Day Nine

I tried leading a discussion in Schultz's English 11 on Monday. I didn't do the one that I put together because there wasn't enough time, so I tried my hand at leading a discussion based on a worksheet that Schultz wrote, with her support of course.

I felt like I was trying to play basketball with a team full of pros, standing on the sidelines waving my hands around hoping for someone to pass me the ball. My discussion didn't go so well.

During second hour I decided that Monday had to be my last day at Jefferson. I enjoyed my time there, but I began to think that I'd pretty much done everything I could possibly do. At least that was until Schultz dropped a pile of papers for me to correct for mechanics and grammar, which is what I spent the rest of my day doing. It was pretty awful, so I'm really glad that Schultz offered it to me. It was actually a good way to see just how much work a teacher has outside of the classroom.

3rd Hour, Day Eight

Today lunch was nothing more than a place for teachers to sit and bitch about how much teaching sucks and also about how they are under-appreciated, which I am sure that they are, but come on guys, it's got to get old after a while.

At the beginning of 3rd hour Jamie went through a very good tutorial that showed how to write the comparative essay very well. I heard her say a lot of the same things she said during second hour in the lab, so I imagine that the idea to give it came then. I think it was a good idea to wait instead of trying to stop everything in the lab during second hour, which is what I probably would have done.

After third hour, Jamie told me that I could hit the road, which I didn't need to hear twice. I'm starting to feel like I have done enough at Jefferson and that I'm starting to overstay my welcome.

2nd Hour, Day Eight

Again into the computer lab, working on the comparative essay. I felt really bad for the kids for having to do a harder paper than they should have and for Jamie for making the mistake and then having to deal with it.

Some of the girls got really bitchy and the guys showed their frustration by not doing any work at all. I think that I actually managed to help some of the kids understand their assignment and get the ball rolling on their papers. But it was Friday and Jamie didn't let them go to the coffeehouse that they have once a week so the kids were antsy and rowdy, lining up at the door like cattle.

1st Hour, Day Eight

The Skills kids were in the computer lab working on their papers again. I didn't get to help as much as I did on Thursday so I felt kind of worthless. Instead, I worked on Death of a Salesman and managed to help a few kids, which is good.

Louis, the kid I know from the playground, brought a roll of stamps to school with him today and actually stuck them on the on the screens of two computers. How stupid is that?! That's something that you'd expect out of a six year old, not a sixteen year old. Teaching these kids takes lots of patience.

4th Hour, Day Seven

I spent 4th hour in another computer lab with Schultz's class. As they finished their papers, I worked on my plan for the discussion. At first I felt like I had to be able to make stunning and eye-opening revelations and so I had a very hard time writing the questions. But when I decided to scale my expectations of myself back a bit, I found myself having a much easier time with it all. I'm not an expert on the text right now, but if I give it one more read and the movie a watch I think I'll be good.

3rd Hour, Day Seven

Jamie taught the comparative analysis essay assignment again. I think that she did a much better job of explaining it the second time around, especially the bit with the secondary sources.

We took the kids into the computer lab and had them work on the essay. They seemed to be working a lot harder than the second hour group did with their fancy laptops, except for that one kid watching family guy.

2nd Hour, Day Seven

During 2nd hour, Jamie had her students start work on the comparative analysis essay that that Schultz's kids were working on on Wednesday.

There's a big difference between the way that Schultz and Jamie are working this essay. Schultz's students are only using primary sources, but Jamie told her kids to use at least two critical essay, which I think only makes the assignment unnecessarily hard. This assignment could totally be done with the primary sources only, but teaching them how to find the journals and stuff will help them down the line, especially if they ever take a college lit course. I never used an online journal finder thing until I was a freshman in college, so these guys will be way ahead of me.

1st Hour, Day 7

Today I made the transition to working with/following Jamie full time. Jamie is in her first year teaching at Jefferson. I think she taught for a year or two out in Colorado before this, and before that she went to Gustavus, like me.

