From the Mouths of Babes

Today I had the privilege of witnessing a student deliver one of the most thoughtful interpretations of Starry Night that I have ever heard in all my years of interacting with that painting. It was completely beautiful. My lesson for the day was on the way society influenced art and vice versa in the late 19th and early 20th century. We started with Realism, worked our way through Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, and ended our conversation with Cubism. The main objective of this activity was to point out how society became less about conformity and more about individual expression at the beginning of the 20th century. As the eras of art progress, the artists within the same genre get more and more distinguishable from each other.

The students got very interested and involved in discussing the works of art, and they especially enjoyed Van Gogh's Starry Night. One boy compared it to what the reflection of the night sky might look like in a puddle of gasoline, which I thought was clever (even if not totally thought out). However, the comment that stopped me dead in my tracks came from one of the quietest students in the class. The only time she had opened her mouth the whole period was to say "here" during attendance, but she made up for quantity with quality.

We were talking about what emotions the painting provokes. Students were saying things like anger, sadness, depression, confusion, which were all perfectly excellent answers. Then Silvia (name changed) raised her hand and cautiously suggested, "I think that the painting shows very conflicting emotions." Of course I asked her to explain why she thought so. She replied, "Well, the sky is very swirly and violent looking, but the town in the background is very still and calm looking, so I think when Van Gogh was painting this, he was experiencing conflicting emotions about something."

For a moment, all I could do was stand dumb founded, but I quickly collected myself and asked the rest of the class what they thought about Silvia's interpretation. Overall, I was very impressed with their level of maturity and their engagement in the conversation today. I am especially proud of my group of students because they have been labeled "CP," or College Prep. This is just a nice way of saying you guys will probably go to college, but you are not quite smart enough for honors.

Many of the teachers I have interacted with at my school prefer teaching honors classes and do not get any joy out of teaching CP classes. They complain that CP kids have more behavior issues, more difficulty grasping advanced concepts, and a wider range of ability levels. That may all be true, but I tried to go in to my first days of teaching with an open mind and high expectations. The conversation we had today definitely required my students to deal with advanced concepts, and they handled it brilliantly.

I believe that teaching can take on many different forms. Yesterday, I tried to be brilliant, eloquent, witty, and captivating with an 80 minute lecture that would leave them wanting more of my fabulous teaching abilities. That failed miserably. Today, I tried to uncover the brilliance lying inside each and every one of my 23 students. That brought me much closer to success. It seems then, that my passion lies in helping students find their own voices and establish their own opinions about the world they live in and the information available to them in that world. Hopefully I can keep that in mind in future lessons. All around, it was a wonderful day that reminded me of all the reasons why the prospect of teaching fills my heart with so much joy.

Sink or Swim

Since I started the semester, my professor, my coop, and my advisor have all been saying that with student teaching it is best to just throw yourself into the lake and see if you sink or swim. Well, today I threw myself in, but instead of realizing my doom in the murky depths or doing laps on the circumference, I just kind of floated lifeless until the current of some passing speed boat propelled me to shore.

It was very anti-climactic. I did learn several very important lessons today however, but before I get into those, I should probably explain that today was the first day I actually taught a lesson. I was supposed to lecture for 80 minutes on the great thinkers of the late 19th and early 20th century (Darwin, Einstein, and Freud) and on the new inventions and medical advances of the industrial revolution.

Lesson 1: I do not like lecture, it is not my style.

After what seemed like hours of blubbering on about who knows what, trailing off at the end of thoughts, loosing my place in the notes, and reiterating the same take away messages in slightly reworded form, I finally breathed a sigh of relief. I had finished my first lesson. However, the weight of this experience was only lifted from my shoulders long enough for the rope to snap and send it all crashing back down on me. I looked at the clock and realized that all that talking had somehow only managed to eat up 60 min of the block.

Lesson 2: Always have extra activities planned if you run out of time.

I turned the class over to Mr. K and tried to maintain my composure as I slunk back to waiting arms of my always nurturing supervisor. She must have been able to tell that I was about to go Simon Cowell on myself because she immediately whisked me out of the room.

Lesson 3: In order to teach you must first be willing to learn.

