Posts Tagged ‘perspectives’
After all my trials and tribulations in the job market, I managed to finagle a second interview. It’s scheduled for next Monday morning. If I get the job, I’ll be teaching 7th and 8th grade history to middle schoolers.
I’ve never taught middle schoolers. My student teaching has been a year’s worth of seniors’ government and sophomores’ world history.
My question to you is this: What’s the difference between those two classes of students?
I know that middle schoolers need far more breakdown of the period in terms of the number of activities. A normal one-period class should have three or four activities, I’ve heard, to account for a weaker attention span. I’ve also heard tell that it’s easier to put the fear of God into them. Nice.
That’s about it.
What, in general, are the accommodations I’d have to make for pubescent teenagers, rather than young not-quite-adults? Should I use the well-known Be Mean ’til Halloween advice, or balance that sort of strictness with a more lenient policy on late work?
If you’re thinking it, write in the comments instead.
The Cobbler took a break from hammering on the importance of openness and trust within a department to consider again that teacher I outed, anonymously, as believing in the bullshitness of BTSA.
Nobody likes BTSA.
The Cobbler didn’t elaborate why, either.
Of course he thinks it’s bullshit. He’s in the middle of it. When he finishes, then he can judge it. He can’t have perspective on it until he finished.
But you have to be open to ideas. I’ve been doing this for 20-odd years, and every day I learn something new. Every day, I learn something from my students.
In reading your blog, I saw you had some ideas about assessment …
I was open until he said this, because then he lost all credibility. As a student teacher, I shouldn’t make judgements or reflect on assessment? I shouldn’t tell others what I think about assessment, or other subjects of high educational theory?
I didn’t have a problem with anything else he said before or after “I saw you had some ideas.” I am, indeed, open to contrary perspectives, and I welcome any and all not-spam comments. If I didn’t, I’d edit and delete them to my heart’s content, a la the douchenozzle Mr. Fillmore linked to.
I’m willing to bet that all teachers and student teachers make these judgments, even if they don’t take the time to write it down and share it on the Intertubes.
His “some ideas” comment is the precise moment I stopped paying attention. After this, I nodded, laughed and joked at the appropriate moments. Yet “Some ideas” continued to bother me.
As we made our way back to the classroom, away from that table at the end of our second-floor hallway, I told him why I blogged, and how it addresses all his concerns on trust, collaboration and openness to new ideas:
I blog because I want to be more receptive to ideas, so I can put them down in writing and see how ridiculous they are, and so I can collaborate with teachers all over the place. I’ve already managed to do this.
Moreover, I blog to reflect. It’s kinda the point.
He responded.
O.K.
I’m not sure whether or not he was receptive to this idea. I didn’t get an impression either way.