The first hour class is completely unfamiliar to me. I guess there are two groups of kids that switch between Jamie and a Social Studies teacher. We took both groups to the computer lab and had them work on putting together MLA Works Cited pages for their papers. It was simply enthralling work.

Actually I kinda liked it because I got to be hands on with the children. Jamie was frustrated because some of the children had so much trouble formating the Works Cited pages, but I can't blame them. I always have to have my MLA guidebook in my lap when I make one and I know that plenty of college students do the same.

4th Hour, Day Six

During 4th hour, the 11th graders were working on the Grad Standard paper again, but weren't being very productive, which surprised me because these students usually impress me more than the 1st hour group. I'm thinking that this has to be because they are working with little laptops, where they can hide their little distractions better than they can in the computer lab. The girl sitting in front of me has written one of the best/worst sentences I have ever seen: "Both American Literatures have amazing adultery scenes."

3rd Hour, Day Six

I stayed with Schultz during Prep to start work on the the plan for my discussion thing. But before that I asked her a bunch of questions about teaching and tenure and stuff. I got a lot of info about teacher evaluations and how a person goes about voicing one's opinions about a teacher that one thinks sucks.

When I was working on the discussion, I had a lot of trouble because I didn't feel like I was an authority on Death of a Salesman. I mean, I've only read it the one time, and I wasn't even very careful about it. I thought that if I was to teach something, it should be completely original thoughts that I came up with myself.

Apparently teaching is a lot like creative writing, where it's all about choosing the right sources to steal from, and adjusting them to make them your own.

2nd Hour, Day Six

Apparently the 9th Graders read an act and a half of Romeo & Juliet yesterday, so today Schultz led a discussion to recap and make sure the children absorbed everything.

I wish that my college Shakespeare course was like this. Schultz walks the kiddos through the act line by line, page by page. I wonder how much this lecture repeats itself year to year. It's hilarious though. I wish Schultz had done my awful Shakespeare class.

1st Hour, Day 6

I've been noticing/remembering that High School teachers are a lot more forgiving than their college counterparts. Today the 11th graders took vocab quiz number two, a quiz that is on the same piece of paper as quizzes one and three. There are a bunch of students that either hadn't taken quiz one or didn't get the vocab words on Monday; instead of being s.o.l. like you would be in a college class, the students just push themselves further back and back.

Schultz gave the students the compare/contrast essay that Jamie gave her students yesterday, and we spent most of the day in the computer lab. I tried to help as much as possible, because I can probably write a paper better than most people in this class.

Snobbery aside, I am impressed by how quickly they all write. The paper is due Friday at midnight and many of them had a half to a full page at the end of the day. I don't think I would be able to jump so quickly into a writing assignment, even one so easy. I think that's either the low expectations of high school or the high expectations and pressure of college.

4th Hour, Day Five

Jamie has prep during 4th Hour, so I sat in with Mr. Johnson's class because I wanted to get out of her hair and Schultz said that he would be a good one to sit in with. Before I got into his classroom, I totally forgot that he teaches Latin.

I know next to nothing about Latin, but I enjoyed his teaching style. He's very dynamic, walking around the room with the PowerPoint remote in his hand as he goes through the vocab words for the day. I wouldn't put up with the chatty clique in the back of the classroom. I assume that this is an elective and it does seem that most of these kids want to be here, but I think that Johnson's laid-back style lets the chatterboxes get the best of him.

3rd Hour, Day Five

English 11 again. This class is much more laid back than the first section. Jamie had her students do a little assignment where they placed the characters from Raisin on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. The kids in this class seemed to understand it more than the kids in the other section did. I think that Jamie might do things better the second time around, but these might just be smarter kids. Who knows?

