JohnnyD’s blog

As a first year teacher, I am filled with idealism about what my students will be able to learn in my class. Sometimes, my enthusiasm is dampened by their laziness.  I can come in bright eyed and bushy tailed with what I think is a great lesson, and they will turn it on it's head.  Fail.  Strike out.  Fumble.

My community is a bit different from those of MTC'ers at other schools.  I have nine other teacher corps members at my school, and I spend a significant amount of time with three of them:  Trevor, Sharon, and Brent.  We have lunch together daily, and that is how we make it through the day.  

In April, I looked at the calendar for summer training and thought, "How in the heck am I going to survive this?"  As I look back now I think, "How in the heck did I survive that?" 

At the beginning of the summer, we were leaving Oxford at 6:30 a.m. to go teach in Holly Springs.  When we returned to Oxford, we were in class from 2:30 to 4:30.  The ten hour days were a bit long. 

Also overwhelming was that we were teaching about a lesson a day and we honestly had no clue how to be teachers.  Like anything, learing to do it is best done by, well, doing it.  I thought that my first lesson was a disaster, but the ones who were watching did not.  However, I do know this: I am a lot better now than I was six weeks ago. 

I had to learn how to: model, give instructions, give notes, conduct an activity, make an activity engaging, design a set, and assess learning.  I did not learn it in a lecture.  I learned by doing. 

I started out teaching MS Studies, and I only had one student.  Her name was Felicia, and she was really smart and did everything I asked.  Thank goodness I had her first!  That lasted for three weeks, and then I was moved to English and she was moved to US History for enrichment. 

The move to English was really frustrating.  I now had eight kids and was teaching something completely different from the subject I had been learning to teach for the past three weeks.  However, I grew as a teacher and learned to handle another subject and a slightly larger class.

Something really productive that we did was role-plays in the afternoons.  Essentially, they are classroom managment scenarios.  We try to react to them and make the right decisions.  I felt like I grew a lot from a classroom management perspective during that process.

Now, I think I am ready to take over the classroom.  It's now my show. my game. my rules.  Maybe I'm not completely ready, but I am a lot more ready than I was on June 2nd. 

On July 18th, we first year participants in MTC had the opportunity to give up our second saturday in a row to participate in program evaluation and intern presentations.  The interns had a lot on thier plates this summer, and I felt that they did an amazing job at summer school and in Ben's office.  Little did I know, they had to be doing research here as well.

The first presentation was Tahina's.  She did a "documentary"' called "Muted."  It was about that lack of diaglogue or space that students are given to talk about themselves.  Teachers spend a lot of time talking about them and how they are, but what do the students have to say?  I thought that it was interesting that the kids say they want to go to college and succeed, but they cannot make the connection between that and what they must do to get there.  They do not put in the work necessary to acheieve that goal. 

Another presentation that interested me was Kelly's, and it was on prisoners' rights.  The prisoners experience "awful" living conditions, have no state provided health insurance, and are exploited as a cheap source of labor.  I vehemently disagreed with her on many points, and I felt that the information was miscontrued to support a certain agenda.  However, I was impressed with the amount of work that went into researching the project.  My questions about this:  Should Mississippi tax payers foot the bill for prisoners?  We're paying close to $20,000 per prisoner.  Why should they get that amount for free when I work and committ no crimes worthy of prison and only get $30,000?

The other presentation was about Freedom Schools.  Yes, we are doing are part to help people overcome obstacles and adversity.  Now, I hope they do their part too.

I am not sure that I was "impressed"  by anything in particular.  However, I am impressed that they could put all of that together and do the job they did this summer as well.  I guess that might prepare them for taking our positions, ha.  As far as questions that still remain, nothing more than what I wrote in the third paragraph.

I was scheduled to teach during 2^nd period on the day that I taped.  With about ten minutes left in the first block, I started checking out my camera to make sure it worked and to get it set up.  Well, the camera was broken, and I had this realization about two minutes before the bell rang to dismiss first period.  So, I ran to the office and switched the cameras out and came back to class.  Mr. Reed, a fellow teacher, was nice enough to set up my camera while I scribbled my objectives and “do now” on the board.  Though all was ready for the period, I still felt rushed.  As a result, I forgot to do my set! 

