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Lynn’s post about a teacher shortage generated some great commentary about teacher training, and as of this afternoon I have some first-hand information I think I can use to add to people’s awareness of how we often train our teachers.
Yesterday, the first day of school, our English AP sent a desperate email asking if anyone would volunteer to take on a student teacher this year. I said sure. I’m in the ideal position to do this: I've sponsored student teachers before; I have all English III, 3 of them inclusion classes; this year, I’m the English III Team Leader in our department, and the inclusion classes will give the student teacher plenty of experience in that as well. I am currently mentoring a new-to-our-school 3rd year teacher and a brand-new first year teacher. In addition to that, the inclusion teacher I have 2 classes out of 3 is a brand new teacher as well - to inclusion and teaching. For those who don’t know me, I went through an alternative program after working for a number of years, and completed no student teaching at all. This is my 9th year as a teacher.
After I agreed to take on the student teacher, I received a general email which was supposed to contain an attachment with the teacher’s name and info, as well as when this teacher would show up. That attachment was not included. I emailed to get the info. I received no reply throughout the day today.
The teacher himself showed up at my classroom door at 2:30 this afternoon, just in time for my last period. I had no idea who he was, but he introduced himself and said he’d just finished training that morning and was told to come to the school to meet me. No one had bothered to escort him - he’d had to find my room on his own. I was greeting students at the door and getting them settled in and taking notes (I’m now officially the MEANEST English teacher, according to other teachers, because I made them do work the first day and gave homework), so I had him sit down and start doing the same work the students would do that day.
Since I teach bell to bell, I didn’t have any time to interact with him until afterward. Here’s what I know about him so far:
He is a former marine, and worked in the prison system for about two years. This bodes well for him in my opinion, and I’m not saying that to make any sort of joke about student behavior. He decided to become a teacher after working in the prison system began to weigh heavily on him. He has been taking online courses since September 2006. He has had no face-to-face contact with any instructors, nor any classroom observation at all. I have no idea what this program is that he’s in.
He has not read any books about education for his courses. He has not received any instruction in lesson planning. “Just kind of outlining ideas,” is how he described it.
I asked him where he felt he was in terms of preparedness. He said, “To be honest, I feel like I’m just starting.” In my mind, the person who is reporting for student teaching should NOT feel as if he’s just starting. I asked him if anyone had told him what our schedule would be, when he should get to school in the mornings, or what he would be doing. The answer was no.
The expectation is that he will take over 2-3 of my classes by the second 6 weeks of school, this young man who has not been taught to write a lesson plan yet and hasn’t even observed a high school classroom.
I hustled him down to the library and got him a copy of Henry Wong’s First Days Of School, just to start him off with something that is easy to read and has some pretty solid techniques. Sent him home with the assignment to read five pages or so, and come back tomorrow morning at 8:15.
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29 comments:
Do you think this is an institutional problem, or just a case of mismanagement within your district? How does this compare to your own entry into the profession?
For those who don’t know me, I went through an alternative program after working for a number of years, and completed no student teaching at all. This is my 9th year as a teacher.
whoa
no student teaching at all??
thrown to the wolves, for sure!
George - (long response)
I couldn't really presume to speculate as to whether it's institutional or not - but I can tell you from reading blogs and listening to the tales of other teachers, many elements of this are not unusual. Teacher training is very often a Darwinian experience, in my opinion. Most detrimental and disappointing, I think, are the stories I hear about sponsors who are in it for the money (as little as it is), and use their student teachers as an excuse to get out of the classroom. I read and hear a lot about that.
I was extremely lucky. Not only did I have a grandmother and mother who were life-long teachers and school librarians, my father retired from a career in the military, went to college, and became a middle school teacher about 2 years before I did, so I had tremendous support and advice.
I was also lucky in that I started in a school which, due to terrible problems as a low socio-economic school 3 miles from our largest local prison, and right in the heart of gang and meth-lab territory, had completely turned over its admin and much of its teaching staff the year I began. They'd brought in a new principal and other admin, and the district paid for an enormous amount of very pricey and very rigorous teacher training in the realms of student-teacher interaction. (Not so much with anything content specific, since content was, quite honestly, the last thing on their minds at that point.)
