My Teaching Experience from Student to Professional with Lesson Plans

Poisson d’avril, the French April Fool’s Day, is said to have started because of either the change of the calender (they celebrated New Year’s Day on April 1st and then switched it to January 1st and people left behind got tricked) or because of Spring coming and fish being easy to catch. There are probably a few other proposed reasons for the name of the holiday, but I’m here to talk about what I’m going to do for it.

I will hand out little goldfish crackers and make students write 5 sentences about their specific goldfish that are “all different”- this is a POP QUIZ and it’s worth a LOT OF POINTS. That should scare them. Then I’ll let them eat them.

In a few classes we’re going over the letters of the alphabet and I asked some students to spell their names out with French letters. I will tell them that I’ll spell out my first name (which they don’t know and maybe aren’t supposed to know)…I’ll spell out “G-R-A” and then tell them they have to do all the work if they want to know the rest of my name. At the end of class I’ll finish spelling my name “N-D-M-A” (Grandma!) Hopefully some of them will have been thinking about it during the whole class and guessing.

Other ideas that I had that I’m not going to do? Putting a funny slide or two into a powerpoint presentation. One of those “read all of the directions” quizzes that you don’t have to do all of it. Playing a weird song instead of a French listening activity. Make kids take out a sheet of paper and make them write what you say word for word, really fast, and it’s for a quiz grade.

I have a few more ideas but I’m not sure. We’ll see how it goes with the first class. And I have to keep in mind that kids might be getting ready to play tricks on me. Maybe not. I’ll let you know how it goes!

Happy Poisson d’Avril Day!

I asked students to make flashcards of activities and locations we were going over in the chapter. Some examples: going to the park, going to a restaurant, playing hockey, traveling, or reading a book. We were doing an activity where students in pairs had to guess which 2 out of 4 activities the student either was or was not going to do over the holiday vacation. If students did not have the flashcards I told them to quickly draw pictures of activities.

These are the pictures my class clown made. I asked him what language they were in. The first one is a valid activity “Regarde la tele” but they should be in the infinitive “Regarder la tele”. The other ones? Oh boy. I told him “le roboto” sounded more like Spanish and he said it was German.

Some kids! I was never a “bad” student when I was younger and now that I’m the teacher I have to demand appropriate performance from the students, but I can still laugh at the humor later as well.

Sometimes when students tell me they don’t know the reference I’m talking about I’m surprised, but I have gotten more used to the idea that I AM OLD. (I am over a decade older than some of them). And they were born in the 90s. So they do not know much of the popular culture from the 80s.

They also don’t know much. Kidding! That is a cruel joke. But the truth of the matter is I am surprised to see some of the things I do. Only one student had heard of Ghandi before. I am just student teaching, but I do plan on continuing in the teaching profession, because I care and I want to share it. I want to give back and be a quality teacher who accommodates diverse learning styles in their instruction. That said, student teaching is teaching me a bit about what and how I want to teach, and what the students are used to or what their background knowledge is.

So here are some gems from a friend of mine who is a history teacher in New Jersey. She wrote about these special moments and quotes that can give us some insight into the both humorous and heart-breaking situation that is the knowledge base of some students out there:

“Also, here is a lovely example of fabulous writing for you to enjoy… In response to the question, “Why is a marathon called a marathon?,” a boy wrote, “Was ask to run and that why a marathon is called a marathon.” “

And the following quotes all come from just one week’s worth of teaching history:

When I asked a student where New Mexico was, he responded, “There’s a new Mexico?”

One of my AP students asked if Italy was in Spain.Also of note, several students seem to think that Washington DC is a state.

On a colonial map quiz, several students were unable to identify the state of New Jersey (where I teach). Several others were unable to identify Pennsylvania.

Oh, and I gave extra credit points on Friday’s quiz regarding Thursday night’s Democratic party debate. One girl asked, “Who’s Hilary Clinton? I’ve never heard of her.”

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I love my students that I am currently student teaching. Sometimes they say funny things. If it is appropriate, the class, the student, and I will have a laugh (Like when we get to the conjugation for the verb meaning to sleep and we’re going around the room in order and the boy we end up on happens to actually be asleep!). Usually I have to save my laughter for later- like when I’m grading quizzes or tests.

I know some teachers make students wait, but sometimes you can tell it’s urgent. I also recognize that some periods it is more acceptable to force them to wait until the end of class, and I think it does help if you have a general rule that students cannot go to the bathroom (they easily end up abusing the privilege), but whoops! This teacher is probably going to regret…

Teacher Forces Students to Urinate in Lunchbox

Yeah. That one is going to be tough to justify. I would definitely have let the kid go to the bathroom. I know I drink a lot of water and have trouble making it to the bathroom sometimes during the 4 minute break.

Oh the humor…the horror. Back to lesson planning and grading

This has happened several times- I start getting exhausted, feeling over-worked, uncertain of how I’m doing, and then it’s time to go to my school (the one I’m doing my Masters with) and I get a little bit more frantic because I have to have everything looking perfect to present to them.

And once again, as was the case with the other check-ins, I hadn’t needed to worry like I did, and I was doing alright based on feedback and other student teachers’ experiences.

Today I was excited to hear how other S.T. experiences were going (sounds like I’m actually having a really good one comparatively) and to feel like I’m not so far behind, or so bad at planning and teaching. Au contraire.

Some student teachers are still having issues with their cooperating teachers- particularly regarding them letting go of control of their classroom (they don’t want to do that at all). Personally, I would wonder why they even agreed to have a student teacher in the first place if they are so unwilling to let them teach.