2nd Hour, Day Five

Jamie's Second hour is English 11. There are a lot of guys in this class, probably 25/30 and it seems to be a struggle to keep them under control. Jamie has a good style of keeping the kids in line by being quiet, threatening to send people out of the classroom and acting upset with the offending student. The kids respond right away. These seem to be good kids even if they are more rowdy than Schultz's 11th graders.

I guess Jamie isn't teaching Death of a Salesman, which is a shame. I would like the chance to compare her teaching style to Schultz's.

After a quiz, Jamie got the kids into a discussion on the play A Raisin in the Sun. They participate well and seem attentive, even if the ones in the front row are watching the TV announcements like a bunch of slack-jawed yokels.

1st Hour, Day Five

Schultz was home with a sick daughter today, so I'm jumping in early with Jamie. Her first hour is 10th Grade Skills English.

Teaching these kids seems to require a lot more patience and hands-on fun. There is a special ed teacher that Jamie team teaches with a special ed teacher that walks around the classroom and helps keeps things in line.

Jamie teaches off of a PowerPoint slide show and her students have note sheets that have little PowerPoint-style square frames. She tells them exactly what to write down and gives them tons of time to do that.

I asked Jamie what gets a kid into the skills class. She said it was a combination of developmental and motivational problems. I was surprised to learn that Louis, a kid a know from the playground program is in this class. Which group does he fit in to?

After the lecture the kids went to the computer lab to work on a paper. Its amazing how computers make it easier for people to screw around. Louis was listening to music through some website and there were kids messing around with the webcams and all kinds of crap.

I'm thinking that Louis is one of the motivationally challenged kids, because in spite of all of the distractions he made for himself in the computer lab, he still had two paragraphs written, putting him ahead of most of the class.

Right after first hour is something called tutorial. I guess it is a time for study halls, homework make up and clubs that seems like a big waste of time. Apparently it's kind of controversial.

4th Hour, Day Four

English 11 is Quiztown again. Boring.

To destroy my boredom, I volunteered myself to lead the vocab section. Yeesh. It wasn't quite flop sweat time, but I was pretty darn near to it. I had the same problem that I had with the ninth graders last week: I don't have any authority when Schultz is in the room, and the talking children were quieted by Schultz instead of me. I thought that I did ok, considering that the kids don't know me hardly at all and I don't know any of their names. I do like standing in front of a full of people though.

Schultz said that I did good too, which is good.

3rd Hour, Day Four

At lunch I overheard some of the teachers talking about contract negotiations and pay raise stuff. I guess the pay raises don't even match the rise of inflation. Yeesh. If that doesn't make a person want to jump into teaching, I don't know what will.

Instead of working on the previously discussed discussion on Death of a Salesman, I sat in with Liz, another English teacher who seems to teach mostly electives. I went along to part of her TV production class, where she said that she doesn't actually 'teach' everyday. Students work on their stuff and come to her with questions, so we should have lots of time to talk about teaching and stuff. Liz is the teacher that tells me not to go into teaching, so I think that her advice is the most valuable that I can get from anyone at Jefferson. She began to tell me exactly why I shouldn't go into teaching when one of her students came to ask her a question and we forgot all about it. Darn. I guess I'll have to spend another 3rd hour with her to find out.

I spent the second half of 3rd hour doing lunch duty with Mr. Johnson. Mrs. Schultz said, "I would rather clean the dirty toilet seats with my tongue than do lunchroom duty," so I knew that I couldn't pass it up.

It wasn't that bad really. I actually kind of liked it. It seemed like it was just another chance to interact with people and tell the kids what to do. I do see Schultz's point of view though. Someone that has their master's degree probably doesn't deserve to be put in charge of dirty trays and empty milk cartons.

2nd Hour, Day Four

We were back watching that Lord of the Flies thing during 2nd Hour. The auditorium is much colder than it was on Friday, so the smell isn't anything to worry about anymore, but that's not to say that the 12th graders don't still stink. Some of them are better than they were on Friday, but one player in particular, a super frat-boy-style jerk is really bad. And the ninth graders love him. They prove it by finding him and all of the other accused characters not guilty, which is pretty rediculous.

