually conclude the unit on Existentialism and the Absurd.

           

            I am working on my lessons for the introduction of Satire which I will be teaching in the next three weeks.  I am using an essay by Robert Harris called “The Purpose and Method of Satire” as well as high level questions for the students to answer about the article.  I also wish to include some clips from The Daily Show or The Colbert Report to highlight how Satire is used every day.  I also hope that using these modern media sources will help the students build upon their background knowledge.  After that I will be teaching Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal.”

            I had the opportunity to observe my CT as he conference with the students one-on-one about their essays.  As part of the writing workshop that the class participated in at the beginning of the year he has now graded and returned their essays.  That being said, he returned the graded essays and had the students spend some time going over the comments that he left for them.  The students were then instructed to write a reflection upon the comments and write an informal reflection about what they did well and what they need to improve upon.  Most of the students treated the exercise with importance because my CT stressed to them that this part of the process was not graded but will only serve to make them better writers in the future.  He stressed that they needed to grow in their writing now in order to be successful when they get to college next year.  That being said, one of the students that I observed seemed to understand the importance of growth but openly admitted to not caring about the novel they wrote their essays about.  The student said “I didn’t like the book and I couldn’t get myself to work hard on the paper.”  To me that was frustrating, but I have to remember that these students are real people.  I know that, even this semester, I did not put all of myself into a paper I wrote for my Shakespeare class because I didn’t like the writing prompt and the story.  However, I did turn the paper in on time.  Unfortunately if my student had at least turned the paper in on time her grade would have been passing.  My CT did stress this point to her and I think that it was clear and will make a difference in her assignments in the future.

Another valuable lesson I am learning has been watching my CT create the guiding questions for the class every day.  This has helped me understand how to connect my students to the texts we are exploring.  This is also assisting me in planning my own lessons for Satire.  Finally, observing my CT giving constructive feedback to the students over their writing unit has helped connect the concepts I learned last semester in 680 into the classroom. 

            

"I think; therefore..." Rene DeCarte

Over the course of the first few weeks of school my seniors have been working on an analytic essay that they wrote over the summer.  People I tell about the assignment are surprised that there is a program that has students working over the summer.  I have to remind my friends that these students are on a college track, many have already been accepted to impressive institutions, and the amount of work they do over the summer is nothing compared to the work they will be expected to complete when they get to university.  That being said, we have now moved on into Existentialism and Hamlet. 

                The class spent a few days learning and annotating an article from the Stanford University Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Existentialism.  My CT gave them a packet that is comprised of the existentialism article, examples of how to annotate a work, and a series of higher level questions to answer.  Honestly, I am not well versed in existentialism so I completed the assignment at home to give myself a better understanding and so that I could assist the students if they needed help.  I also dug out my copy of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness and brushed up a bit.  We are teaching existentialism and the absurd in order to give students context as they read Hamlet.  Furthermore, we are teaching annotation so that our students can learn the skill.  They will be required to take notes during Hamlet and then when we move on to The Stranger they will be required to annotate their own copy of the novel for a grade.  I was surprised to find that there are college students and certified teachers who have never annotated a novel and it blew my mind that they would miss out on having that intimate of a conversation with a novel, especially literature.

                Some of my colleagues have expressed that they feel existentialism and the absurd is (1) to difficult of material for Highschool students and (2) they feel like they may be unprepared to teach such a heavy subject, especially in relation to Hamlet.  However, in my opinion if we gloss over existentialism we are doing an injustice to them.  Hamlet is in a similar situation to many of our students.  “To be or not to be” comes to mind.  By teaching existentialism with Hamlet we are helping our students, who are creating their own identity, to create their own identity using existentialism and literature instead of pop-culture and celebrity.

 

                During Thursday’s class period the class was opened for discussion on existentialism and the absurd.  The opening question that my CT posed to them was “What are your ideas of existentialism at this point?”  The conversation went from there on its own.  My CT did ask connecting questions but primarily the discussion was student driven as they discussed and debated their own concept of existentialism.  Some of the best questions were: “What is the burden of facticity?”  “How can paradox be resolved?” “What is the context of religion and science in relation to existentialism?”  How did the reformation effect existentialism or did existentialism influence the reformation?”  And a discussion on herd mentality.  These students are extremely intelligent and challenging them less than we are doing right now would be to fail them.

                Time was given on Friday for the students to review their graded summer essays that they edited in class.  For the most part they did well with the revision process.  No one received below a B.  My CT reviewed what assignments were supposed to be turned in by Friday as we handed back papers.  Time was then given to the students to review and read the comments on their papers.  It was made clear to them that repetitive mistakes do not show growth and that you have to be willing to review several papers together in order to find these types of mistakes.  In addition my CT made sure that the students were aware that they can come in at lunch or after school to discuss their papers in a friendly way and that he would show them how to correct any mistakes in their papers if they had questions.  Afterwards we began Hamlet.

                Hamlet in context was the objective of Friday’s lesson.  Students took Cornell notes while my CT lectured.  Topics covered during the lecture were: Hamlet’s first performance, Elizabethan history, James I, Change and the unknown, reality vs. unreality.  Students were assigned their own parts with my CT reading the part of Hamlet.  My advice to the students was to read with enthusiasm.  Nothing is worse than reading, and listening to someone read, with a monotone, boring, uninterested voice.  We got through Act 1: Scene 1 before class ended, and definitely an exciting start to the year.