Where're we Headed?

Today, and this week, I've been troubled by questions about curriculum. And this is another one of those now-familiar tales of the disparity between what I'm learning at Pitt and what I'm seeing at my placement. Trying to negotiate this disparity is beginning to seem like an unavoidable but quite challenging center to my preservice teacher training.

Let me start with a brief discussion of what I'm learning at Pitt. It all sounds really great and reasonable and smart and consistent, and I think I really like it so far. As far as planning/curriculum, we're learning how to plan unity using backward design. Basically, the unit (perhaps even the course) is guided by an investigative question like "What is a nation?" or "What is/are the American dream(s)?" Thinking about that guiding question, you plan your summative assessment for the course/unit, and you plan activities and texts for engagement that will help students to investigate the question guiding the unit/course. Each lesson, too, has learning goals of its own that help students work towards the unit question, and formative assessments that work towards the summative assessment. (broadly and simply: formative=assessment as you go, summative=assessment when you're done, though they're perhaps significantly more complex than these simple definitions can account for). So you might use three texts that describe three different versions of the American dream, ask students to articulate/critique/discuss the representations as you go, then ask them to describe their idea of the American dream, in comparison with the representations in the text.

(I think you can also work on particular skills through the unit, too, like crafting persuasive writing, so you would incorporate different elements of persuasive writing into the activities you use for each text, maybe you'd stage a debate between characters from one+ texts, and then as a unit assessment, you'd ask students to persuade you (or each other, or someone else) that their American dream is somehow best. We haven't explicitly worked on this aspect of unit planning yet, but I suspect it might be coming)

According to my mentor teacher, what I'm doing at Pitt and what my placement school tries to do is called understanding by design, or backward planning. However, what my placement is doing is somewhat different. Their units, instead of being focused on guiding questions, are built around state standards that are selected to go along w/ each unit. Each grade has a standard curriculum that the departments developed in conjunction with the textbook, and they go through each of the state standards and select texts/textbook activities that address those standards and structure their units in this way. My mentor teacher explained that this type of unit planning is, indeed, "teaching to the test," but that because the school I'm placed in has failed to make annual yearly progress for so many consecutive years, she says that they have little option but to teach to the test, because students need to pass the test, and if they're not passing, teachers need to be able to demonstrate that they taught from a standards-based, aligned curriculum so that they cannot be held accountable for students' failure on the tests.

That's not to say that my Pitt classes don't ask us to incorporate PA state standards. Every lesson plan we do addresses at least one, usually more, state standards, but we don't plan "to the standards," we more like plan with the standards "in mind," addressing them as we address the strategies and the investigative questions we're trying to cover.

To be honest, attempting to negotiate these two perhaps-similar-but-significantly-different approaches to unit planning is fairly exhausting and stressful. I totally understand my mentor teacher's and my placement school's attitude, even though I really don't agree with it. In our accountability-obsessed educational climate, it's really easy to become focused on covering the broad range of topics on the test--teachers and administrators understand that their schools and their jobs depend on test scores, so naturally that's what ends up being emphasized. Even if a noble, self-sacrificing teacher were to say, "Forget the tests, I'm going to educate my students the best way I know how, and if I'm successful, they will be able to do well on the tests." She's not doing her students any favors if her lack of an "aligned" curriculum gets her fired when the school fails to make AYP, and she's not around to self-sacrifice for pedagogical ideals any more, anyways. So I see this in part as a real problem with standards-based assessment. My mentor teacher told me it comes down to a choice; "You either dig an inch deep and a mile wide and try and cover as many texts as possible and use all the strategies and standards, or you dig a mile deep and an inch wide and really deeply and richly investigate a few texts/standards." The suggestion was not only that the former was preferable, but that it was the school's only option in this educational climate.

My classes and professors at Pitt, I'm sure, would not want me to be discouraged in this way. They would ask me--I think--to construct curricular units that are inquiry-driven and student- (or learning-) centered, but that also addressed state standards as I went. And I know there are ways in which this is possible--we've seen them done, in the examples our theorists lay out for us. But many of the preservice teachers in my program, as well as the teachers I've interacted with at my placement, are stuck with pre-fabricated one-size-fits-all curricula that prescribe texts to use and skills to use with those texts and activities/resources that work to achieve those standards/skills. I know that even within the tightest curricula, there's room for modifying activities, texts, etc to account for unique groups of students etc, but I think that requires even more creativity than planning one's own unit does, because it requires a lot of delicate work and tremendous insight and knowledge. I don't know that I even feel prepared to create my own units--I'm not even half-way through the program, so I'm sure the skills will come, but the fact remains that, at this point, I can't imagine planning units that are effective and inquiry based and not prescriptive and restrictive--much less to preform the exponentially more challenging task of trying to fit a pre-fabricated unit to fit my needs and, most importantly, the needs of my very different students.