When we got back to the room, Schultz had a few choice words to say about the 12th graders that put on the presentation and wasted two days of class time. It makes me wonder if she is going to say anything to this other teacher and if a teacher has anyway of expressing unhappiness with the performance of a peer.

1st Hour, Day Four

I began the day by doing some clerical stuff for Schultz. She needed some stuff copied, some stuff written on the board and some other stuff handed out. Student assistant type stuff.

The 11th graders are taking a one-way trip to Quiztown today, so I had a bit of down time while they took their three quizzes. I managed to finish Death of a Salesman, and wow is that a depressing piece of work. Sometimes I just don't want to make room in my life for the depressing things in fiction when real life is sucky enough as it is.

I asked Schultz about leading a discussion tomorrow or Wednesday, and she said that we'd talk about it during prep, so that's something to look forward to!

4th Hour, Day Three

11th Grade English is the same as first hour again, reading Death of a Salesman. There is a student teacher here from Augustana named Kristin. While the students read and take notes from the same eleven pages of the textbook (how can this be taking them so long?) Kristin and I talked school stuff. She's an ed major and had some insights on things that I wouldn't have thought of and let me look at her teaching papers and stuff.

The kids that are reading the play today are actually pretty good. I'm impressed and surprised!

3rd Hour, Day Three

At lunch I got to overhear some interesting discussion about book acquisition and I talked with some of the teachers about the venting they do when they talk crap about students. They seemed pretty defensive when I pointed it out, but I really wasn't accusing them of anything. Making fun of the children seems like a perfectly natural thing to do. They piss you off and you can't take your frustrations out on them, so you make fun of them when they aren't around. I just want to know what my teachers said about me.

After lunch I sat in with Art, a man who has been teaching 9th grade English for the last 30 or 40 years. He did lots of grammar work with them, which is something that I don't think anyone can do enough of. Art makes a big deal about his students retaining the information they learn in this class. He has an infectious, but subtle enthusiasm that think is the reason his students seem (on average) more engaged than Schultz's 9th graders do. Maybe age has something to do with that too.

I hope that these kids remember their grammar and that they keep learning it throughout high school. It may not be the most important life skill, but it seems like most of my English major friends know any grammar at all, myself included. I do know what direct and indirect objects are though.

2nd Hour, Day Three

I spotted an Emo Child playing Pokemans and all of the nerdy kids gathered around. If only I had known it was so easy to be popular.

I followed the 9th graders to the auditorium to watch one of the Honors 12th grade class attempt to hold a trial for the characters of Lord of the Flies. It was really bad. It was obvious that most of them hadn't read the book. Schultz said that it was the worst one of these she'd seen since she'd come to Jefferson. The 12th graders weren't the only thing that stunk. There were probably 60 kids in the room altogether and wow did it smell. It was like being in a zoo. Yeesh.

1st Hour, Day Three

The children are reading Death of a Salesman again. I got to look at the assignment sheet for the grad standard. It seems really easy.

Day Three

Before classes started today I got to see how Grad Standards can screw things up. Jamie, one of the other teachers had apparently forgotten about a compare/contrast essay that her students needed to do before the term was over. It was a struggle that took three teachers to figure things out.

I guess part of that is because Jamie is only 2 or 3 years into teaching. It's good to see that people are so willing to help each other out around here.

4th Hour, Day Two

English 11 again. Boring.

I think it would be very boring to be a teacher and teach the same thing like this over and over again. I guess having new students might be enough to make things interesting.

Same thing with grading.

3rd Hour, Day Two

Anything interesting that happened during 3rd hour happened during lunch. The teachers were talking about getting into teaching and how debt is a problem that prevents potential teachers from getting into the profession. One of teachers said not to go into teaching at all. I'm not sure if she's being serious or not.

