The Malicious Monocle

My student teaching semester is coming to close. Less than two weeks of actual student contact left. There’s still a ton of stuff to get done before the end of the semester, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I’ve started filling out job applications and end even went out and bought a couple of new suits to look all snazzy in when interviewing.

I had a lot of fun and have learned a lot during my student teaching, but I have to say I’m glad it’s over. I have never felt so exhausted or worn out on a constant basis for so long before. I’ve been so busy I haven’t even written anything new for the Malicious Monocle story. That will change. Ideas have been percolating in the back of my head the whole time even if I wasn’t writing them down anywhere.

Well, back to work. I still have a few lectures to plan and a couple of tests to create.

 I’m pretty sure I’m at the same point all of the other student teachers are at right now - counting down the days until Spring Break and a little bit of a rest. I’m exhausted. I can’t seem to ever get ahead of the work I need to do for this and every time I think I may have pulled a little ahead, I find out about something I forgot to do.

I was sick a couple of weeks ago as well. That slowed me down to a crawl. I’d get home from school and just want to crash. I didn’t get any papers graded or much else done in the evenings. I’ve just about caught up from that now, but I won’t really be able to say I’ve caught up until sometime Sunday night probably.

Next week marks the end of my first placement. After Tuesday next week I will be slowly transitioning away from the front of the classroom and letting my co-op take his room back over. I’ve enjoyed working with him and his class. I’ve also enjoyed meeting the rest of the teachers from the 8th grade and working with them as well. I can only hope the 7th grade teachers are about as equally unified as the 8th grade teachers are.

Needless to say with as exhausted as I’m always feeling, I haven’t done any writing on the monocle. I did come up with another fun bit of alliterative clothing though. The “Dastardly Dagged sleeve”. I have a sentence written for it, but nothing else to really go with that little sentence.

My 2nd formal observation is this Thursday. I’m not ready for it. I’m pretty sure I’ll do ok, but I can’t really say I’m ready for it. I just want to sleep for a week or two.

In preparation of actually having some free time again sometime in the future, I picked up Guitar Hero III for my Wii. I also hoped on Ebay and picked up a cheap wireless guitar for my PS2 for whenever I pick up the GH games for that platform.

Yeah, that’s enough time away from being productive. Back to work. Sleep beckons, but it’s not going to happen. The know in my shoulder will probably see to that.

   The little rotters have gone and given me some sort of bug. I’ve spent the weekend with a sore throat and feeling like crap. I don’t want to call in sick, because there are a limited number of times I can do that while student teaching. I’d much rather plow on and try do everything I can.

However, I am going to ask my co-op to take over the teaching tomorrow. I’ll spend the day finishing writing the test for Thursday and working on stuff for next week. If he won’t teach, then I’m going to probably kill my throat trying to be heard over their talking.

  Today had all of the makings of an awesome day. There was a high chance of a snow day and I’d ended up watching the BBC feed on the primary results rather late. No snow day. To be fair, the roads weren’t looking all that bad this morning, but everyone knew the bad weather was still coming. By 10 this morning it was clear that the weather was going to be really bad by the end of the school day. Maybe we would be given a half-day? Nope.

The snow came and it came down really hard. It came and it came and it came. The windows of the classroom were almost completely covered by the blowing snow. School started without about half the students absent. About half of those left over the course of the day as well as parents came and picked them up. Then it took me over a half an hour to dig my car out of the parking lot which hadn’t been plowed at all during the day. Well, except for during the last period when some students were taken outside to shovel and clear off cars. Unfortunately it didn’t look like they did the lot I was parked in.

Sitting at home wasn’t on my list of things to do tonight, but that’s exactly what I’ve done. Well, except for the time I’ve spent outside digging my car out of the driveway where it was stuck when I got home and then clearing the driveway as well. With the shoveling I haven’t even managed to get any work done on my lesson plans. There’s still a couple of hours though, so I may yet get somewhere.

Grr. I hope tomorrow goes better than today did.

One kind of nice thing. I found out the science teacher in my house is married to a guy I kind of knew back in High School. He’s a professional artist now. I’m always seeing a painting of his at my favorite coffee shop. I wonder if he recalls who I am.

   Today was my first observation as a student teacher. It went rather well. My university supervisor sat in on the second class of the day. It isn’t one of the classes I’ve started teaching, but I do participate in the teaching of the class and help out where I can. The form she filled out for my file looked good. It was all upbeat. Her big concern really seemed more about if I looked comfortable. If by this point I still wasn’t very comfortable in the class,  I think she might have taken me aside to have a good talk.