But I went through no student teaching whatsoever, except a few classroom observations. One of the teachers I observed allowed me to present a one day unit on magical realism with one class, which went over pretty well, but she didn’t help me design or plan the unit at all. The college I chose to graduate from was very small, and to be honest I chose it because they didn’t require student teaching. I desperately needed to work at that point (I’d been employed full time with an airline for many years and just going back to school to finish my degree was financially devastating (no hubby for money help!), even with 2 menial jobs to make ends meet around class time. A semester of student teaching would have broken me, because I wouldn’t have been able to work my two other jobs.
I was thrown to the wolves in a school where, as mentioned, the culture had become so poor that simply curbing violence and retaining students was a priority. I survived due to the changing culture of the school by way of professional development truly focused to pinpoint the problems and solve them, and a crew of first year mentors both within and outside the profession. But I walked into my first classroom with no tangible experience. In many ways, I see the folks who want to enter teaching late as the most disadvantaged by the requirements. There comes a point at which I can’t imagine anyone being able to manage to the usual 3-4 months unpaid student teaching without someone else involved to provide financial support. (If you have to work 8-4 in the classroom, then go home and lesson plan, read, grade, etc. when do you work? At the end of it all, you aren’t even assured a job - you still have to hit the district job fairs like any other, and mid-year no less if you student taught the first semester.) And yet, for so many reasons, these are the folks we should really, really want to be there. Mostly because, like me, they really, really want to be there, and they know why they want to be there.
The next most detrimental stage in this process is the isolation of first-year teachers. If the school doesn’t have a solid mentoring program in place, these people often end up with no support for the added rigors and obstacles they face when teaching full time for the first time.
I’m now officially the MEANEST English teacher, according to other teachers, because I made them do work the first day and gave homework
I have to pick your brain about this one of these days.
hmmm...
trying to be discreet here...
Chris had a teacher we thought was pretty great
we also think he learned a lot from her, and we probably have evidence in the form of his ITBS scores that this is the case...
Chris has told us several times that many of the students disliked her strongly
I don't know what to make of this, and I'd like to know (out of curiosity - I won't be changing my opinion of what he learned in her class)
she was a hard grader, which can be alienating, but I can't tell whether that was the problem
her one failing, which I think is a failing of the department, not of her, was that the written assignments were way over the kids' heads
Ed spent **a lot** of time breaking them down, teaching component parts, etc.
but those assignments were given by all the teachers, and I'd be stunned if any of the other teachers did any better job of teaching them. They were bad assignments; they couldn't be taught. (Couldn't be taught to a class. Ed "taught" them through hours of one-on-one, step-by-step instruction.)
so I haven't known what to make of the whole thing...
He is a former marine, and worked in the prison system for about two years. This bodes well for him in my opinion, and I’m not saying that to make any sort of joke about student behavior.
I agree.
I'm not joking about student behavior, either.
In my mind, the person who is reporting for student teaching should NOT feel as if he’s just starting.
arrrghhh
I should note I've taught in 2 different districts, 8-12th grades, on-level, AP, and inclusion.
The expectation is that he will take over 2-3 of my classes by the second 6 weeks of school, this young man who has not been taught to write a lesson plan yet and hasn’t even observed a high school classroom.
oh boy
we're going to have to get Karen in here to tell some of her student teacher stories... (she may not be able to)
glad to know Henry Wong is good - I'm going to read that book, too
don't know if you were around when I mentioned the book I like so much:
Reluctant Disciplinarian: Advice on Classroom Management From a Softy Who Became (Eventually) a Successful Teacher by Gary Rubinstein
I have no idea whether teachers would like his book (I think it has good reviews on Amazon - I'll check), but it seemed terrific to me.
I have independent george's question, too.
wow
42 reviews on Amazon
I'm going to take a look
OK, I've read 3 reviews & I'm convinced this book would be worth reading for someone in your Marine's position.
Check out this review from a Sunday School teacher (I am one who knows just EXACTLY how out-of-control Sunday school kids can become, not because I taught Sunday School, but because I attended Sunday School. Sunday School for middle schoolers is basically full-time substitute teaching.)
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
Is your class running all over you?, February 28, 2007
By Hugh Watkins "www.tail-life.com" (WOODSTOCK, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
I got this book, because I was having trouble controlling the kids in my Sunday school class. It gives some good common sense approaches to classroom behavior and it gives you insight into the authors struggle to become a good disciplinarian.
If you are in a teaching role with kids and started out wanting to make things fun and interesting, but feel like you have lost control, this book will help.