Others said that working some other job for a while before going into teaching is a good idea, so that you can pay off all of your debts and stuff. I guess that's how I'm leaning right now.

After lunch I sat and read Death of a Salesman because I had nothing else to do. Also I got Schultz a box of stuff from her car. Boring. Death of a Salesman is depressing and also boring.

2nd Hour, Day Two

The 9th graders took a test today, so... I was very bored.

Schultz told me to keep an eye out for naughty children while she went off to do some work somewhere. I saw a girl sitting in the front row who was using her cell phone down in her lap. I made sure that we made eye contact so that she knew that I knew what she was doing. I figured she was just texting someone after finishing her test, so I didn't really think much of it.

When Schultz asked me how they were, I told her about the cell phone girl and Schultz went right up to the girl and confronted her about it. I felt bad right then because that girl totally knew that I ratted her out.

I hate being a snitch. I would have no problem with walking up to that girl and telling her to knock it off myself, but unfortunately that isn't within the realm of my authority in this classroom.

1st Hour, Day Two

"Monitor and Adapt." I guess this is the thought process behind the curriculum flexibility that I saw on Wednesday. Schultz said that a teacher has to adapt his or her teaching plans to their students needs. I guess that she was planning to have her kiddos do a poetry section after break, but decided to change her plans because she thought that the poetry would bore her students (everything does, one of the teachers in the office said) , and would then leave her students with a nasty taste in their mouths.

Schultz sits in a desk as the children read Death of a Salesman. I like that. In addition to putting herself on a level close to that of the students, it seems to help her keep track of the back row specialists. Some of the kids towards the front are taking advantage of this by napping during the reading. There are trade offs everywhere.

The kid playing Willy Loman is impressing me with his chops. Also, now I'll finally be able to learn who Biff Loman is after hearing him referenced on Seinfeld.

Day One, Hour 4

4th Hour is English 11 again, with the same novel reading assignment. Schultz seemed more lenient on those students that didn't have their novels on them. I don't know if this is because she's getting tired of giving 0's, or if it is because she trusts these students more than the 1st hour kids, or if she can just tell that they read their books with out doing the one sentence thing.

Prep Hour

After lunch, Schultz and I went back to the classroom where she had me look through the textbook to recommend a poem or two from the Harlem Renaissance.

That was kind of tricky. It was hard for me to recommend things because I didn't feel like I was any kind of authority on the the subject, but I guess that when you come right down to it, I am. I am a reader and an English major and that sets me apart from most people. I guess that I've become sort of insulated in my little world of English majors and books and forgotten that I have the skills to pay the bills (sort of).

Schultz and I also talked a lot about school & education politics and stuff like that. I guess as a 'masculine' (her word, not mine) male interested in teaching, I would be given very high priority when applying.

I'm still not clear if Schultz thinks that this is a good thing or not. She said that the more 'femmy' male teachers have trouble connecting with students, especially the guys. However, Schultz also talked about back in the days when she worked for Donny back at JFK. She seemed to resent him for telling her to hire dudes no matter what. I guess you just need to be the right qualified dude. She told me an anecdote about some guy she interviewed at Kennedy who brought a guitar to the interview and said, "I don't really go for traditional/formal interviews, so I'm just going to sing you a song." Seriously.

Schultz also told me about her move from Kennedy to Jefferson. in 2001 or 2002 Steve Hill, then the assistant principal at Kennedy became head principal at Jefferson. Two or Three years later, he asked Schultz to fill an opening at Jefferson. She said that after she got the job she had to distance herself from Hill because some other teachers might think that she was 'brought over' from Kennedy by Hill and they wanted to escape that stigma.

Towards the end of this prep hour, after I told Schultz about my suggestions for the Harlem Renaissance, she told me about the frustrations and that come from teaching English lit for a person who loves books and reading. She told me that it can be extremely frustrating for a person to teach a book that they love, say To Kill a Mockingbird, and have a third of the class hate it because they refuse to give it a chance because they are crappy students that don't give a crap about their educations. She also said that getting any member of the 1/3 that doesn't give a shit to give a shit about anything can be extremely rewarding.