My supervisor smiled at me wisely and informed me that I had done a brilliant job. Of course, I was not inclined to believe her at first, but eventually she was able to convince me that teaching a class of 23 juniors in high school is not something you get right on your first try. I took that to heart. As it turns out, student teaching is going to require me to be much more of a student than a teacher.

Today was an eye-opening experience for me, but it did not leave me feeling defeated. I am glad that this is not going to be easy. Student-teaching will be an excellent challenge, and I plan to meet it with all the zeal, creativity, and perseverance that it deserves.

Teachers

My first week of student teaching has been relatively uneventful. I met my coop (cooperating teacher) Mr. K. I also met my supervisor. She is a retired teacher who used to work with inner city kids in Philadelphia. They both seem completely wonderful.

I have been thinking extensively over the past two days about the kind of teacher I want to be. Sitting in the teacher's lounge yesterday and today gave me a bit of a shock. For some reason, I had been envisioning teachers using their 80 min plan period to grade papers, come up with new curriculum, and brain storm ideas for reaching students in their classes who are struggling. I pictured teachers sharing stories about student successes and intelligent things students said in class. What I witnessed was something completely different.

Today, the teachers were grading final papers. They were taking turns going around and reading "stupid things" that students wrote to the rest of the group. Run-on sentences, comments that made no sense, improper grammar, and anything else that struck them as funny. Now, don't get me wrong, some of the mistakes were humorous, and it was quite obvious that some of the students did not put much time and effort into their papers. However, it was the tone of the conversation, and their attitudes toward the students that put me on edge. It was like they were mining through the papers for errors, hoping they would find a funny student failure to share with the group.

Still, they are all very nice people, and I will do my best not to judge them all totally on first impressions. The experience just got me thinking about what kind of teacher I want to be. I want to be the kind of teacher that spends 80 minute planning periods pouring over papers and looking for hints of student brilliance and potential. I want to be the kind of teacher who sees improper grammar or an incorrect fact and feels concern that the student has not learned the material properly. Instead of spending my time googling Phillies ticket prices and coming up with chapters for the hypothetical book I am writing in my head called "Why People Kill People," I want to spend my time coming up with new fun and interesting activities that will enrich my students' learning experiences.

Most of all, I never want to get to the point where I am comfortable. I never want to wake up and go to school knowing exactly what I am doing that day because I am teaching the same lesson the same way that I have been teaching it for the past ten years. I want to be always challenging myself, always finding new and different ways to connect with students.

Who knows, perhaps someday I'll look back on this post and think, "Oh that poor naive and idealistic girl." However, I really hope that is not the case. Whatever I do in life, and wherever I end up, I always want to be out of my comfort zone, and I always want to be pushing the limits. Most of all, I hope that I will always have a passion for the work I am doing and that I will always care genuinely and deeply for the students I am working with.

Divin' In

"Now is the time to be up and doing, with a heart for any fate." -Longfellow

For the past week, I've been accumulating a pile of doubts higher than any of the snow drifts I saw over break.

Can I really be a teacher?

What if my students think I'm boring?

What if I don't know enough about global studies?

Will my cooperating teacher like me?

Higher and higher and higher until someone walking past my doubt pile might have tried to climb it search of a golden goose. Then, this morning as I was rushing to get everything done for my first student teaching seminar, I happened to glance at the cork board behind my desk where that Longfellow quote hangs. I took a deep breath, laughed softly, shook my head, and felt the muscles in my shoulders relax for the first time since last Monday.

All the fears, all the worries, all the anxieties are useless. In the end, I have two choices. I can either inch my way slowly into student teaching, taking every precaution imaginable and letting my comfort level adapt to the new change I've made before I move on, or I can just dive in! I choose the latter.

Now, I am just excited. Student teaching is going to be a grand new adventure. Refusing to take risks because I'm afraid of failure will not do me any good, and I will learn nothing. I'm certainly going to make many mistakes, and I'll probably even fall flat on my face a couple of times. But that's a good thing. Experience has taught me that the biggest mistakes and failures in life are the ones you learn the most from. So I approach my first day of student teaching with a heart for any fate! I just hope that fate is not a coronary :)