I had a very hellish day of teaching my 10th graders. Not only was the class just awful, but it was even worse because I was being observed by one of my own teachers in the program. When we talked after class, I totally cried. I felt so miserable. And I was so embarrassed. I have had a couple of really fantastic days with my eleventh graders, but of course, had to be observed on a shitty day with the sophomores.
As awful as it was, it was actually very productive. We talked a lot about what was going well and what was not so great in each of my classes and I realized that my big issue with my sophomore classes is that I am just not comfortable teaching them. I don't feel as comfortable with the material and I don't feel comfortable with the 38 fifteen year-olds that I have to teach it to. I then had an epiphany and realized that the reason that I am uncomfortable is that I am trying to be someone that I am not. I am trying to hard to fill this very standard version of what "good teaching" looks like and it's way too formal and way not me. So, I have made some decisions about how to now approach the class and how I can do so in a productive way by being myself and not who other teachers think I should be. It really works for me with my Juniors and I am hoping it will be the same for my sophomores. Wish me luck!
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Saturday, January 12, 2008
PRAXIS HELL!
Today I took both the PRAXIS II for World and U.S. History and the PLT and let me tell ya, they were hellish. The History test asked the most obscure questions, gave indecipherable maps, and had graph interpretation questions where none of the possible answers could have been made conclusively from the graph. Two hours of hell. Granted, I wasn't as prepared as I could have been, but really, I don't even know how good extensive studying would have done me. We had a break in between the first test and the second and we took the time to eat lunch, bitch about the first test and then sort of study for the next one. The second one, the Principles of Learning and Teaching consisted of four case studies and then about 30 multiple choice questions. Yeah, you need more than two hours to complete all that. The short answer questions required thought, but they don't give time for it. I was scrambling to finish at the end, but I didn't quite make it.
Not only were the tests hateful (said in the Jack McFarland voice with accompanying angry fist shake) but I feel that they are also really inauthentic. For the history one, there is not a chance in hell that any veteran teacher knows all the stuff that was on the test, so to think that pre-service teacher would know it all is absolutely absurd. Furthermore- I don't think that content knowledge necessarily makes you a better teacher. Many teachers, especially novice teachers are only a day or week ahead of their students as far as learning all the specific information for any given unit. But they learn it eventually, they make good use of it, get the students interested in it, and thus teach it effectively. Alternatively, you have teachers who are wells of useless information and present it to the class who sees it as...useless information. Gauging a teacher's knowledge of their content at any given time is not necessarily telling of how effective or ineffective that teacher is. As for the PLT- we, as teacher candidates, are taught that often there is no hard and fast rule for dealing with content and management issues. We are taught that every class and every individual student will come with their own background and experience and baggage, and therefore different solutions will work for different classes and individuals. Yet, to prove that we are worthy to be teachers we are given sets of hypothetical situations, without enough background information about said situations and are asked to come up with viable solutions. Not to say that it isn't helpful to think about these things, but once again, your ability to give the "right" answers to these questions does not necessarily say much about how you would really handle them as a classroom teacher.
Though there is always the chance that I will have passed these tests today, I am pretty confident in saying that I will return to this subject in about 4 1/2 weeks to bitch about having to take them again after failing my first time around. I'm sure you'll look forward to hearing all about it.
Not only were the tests hateful (said in the Jack McFarland voice with accompanying angry fist shake) but I feel that they are also really inauthentic. For the history one, there is not a chance in hell that any veteran teacher knows all the stuff that was on the test, so to think that pre-service teacher would know it all is absolutely absurd. Furthermore- I don't think that content knowledge necessarily makes you a better teacher. Many teachers, especially novice teachers are only a day or week ahead of their students as far as learning all the specific information for any given unit. But they learn it eventually, they make good use of it, get the students interested in it, and thus teach it effectively. Alternatively, you have teachers who are wells of useless information and present it to the class who sees it as...useless information. Gauging a teacher's knowledge of their content at any given time is not necessarily telling of how effective or ineffective that teacher is. As for the PLT- we, as teacher candidates, are taught that often there is no hard and fast rule for dealing with content and management issues. We are taught that every class and every individual student will come with their own background and experience and baggage, and therefore different solutions will work for different classes and individuals. Yet, to prove that we are worthy to be teachers we are given sets of hypothetical situations, without enough background information about said situations and are asked to come up with viable solutions. Not to say that it isn't helpful to think about these things, but once again, your ability to give the "right" answers to these questions does not necessarily say much about how you would really handle them as a classroom teacher.
Though there is always the chance that I will have passed these tests today, I am pretty confident in saying that I will return to this subject in about 4 1/2 weeks to bitch about having to take them again after failing my first time around. I'm sure you'll look forward to hearing all about it.
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