Teacher as Person: Reflection 2

LOOKING BACK

*Connections I have made with others this week: (students, staff, student teachers, parents, etc.)

Students: Truthfully, I haven't had much to do with the students of ________ this week. I did get to help one student workshop a paper. Specifically, he wanted help with sentence structure. His essay was quite good. I truly enjoyed helping him refine his essay. While my SA normally marks with a red pen, which I find a little too harsh, I went over his paper and just used a pencil to make some notes for improvement in conjunction with dialog. I tried very hard to make specific, helpful suggestions rather than just 'naming' the error present. I also tried to show where in his paper he was writing effectively so that he might learn from his own strengths. All in all, a good way for me to ease into relating to the students. Otherwise, I had the curious experience of students standing and clapping for me when my SA introduced me. I could see that they were just as curious about me as I am about them. Curiosity is a good place to start.

Staff: An amazing whirlwind of introductions! My Associate Principal greeted me, introduced me to everyone he thought I might have an interest in meeting, and checked up on me throughout the week to find out how my experiences were going. Meeting the administrators and faculty at St. George's has been a wholly positive experience. My SA is jovial and compassionate and proficient in all he does. His demeanor put me at ease early in the game. His constant self-deprecating humor and gentle teasing quickly acted to integrate me into the staff room culture. When I went over the routines assignment with him, I could tell that he felt satisfied and encouraged by my observations. In return, I also felt satisfied and encouraged by his responses to my work thus far. All in all, we have set up the conditions for trust and rapport that I am positive will result in a productive working relationship. In the course of the first couple of days, I also got to show two or three teachers stuff they didn't know about in their fields. I felt like they saw me as capable and ready to contribute. My SA and the other teachers I've observed, have all indicated that they are open to suggestions for improvement as well. The environment of St. George's seems so open and essentially gentle. (This easy openness and transparency surprised me coming from such a clear privilege—I imagined more rigidity would be present in these 'upper echelons.') As the week progressed, I felt more and more like we all had something to contribute and that those contributions were both well received and well respected. In effect, we were all part and parcel to the learning community that is ___________.

Student Teachers: I'm quite pleased with my fellow student teachers, both my colleagues at ________ and my colleagues placed at other schools. I have found myself in a supportive role with both my _______ classmates; thus far; I help by making arrangements to meet and assisting them make sense of assignments and expectations. In a way, I see my behavior as 'stock pilling' good will so that I know we can all count on each other. I'm am touched and impressed by the little vignettes posted to Firstclass by my fellow modulers. I felt worried about how our atmosphere may have been transformed by our last day on the hill. I worried about the tension created by the FA's call for increased professionalism; I worried about the divisive potential of the “certain subjects/don't have to listen” and the credo activities; I especially worried about one class member who seemed to be hit really hard by the professionalism reminder. I felt relief once I realized we were all 'okay' and more or less ready to face the challenges of our placements. I'm so proud of my fellow classmates; I miss them too. I miss seeing them, my FAs and my FM. I'm looking forward to seeing everybody on the 20^th.

LOOKING AHEAD

*Different instructional methods I observed this week:

• Socratic Method (impure—makes some statements.) My SA spends significantly more time asking students questions than lecturing. When we discussed the rationale for certain classroom procedures, he said, “I'm not here to give answers, I'm here to encourage discovery.”
• Offering students choice of activities. Voted for either silent reading or class discussion.
• Powerpoint presentation. Duality in Fifth Business
• Silent Reading. Brave New World
• Peer Questioning.
• Peer Evaluation. Took quiz and consulted with each other before SA gave answers.
• Peer Editing. Journalism—open workshopping of editorial pieces.
• Praise: “Absolutely, that is a perfect analogy.” “That is an excellent observation.”
• Publish. Readying student writing for student content newspaper.

WRITING PROMPTS

*Select a favorite quote from a professional reading and explain why it is significant to you in relation to teaching and learning.

I take my quote not from a professional reading but from a classroom instruction: “Life is your curriculum.” Carolyn Mamchur made this statement during a classroom activity on type theory, specifically when we were exploring what the different types need in terms of safety and power. From the first class with my SA, I could tell that he is interested in being a real person to his students and seeing their realities. School is a huge part of these boys' lives and my SA does what he can to teach them about learning and life simultaneous to conveying educational information and process. From the get-go, he asks them what they think and moves them from their life experiences into the novels and the ideas with which they are engaging. Some examples:

“Would you choose monogamy or free sex, unencumbered, random orgies. Hedonistic pleasure. Dirty, dirty sex with all these women?”

“How about a drug induced happiness or abstinence? Is our Society really abstinent? In what ways does our culture encourage alcohol consumption?”

“The human condition requires that we feel pain...only with struggle, difficulty, pain there is happiness. No struggle, no happiness.”

He really succeeds in bringing the students into a complicated reality—both their own and the reality of Brave New World. A dialog between the teacher (SA) and several students (ST):

SA: Why produce an epsilon?

ST: Cheap labour.

SA: What other advantages?

ST: Easily manipulated.

SA: Are they happy with it?

ST: Yes.

SA: Does that make sense?

ST: Absolutely.

SA: How else are they different? How do we know?

He accomplishes these kinds of dialogs in every class. The above quotes are all taken from one grade 11 English class. The following taken from a grade 12 English class where they are reading Davie's Fifth Business.

SA: (Turns off music.) I want you all to think about the time in your life you've felt the most challenged. Despair. Hopelessness. Grade 12 elicits those kinds of emotional responses I know. (Pause) Think about your life immediately after the experience. For lack of a better word, during recovery. A moment of salvation. (Pause.) What do you think you came out of that experience with?

ST: Relief.

SA: Anyone willing to share?

ST: The whole suspension thing. 2 week. 3 months. Can't organize things when you're down like that. There's...like an lead apron...

SA: How does that feel?

ST: Scary because you don't have to feel some thing all the time.

SA: Did you learn something from that experience? You said, “Things figured themselves out?”

ST: Learn how to grow up a bit. Learn that you only have a year left. You just have to give'er and get out.

I could go on. I have notes from all his classes in which he draws his students into the novels and ideas through their own experiences. In one class, he focuses on “happiness comes from accomplishment.” In another, “How many people here are afraid of growing old?” Ostensibly, he's teaching the same material but each class in different. Each class reflects the life (or lived) experiences of his students. There is no real routine and he abandons his list of discussion questions easily in order to facilitate these boys' search for meaning. Together, students and teacher, strive for understanding something about themselves, about their world and their relationship to life and literature and the world of ideas.

What I really want to draw out is how the curriculum is life for our students (and ourselves). Education is an experience through which they are living. The years spin towards graduation (or exiting the system by an alternate path) piling one experience upon another upon another. I believe it is artificial to attempt to draw lines between curriculum and life. They are one.