3 posts tagged “student teaching”
So things are coming down to the wire for me in terms of student teaching this semester. I have to jump thru so many useless hoops that i feel like a trained poodle. One of the last obstacles to getting this all set up is completing an incomplete i received in my Methods class.
If anyone wants to know if there is a crisis in American secondary education, i'm here to answer that question with a resounding "Yes!" There has not been a single education class that i have taken that has not made me want to pound my forehead into a brick wall until i bled. I took a curriculum class a couple of semesters back where the entire semester was utilized by the professor to teach us that there is no objective definition for the word "curriculum." That class made me want to light myself on fire, although i managed not to get an incomplete in that one.
My methods class was very hard to handle because it was sooooo frustrating. It was tied in with a pre-practicum where i had to teach five lessons and be in a classroom at least one day a week. Everything i was learning from my practical experience mocked everything that i had to do for my Methods class -- and so did the teachers at the High School. To a man/woman, every one of them pulled me aside and told me that if they would have had to go thru the bullshit i was going thru they never would have become teachers. I ran out of motivation to do this work for my Methods class very quickly.
So here i am, behind the 8 ball again because i did not grit my teeth and discipline myself to do all this busy work that will in no way pan out into anything of practical value or use. I probably won't be blogging very much this week as a result, but i will try to read the blogs produced from my neighborhood. I have to produce a unit of ten lesson plans covering the American Civil War, write out all the assessment materials, do a calendar, write five reflection papers from five of the lessons i taught last year, and to finish off the last three lessons from the reflection paper assignment.
To put this all in context, my TV just died (it was a great TV for the ten years we had it, thanks Mike), i'm behind in almost every bill by at least two months, my GSL defaulted and i have to come up with the money to "rehabilitate" it, i will be working part time so 1/2 of my paycheck will be gone while at the same time, because of the default, there will be no new student aid for yours truly, and The Wife has a habit of picking up parking tickets at the meters in NoHo and on Campus. Oh, and to top it off i'm a passive/aggressive lazy ass. Fuck me gentley with a chain saw, right?
Glory, glory, glory.
Today is Friday and the end of the work week for many people; although not for me because i have to work tomorrow. Fridays and Saturdays are relatively slow days here, as most people have lives and few want to be caught in the Library on a weekend. This will give me time to catch up on my next project. I have to finish an incomplete grade from a couple of semesters ago in order to complete my student teaching requirement. The incomplete is my Methods class -- one of only two education classes i have taken that were not almost entirely worthless. However, altho this class was better than most education classes i've taken, it still didn't have an awful lot to do with the day to day work of a teacher, at least not at the school i did my pre-practicum. I pretty much was mocked and laughed at by the teachers for all the hoops the Education Department was putting me thru -- it seems the University cares more about accreditation than they do about equipping people to excel at what they will actually have to do as a teacher on the ground to survive in a public school. I need to prepare a ten lesson unit on the Civil War and a slide show presentation introducing the unit. Hopefully i can be done in two or three weeks...
Thinking about all the hoops i have to jump thru to obtain a couple scraps of paper made me think about politics. Now there are two kinds of politics, although they tend to overlap and intermingle with each other. One is Politics with a big "P" and has to do with our traditional concept of institutional intrigue and ideology. The other has to do with power as well, although in a different sphere, that of interpersonal relationships. Looked at this way, i guess someone could say that everything is politics, altho not everything has to do with ideology.
Teachers have to deal with both. The Administration in any school represents institutional power, as does the presence of a union. This is politics with a capital 'P." They also have to take into account their relationship with other teachers, with their students, and with their student's parents. There is a lot of politics happening there, albeit with a small "p." All i want to do is to be left alone enough to teach history to High School kids for a reasonable block of time each day. I have no agenda, no ideology, no plans of indoctrination. I passionately believe that the role of a teacher is two-fold: to impart a certain body of knowledge and to teach kids how to make up their own minds about what to do with that knowledge. I don't care if a kid is a Republican or a Democrat, a Christian or an atheist; all i care is that they have carefully thought out their decisions based on some kind of historical knowledge as to why they believe and act the way they do. I want these kids to do their own thinking.
Really, i am sick beyond death of people who do not have the intellectual chops, the humility, and the courage to question their own assumptions across the spectrum and come to their own conclusions. If a student at this University had an original thought his/her head would probably explode, whether that thought had to do with Politics or politics. Around here it is people like Howard and Noam who do the political thinking for almost everyone; Rush, George (Will) and Sean think pretty much for the rest Politically. on the other hand, people are very anxious to mimic the attitudes and beliefs of who ever is a) in charge enough to have the ability to control the direction of their work environment or career, or b) are very charismatic and popular. In both instances, it is amazing to see how fast people turn into parrots for the sake of politics...
Oh well, life is what it is, at least we have music to take the edge off things occasionally. I thought you's all enjoy some Cash, so here's Johnny.
I firmly believe that people try their best to derive meaning in their lives and their world around them from stories, whether written or put on film or sung. I really don't think people are all that different from pre-modern people this way, regardless of the fact the Enlightenment happened. Don't get me wrong, i am a real fan of many of the things that modern science has provided while being a huge critic of the ideology of Rationalism.
I liked the Potter series because she didn't soft peddle life to a group of people that are no where near as innocent and clueless as most adults think they are. Injustice, death, abandonment, anger, joy, failed expectations, acceptance, friendship, betrayal and loyalty are an integral part of a child's life. I also think, because Rowlings was educated as a Classicist, that Potter was so popular because she tapped into some deep, deep myths and legends from western culture. The whole thing was just so familiar... It has been said that if you have read Milton, the Bible, and Shakespeare that you have read most of western literature, and this is especially true of the Potter series along with JRR Tolkein's Ring trilogy and CS Lewis's Narnia series. Frankly, i am very surprised the Potter series was as popular as it was because of this -- we live in a time when Orwell was wrong and Huxley was right and its more like A Brave New World than Animal Farm. I would think that an obvious attack on Lewis's and Tolkien's works, like the His Dark Materials trilogy(some very nasty stuff), the movies Blade Runner or The Matrix, would be more to the cultural zeitgeist than Rowling's stuff. But go figure, huh?
The cultural battleground more and more revolves around the question of which narrative will people live their lives by here in the wild, wild west. Every "ism," every religion or spirituality, has a narrative that explains to people why things are the way they are, and how they can navigate the world to their advantage. It is an interesting question, is it not? What narrative do you derive your assumptions and presuppositions from? Each one are vying for people's loyalty, and it is going to get worse before it gets better as Americans are very fond of taking a little of that and a little of that to customize what they will believe.
I spent the better part of two hours in a McDonald's two days ago explaining the Christian narrative to a pal i see sometimes at work and sometimes around who probably, more than anything else, is a Buddhist. What gets me is how much i first had to repair just how badly the Christian narrative has been told and represented before we could really move into what a life lived in the drama of God's redemptive story might look like. Sigh...
I live in a post-Harry Potter world now, just like i live in a post-Christian culture...
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, The Wife and I are doing well, and life, although not exactly rosy, doesn't exactly suck either. I am getting closer to getting my Student Teaching set up (THANKS CHRIS) and work has settled into quite the routine. Tomorrow or the next day i will get more into the narrative that is my day instead of all this abstract stuff, if i can actually get on Vox to blog, so peace all.
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