The Wong book looks great (there's a look-inside-this-book feature on Amazon)
In my opinion, if they couldn't be taught to a class, then there may have been a problem with how they were presented. If Ed spent hours teaching them through one-on-one instruction, this could have been done with the entire class. It sounds to me like they had high expectations (admirable), but didn't provide the foundational modeling the students needed. In other words, they assumed the level the students should have been at, trusted that the higher level students would make the intuitive leap, and expected the lower level students to come in for tutoring (or get it on their own).
In my opinion, this is more a problem of classrooms in which students are severely hampered by wildly divergent ability levels, and a teacher who must teach all of them at the same time. The "quick" students finish early and are bored, the "slower" students struggle, the teacher wears out a perfectly good pair of sale-priced Easy Spirits running around to check all their work; urging the bored students to finesse their responses while at the same time prying the most acceptable response out of students who are completely overwhelmed. That's what we call a "differentiated classroom," and it's perpetuated as an example of "equality" for all students.
Don't you wonder about those poor kids whose parents couldn't walk them through the assignment like Ed could?
The Wong book is wonderful for first year teachers. (As is his series of videos, if anyone can get a hold of them. I've seen them twice. He's as much an entertainer as a teacher.)
He is supportive, he gives concrete advice, he is uplifting and helps foster a sense of nobility and purpose for the profession.
As teachers grow and mature, they will most likely move away from some of his stuff as they read more and develop even better strategies. (Especially since many of his are geared toward elementary and middle school.)
I've never read Reluctant Disciplinarian, but I've heard about it. Jose Vilson just did a review of it for the most recent carnival.
http://thejosevilson.com/blog/2007/08/28/the-not-so-reluctant-disciplinarian/
Teaching on the first day is something I got from Wong, actually.
While every other teacher is lecturing through tedious worksheets (just like the worksheets they got in the class before) with their students about expectations and grades, then ending with some cutesy little activity like a student questionnaire (What's your favorite book? What superhero are you most like?), I just teach it as I go along.
"Welcome. My name is Ms. Redkudu, and this is English III. When you came in the room I showed you where to pick up your handouts for the day. That is where they will be every day. What I'm putting on the overhead now are notes which will give you all the information you need to complete today's tasks. Please copy them down on your own paper. Thank you all for being prepared."
I've just covered policy and procedure right there.
The first day should be about setting the students' expectations for how the class will proceed. If they come in and have to listen to a lecture which they zone out of ten minutes into it, then get to do a goofy throw-away activity, what have they learned to expect of the class?
Today was my second day with my A day students.
I did not have to remind them to get their daily handouts. I put the notes up on the overhead, and they were ready to copy them down. In two days, they have read 4 examples of Native American folklore, they are able to compare/contrast Diver foklore from Above and Below foklore, they have learned to summarize a short passage in a single sentence, they have learned to divine the meaning of vocabulary from context clues, and they've learned to use textual proof to support their answers to open ended questions.
They've also written their own creation folklore, and done an icebreaker that left them all in stitches.
I'm not touting my expertise here. I'm just pointing out that these strategies really do work. You can get them going on the very first day, and they can accomplish amazing things when asked.
The Wong book looks great (there's a look-inside-this-book feature on Amazon)
I like this book. I received it as part of my teacher credentialing program in CA in a workshop about substitute teaching. Wong's big focus is on first impressions (The First Day) and starting off strong. I think it's really sound advice for new teachers particularly and for many situations in general. Definitely worth reading.
In other words, they assumed the level the students should have been at, trusted that the higher level students would make the intuitive leap, and expected the lower level students to come in for tutoring (or get it on their own).
You know....I think the problem is a bit different....we've got a general issue here with LOTS of pressure on the middle school, which is correctly seen as the weak link in the district
In particular, there is vast and open parent unhappiness about the writing instruction
I gather that many students who were getting As in ELA in middle school suddenly hit high school and were rejected by the ELA Honors class....when their parents took a close look at their work they realized that their kids were, at least in some cases, not even writing grammatical sentences....
This is a bit before my time, but I know I've got the general narrative right
In any case, there is HUGE pressure on the middle school to teach the kids to write. The superintendent was basically hired to improve writing instruction. (Now that she's here she's got a Math Crisis on her hands; c'est la vie.)
My sense is that the ELA department, which is chaired by a high school teacher, simply does not know how to teach writing --- either they don't know, OR they reject the concept of foundational skills. Or both (which is probably the most likely).