I’m working away at my lesson plans and it looks as though I will be taking the classes over completely by about Wednesday next week at the latest. I have most of what I will be teaching planned out, but I need to make it fit into a RIO lesson plan for when my supervisor comes to observe. I need at least three of them set up, but may have to do a fourth at this time. My first formal observation is set for Monday the 18th of February, so whether I will be able to use one of my base three RIOs for her observation will hinge on when exactly I take the classes over.

I still haven’t heard anything from the principal about if I will be allowed to take over the gaming club at the school. I’m trying to decide if I should email him on my own or have a couple of the students go plead their case.

It looks as though we will have another snow day tomorrow. I’ve been watching the BBC News covering the American Primary races tonight while drinking a pot of coffee. If there isn’t a snow day tomorrow, I will be a sleepy social studies panda.

The seminar class I have this semester is requiring us to write a poem about student teaching. I could have gotten away with a simple Haiku, but that would have felt like cheating. So, instead I wrote a more full-length poem. I’m posting it here because it’s a pretty good one and it’s probably the first actual poem I’ve written in a decade or more. I gave up on poetry as a means to expression a long, long time ago.

Well, here it is:

Ode to Student Teaching

The sleeper awakens

(Grecian Urns can go to hell)

 

 

The electronic warble of the alarm wanders

It wanders about the room poking and probing

Probing for an undisturbed ear

Its only purpose in wandering to disturb

 

 

‘Neath the homemade quilt from grandma something is spied

Look!

A weak spot! A chink in the quilted armor

An elbow lays bare and uncovered

 

 

The warble waddles delicately along the arm

Turning ‘round the other way when the fingers are tipped

The shoulder is crested after finding a purchase in the wrinkled dermis

Peering into the quilted twilight an earlobe is sighted

 

 

Now begins the battle across the collar

No ring around here

Though a ring would make travel simpler than just the dermis

One final swing from the earlobe into the canal

 

 

The warble swings its pickaxe forged of decibels

The pickaxe shrieks as it arcs through the air

The now warbling shriek slips past the eardrum

It now bores and digs until the brain is found

 

 

An arm flashes out from under grandma’s hand-made quilt

Stabbing downwards, the warble is silenced

Bleary eyes rise up to check the time

A grunt, a groan and the sleeper is awakened

 

 

This sleeper is not the base of the pillar

He is not the shadow of a mouse on the moon

He is a modern-day apprentice, a servant indentured

Lo! He is a Student Teacher!

 

 

The Journey through the Urban Wilderness

(Without Snake Plissken to guide me)

 

 

The student is running late

Too many stabs at the snooze

Too long checking e-mail

Too long in the shower

 

 

Running to the car

A quick detour to the front porch for the paper

A quick stop at Mc D’s for some tasty breakfast

A quick zip, zig and zag to the school

 

 

Entering the Lot

A lot slalom (not Salem’s Lot) begins

Left to miss the oblivious children

Right to miss the oblivious parents

 

 

Chunk Ka-Chunk

Chunk Ka-Chunk

Speed bumps go by

Exhaust system is probably gone by now too

 

 

The parking lot slalom ends

The final bus passed

The final distracted parent avoided

A snugly-fitting parking spot found

 

 

Bleary eyes blink blankly

Still far too early

Students trickle towards the doors

I hope it’s early enough to avoid curious students

 

 

The Moat is Crossed

(The castle is stormed)

 

 

Hand clenched ‘round my coffee cup

I plunge through the door

Will someone stop me?

Do I look old enough?

 

 

Formatia Trans Sicere Educatorum

 

 

Visitor’s log is filled in

A secretary hands me a visitor’s badge

Another secretary takes the visitor’s badge back

A visitor’s badge is for visitors and I’m no longer one of those

 

 

I’m given a key!

w00t!

That’s right, a key!

Suck it Whigs.

 

 

Heading to the classroom

The halls are empty and cavernous

I meet the other house teachers

They smile and offer encouragement

 

 

A few last minutes of peace fly away

The Bell shatters the silence

It’s electric warble more insistent than the one earlier

The halls are cavernous no longer

 

 

Students mill and stampede simultaneously

Combinations spin, doors open

Books grabbed, make-up and hair checked

Doors close, voices shriek

 

 

A line forms outside the classroom

Students peer at a new face

Turning to one another they seek news

Attentions quickly wander and weekends are discussed

 

 

The school day follows

Periods begin and end

Seats fill and empty

A day passes in a blur

 

 

Blurred days creep on

Slowly names are learned

Personalities encountered

Comfort found

 

 

The student teacher starts by watching

Just like the 100 hours of observations

I start with one class and then move to two

Soon my day entire is spent in the front of class

 

 

Perhaps I am a teacher

  Well, so far student teaching has been incredibly relaxing. Of course, that may be because we’ve ended up with two non-contiguous snow days this week. When we were in school, I did step up and teach a lesson using the teacher’s lesson plan and had it go pretty well. The only real problem I felt I had was in going too quickly for the kids. I really need to learn the proper pacing for these Middle School kids. I don’t have my lesson plans written yet, but they are pretty well planned out in my head. I’ve also managed to make a good start on my first power point. Their regular teacher uses an overhead, but I can’t stand them. I had to copy endless notes off of overheads when I was 13. I really don’t want to now use them myself.

