Phew, this is hard!

I am having a very hard time keeping up with everything. There are so many different systems and routines built into the 5th-grade day and they are all managed, maybe micro-managed. How will I ever get them all down? Or is the best answer to just say, OK, well, I'll explicitly teach them these things, but if it does not work, I will not freak, because you know what, no matter how they get from Jane's class to Jean's class, they will most likely all get there in one piece with little sidetracking (hopefully). These are not kindergarteners, the classrooms are not that far apart, and they are very unlikely to get lost. The intentional sidetracking probably won't happen till later, and hopefully by then, I will have the system figured out so I can call the kids on it.

They will figure it out eventually. The hard thing is that you have to teach it to them, and in order to teach it to them, you have to understand all the complexities and nuances that are part of the classroom management plan for 5th grade. It is intensely organized. But legitimately so.

Another thing, how is it right for an administrator to be up talking about 10 and 2 strategy (you talk for 10, they talk independently for 2, then you bring them back), keeping exercise involved in the day because it is one of the Brain Rules, (from the book, Brain Rules) as is a stimulating environment with lots going on, and then proceed to talk at you for an hour or so with no exercise breaks or anything that follows the Brain Rules. Most teachers that I know are not used to sitting down listening for the whole day. They stand, they roam the classroom, they interact with students and teachers, and it is hard for them to focus for that long; they are not used to it.

Maybe that's just environmental educators who can't sit and listen for long, but I tell you, I never thought I was one of those kids who always needed to move until I went back to school after teaching students in informal education settings for 5 years or so. I am fidgety, I need to move, or talk a lot, one of the two. Is that OK for me as a teacher to be that way? Am I setting a bad model because I cannot sit and listen for longer than 20 minutes without massive bouts of fidgeting or raising my hand to share?

Questions, anxiety, and excitement

Questions I still have and what I still want to know:
I want to know if our education system is so focused on deficits in children (as a result of high-stakes testing and federal legislation that had to choose some definition for things) that it is unable to recognize multiple intelligences.  I also want to know what I as a teacher can do to look like I am cooperatively working within the deficit model system and at the same time ignore the deficits and seek multiple intelligences instead.  

Anxiety: How will I ever figure out the complex systems my team has in place for behavior management and academic success, and how will I go about recreating those in my classroom if my school culture is different or focuses on different basic rules.  I hope I am in a team situation, a collaborative school, because I honestly don't know if I can set up all that from scratch on my own without any support, guidance, or references.  

Excitement: I am excited to meet the kids and start seeing actual instruction, not just planning, because it is really hard to keep up with planning on my team, cause they have been working together for 3 or 4 years as a team and a teacher says one word and the other teachers know exactly what they are talking about.  They are amazing and laugh a lot and try hard to help me understand everything, but man do they go through it fast.  I am hoping it will all become clear once I see it in action with kids.  

Accepting imperfect or not my best

Something I learned:

I already knew this in a roundabout kind of way, but obvious statements by someone with authority and expertise inform me that I really don't know these things deep inside.  

Today, the obvious statement that came as a bit of a revelation was this: You cannot be the perfect wife, the perfect teacher, the perfect Mom, the perfect student, the perfect anything.  You have to be able to let things go.  When the laundry is piled up and your kids are demanding your attention and your husband needs your help fixing the sink in the kitchen, you have to be able to say "I can't handle this right now.  I'm going to go take some time for myself and then I'll come back and deal with it."  

I have not really practiced this faithfully, and I am a new wife (one year in 10 days) and still trying to be what I see as the perfect wife.  I have to let this go, because it is not going to happen this year.  I think I will have an even harder time letting go and abandoning chaos that is life to gain some space for me when I have kids.  I am mostly concerned about at home, though, not as much at work, but the whole work thing affects home life.  This next year may prove to be the hardest at that because I have been practicing as an overachieving student my whole life.  It is harder for me to tell myself, "OK, I don't have time to do my best, I just have to fill the square," (which you have to do in school sometimes, just fill the square) about school assignments than it is for me to try my best.  But I will not have the luxury of enough time to always do my best work at schoolwork.  Sorry profs, but that is the way it is.

But the obvious statement, "You just have to let the idea of perfect go.  Let things go," is somewhat of a new idea, though I have heard about letting things go to move on from emotional distress, being the sensitive person I am.  Somehow, I have to figure out how to let go of loading the dishwasher a certain way and planning our weekly menu perfectly and sticking to it and not turning in my best work so that I can get the sleep I need to be healthy and the most productive person I can be, or I will not make it over the 5-year teaching career hump, much less through the whole kid-raising thing when that comes around.  I will try. 

Full time student teaching/attending classes: Day 1

One thing I learned:
Teachers you seek recommendations from (master teacher and field instructor and professor) will be asking themselves: Do I want this person as a teacher next-door to me? when they are filling out recommendations. I knew, but not straight out obvious like Prof. AR stated.