I have a great cooperating teacher. I’m very lucky and thankful that it worked out so well for me. I have a very scatterbrained, creative way about me and I think the students have enjoyed having a different style of teaching. I may not be very refined and solid in every aspect of what I’m doing, why I’m doing it, and how I’m going to assess it (and justify the assessment ). But. I have had little successes hear and there that make me enjoy it so much more. From a friend who was in the program with me but is now teaching full-time for real:

“I’m learning that “the moments” are what teaching is all about. It’s getting easier and easier to dismiss the [bad] days and the indifference, just as long as you get one kid per week who is excited about something you’re trying to teach them.”

Yay. I couldn’t agree more. I want to reach the kids who can’t seem to pay attention, won’t do the homework no matter what it is or how much fun it might be, and I want them to enjoy it and have lightbulbs going off too.

And you do get that every once and a while. But you really have to work for it, differentiate and vary your instruction and the like, and boy, is that hard. I guess that develops with time more and more…so I think and hope. I can know it on paper, but putting it into action with a specific varied class is a whole big ol’ load of work.

My friend and I made a simple song that can help students remember the conjugation for “aller” (to go). It went over soooo well! They loved it. They were excited and surprised to hear me sing, and the response was pretty good. [They are mostly freshmen in the French I course, last period of the day, and they can get rowdy]. A few choice responses:

“I want this as my Myspace song”

“Can we get up and dance this time?” (of course I let them!)

I made everyone either sing along or say the conjugations along with it. There is an interlude where I gave spoken word examples of sentences using “aller” for the near future tense “You are going to…”/”She is going to…”

It made me so happy that they enjoyed it so much and a lot of them got it down by the end. We’ll see how it translates when they take their quiz over the conjugation I held up a sign for the visual spelling of the conjugations.

It felt really great! I want to bring a lot more music into the classroom.

• Have a powerful objective: objectives are one-line summaries of your resume. They clearly and concisely let a potential employer know what your goal is in looking for a specific job. While your objective may be “To get a job in the XYZ field—any job!!!”, ’tis necessary to put something like this “To obtain an upper-level management position in the coffee bean roasting industry that utilizes my extensive coffee expertise and stellar people skills” (Decent. I’d suspect them, but hire them).
• Work history: up to 10-15 years of work history can be appropriate- for recent graduates list seasonal work “Summer 2005″, “Fall 2006″, with most recent being first of course.
• Keep your purpose/field/objective/variety of experience in mind: what type of job is it? What is relevant? Create several resumes and tailor accordingly. Include even little jobs you had if they are relevant and remarkable.
• Know your skills and be prepared to flaunt them in such a way as to appear that you are not flaunting them, but rather exuding them at all times: As stated- if you’ve got skills, show it. Show it like you know it.
• Brainstorm some questions they might ask and answers you can give: with education, think of behavior management, lesson planning, educational philosophy, and so on and so forth.
• Practice your wording and know your philosophies- Obviously you wouldn’t want to have stuff planned word for word and end up sounding like a robot or seeming rehearsed, but it’s good to know how you would describe yourself as en educator, or how you bring technology into the classroom or how you bring the language to life. Reflect on what is important to you and how you can convey your unique talents to separate yourself from other applicants.

I don’t really know how it will all turn out. I know I’m an awesome, energetic, and creative educator. I know I’m great with technology. Now we’ll see how well I can convey it in my words.

I am very saddened to hear that California is trying to ban homeschooling. Yes, it’s important that the parent or whomever the teacher is should have “credentials”, but that sounds like more political and technical jargon mumbo jumbo. By mumbo jumbo, I mean that this misunderstanding is being taken way too far. It started with a welfare case because an unqualified mother tried to keep her 8 children home and home-school them.

You cannot move from some protests and a few court cases, to a state-wide ban on something that is the only way some kids will ever enjoy or experience true learning. How can you take away this beautiful process from over 160,000 people. I’m sure some of them may not be the most qualified, so maybe a high school degree could be a basic requirement. They can also have the students and teacher check in with the local Education committee. But they can’t put it into a rigid lock down and force bright, creative people to get “credentials”.

I see part of their point as logical, but that is disgusting that they are banning homeschooling. It’s just not right.

And part of the judges’ ruling involved quoting a case from 1961: “ ‘A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare.‘ “

Does anyone else see something weird about that? A lot of kids who would prefer to be homeschooled are turned off to schooling because of this brainwashing mentality. Teaching students to obey the law and to never question authority is not good education. Teaching students to be individual thinkers who critically reflect on different areas of education and how they intertwine with society and moral and political codes should be the hard-to-achieve goal in the minds of educators. Teachers should want to challenge students to think creatively, and on higher levels (some students’ lack of ability to do so is a completely different subject I will address later). Critical thinking in education should encourage students to examine all aspects of their education, their upbringing, their society, and the values held by any given culture they are in.

Forcing some students to go to public schools is like a death sentence- to their spirit and creativity.

Laws like this = NO!

It is unnecessary and unjust. I have several good friends who are still recovering from the academic wounds of being required to go through traditional schooling.

I am not sick and tired of student teaching. I have been more tired than ever (seriously more tired regularly than ever in a period of my life before- bad sentence structure I know), and I finally got really sick. I was sick the first day I was supposed to start teaching a class, but I got over it because it was some 24-hour flu bug, and I thought I could overcome all the flues and coughs and bugs, but after dealing with a bunch of sick kids (being close to them and telling them about assignments and the like), I got something awful of a cold.

I know this could be expected, but I have a point about student teaching. I easily could have called off (my teacher commented about my hacking cough the day before) and I could have called in because it was a short day. But I just took over my 3rd class and I felt more than just responsible for teaching the classes. I also wanted to go to the pep rally assembly. I really did. I like student teaching, and I like the kids, and I like that I care.

Not every day. Some days I hate it a little, or rather some hours I hate it a little, but overall it’s really grown on me. Yay!