This is a weblog of the Fall 2009 cohort of student teachers--and their professor--in English education at Rhode Island College.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Rock N Roll High School
As your return to high school approaches, what are you looking forward to? Anxious about? What might you need help with as you think about preparing your lesson/s for high school?
I'm looking forward to teaching such different groups of kids. Jeff's classes range from a low level 9th grade class to honors 10th graders to 12th graders. Each class is covering a different text which is fun but overwhelming. The good thing about being sooo busy with all of my classes and our requirements is that I haven't even had time to get anxious about teaching in the high school. It's getting down to crunch time though and I have yet to hear back from Jeff about what I'll be teaching so that is making me nervous. Alright....back to my Nabokov paper. Have a good weekend everyone.
Teaching is going to be awesome. Allie and I are teaching Mr. G's inclusion class first. We are working with persuasive writing and President Obama's acceptence speech. There are a lot of componants to our lesson, so Mr. G. said we might want to teach it over two days so that it is not rushed at all, but we will have to figure that out when we meet with him Monday. I am excited about teaching, I just hope that when we teach the senior class they take us serioiusly. They are seniors and it is April, senioritis.
Going back to high school, my biggest concern was honestly not my own. With the big day for Senior Project having been this Tuesday, and their oral presentations coming up quickly, the kids were all pretty frantic BEFORE vacation, and that was with a week remaining between them and their deadline. I figured the kids would be a mess Monday and Tuesday.
I was only half wrong.
Monday, as some may have noticed in a more timely manner than I, was 4/20. I found it interesting that so few of the teachers were aware of why that may have been significant to some of their students. I don't remember how I found out about 4/20, but I've known what it is to a certain subculture for a pretty long time. I still don't know what its origin is; Snopes denies that it's police code, or that it has anything to do with something significant happening at that time or date, but doesn't seem to have a valid suggestion as to its REAL origin, besides some kids in Cali using it to discuss clandestine meetings to get high. It wasn't until Tuesday that it occurred to me that the high rate of absenteeism on Monday could have been related to the date. Half of Rita's senior inclusion class, the group Becky and I have observed the most (and will be teaching) was absent. I had expected them to be there and too nervous to concentrate on the intended lesson, but again, I was only half wrong. The half that were absent were, well, obviously absent. I don't know how they were feeling about their senior project deadlines. The ones that were there, however, were QUITE keen to go to the senior skills lab instead of staying in class and potentially doing the cool lesson Rita had planned. Faced with 8/16 students, she chose to let them have their way, as she didn't want to have half the class behind on what was supposed to have been a paired activity leading to the (sadly premature) conclusion of their Carpe Diem unit.
Unfortunately for both Rita and her students, this unit had to be preempted by preparation for their oral presentations for Senior Project. She had all this cool stuff planned with some of the poetry of the Carpe Diem vanguard, and had planned to show them Dead Poets Society. I would have LOVED to do a poetry unit that cool in high school. LOVED TO. But, alas, standardization trumps cool stuff once again. She could have finished the awesome lesson, but it would have CRIPPLED her kids because they NEED to prepare for this presentation. It has to be between 8 and 12 minutes, has to cover 5 discreet sections of their senior project (and that's not including introducing or concluding their presentation, which is also obviously necessary), and I get the impression from listening to them that some of these kids have never even done a real oral presentation before. They are nervous about EVERYTHING.
What Rita is doing instead, because she is a responsible educator who really cares about her kids, is she is having them prepare their presentations for class and scheduling them to present to the class before they have to do it for real. I can't begin to explain to you how relieved they were that she was doing something as prep.
What Becky and I will be doing is teaching two back-to-back lessons about the early stages of prep. Friday, we'll be covering relaxation and organization, looking forward toward the development of strong introductions on Monday. I got this great idea from Charlene about working with them on the intros, but I want to run it by Becky and Rita before I go blabbing about that one. Besides, that's Monday.
I'm feeling pretty confident about Friday, though still a little nervous. I think that's only natural though; this is REALLY high stakes for them, so that makes whatever Becky and I do more high stakes than any lesson I've taught previously.
One of the other teachers, Dave (I don't know if anyone else has noticed, but all the NPHS teachers seem to use each other's first names much more than last, even when there are kids in earshot. Wasn't like that at my high school), gave us some great resources, and we began evaluating them with Rita on Monday while the kids were working on their projects. If there's one thing I've noticed at NPHS it's that the teachers there really seem to have fostered this amazing collaborative environment. Rita and Madonna were talking about SP, and Dave immediately volunteered some great stuff he had on oral presentations. Madonna's been very eager to share some of the cool things her kids are doing with us. This isn't to ignore Rita's enthusiasm, just to note that her colleagues, who aren't even in any way responsible for/to us are totally willing to share stuff with us as well. I love it here!
Okay, enough babbling, I should either be polishing things up so that I can send them out as soon as I talk to Becky or else working on my seminar paper. But I'm excited and I remembered that I didn't actually post my pre-return anxieties, so I figured I'd pop in and say something.