This challenge, which I'll certainly have to face in the future as an entry-level teacher, says nothing of the challenge I currently face. How do I fit my lessons into my mentor teacher's curriculum? She simply doesn't use a lot of the strategies Pitt is asking me to use; can I ask her to when we're co-planning lessons? Or would that be totally an imposition on the unit she's designing with a very particular and calculated goal in mind? Will the shape of the class totally change when I "take over" in the Spring? Is that fair to the students, who will suffer from whip lash, being jostled from a class structured based on one pedagogical approach to one with a seemingly totally different approach? Will it adversely affect the school, or my mentor teacher, by robbing them of their overtly and explicitly "aligned curriculum?" I'm already running into issues, because the couple of small activities that I've conducted that, in my classroom, would be the foundation for building a unity, have been basically treated as tangents, footnotes, asides from the class, which is taught totally differently. Already, after only a couple of lessons, there's a disconnect between "her" classroom and "my" classroom (which, obviously, is still her classroom, but is also, in a way, Pitt's classroom, because Pitt is the institution telling me what to do/implement at my placement). Are the students already suffering? How much will they suffer over the course of the year?

I'm really at a loss about this. Even planning a unit based on a guiding question seems potentially overly-limiting to me, so planning within a prescribed curriculum seems that much more limiting and frustrating, and being asked to modify that prescribed curriculum to meet the standards Pitt is setting for a high-leverage-practice-based classroom is even that much more challenging. What do I do? I feel like I have no authority over ANY of these competing forces, so how do I work them all together for my good as a developing teacher and for her/my students' good?

Super challenging stuff that I am REALLY struggling with! Would LOVE feedback on these issues!

What's a Student-Teacher Even Supposed to Be!?

Related to my post about last week's observations and how I fit in in my district, this week, I taught my first lesson (and breathed a HUGE sigh of relief once I'd actually done it!) and it got me seriously thinking about what my role is as a student teacher, and weather it's really right?

Hopefully, again, this doesn't come across as a negative statement about my Pitt program. I LOVE it, even though it can be SUPER overwhelming at times. But I do have a hard time figuring out exactly what my function in my placement is really supposed to be. In short, who am I supposed to be when I'm there?

I know that, as a student-teacher, I'm some kind of weird hybrid of student-teacher-expert-novice-observer-observ-ee(probably not a word, but I mean it as the object of the observation of others)-critic-criticized-the-list-could-go-on! But what exactly does that mean for the many people interacting with me? In particular, what is my responsibility, and my mentor teacher's responsibility, to our students?

So I taught my first lesson, as I said, this Wednesday the 21st. And I felt like a failure after the first time I presented it. I was sure I'd been unclear, and that students had not understood the purpose.

I'll outline what my activity/lesson was, to give some context. My assignment from Pitt was to co-plan a lesson with a group of my peers that we could each use in our placements as a device for building literacy community/ies in our classrooms. (A literacy community refers, in my understanding, to a community of readers/writers/learners whose literacy practices and knowledge can inform one anothers' learning). My group came up with what we called a kite activity, because the idea behind it was to go from individual knowledge, to the knowledge of 2-3 peers in small groups, to the knowledge of a whole class, that could then be assimilated by all the individuals in the class.

My class was starting a new unit on the Enlightenment, and I wanted to implement the lesson so that students could learn to see one another as resources, and see how much knowledge could be constructed by working with their peers. Using a wonderful target-shaped graphic organizer from Jim Burke's Tools for Thought, I had them brainstorm one or two pieces of knowledge they had about the Enlightenment as it occurred in the US--be they ideas that were popular, trends, people who were alive/in power/writing at the time, etc. (they placed their ideas in the smallest, central circle of the target on the organizer). Then they got together in pairs or small groups, shared their knowledge, and worked on making possible connections to fill up the second-largest circle on the organizer. Then the pairs/groups "shared out" to the whole class, and we filled out the largest circle in the graphic organizer together. I then asked students what they perceived the purpose of the activity to be, explained that it was to see how much more knowledge they could develop as a community than on their own, and asked them to reflect on weather it had been effective, what they'd learned, and any other feedback they had.

