"Pull Yourself up by Your Bootstraps"
I am the type of person who tries to make the best out of a bad situation. I try to find the positive in a not so positive situation.
Certain aspects of this semester have been a challenge.
Not the classes or working with Scarlett students but the never ending doomsday lectures about standards! We have chosen to become teachers and were pretty excited about it until around the second day of class. I feel like ever since we have gotten a healthy dose of pessimism in multiple classes. I wanted to go to medical school and every physician I knew tried to talk me out of it. I thought about PA school and got the same response from practicing PAs. Current teachers look at you like you are crazy when you tell them you want to go into teaching. Why do so many people bash their profession?
Is everybody really that unhappy?!
I want to learn about all of the great things about teaching. The positive impact we are going to have on our future students, the fun times we will have in the classroom, and the feeling at the end of the day like we are making the world a better place.
I totally get that standards are difficult to teach and difficult to follow and difficult to be tested on. I get that standards are not a good indicator of student knowledge and stressful for students and teachers. But - our leaders have decided that as of right now this is the best option they can come up with.
So instead of the negative/doomsday/the sky is falling talk, why not teach us how to conform to the standards while also employing high leverage teaching practices.
How about motivating us and telling us we will get through it and we will all make fabulous teachers!
We learn how important it is to motivate our future students everyday :)
Am I just living in a world full of rainbows and butterflies?
I look forward to reading your comments - am I the only one who feels this way!?
Jeni,
ReplyDeleteI think you raise a pretty intriguing conundrum that I've noticed more and more through our classes and interactions with people in my life. Teaching is going to be hard. I think we might be silly to not think that right now while we're in training. There are so many other influences within the educational system that will make this job difficult and those that are completely out of our control. I love that you have a positive outlook on all of this, and I think you'll be a better teacher because of it. I think a lot of our classes will highlight a lot of the doomsday stuff in education, but I think ultimately we're going to be better prepared for whatever comes our way once we're in control of our own classrooms. But you're right, we need motivation just as much as the motivation we plan on giving our students. Since our journey has just began, I think there will be a lot more to think about once we start working in the schools in the fall. It'll be interesting to discuss this same idea once that has begun!
Aw Jeni! I think that you're right -- we do hear so much about the "doom and gloom" that is a growing reliance on standardized testing and vague and underdeveloped standards. I think in a lot of ways, though, that this will get better very, very soon -- as soon as we get inside the classroom.
ReplyDeleteThink of it this way: I don't know about you, but I learned how to drive a car by attending a driver's ed class at my high school. During that class, there was a ton of emphasis on the "doom and gloom" -- the potential for accidents, how to drive in terrible weather, how to deal with people who have road rage. None of that really makes you want to DRIVE, right? But we wanted to learn how to drive a car because doing so meant being able to go places, to travel with friends, to help out the ones we loved who couldn't get rides, and even just to motor down the road for the fun of it on a June day and listening to ZZ Top with the windows rolled down, wind blowin'.
I think this is the same way. We're learning right now about how to deal with weather and accidents and road rage so that we will be qualified to be in the classroom, and I think once we're there, we're going to love it. We'll have the windows down and we'll be listening to ZZ Top :P
I think implicit in a lot of our teachers' messages is that teaching is tremendously worth it and a wonderful way to live, and I think that the reason they're telling us about all of the problems with education is so that we can contribute to preserving teaching as it is, or at this point, as it was a few years ago. They're training us to be game-changers. We can't quite do that without understanding how the game needs to be changed.
I feel whole-heartedly, though, that once we step into our internships this fall, it will all be worth it. Thank you for sharing these thoughts with us! Definitely know that you are not alone in believing these things.
See ya Monday,
Matt
I apologize if this is repeating anything from the other comments, but TL;DR.
ReplyDeleteI think I understand where you are coming from. In most of the classes, everything has a silver-lining. Challenging students require us to speak more clearly and reach out. Bullying is something that we can act against. But, when it gets to the CCSS, it seems like everything we hear is negative.
I think what you said is true. We need to focus on how we can motivate our future students in spite of these difficulties. Like Charles says, don't talk of difficulties but of challenges. This may be a realistic problem that we will have to confront as teachers, but I think that this gives us an understanding of how important it is to show that our problems have possible solutions.
We may live in a world of hurricanes and famine, but rainbows and butterflies are also an important part.
