What do these final days feel like to you, as you stand on the brink of un-hyphenated teacherhood?
What are you most proud of from this semester?
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Two Dates: Mark Your Calendars!
Next Tuesday, Dec 14:
At 3:30, let's head to McCormick & Schmick's in downtown Providence for Happy Hour drinks and apps. Read more about it:
Famous $1.95 Bar Menu
While McCormick & Schmick's has been recognized for its culinary excellence as the "best seafood restaurant" in cities across the country, the restaurant also has become equally famous for its bar menu with items starting at $1.95, featuring hummus and pita ($1.95), a half-pound cheeseburger ($2.95), chicken quesadilla ($3.95) pulled pork sliders, buffalo wings or steamed mussels ($4.95) and more.
It's a happy hour that's MADE for money-poor but knowledge-rich student teachers!
Next Friday, Dec 17:
FINAL VERSIONS of TCWS DUE to DR. COOK and UPLOADED to Chalk & Wire.
PLEASE NOTE: You need to turn in a hard copy of your TCWS as well as uploading EACH of the 7 pieces to your Chalk & Wire account for scoring. I need to score them all on Chalk & Wire. The hard copies stay with me for accreditation visits.
At 3:30, let's head to McCormick & Schmick's in downtown Providence for Happy Hour drinks and apps. Read more about it:
Famous $1.95 Bar Menu
While McCormick & Schmick's has been recognized for its culinary excellence as the "best seafood restaurant" in cities across the country, the restaurant also has become equally famous for its bar menu with items starting at $1.95, featuring hummus and pita ($1.95), a half-pound cheeseburger ($2.95), chicken quesadilla ($3.95) pulled pork sliders, buffalo wings or steamed mussels ($4.95) and more.
It's a happy hour that's MADE for money-poor but knowledge-rich student teachers!
Next Friday, Dec 17:
FINAL VERSIONS of TCWS DUE to DR. COOK and UPLOADED to Chalk & Wire.
PLEASE NOTE: You need to turn in a hard copy of your TCWS as well as uploading EACH of the 7 pieces to your Chalk & Wire account for scoring. I need to score them all on Chalk & Wire. The hard copies stay with me for accreditation visits.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Last Class of Your Undergraduate Career!
Our class on December 7 will be the final class of your career at Rhode Island College. I bet some of you thought this day would never come (could college last any longer?), and others of you might be sad to see this day here (but I don't want to go be a grown-up!). I wonder where your thoughts are--about college, about RIC, about your program of study, about reaching a big goal--as you get ready to attend your final class as an undergraduate student. Share your end-of-college-days sentiments with us here, as you complete your last class assignment on the blog.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Communication & Humility
Okay, folks. In the last few weeks, I've been intervening in various learning-to-teach situations that all involve the following themes.
Communication & Humility
I'm writing this thread in the hope that you read it, assess yourself, and start stepping up to the challenge as we move down the home stretch.
If you go back and look at the syllabus I handed out in August, you'll see that the NUMBER ONE course requirement is "Regular and Open Communication with me." I now know that it should also read: "Regular and Open communication with your cooperating teacher." I can pretty much guarantee that any problem that you've been having in your classroom that has exploded into an "issue" or "incident" is probably because you either did not communicate the problem when it was in its earliest stages OR because you didn't communicate that you were having problems in the first place, which leads me to theme #2...
Humility, or admitting fault for screwing something up. This is student teaching. No one expects you to be perfect, except for, well, YOU. No matter how much I tell you this or how much I encourage you to experiment and take risks and try on new hats that may be unfamiliar to you, there seems to be a disease spreading through our cohort that smells like perfectionism or, at least, like a lack of humility. None of us is a perfect teacher, and none of us ever will be a perfect teacher. There's no such thing. That's the point! Teachers screw up all the time, but the sign of a good, effective teacher is that (1) they know they've screwed up; (2) they aren't afraid to talk through the challenge and to seek out resources to help and, finally, (3) they aren't too proud or too scared to ask for help.
On the heels of our Job Search Workshop last night, I need to say to you that getting a job as a teacher has A LOT to do with these two themes above. It should have become really clear last night that not only do you need to learn how to communicate your strengths and weaknesses to interviewers, but that you also need to know how to communicate with lots of different people who are going to work with you in schools (and not just the ones you like). Additionally, showing humility, demonstrating a keen awareness of your need-to-work-on areas, and asking for help are also signs, to a principal or a professor, of a smart teacher. Incompetent people don't ask for help---that's why they are incompetent!
Anyway, I needed to say all of this to you, and it couldn't wait until next Tuesday. I'm asking all of you to think about yourself this week in terms of these two themes: Communication and Humility. Where are you in terms of these two "dispositions?" How are you demonstrating these dispositions to your cooperating teacher/s and to me? What do you believe about communication and humility as they relate to your Teacher Self? What goals might you set for yourself as a first-year teacher where these two qualities are concerned?