For my snow days I’ve spent them being pretty productive. Perhaps not as productive as I could have spent them, but I didn’t totally slack off. Today I even managed to go out and meet up with a classmate for some coffee. That was pretty nice. It was only for about an hour and a half, but at least it meant I got out for a bit. She even bought me the coffee.

I also filed my income tax today. Education credits are fun!

Before going back to my power point slides, I’ll leave this: http://blog.wired.com/geekdad/2008/01/ipod-plus-delca.html

It’s a link to an article that has copies of both the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution read aloud and available for free download.

  I’ve now finished up with my second and third days of student teaching and all is going pretty well. I’ve started working on my long-form lesson plans for my first few lessons and have also started participating in teaching the classes. At this point I’m largely just adding to what their regular teacher is lecturing about. I was kind of worried that I might be annoying him by throwing my own two cents into his lectures, but I spoke with him and he said it was fine. He actually thinks it may be a really good way to transition the students between us as their primary teacher.

The current unit is on the U.S. Constitution.  Friday was spent on key terms and today was spent on the 7 basic principles of the Constitution and the preamble. Tomorrow we’ll probably get into the first article or two.

My newest issue of NEAtoday showed up in the mail today. According to an article in there, the NEA won an appeal in court over the NCLB Act. The federal government is trying to say it doesn’t have to give schools any extra money in order to carry out the mandates in the Act. The NEA feels differently. The case was initially thrown out, but with winning this appeal it means that the government is going to actually have to explain why they don’t need to pay for their legislation.

Over the weekend I also received an email from the author of the WWI blog I have linked here. He wanted to discuss the SmartBoards. It turns out he’s and IT co-ordinator for schools in the UK. I just feel really bad that I accidentally  deleted the comment he left that started the email exchange.

   Today was the first official day of student teaching. As expected, it passed rather uneventfully. I spent the day observing rather than any actual teaching. I’m sure I will probably be up in front of the classroom by the end of next week in some capacity or another though.

Today’s activity revolved around the Citizenship Test. I’m happy to say there were only two questions I wasn’t able to answer correctly. The rest weren’t really any problem at all. Oh well, I guess I won’t be able to engineer being deported to Germany or the UK anytime soon. I’ll have to find another way, I guess.

That first lesson or mini-lesson I’ll probably end up doing will likely be on the subject of the U.S. Constitution. That’s rather ironic as I spent a good amount of my time at University playing with the various student organization constitutions. I helped write three or four and engineered work-arounds for a couple others. I have an idea of a fun lesson incorporating some of those constitutions, but I’m pretty sure the teacher has already covered the writing of the constitution and they are now looking at the amendments, etc.

An odd topic I’ve heard mentioned several times about one’s first day of student teaching, is the outfit one chooses to wear. I’m guessing it’s because most teachers are women, because I didn’t obsess over what I was going to wear. I just picked out an outfit before going to bed (in case I woke up late). No sweat, no blood, no tears. I wore a pair of kakhis and a gray sweater. A very simple outfit to be sure,but one that was professional-looking. I’m very happy I was able to arrange for a seeing-eye person to go shopping with me the last time I bought some clothes.

I also identified a couple of students as gamers. One plays an IG army for 40K. I’ll have to arrange for a game against my Tau before the end of the semester.

Today I went to an all day training session for Smartboards in Milwaukee. It was very informative and we all had a chance to play on the Smartboards. The training room had four different boards set up so there wasn’t ever very long to wait. I even had some time during lunch to just mess around on my own. I spent that time looking up this very blog on a big screen and seeing how the pictures from last Saturday look on a big screen. Adverb and I also spent some time with map programs messing around and looking for our houses. Sparta was the other Cohort member who came up with us for the class.

Stroke of luck with the class was that we were actually given certificates for attending. That means the three of us can use these in our favor when looking for work next fall. It also helps us look all pro-active when it comes to professional development. I got some links and stuff for using Smartboards, but I need to get an email back from the teacher to clarify the handout.

Here’s a couple that seem to have been written correctly:

i-Maths are online, interactive, multimedia and math investigations.

Available at: http://illuminations.nctm.org/students.html

Electronic Abacus Applet explores the use of abacus model for representing numbers and performing addition.

http://illuminations.nctm.org/mathlets/abacus/index.html