I had a great set planned for the lesson.  The lesson was about editing essays and looking for mistakes, so I had a set called “stories with holes.”  Essentially, you start by saying “John and Mary are lying dead on the floor in a puddle of water and broken glass. Chester can't be found.”  The students have to ask “yes or no” questions and guess what happened.  The whole point is that all of the information has to be there and that is why editing is important.  With a lot of grammatical mistakes, the story has holes.  Anyway, that was all lost in the shuffle! 

Besides that, I have improved as a teacher.  My reaction to my lesson is that it was fun because it was “top ten mistakes” made in essays.  Lists are fun, and it was an opportunity to teach elementary grammar with which the students struggle.  So, it was a good lesson. 

My strengths:  energy, humor, clear instruction, and the ability to relate to the students.  My weaknesses:  sometimes I get a little frustrated with the students’ lack of energy and it gets to me (especially when you sing and play the guitar and they just stare at you). 

What did I learn from watching myself?  Well, I noticed in my video from June that I said “okay” a lot.  I cut that out and replaced it with “so.”  I guess everyone has their verbal pauses in one form or another!  Also, I move around the room a lot which is good and should help curb discipline problems.

Has my teaching style/ability changed since June?  I maintain energy a lot better throughout the lesson than I did in June, and I manage the class a lot better (I went from one student to eight).  It’s a little different trying to assess my ability and style difference since the subject and number of students changed.  However, I feel like a much better teacher today than I did just a month ago.  

I taped myself the same day I had a formal evaluation, and I did this for two reasons.  Firstly, I wanted to watch the video and grade myself before my team teacher met with me and gave me her evaluation of my lesson.  In this way, I could get an idea if I was naturally noticing the things I need to change and compare our evaluations. As usual, I was harsher on myself than my team teacher was as I gave myself an 85.7% and she gave me a 90.9%. 

Overall, it was a good lesson, and I did some things well.  For example, I had good energy for the majority of the lesson, and I felt that my set was pretty good. 

On the other hand, there were a couple of verbal things that I was doing that I wasn’t very happy about.  I said, “right” or “okay” a pretty good bit.  The problem that I have noticed with that is the student isn’t going to disagree with the teacher in most instances.  If I say, “You know what colonialism is, right?”  The student doesn’t want to admit that he does not have the slightest clue.  If you say, “We’re going to move on to the next activity, okay?”  What student in his right mind is going to disagree?  The point is that saying things like that are pointless and almost as bad as saying “Um.”

Another verbal thing I need to work on is volume.  If I don’t maintain a loud volume, I will either put my kids to sleep with a soft voice or they won’t be able to hear me.  I think my volume will get better with a larger class size.

It was hard to tell from the video whether or not the student was engaged because it was filmed from the back of the room, but I felt like she was when I was actually teaching the lesson. 

Something I demanded from her every lesson that I taught was confidence and speaking loudly.  She usually knew the answers, and I made her say them loudly and with confidence.

In the end, I thought it was an effective lesson, but I know that I can do better!  

Each first year teacher was challenged to take a personality test and comment on the results.  Here are mine.

The second years have vanished, and we "first year" teachers will take over the classrooms for the next three weeks. With three weeks of experience under our belts, we obviously know what to do (SARCASM).  

The first year members of the MTC were assigned a reading on classroom management called "The Reluctant Disciplinarian."  It is by a teacher who was really ineffective at managing his classroom at first, but he eventually got the hang of it.

This book was a really quick read, and I actually did it in one day.  It provided some good info and some useless info, but I will focus on the useful. 

I completely agree with him when he says that many times we first year teachers ask questions like, "What do we do if a kid won't do his homework?"  The reply is usually, "Don't put up with that kind of nonsense!"  Well, what exactly does that mean?  He explains further:  "To assume that these ideas will automatically wok for less experienced teachers is like assuming that any golfer can clear the water hole with a five iron from 200 yards, just because he has seen Tiger Woods do it on television."  This, interpreted, means that watching an experienced teacher manage a classroom effectively doesn't do us a lot of good.  That teacher has a reputation and has built that system over time (Tiger Woods).  It doesn't mean we can instantly do it. 

Another topic on which he writes is the two types of presentation strategies on "in-service" days.  The first type is "the paradox" in which someone lectures for an hour on how ineffective it is to lecture for an hour.  I have had this experience during my first month of MTC.

After discussing how he failed, he turns his focus on to what does work.

TeacherREX0604_228x343