Communication & Humility
I'm writing this thread in the hope that you read it, assess yourself, and start stepping up to the challenge as we move down the home stretch.
If you go back and look at the syllabus I handed out in August, you'll see that the NUMBER ONE course requirement is "Regular and Open Communication with me." I now know that it should also read: "Regular and Open communication with your cooperating teacher." I can pretty much guarantee that any problem that you've been having in your classroom that has exploded into an "issue" or "incident" is probably because you either did not communicate the problem when it was in its earliest stages OR because you didn't communicate that you were having problems in the first place, which leads me to theme #2...
Humility, or admitting fault for screwing something up. This is student teaching. No one expects you to be perfect, except for, well, YOU. No matter how much I tell you this or how much I encourage you to experiment and take risks and try on new hats that may be unfamiliar to you, there seems to be a disease spreading through our cohort that smells like perfectionism or, at least, like a lack of humility. None of us is a perfect teacher, and none of us ever will be a perfect teacher. There's no such thing. That's the point! Teachers screw up all the time, but the sign of a good, effective teacher is that (1) they know they've screwed up; (2) they aren't afraid to talk through the challenge and to seek out resources to help and, finally, (3) they aren't too proud or too scared to ask for help.
On the heels of our Job Search Workshop last night, I need to say to you that getting a job as a teacher has A LOT to do with these two themes above. It should have become really clear last night that not only do you need to learn how to communicate your strengths and weaknesses to interviewers, but that you also need to know how to communicate with lots of different people who are going to work with you in schools (and not just the ones you like). Additionally, showing humility, demonstrating a keen awareness of your need-to-work-on areas, and asking for help are also signs, to a principal or a professor, of a smart teacher. Incompetent people don't ask for help---that's why they are incompetent!
Anyway, I needed to say all of this to you, and it couldn't wait until next Tuesday. I'm asking all of you to think about yourself this week in terms of these two themes: Communication and Humility. Where are you in terms of these two "dispositions?" How are you demonstrating these dispositions to your cooperating teacher/s and to me? What do you believe about communication and humility as they relate to your Teacher Self? What goals might you set for yourself as a first-year teacher where these two qualities are concerned?
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
This I believe...
I believe in the power of the classroom where curiosity and inquiry drive instruction and study; in the relationship between teacher and student and text as a catalyst for new knowledge construction; in the possibilities inherent in teaching my students the world and the word; in the social, emotional and political complexities of teaching and schooling; in the creative and collaborative power of small groups of thoughtful, driven and dedicated people; in simplicity, beauty, poetry, music, and Nature.
As an invitation to start crafting your actual educational philosophy text, here is one I wrote based on the prompt that I've used for a title this week. Try it! Try sitting down and starting with "This I believe..."
You'll be surprised at how this allows you to access all those things you didn't think you knew about yourself. What's at the core of what you do as a teacher and a person on the planet? (Hint: a teaching philosophy is also a life philosophy is also a worldview).
Here's how we can check each other's blurbs once they are posted: Can you recognize the person in the statement they wrote? Does their persona shine through the verbiage?
As an invitation to start crafting your actual educational philosophy text, here is one I wrote based on the prompt that I've used for a title this week. Try it! Try sitting down and starting with "This I believe..."
You'll be surprised at how this allows you to access all those things you didn't think you knew about yourself. What's at the core of what you do as a teacher and a person on the planet? (Hint: a teaching philosophy is also a life philosophy is also a worldview).
Here's how we can check each other's blurbs once they are posted: Can you recognize the person in the statement they wrote? Does their persona shine through the verbiage?
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Ed Philosophy
Like our friends Hilda Dyon and Emily Style, Ed Philosophy wants in on the action!
Seriously--please use this space and this week to practice articulating some of the cornerstones of educational philosophy, your "stance" as a teacher. Do you consider yourself an activist teacher? Do you consider yourself a guardian of literary culture? Do you see your role as an English teacher as one who invites students to actively negotiate culture and wrestle with issues of humanity, identity and self? Do you see yourself as a teacher of texts?
WHO ARE YOU AS A TEACHER?
WHAT DO YOU STAND FOR?
WHAT DO YOU STAND AGAINST?
Please share with us your thoughts as they begin to crystallize. Thanks.
Seriously--please use this space and this week to practice articulating some of the cornerstones of educational philosophy, your "stance" as a teacher. Do you consider yourself an activist teacher? Do you consider yourself a guardian of literary culture? Do you see your role as an English teacher as one who invites students to actively negotiate culture and wrestle with issues of humanity, identity and self? Do you see yourself as a teacher of texts?
WHO ARE YOU AS A TEACHER?
WHAT DO YOU STAND FOR?
WHAT DO YOU STAND AGAINST?
Please share with us your thoughts as they begin to crystallize. Thanks.
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