Students completed the task successfully, but I didn't quite see the synthesis of ideas I'd hoped for, nor did I see students really, fully understanding how they had constructed a narrative that they could use to inform their readings from the Enlightenment period. I felt I'd failed.

My mentor teacher and supervisor both praised me, though. They reminded me that I could improve, obviously, but that I had done well, connected with students, been effective, etc.

My question, though, is this: Certainly, if I'd been an experienced teacher, I wouldn't have failed to notice the girl with her hand raised for several seconds. I would have given clearer directions, and explained the purpose of the activity more clearly. In general, students would have learned more--so why am I allowed to be in the classroom with students without the experience necessary to avoid those mistakes?

I know the answer, practically--how can I learn not to make the mistakes without the practice in a real classroom? But is it fair to the students, when I make rookie mistakes that perhaps prevent students from becoming motivated and engaging, or prevent them from asking questions for fear that they will look silly if I'm not answering them quickly enough, or when my lack of clarity about an activity prevents students from gaining anything purposeful from it?

Should my mentor, a veteran teacher, be stepping in every time I make a mistake, or could be doing better, or neglect something? Certainly, with that much support, I wouldn't be able to establish myself as an authority in the classroom, so how would I be able to develop professionally? But is it fair to the students? They're there to learn, not to help me to learn. They're not getting paid to educate me, but they're being expected to do just that.

I know that what I'm taking away from these questions is that I have to give it my all, I can't afford to make careless errors with the attitude that, "I'm new, I'll get it eventually," because, unfortunately, I'm my students' only chance to learn the ideas and material that I'm presenting. I have to be prepared, I have to try and anticipate as much as possible. And I have to try and think like a veteran teacher as much as possible.

But I wouldn't be a STUDENT-teacher if I could totally inhabit the role of a vet teacher. So I have to know that I will be making mistakes--probably TONS of them--and that my students may, at times, be wronged by my mistakes. How can I accept that, though? What level of leniency can I allow myself without short-changing the students? I know I'm being hard on myself (and probably on all student-teachers) but from students' and their parents' perspectives, these are the questions--perhaps the only questions--that really matter about teacher training programs, so I feel I'd be irresponsible not to at least think about them.

Wouldn't it be easier if teachers could all be perfect?

I know, this is perhaps unreasonable, but in other ways, it's totally important and relevant and it's a HUGE concern for me right now. What can/should I expect myself to be able to do for my students, who are also, since I'm a student, too, my teachers? How do other preservice, or vet teachers, feel about this? HELP!

Seeing Lots of Teachers!

Wow! Only 3 weeks into keeping this blog, and I'm already playing catch up for last week! I'll put up two posts today to cover my last two days at my placement, and, from now on, I'll be sure to stay on schedule as much as humanly possible!

So, for my observation on 14 September 2011:

This observation was a really nice opportunity for me to observe a range of teachers. When I say "a range," I mean I was able to observe teachers with a wide variety of teaching styles and pedagogies, teaching to a wide variety of grade- and presumed ability-levels. This experience really got me thinking about how we define "good" teachers--and "good" students, for that matter.

What was interesting to me was that, regardless of grade level, teacher, or students' perceived ability level, instructional strategies didn't vary greatly. True, teachers had severe or mild strategies for behavior/classroom management, spoke with varying tones of voices, referred to students in different ways, covered different activities and different texts. But, for all of that, the dominant pedagogy remained, at least from my vantage point, roughly the same. Perhaps the subtle differences I saw were more significant, and reflected really significant philosophical differences. I'm not saying by any means that my perception is perfect. But, it seemed to me that the school culture is one that I've yet to fully understand. I want to preface this by saying that not every single teacher I observed today fits this characterization equally, or to a great degree at all. But it seems to be a trend that I'm trying to understand.

To me, students are meaning makers, and they should be working really hard in school--maybe close to as hard as the teachers--to understand their readings on a really deep level, to understand how composing helps them to make meaning out of texts in their lives, etc. But it seemed to me that the teachers at my placement think a little bit differently. I haven't interviewed them about their pedagogies--perhaps that would be a good project to undertake--so I hope I'm not mischaracterizing them here. But it seems that they perceive English to be a static subject that one can obtain knowledge of through an understanding of literary devices and prescribed composition structures such as the five paragraph essay. And this could be a valid pedagogy--it's not one that I find very useful for me, and it's not one that my graduate program seems to promote, but it's certainly--again, as I perceive things--a dominant model in many schools, perhaps due in part to NCLB and policies emphasizing standards and accountability.