6 comments:
I'm looking forward to teaching such different groups of kids. Jeff's classes range from a low level 9th grade class to honors 10th graders to 12th graders. Each class is covering a different text which is fun but overwhelming. The good thing about being sooo busy with all of my classes and our requirements is that I haven't even had time to get anxious about teaching in the high school. It's getting down to crunch time though and I have yet to hear back from Jeff about what I'll be teaching so that is making me nervous. Alright....back to my Nabokov paper. Have a good weekend everyone.
Teaching is going to be awesome. Allie and I are teaching Mr. G's inclusion class first. We are working with persuasive writing and President Obama's acceptence speech. There are a lot of componants to our lesson, so Mr. G. said we might want to teach it over two days so that it is not rushed at all, but we will have to figure that out when we meet with him Monday. I am excited about teaching, I just hope that when we teach the senior class they take us serioiusly. They are seniors and it is April, senioritis.
Hey Ninjas.........
Words from Dory, the wise (or not) fish from Finding Nemo:
"Just keep swimming...just keep swimming...just keep swimming..."
We can do this!
Allie-
"I wish I spoke whale!" Dory is my FAVE!!!! (okay, really Ellen is my fave, but whatever...)
YOU CAN DO THIS!
Be a powerful force for good on the planet. And have fun doing it!
Going back to high school, my biggest concern was honestly not my own. With the big day for Senior Project having been this Tuesday, and their oral presentations coming up quickly, the kids were all pretty frantic BEFORE vacation, and that was with a week remaining between them and their deadline. I figured the kids would be a mess Monday and Tuesday.
I was only half wrong.
Monday, as some may have noticed in a more timely manner than I, was 4/20. I found it interesting that so few of the teachers were aware of why that may have been significant to some of their students. I don't remember how I found out about 4/20, but I've known what it is to a certain subculture for a pretty long time. I still don't know what its origin is; Snopes denies that it's police code, or that it has anything to do with something significant happening at that time or date, but doesn't seem to have a valid suggestion as to its REAL origin, besides some kids in Cali using it to discuss clandestine meetings to get high. It wasn't until Tuesday that it occurred to me that the high rate of absenteeism on Monday could have been related to the date. Half of Rita's senior inclusion class, the group Becky and I have observed the most (and will be teaching) was absent. I had expected them to be there and too nervous to concentrate on the intended lesson, but again, I was only half wrong. The half that were absent were, well, obviously absent. I don't know how they were feeling about their senior project deadlines. The ones that were there, however, were QUITE keen to go to the senior skills lab instead of staying in class and potentially doing the cool lesson Rita had planned. Faced with 8/16 students, she chose to let them have their way, as she didn't want to have half the class behind on what was supposed to have been a paired activity leading to the (sadly premature) conclusion of their Carpe Diem unit.
Unfortunately for both Rita and her students, this unit had to be preempted by preparation for their oral presentations for Senior Project. She had all this cool stuff planned with some of the poetry of the Carpe Diem vanguard, and had planned to show them Dead Poets Society. I would have LOVED to do a poetry unit that cool in high school. LOVED TO. But, alas, standardization trumps cool stuff once again. She could have finished the awesome lesson, but it would have CRIPPLED her kids because they NEED to prepare for this presentation. It has to be between 8 and 12 minutes, has to cover 5 discreet sections of their senior project (and that's not including introducing or concluding their presentation, which is also obviously necessary), and I get the impression from listening to them that some of these kids have never even done a real oral presentation before. They are nervous about EVERYTHING.
What Rita is doing instead, because she is a responsible educator who really cares about her kids, is she is having them prepare their presentations for class and scheduling them to present to the class before they have to do it for real. I can't begin to explain to you how relieved they were that she was doing something as prep.
What Becky and I will be doing is teaching two back-to-back lessons about the early stages of prep. Friday, we'll be covering relaxation and organization, looking forward toward the development of strong introductions on Monday. I got this great idea from Charlene about working with them on the intros, but I want to run it by Becky and Rita before I go blabbing about that one. Besides, that's Monday.
I'm feeling pretty confident about Friday, though still a little nervous. I think that's only natural though; this is REALLY high stakes for them, so that makes whatever Becky and I do more high stakes than any lesson I've taught previously.
One of the other teachers, Dave (I don't know if anyone else has noticed, but all the NPHS teachers seem to use each other's first names much more than last, even when there are kids in earshot. Wasn't like that at my high school), gave us some great resources, and we began evaluating them with Rita on Monday while the kids were working on their projects. If there's one thing I've noticed at NPHS it's that the teachers there really seem to have fostered this amazing collaborative environment. Rita and Madonna were talking about SP, and Dave immediately volunteered some great stuff he had on oral presentations. Madonna's been very eager to share some of the cool things her kids are doing with us. This isn't to ignore Rita's enthusiasm, just to note that her colleagues, who aren't even in any way responsible for/to us are totally willing to share stuff with us as well. I love it here!
Okay, enough babbling, I should either be polishing things up so that I can send them out as soon as I talk to Becky or else working on my seminar paper. But I'm excited and I remembered that I didn't actually post my pre-return anxieties, so I figured I'd pop in and say something.
Ashley,
Fantastic entry! I can't wait to see your lesson tomorrow morning.
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