Certainly there is no sequence of writing instruction. The kids start out in Kindergarten or 1st grade "writing" journals; now, I'm told, they're supposed to be writing whole paragraphs (?)
They start at the top.
The kids don't know how to write coherent paragraphs or summaries, but they're supposed to write a "research" paper.
Making matters worse is the use of "open-ended" assignments.
One of C's paper assignments was "choose a poem and write an analysis." (I think that was it; he may have been asked to evaluate whether it was a good poem, which isn't much more specific.)
Choosing a topic and forming a thesis is an extremely advanced skill; Temple and I have spent the past two years choosing a topic &, finally just this month, developing a thesis -- and we're writing a sequel to an already published book.
We wrote an entire proposal that didn't work as well.
Having kids who can't write a paragraph or a summary "choose" a topic is a terrible, terrible, terrible idea.
Ed doesn't have his undergraduates at NYU choose topics, I don't think.
I know for a fact that when he decided to teach his students to write he found that their work was far better when he gave them the topic than when they "chose" a topic for themselves.
So...long story short; that's why I say I don't think the writing assignments were the specific problem with kids in this class. All the teachers give these assignments.
Don't you wonder about those poor kids whose parents couldn't walk them through the assignment like Ed could?
We're both VERY concerned about these kids. We can see them sliding down to Cs, Ds, and even Fs.
Chris has a wonderful friend, a kid whose folks are divorced, who was down to Ds, I think. Ds and Fs.
He has no idea what's being asked for in these writing assignments and neither does Christopher. None.
I doubt his mom could help much, either. How many parents know how to write a literary analysis of a poem?
I don't know how to do it myself.
Christopher got an A on one of those assignments and he was incredibly proud and happy.
Ed found it upsetting. He said it's like emotional blackmail.
If you don't teach your child how to do the assignment he's going to get Cs and Ds and be devastated.
I want to add, for the record, that this is in no way a case of Ed writing the paper for him.
Ed spent HOURS breaking the assignment down and teaching each component separately, then explaining to C. why what he'd written needed revision and editing.
Basically Ed became C's full-time, one-on-one, on-call writing instructor.
There is nothing fair about this -- and it's not a great way to teach C., either.
Basically, we're doing "reactive teaching" with writing as well as math.
We did have a good moment meeting with the assistant superintendent in which I pointed out that if the teachers don't know what parents are doing at home they aren't getting accurate feedback on their assignments.
She had been fairly dismissive of the "Irvington tutor" problem, but when I pointed that out she had a look of recognition on her face.
She's a "data" person; she wants teachers to start assessing the results of their teaching and making adjustments accordingly.
But if they take data on the students without taking data on the parents and the tutors, there's going to be a vast distortion in practice.
"Welcome. My name is Ms. Redkudu, and this is English III. When you came in the room I showed you where to pick up your handouts for the day. That is where they will be every day. What I'm putting on the overhead now are notes which will give you all the information you need to complete today's tasks. Please copy them down on your own paper. Thank you all for being prepared."
I LOVE IT!
I did not have to remind them to get their daily handouts. I put the notes up on the overhead, and they were ready to copy them down. In two days, they have read 4 examples of Native American folklore, they are able to compare/contrast Diver foklore from Above and Below foklore, they have learned to summarize a short passage in a single sentence, they have learned to divine the meaning of vocabulary from context clues, and they've learned to use textual proof to support their answers to open ended questions.
wow
"Certainly there is no sequence of writing instruction. The kids start out in Kindergarten or 1st grade "writing" journals; now, I'm told, they're supposed to be writing whole paragraphs (?)"
This is true in our district. Kindergarten children are asked to write sentences and "stories" without having been taught how to correctly print the letters, how to spell and forget capitalization and punctuation (not to mention that many can't read yet). All they are doing is practicing mistakes and wasting time, IMHO. I prefer the idea of controlled copywork until kids have enough training to compose on their level without practicing errors.
My soon to be first grader has seven folders and three composition notebooks in his back-to-school bag downstairs. I can only imagine what they will be used for. I'll find out tomorrow at meet your teacher day.
Kindergarten has become the new first grade. Kindergarteners are expected to know how to write upon entering school. If they don't, it will be a year of catch up.
Last year when my son's kindergarten teacher told me she had to have the children writing a paragraph by the end of the school year, I told her I thought that would be a serious challenge. Many of the kindergartners could hardly print. She commented that she thought it was developmentally inappropriate, but that she didn't make the rules.
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