But this leads me, too, to question my perception. My placement has a curriculum that was decided upon at the beginning of the school year, and all teachers in the specific grade level must follow the curriculum. Perhaps this accounts for the prescriptiveness of many teachers methods.

My question, then, is what am I doing? What I envisioned today to be about, for me, is finding where I fit in a spectrum of teacher identities. I don't think I found it. I did find people whose demeanors are similar to mine, but none who I could tell from the lessons I observed thought like I do.

Does this mean that all the stuff I'm learning, that I find so compelling right now, is unattainable pie-in-the-sky ivory tower theory that has no practical applications? I've read studies that seem to say that this isn't the case, but that seems to be what I'm seeing, so what do I trust? The empirical observations I'm making and the things I hear teachers saying at my placement--and at the placements where my peers are student-teaching as well? Or the data and research I'm getting from my classes, that I want to believe in but that, based on what I'm actually seeing in the "real world" seems like there has to be something they're not telling us. For example, in a school where the curriculum is prescribed, is there any teacher autonomy? If not, why am I learning how to make choices about unit planning and text choices? On the off chance that I get into one of these "magic schools" that people write about these strategies working in?

I'm not trying to be cynical or pessimistic here. Quite the contrary! I'm super hopeful about developing my "praxis." But I'm struggling about how I'm supposed to be doing that in a classroom that's not my own, with a curriculum that some text book developer made up in an office somewhere, with no knowledge of my school district or my mentor teacher or my students or me.

And what about teachers who have lost hope? I've seen them, and I've heard of them, too. They look at the work we're doing at Pitt and call it "the new educational trend that will be replaced in five years by something else." They stick with the material they've been teaching and the materials they've been using because they feel its proven itself. Should I believe that to be true? That a "tried and true" approach/curriculum/writing format can exist? Should I be challenging that? How? When? Now, as a student-teacher? When I get my own classroom? Not until I have tenure? And what if I do find out, in five years, that I've been doing it "wrong" all along, even though I feel its been working for my students?

The teachers I'm talking about care about their students, and their students' test scores, college prospects, futures. I get the sense that they worry that experimenting with new strategies that they're not familiar with, and might not be good at, is a detriment to their students education, because students become guinea pigs, in a sense, having the effectiveness of a new strategy tested on them. And what if the theory WAS wrong on this one, for this student/class/school? So I understand their adherence to standard, test-prep focused curriculum, even if I'm learning alternatives that make much more sense to me, and I think will be more effective and help students more.

How do I negotiate this? And re: all the questions I just asked about when it's okay to try and shake things up a bit? Do I just hope for a job at a progressive school? Or does that defeat the purpose entirely, because then MY particular knowledge/training won't be required to help those students?

I hope it doesn't seem like I'm putting other teachers, with other pedagogies, down in any way. Like I said, I totally understand the pressures on them from all directions to do things in a certain way. But I'm afraid. I think I'm afraid that there's no place in my placement, and perhaps in today's US education system, for the teacher I think I'm becoming. What should I do?

I'd really REALLY love some feedback on this question from anyone with ideas, or anyone who is feeling some of the same things. Thanks so much for reading this one!

Justifying Myself!

I'd like to begin this blog by introducing myself and my current situation so that all of you followers (I hope you'll be out there!) will understand the context for the discussions to come!

(As I'm writing this blog, I'm about half way done and this entry is shaping up to be quite legnthy. I'm really sorry about that, and I don't imagine it will be typical of my future posts. I'd love for people to read it, but I know it's loooong and perhaps not as interesting as the youtube videos of kittens you could be checking out, so it's broken up into sections. Please feel free to read portions at a time!)