Questions and still want to know: I wonder if I am going to be heading up student-parent-teacher conferences during the spring quarter of full-time student teaching.

Anxious about: I am anxious about optimizing my learning as a future teacher while still not stepping on my master teacher's toes. I want to learn as much as I can this year, and I think one of the best ways for me to learn about writing lesson plans and teaching and assessing is to practice, so how can I learn the best way for me to learn while still following the seemingly strict guidelines in the handbooks and avoiding toe-stepping on.

I am also anxious that I will learn too fast or faster than my master teacher is expecting or Jim is expecting. I have been managing small classes (15-20) in informal education settings for quite a while and feel pretty confident there, and I don't want to get ahead of myself or my master teacher, but I don't want to feel unchallenged either, because then I will not enjoy my internship.

Excites me: Doing more focused learning. I have been working in camps and field trip and environmental education centers, and the kids are usually excited about the field trip or it's camp and they know it's fun, so there is somewhat less academic focus. I am excited by the new challenge of focused academics and incorporating the fun techniques into teaching. I am excited to be with kids for longer than a day or a week so I can get to know them better and really help them make progress.

Global Climate Change in Middle Grades

I continue on my journey to teaching public formal education, and as part of it, I am researching cliamate change curricula, teaching, and assessing in middle grades 5-9.

Global climate change is a world problem that can only be mitigated through international cooperation and wide scientific literacy. Climate is complex. There are a multitude of influences on the weather for any given day, and as such global climate change is highly complex and though many consequences of climate change are widely known, very few citizens truly understand how and why those consequences came/come about.

I intend to research what middle grades educators are doing about climate change education. I will look at national and state standards for evidence of climate change education to see if they even exist. I need help with this research. I need educators who will let me interview and/or observe them teaching. I need an audience for my findings. Where should I publish these findings? And who shall I present them to in order to broadly influence science education?

Of course I can incorporate climate change studies into my own classroom, but how can I help other science teachers do the same? How can I inspire civic action on climate change through education, both of children and adults, educators and general citizens?

Global climate change is the single biggest ecological problem faced by humanity currently, and in the future. The ramifications are widespread, and a possible effect is eventual extinction of the human species if we refuse to adapt our habits. Not for many generations, but as the Great Law of the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) Confederacy states, "In our every deliberation, we must consider the impacts of our decisions on the next seven generations."

Inaction today will lead to destruction for future generations.

Reconciling Totalitarian Assessment with a Democratic Classroom

In Chapter 6, Ayers discusses the totalitarianism of standardized testing. His view that by allowing any one group to decide what is the best knowledge to have is totalitarian by nature meshes with my view that different geographic areas value different things to learn and thus the education of American children should not be entirely uniform. The responsibility to educate citizens resides in the states' hands, not the federal government's hands, and a national test is a bad idea because of unique valuation and the totalitarianism embodied by one group of people determining the knowledge that everyone should have.

At the same time, knowledge is limitless, and there has to be some consistency in what is taught, and there is already. Consistency across states in assessment is unnecessary, I think, but not per se wrong. If standardized tests weren't given so much power in policy determination and evaluation I would be less upset by the un-democraticness of the tests. But, they are powerful, and anything as powerful in determining national or state direction as standardized test results are should be more democratic in nature in the U.S. democracy.

Chapter 3 inspired a lot of thinking. All of Ayers's descriptions of acquaintances' houses made me wonder what my house and home tell people about me and those that live with me. My situation is different than the ones Ayers describes because I am in a rental house that I share with my husband and another couple who we are unrelated to. It's a roommate situation. In a roommate rather than a family living situation, it's harder to make your house yours, even if you are the owner and others are just leasees. So maybe a better question would be what do our "private" rooms tell others about us. I'll have to ask a neutral observer sometime. But, does a house embody a personality to a complete stranger? Or does a house not take on personal traits until an observer knows a person well? Same question could be asked of a classroom.

Ayers is so blunt about what he thinks but simultaneously poetic. He's a great descriptive writer, and the way he states things about learning environments really kind of makes me cringe inside, because they're thoughts maybe I did not want to have but really they're there and have been there I've just been avoiding pondering them. For example:

"The most taken for granted...and commonplace features of life in school carry messages about important issues: this is how people learn; this is what is valuable; this is what you should attend to. And these messages constitute a major part of what is learned and what becomes assumed about school"

"Kids understand that school is about crowds--there is no privacy and there is little individuality. What's good for the group had better be good for me. The schedule is in charge"

"In school authority is established and learning about hierarchy becomes crucial; democracy is talked about but not practiced, issues of larger community interest are rarely considered and never acted on."

"Kids see that in school, learning is linked to age more than anything else, and...neatly divided into nine-month units"

I wish I could get away with stating things so bluntly in class! Of course, I am not respected like Ayers so that's probably why, but wouldn't it be nice?