Nate
I can definitely understand where you’re coming from Jeni. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Though we’ve been talking a lot about challenges within the profession, in some sense, engaging in this kind of critical thinking might protect us from being disillusioned and hardened by the difficulties of teaching and larger systemic challenges that we’ll become more aware of once we are actually teaching. Maybe that’s why we see some teachers who don’t have the same spirit they once had when they started. I really appreciate your optimism and willingness to find ways to work within the system that we do have. I agree that we need to do our best to give students the best education we can within the existing system, and I’m looking forward to learning more about how we can do this.
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ReplyDelete(I didn't copy-edit my post carefully, so I'm trying again)
ReplyDeleteYour posting clearly expressed something that others have felt, Jeni, and I know that 504 isn't exempt from the criticism you outline...that is something for us to think about, so thanks for being candid.
I like Charles' framing of challenges rather than problems, and I also think that there's value in thinking about the cause of what you've noticed. There is, both in Schools of Education and definitely in the K-12 world a good deal of resentment over people outside education telling educators how to do their jobs. I am sympathetic with many of these feelings--throughout the entire history of public education in the US there have been people--LOTS of people--advocating for variations on the idea that the "business model" ought to be applied to education, with its promise of no-nonsense efficiency. My sense is that, for the most part, this orientation doesn't work very well in the idiosyncratic, very human space of schools, but that's just my opinion. Of course, as you point out, more recently schools and teachers have seemed to be the object of much criticism from politicians and the general public. On another hand, teachers have also gotten accustomed to a great deal of autonomy in terms of how they do their work and, while I am firm believer that, in general, teachers deserve to be trusted, and treated like the capable professionals that they are, there's no reason why we can't have thoughtful, nuanced assessment of the work of teachers. Indeed, the occasional curse of the professional lives of teachers is that they are so much in the public eye, and their work is scrutinized in sometimes condescending ways that the work of other professionals...lawyers, doctors, architects...is not.
All of this is backdrop, though, as you and your colleagues deserve to have a sense of the "lay of the land" as you enter schools.
Having said this, though, the wisdom of your question ("why not teach us how to conform to the standards while also employing high leverage teaching practices?") is undeniable, and your enthusiasm to do the work that you'll soon begin in earnest is the most valuable thing you have going for you. So, while I think that, in the fullness of time, the program will respond helpfully to your question, your reminder is appreciated and one to which we need to be actively sensitive.
Jeni-
ReplyDeleteWow. I’ve spent a few days thinking about how to respond to this post. You’ve raised an important issue that I’ve grappled with a lot as a teaching intern in the MAC program, a novice teacher, and as a cooperating teacher.
Given the gravity of this topic I’m going to to respond strictly from my perspective as a 7-year practicing teacher who is about to go back into the classroom in a few weeks. I can’t speak for your other instructors or your classmates, but I am aware that--especially in the last class--the picture I paint of teaching can be a bit harrowing. Remember, this is just my perspective, so I’m going to spare you the “I think”s and “I believe”s.
First, teaching is the greatest job in the world. There is no occupation more important, more fulfilling, more humbling, more complex, more challenging. And my guess is that you wouldn’t be in this program if you didn’t know all of that. But that last adjective is the one that too many teachers don’t fully understand, which is one of the reasons so many teachers leave the profession. Many of them say, “If only I had known __________, I would have never become a teacher.” I see one of my roles as the guy who fills in the blank.
Second, I don’t think that when a teacher looks at you like you’re crazy for becoming a teacher that they’re necessarily bashing the profession. Maybe what they’re doing (I know this is what I do) is challenging you to make sure that you really want to do it, that you understand the challenges and that you’re willing to work through them. In that sense, they’re doing you and your potential students a favor. In truth, they’re just preparing you for what the job is, which is a lot of people (students) doubting your motives and your abilities early on, and then respecting and often loving you later. And although it is a process, every year you get better at earning that respect, until eventually the kids walk through your door already respecting you. And that’s when the job really gets magical. Sadly, too many people leave the profession when they’re on the precipice of experiencing that magic.
As for the talk of standards, I think that’s kind of a mask for everything I just said in the previous paragraphs. You will learn how to teach the standards using high leverage practices, and you will be motivated, and some days teaching will feel a bit like doomsday, but other days there will be rainbows and butterflies and unimaginable feelings of accomplishment and joy.
Again, this is just a single perspective, which may not be worth much. Thanks again for bringing up this topic.