Who (and where) I am and how I came to be (here):

My name is Hannah Lewis, and I graduated from Penn State in May of 2011 with my B. A. in English and a Minor in Philosophy. At that time, I really wasn't sure what direction I wanted my life to take. I've always loved writing, and I do it constantly, so I thought about pursuing a career in commercial writing, journalism, editing, or anything like that. I was also planning to continue my education and get an M. A. and perhaps, ultimately, a PhD in English lit, postcolonial lit, rhetoric and composition, journalism, comparative lit, commercial writing, cultural studies, literary criticism--really, anything, because I really do love all of that stuff, the academic and the professional possibilities that come with an English degree. But I decided not to jump right into grad school because, without direction and focus, I was afraid that I'd just be wasting time and money without actually getting the full benefit out of my coursework, and there was the possibility that I'd end up just as directionless with my MA in hand as I had been when I received my BA.

So I spent some time--Summer and Fall of 2010--working in an office and reflecting on my experiences, and trying to determine how one should select a career. Should I aim for the financial benefits or potential social prestige and power that come with something like a Law degree? The intellectually steeped life of an academic? The freedom (in best-case scenarios) and self-indulgent possibilities that come with professional writing? Should I be reflecting on what experiences have made me happy? What I felt a duty to do? What would be most rewarding (someone called this "psychic income")?

I felt pretty directionless there for a while, and made some choices--such as where to move after finishing Penn State--for questionable reasons, probably mostly because I was searching for something stable to anchor me, and as soon as the potential for stability presented itself, I jumped on it. But for a lot of reasons--including my reflection on my own skills and interests, the rewarding experiences I had as a peer tutor at Penn State, the extent to which I was coming to value social equity and education as a means to social equity as well as self-fulfillment, the crises(es) in education in the humanities, and the goals I was beginning to form for my adult life--I started looking into teaching programs. I found one that I thought I liked at Pitt, tried out some education classes, found out that I LOVED them, and resolved that I should pursue a career as a teacher. And my licensure program started two weeks ago! I'm working on a professional certification--so it's a graduate program, but not one that terminates with a Master's degree--and student-teaching eleventh graders at a high school in the Pennsylvania Mon Valley, near Pittsburgh.

Which brings me to this blog...

A teaching blog? Why/what!?

The Why?

Any of you who are teachers/preservice teachers probably know that the beginning of a teacher licensure program is totally overwhelming. In the past two weeks, I've purchased hundreds of dollars in textbooks (both professional and literary), purchased my first video camera, joined the National Council for Teachers of English, met at least 5 new professors, my mentor teacher, my clinical supervisor (in case this position isn't a staple in teacher cert programs, she is a retired English teacher/current Pitt faculty member who makes sure my clinical experience, ie student teaching, works the way it's supposed to), met dozens of high school students at my placement site, met dozens of fellow preservice teachers, been introduced to several new ideas, theories, pedagogies, etc, started a twitter account for a class (#pitt_enged), and probably undergone a dozen more experiences that I'm still struggling to process/fit together into a vision of what my teacher training will look like! So why add the extra work of a blog on top of all of that?

For a lot of reasons. The first is a desire for productive dialogue. I've resisted blogs for a loooong time now, because I always thought of them as narcissistic and self-indulgant. Who has that much to say, that someone would want to follow their blog? I used to think. But now I understand that--at least for me as a blogger and this blog as a text--it's not about elevating myself to a state of importance, or believing that my experiences are relevant and valuable and interesting enough to attract readers. Instead, I NEED HELP making sense of all the experiences I'm going through right now! I very frequently make sense of (or attempt to) my experiences, emotions, thoughts, behaviors, etc through writing/journaling. I've been an avid journal keeper since I was probably about 11, but they were always private journals that I wrote just for the catharsis of writing something down, verbalizing it, releasing a thought/feeling I had been afraid to consciously articulate, or making sense of something I didn't understand by writing about different possibilities until one struck me as cohesive enough to settle the question for me.

In all cases, I was writing with the idea that I knew the answer to whatever questions I was posing, and I just had to dig the answer out of myself. In this case, though, I know that I don't have the answer. I might be able to construct an answer, or several possible answers, over the course of my training and the beginning of my career, but the internet is providing me with the opportunity to present my experiences to a lot of people who are struggling with/have struggled with these questions.

I know it can be really helpful for me to dialogue with others, get feedback about my developing praxis (a perhaps inaccessible but jargon-y and convenient way to say theory and practice), and find out what others think the purpose of education, the teacher, the student, the public school, the university, field research, standardized tests, IEP's, etc etc etc might be. So I invite as many people as would like to, or even just not mind, to please please please read this blog every once in a while and let me know when you think I'm totally wrong about something, or when I'm enacting a practice that might be intellectually harmful to students, or when I'm severely overanalyzing a trivial problem! Getting feedback will be awesome, will let me feel connected to other people during a BUSY semester that will probably turn me into a recluse, and will give me a lot to think about and to use to form my developing teacherly identity!

