Broken Bonds and Sacrifices

I left Monday morning sad and heartbroken.  It was the first time since the school year started that I didn't get to bathe my daughter, get her ready for school and put her on the bus.  This made me feel a bit bitter about going to Coventry; as all of you know I love her dearly and motherhood is one of the most fulfilling works I do on a daily basis.  I am glad that by the end of the day at Coventry this changed.  It was our last class and over the lunch break we learned that one of the students is currently in foster care.  The teacher told us they asked him how his Thanksgiving was, and he responded that next year it will be better because this year he had learned that his mother had passed away.  Although he was not living with her this affected him very much; I don't know all the circumstances but I know she brought him to this world and he knows it too.  My heart went out to this boy who was happy during our teaching time, participated and was the most friendly students towards us.  Then all of this allowed me to reflect on teaching once again.

I have a motherhood instinct after all I am a mother but wanting to be a teacher has demonstrated me that all the kids are not as lucky to have a family and grow up with loving parents.  This is where the idea of school being a second home comes in from.  Students often have hard lives at home already and coming to school helps them forget what is going on back at home.  While some students don't like school others view school as an escape.  Classrooms are that place where students who are not valued at home can become someone important.  They can help the teacher, get good grades and become a favorite student.  Teachers take on the roles of parents and important individuals in these kids lives.  I remember being little and falling in love with my teachers because they made me feel welcomed and special.  Now thinking about my future as a teacher, I see that students are human first, they are individuals with lives just like the rest of us and that part of our job as a teacher is to nurture and care for them to encourage learning in a positive environment.  This is why I believe some teachers don't have kids; at least one of my high school teachers used to say that his students were his kids, he didn't need any.  Days like this one help me to see the teacher I want to be and also make me love my profession even more.  Teachers might not get paid much or be talked about in positive ways as we would like but the rewards are numerous in other areas.  Impacting student lives, helping them to see a brighter side of life and making the classroom a second home develops thankful students and better individuals for our society.

After leaving Coventry the bitterness was gone, at least I could still pick up my little girl at the bus and enjoy her kisses, hugs and daily stories something one student from our middle school would not be able to do.  Once again I think back to being the caretaker of the human spirit and how this situation is so relevant for that reference.

Mountains to climb

Megan and I have been going to Coventry for three weeks now, it has been a challenge with the rotating schedules and to add to it the really weird system under which we have to work on.  Of the numerous times we went, we have only seen one of the classes twice, the other we have only seen once or probably just maybe never.  The one we did see, we are not teaching, yes,,,hard to understand and we are still trying to figure how we are going to work all this out.  So for collaborative goals, I believe we are going into this HOPEFUL...very hopeful that even though we don't know the students by name or had time to build even a small connection they will be open to letting us teach them.  After all the first time we were there they called us "strangers," something that lingers in the back of my mind as I picture myself standing in front of their classroom.  Together we wish to work things out in a way where we can accomplish something with what we have planned.  Our week begins with creating name tags to become familiar with students until the very end that will consist of a piece of argumentative writing.  That is one thing we know about our students and we have seen across all the different classes we have observed...they LOVE to argue!!!

My personal goals consist of beating the little voices inside my head; those that tell me middle school is so different from high school and make me doubt myself and the others that tell me I don't know these students, who am I to teach them.  Indeed high school was very different, I bonded with the students way before we started teaching them and I had learned names the first week; not to mention we had been invited to take over and teach before it had translated into an assignment.  I also want to prove to myself that while I may not teach middle school for a living and my "true passion" in teaching doesn't rely with middle schoolers or away from the English world that I love so much, I will still be able to embrace the moment and make the best out of it.  Yes it's a different environment, yes there are challenges already but at the end I want to breathe and say "I did it, I climbed another mountain and conquered it...I survived another environment in the teaching world."