Ayers puts up student work in his classrooms in order to make his classroom more than just his and also to ensure democracy in his classroom. Everyone's contributions are equally valid. It is not his job to determine what the classroom looks like or the curriculum either, for he is a teacher practicing democratic schooling. Most teachers put up student work because that's what you do with classrooms, at least that appears to be why. I doubt many have reasons as pointed and significant as Ayers does.

Ayers's point about learning with a purpose is valid. Why has this learning been lost? Why isn't academic learning more like real-life learning? Shouldn't it be? Aren't schools supposed to prepare students for real life in addition to teaching them new things? Shouldn't these new ideas have some practical application that is visible to students, or that a teacher can at least point out? Why is the old adage "You'll need to know this when you have a job" or "You'll need to know this when you're an adult" spoken so widely? How come we cannot instead show students by purposeful learning that the knowledge is necessary? The best way to learn is through one's own mistakes and missteps. Ayers is so right that by breaking learning into irrelevant pieces that only adults can impart to you are "absolutely disastrous lessons if curious and critical dispositions of mind is a goal." This is my goal as an educator, do others not share it? What about administrators? What is their goal? The goals of schooling are wide, I know, but shouldn't something as simple and necessary as curious and critical mental disposition be on everyone's goal list?

Ayers's reminder that everyone in a classroom is a whole person, including the teacher, "Her passions--singing, quilting, hiking, dancing--will be well represented [in her classroom]" raise a contentious issue with me. Many people get upset with me for saying that my students should know my pasions. It seems like peers want me to hide it in order to avoid imposing ideas on children. I'm a strong, passionate, and independent woman and I feel great pressure to robotize myself in order to successfully teach. To thine own self be true. I have been true to myself for eight years; I am not giving that self-knowledge up for anyone or any job. That seems wrong to me. Yes, teaching is a role, but the teacher is a whole person too, and why should I deny my own wholeness for my students to have the best change to be whole people themselves? It makes no sense to me. Sacrificing myself as a person in order to help them be people: Is that what I am being asked to do?

Authentic Assessment

"The root of the word evaluation is value, and authentic assessment includes understanding FIRST (emphasis added) what students VALUE and then building from there."

Ayers's definition of assessment is totally upside-down from the mainstream view of assessment and I love it. Much of assessment is dictated by what society values or what school superintendents value. Very little seems to consider what students value first. Within classrooms that may not be true, but most standardized testing and the like is not about what students value. No wonder school is such a dull, drab, boring place for most children. Ayers definition of assessment is a throwback to Dewey's ideas on education. It's an interesting coincidence they they are/were both faculty at University of Chicago. And Paley's book also was written about an experimental school at University of Chicago. I wonder what Chicago's public schools look like with such progressive minds filling the teacher education halls.

I completely agree with Ayers that standardized tests are given way more power than they deserve and they suck even resisting people into their maelstrom. Ayers depictions of both himself and another anti-testing colleague's reactions to standardized test scores were revealing. Especially his colleague that went through hell and high water to get his daughter's test scores up; not because he did not consider his daughter intelligent but rather because "Those scores are like a union card. The union may be crooked and run by gangsters, but, hey, no union card, no work."

What a sad position for children of today to be in. Their whole future sometimes hinges on those test scores. But at the same time, in the working world, if you are only good at taking tests and cannot function within a group or if you lack people skills, then you are less likely to "get promoted." However, in some industries, the smartest people according to test scores but the dumbest when it comes to people and social skills are the managers. My roommate works at Microsoft, a company that seeks the best minds in the world to be employees. She is continuously frustrated by many of her managers because they do not have people skills. They may be smart, but they are a pain to work with and make for pretty poor managers.

Ayers explosion of the myth of scientific objectivity of test scores was revealing, especially how the averages are determined. The cultural bias and simplified way of determing averages make people aware before the test even begins of who will be the winners and who will be the losers. I wonder if teachers really do know before the test is administered? Ayers is just one education professional; he can't speak for all educators, though he's got a lot of good ideas and insights.

Ayers argument that the problem of drill and skill curriculum prevailing over a more comprehensive, problem-solving, critical thinking curriculum in our test-loving world is worse for those children who have the deck stacked against them just by their birth is strong. "By focusing on the ability to answer multiple-choice questions, reading is reduced to a set of relatively unimportant skills, and the link between reading and power is further broken." This broken link is the greatest loss of all, in my opinion.

I like Ayers's ideas about being frank with students about what the tests mean. Would such honesty, such bluntness about the lack of any real value in standardized testing be permitted to occur? Many people wish to shelter children in schools from harsh realities of the world and I think this is OK to a point, but I think it is crucial for children to know they exist and that there are tough obstacles to face as humans. Children should know the real value in standardized testing, but I foresee a lot of resistance from parents and curriculum writers if teachers pursued this strategy. Really, what you must do to do well on a standardized test is learn to take the test, but that should not be the goal of all learning in schools. Knowledge of the content of the test is much less significant to achieving high test scores than are the tricks to taking the test well.