The blog also serves a (some) selfish purpose(s). The act of writing, like I said, has a tendency to help me understand, analyze, and just generally think through new experiences, especially complex and chaotic ones. My high school classroom is totally unpredictable (at least at this point in my career) to me, and so many things are always going on, it's hard to keep track of them all and draw valuable connections without doing a lot of written reflection, so that the thoughts become static and can be represented more permanently than when they're just thoughts hovering somewhere between my long-term, short-term, and working memory (wait, maybe short-term and working memory are the same, but you hopefully understand that I'm just trying to emphasize their flighty-ness, the ease of losing a train of thought as it becomes more complex). So writing will serve that function--I'll get back to this in the "What" part of this entry, though, when I discuss what I envision my blogging process to be.

Along that same vein, though, I want to preserve what I'm feeling and experiencing right now because it's so heightened and confused and chaotic and probably overly reflective. I think that--and I don't know for sure yet, because I'm still a novice at this--that, like any profession, feeling like a good teacher and being a good teacher are two separate and potentially unrelated ideas. In fact, I'm really afraid that I'll develop the habits and routines that I see my mentor teacher using/repeating . I'm not afraid because they're bad habits; I'm afraid of the idea of becoming such a natural at teaching (she's been teaching English for 10 years now) that I can go through the motions reflexively without thinking. I'm sure when you're that experienced, you probably feel like you're good, or at least competent, at your job. But if you're not constantly evaluating your practices, you might not be a good teacher at all! So I want to preserve the preservice, hyper-analytical me so that the potential veteran teacher me can look back and remember all the questions I had about all these big and small issues, and just remember how important even something habitual and routine can seem/be.

And the final purpose for starting this blog is a professional one. The secondary English ed program coordinator talked to us a little bit about our digital footprint and making ourselves marketable, and she made some fair points. If, when administrators considering my candidacy for a job google my name (which they almost certainly will, I'm thinking), they find a blog with videos of me teaching in a real classroom, detailed reflections on my ideas about education, teaching, English, writing, etc etc etc, in addition to my twitter account that feeds into my education class's tag #pitt_enged and a responsibly maintained facebook page, they will know (in a partial way, at least) not only what kind of person I am/present myself to be, but also what I think about various disciplinary and professional issues, and also, if I can include the video clips on here, how I will likely behave in the classroom.

With that in mind, I encourage comments, but I also ask that anyone commenting on this blog (which I hope everyone I know does at least once or twice) all content is professional and carefully selected. Basically, imagine if it's something I would want a potential employer to see--because that's one function I want this blog to serve!

That should give you a general idea of why I've decided to keep this blog, so, on to the what!

The What?

What is this blog going to look/be like? Truth be told, I don't fully know; in fact, it's probably impossible to know what it can become, considering the gradual process that goes into creating/keeping a blog. But I have a general game plan in mind, which I plan to stick to for at least this semester while I'm pre-student-teaching. Really, I don't envision the blog majorly changing until I get a classroom of my own/a "permanent" teaching position (the "" are a shout out to the debates going on right now about the value of teacher contracts/tenure and the crisis in the humanities and in education, leading to a lot of schools making significant cuts). At that time, my needs for the blog will likely change in ways that I can't foresee at this point. But, for now, what I hope this blog will be:

It will likely be topically quite diverse, which is why I hope to get a great diversity of people following it! I want to deal with English issues like the ones I dealt with in my Undergrad work--What makes a piece of literature great? How do we define genre(s)? How important/valuable is each lens of critical analysis/movement in literary theory? What does a well constructed essay look like? What texts/types of texts count as literature? etc etc.

It will also likely deal with professional issues: What teaching strategies are effective, and when are they? How much reading/writing/test prep should I be doing in each of my classes? How do I differentiate curriculum for kids with IEP's while still challenging them (eg how do I scaffold in a mixed-ability class)? What is the role of alternative types of text in my class? How do I select texts for inclusion? How do I select unit topics/goals? etc etc etc.

It will also probably deal with more socially situated quasi-philosophical questions like, What is the value of education? What is the teacher's role in society? What is the student's/citizen's responsibility/role in society? Should I teach knowledge for its own sake, or does it need to be practically relevant? What type of space should a classroom be?