Inhabiting Different Worlds

What can I say about middle school,,,to be sincere not much.  While I always try to make the best out of every experience I'm still trying to find myself in the sea of small people who are not so welcoming.  I find myself a stranger among the majority of white students who dominate the school.  Not to mention I can't get used to kids hauling three, four and five huge binders from class to class.  Maybe it takes more than a month to get used to this atmosphere or maybe my "teaching" spirit lies within the pages of literature that I now miss and the adolescents that come in a high school classroom but one thing us for sure...this middle school experiences has made me feel and explorer, a traveler...a discoverer.  I have found things about my teaching identy, it has taught me the type of teacher I want to embody whether it be from bad experience or good.  I'm still trying to find a place, especially now that I have to go in on Monday and teach classes that we've only seen once, to student's whose names I don't know.  All I know right now is that middle school is this strange world that I haven't yet found my place in. 

The good, The Bad and The Ugly

Middle school....whoa, something we were not expecting....Today we went to Coventry middle school and we were thrown a curveball.

First of all we shall talk about the good.  No cell phone issues!!! Dear God this was the highlight of my day.  Students were being reprimanded for using electronic devices that they should have not been using in the first place.  I've been in different high school classrooms and they all had their faces in their laps due to the constant checking of cell phones or ipods.  Apparently students at the middle school level are not so worried about cell phone conversations.  I think the major solution to the cell phone problem at Coventry was how they reprimand the problem when a students uses one.  Our cooperating teacher told us that if students were caught with their cellphones a first time they would be called on by the teacher, the second time they would be reported to the principal and the third time the principal would take the phone for the remainder of the year.  Most importantly parents could not get mad or interfere because if they come in the principal will say to them it is strictly stated in the handbook.

Now let's move on to the bad.  I hope that by the end of the month my mind changes about teaching middle school but it is not something i'm looking forward to now to be sincere.  Middle school is such a different atmosphere from the high school feeling and not to mention the extra perks we have added.  The first of the perks being a crazy rotating schedule; I mean there is two teachers...one of them teaches mon, wed and fri and the other teaches tues and thurs in one week but then the next week they switch days.  Somehow they manage not to have the same students and teach the same curriculum.  Second, these particular teachers, teach out of a "cart."  What this means is that they have no set classroom which doesn't allow them to align seats in the manner they desire or takes time away from class because they cannot have the technology ready if she is using it on a particular day.  I really could add more to this list but I don't want to seem like the highly critical person.  At this point I am just trying to embrace all that's going on, still trying to figure it out and adapt in some shape or form.

Tomorrow morning we go back to Coventry and as much as I know there are more negative setbacks instead of the positive ones, there is still a classroom filled with 28 students who don't need to worry about my hard time adapting.  I must put on my teaching face and move on...this aspect of teaching I have learned will be one of the ones which I will be using the most.

Vigilante

So much can be learned about one's personality from teaching one lesson or from teaching a whole week.  The teaching week at Central High provided me with insight as to who I want to be as a future teacher.  Also the topics that I learned about ranged from classroom management to teaching voice.

After my teacher came to observed us and gave us many positive regards I was happy to know that I was on the "right path."  I was scared at first to be watched but after it was all over I was happy to have had the advice of someone who wants the best for her future teachers.  I remember starting off with a mini lesson back in 406, which was to be taught to our peers and now I was teaching a whole week.  We planned for a whole week, this felt like such an accomplishment on Friday.

My favorite lesson was the one we taught on Monday.  It involved Oedipus and finding irony in the pages we had read.  Students were divided into three groups each being observed by either Emmanuel, Ms. Friendson or myself.  In my group we collected more examples than the ones we had to have done; not to mention they worked successful in supporting each other.  I am not going to lie, I think this lesson was rather successful because each one of us was there to support our groups.

One major observation and learning that I took away from this week was the success of having multiple teachers teaching one class.  Teaching is a secluded job; teachers often set boundaries within their classrooms and isolate themselves.  Teaching with two other people provided me with an opportunity to have other's knowledge and support.  It made lesson planning easier and reflections be much diverse coming from different points of view.  While it is irrelevant because classrooms are not going to have three teachers at a time but it was still nice to experience this.