Lunch time

Third Hour is prep, which really means lunch. Lunch was pretty fun, the group of teachers span a pretty large span of 'experience,' from Jamie, who is only two or three years out of Gustavus to Art who has been at Jefferson for over 40 years. Definitely more fun that sitting by yourself in a big empty classroom. All of the stories about lying to the children, and tips on how to handle them, and general banter around the table reminded me of... any group of people, really. One of the other teachers even said that she forgot that school started up again until 7pm the night before.

Day One, Hour Two

Hour Two is Honors English 9, which seems to be very similar to the class that Schultz taught me back in the day. I'm still sitting among the natives, S had these kids do the same reading assignment over break. The 9th graders are pretty funny, so far I've seen two of them wearing new Christmas clothes that still have their tags attached.

I was given a special assignment for this block: to read two short stories by Langston Hughes and Nella Larsen. I was told to help her determine teach them as part of a Harlem Renaissance section, rather than Death of a Salesman. It's weird that a high school teacher can much such a huge change in the schedule with only 11 days left in the semester. I thought that this would be the kind of thing that they would have had figured out for a while. I would flip if one of my professors decided to make a change like that. I guess college students tend to care more because we have to buy our books. I do advocate reading Langston & Larsen by the way.

Passing Time

During the passing time before second hour, Schultz and I went into the large group office that is shared by many Jefferson teachers, where we met a 10th grade English teacher. I think Schultz had to pick something up from her desk too, I'm not sure. Anyways, this 10th grade teacher said that Jefferson has a much healthier work environment than many other schools, including Kennedy. Schultz and this other teacher, whose name I think is Suzy agreed that this is because of the sense of community created by the large office room. It's like living in a suite with a bunch of friends compared to to working at a school like Kennedy, where the classroom setup makes life lonely and boring for teachers, like living in a single room. At Jefferson, all ten or so of the English Teaches eat lunch together, whereas Schultz told me that back in the Kennedy days, she would either eat alone or with one other teacher only.

It's interesting to learn this sort of social/political-type stuff, especially when I find that my beloved Kennedy High School was an unhealthy work environment because the friendships that I saw between my teachers is one of the things that first attracted me to teaching.

Day One, Hour One

So, I was literally with Schultz for about 10 minutes before the school day started. Her first class of the day is English 11. When I had imagined shadowing, I thought that I would get to sit at a desk and feel big and important. Instead, Schultz introduced me briefly, put a teacher's copy of the textbook into my hands and told me to go sit down in one of the desks in the back of the classroom.

She needed the desk room because she was interviewing her students about novels they were supposed to have read over Christmas break. When Schultz called a student up to her desk, she opened it up to the back fourth or so, and read a sentence. The students were then supposed to explain the context of the sentence. Meanwhile the class takes notes from 11 pages (note that they have 80 minutes to do this) and I skim the 9th grade text on Romeo & Juliet.

Lots of the students don't have their books, and even though I would probably be one of them, I am surprised by the cavalier attitude that so many throw around as they tell Schultz that they didn't read their books at all. I would have been mortified. Well, a bit embarrassed at least.

From looking through the teacher's textbook, I can see how a person could manage to slide around and be a crappy teacher by just doing everything that the editors put in the margins. I'm pretty sure that one or two of my teachers back at JFK did that, and it will be interesting to see how Schultz compares to this hypothetical crappy teacher.

Day One

The first teacher I am shadowing is Mrs. Schultz. Schultz taught me in ninth and eleventh grade back at Kennedy High School and was pretty awesome. Since then she's moved to Jefferson, the other school in town and still seems to be pretty awesome. She has a unique talent for relating to students that I have always admired. She somehow manages to make friends with all of her children while constantly barraging them with mild insults. It's a style that is right up my alley.