And I don't think I'll be able to totally escape the charged political questions, too: What is it reasonable for taxpayers to ask of public school teachers? How do funding choices affect administrators/taxpayers/teachers/students/resources/instruction/learning? Should teachers encourage students to be politically active participants in a democracy, or should we try to avoid "mobilizing" students? How much political/religious/personal discussion is acceptable/desirable in an English classroom?

And most of all, I want to talk about the process I go through--and all of you go/have gone through when trying to come up with answers to all these different types of questions, because though my answers may change as I develop into/as a professional, I'll always (I hope) be asking them, and seeking to revise my answers--so while the answers may be tentative/temporary, the process will certainly endure, and I need to develop and hone that.

And as far as the format/writing process goes, I plan to write weekly this semester. I observe in my 11th grade classroom every Wednesday, so look for updates every Wednesday. This blog will deal mainly with the thoughts/questions/concerns that arise in my experiences in my classroom, since I get the advantage of classes to discuss the other types of texts/work I'm encountering, and because I don't really have anyone in close proximity to me on a regular basis with whom I could otherwise unpack my experiences at my placement, primarily because the only people who are in the classroom are the students and teacher, who are engaged in learning and teaching, respectively, not in analyzing what's happening, per se. So I plan to post at least once a week every Wednesday until the semester is over, but I may occasionally post if I'm really struggling with a concept I encounter in my class readings, even after the class has the opportunity to discuss it. I'd like to imagine the number of weekly posts will increase in the Spring when I begin student-teaching, because there will be SO MUCH for me to try and make sense of, all of which I would love to have detailed feedback about, but I think that may be impractical, because I'll be even more pressed for time next semester than I am now, so I may not be able to write as often as would be useful. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, though!

Though I'll be discussing my placement, I will only be writing in a positive or a constructive way. I won't be criticizing my mentor teacher's pedagogy/practice, for example, because in a public forum like this, I don't think it would be appropriate or professional. Not to mention she's been teaching English for 10 years, and I've been studying it for not even half that long, so she has the expertise that I don't. That's certainly not to say that I always like/will always like how she runs her classroom, what she communicates to students with various practices, how she views each of her students, etc. In fact, I imagine she and I will differ on many, many issues because we're two very different people with different pasts and different goals. It's okay for her to be different from what I want to be, though! And I can still learn quite a lot about teaching from her classroom, even when we differ in our opinions of what she might be doing with her classes that day. But any discussion of how her practices may or may not match my expectations/what I'm learning/what I plan for myself as a future teacher will be done in a constructive, hopefully dialogical way. And I will never never never be using student names or discussing students in any way but a constructive one! In fact, it's because of my concern for student anonymity that I'm considering weather or not I should post videos to this blog that feature the students I'll be teaching.

Conventionally, though, this will be a fairly typical blog (barring today's EXTRA-long post...) I will be writing in blog style, not paying overly careful attention to surface-level conventions, interrupting myself, talking through ideas without a clear thesis (using what Peter Smagorinsky calls, or cites someone else as calling, exploratory talk instead of final-draft speech). So don't gasp at my use of abbreviations and contractions, my long-winded and twisty-turny sentences/paragraphs, my interjections into my sentences, my sometimes coloquial diction, etc. I'm thinking through things, and my blog will generally reflect the un-polished, disorderly nature of my tentative and developing thoughts.

I plan on my process being basically this: take tons of notes throughout my day at my placement, weather I'm observing or teaching on my own, think through the day on my buss ride home from my school site and try to decide what problems I really need to think out and get feedback on, start planning a general idea of how I'll talk about/contextualize/explain the problem(s) and the situation(s) in the classroom that gave rise to it/them, write really quickly in my teaching journal that I keep in word, which is a more private, more emotional and critical reflection, decide what belongs on a public blog and what does not, and then post on here.

So I was going to reflect on my placement experiences today, but I think I'll let this post stand alone, and perhaps create a separate post to get into the particulars I want to talk about so far. Again, PLEASE everyone who is interested at all read over my posts and give me some feedback when you can! I want to know what I'm failing to consider, or what I can/should try, or how I can improve my thinking and/or my teaching skills/practice!

Thanks for reading thus far, and sorry again for having so-freaking-much to say to contextualize/set up what this blog is/will be!!!!