T-shirts

I've always loved t-shirts with good messages, so I decided to use the magic of the internet to create a series of t-shirts. Here's the first one, click on it to go to the online store. I'm not in it for the money, so there's no markup. You pay the minimum price that CafePress will let me charge. The black t-shirts are kind of pricey, but there is an white t-shirt made specifically to fit into a teacher's budget.

Want to see something particular on a shirt? If it's motivating, thought provoking, or really funny I'll make it.

Creating people that must be controlled

Today Mrs. Teacher2 told me that I need to start collecting and grading the notes my students are supposed to write while they're reading.

Umm... N.F.W.

(For the unitiated, the N stands for "No," the W stands for "Way." You can do the math from there.)

It seems that her students don't do any work unless they know it's going to be graded. I can't think of a better way to make more unnecessary work for me, to tell the truth. The quizzes I'm giving them on the reading in this unit are open-note, but not open-book. I'll know how good their notes are from their quiz scores. I've modeled the notes they should take, I make sure to point out important information they need to write down while we read in class, we've reviewed them together, and I think they have plenty of instruction on what constitutes good note-taking.

But she's right, in a way. Because she's created an atmosphere in her class in which she indicates what's important by the grade assigned, she's trained her students not to do anything they're not specifically told to do, and not to do anything that doesn't get them immediate credit. One of the other classes failed to take any notes at all until we started writing things on the chalkboard for them, then they copied verbatim. No thinking, little learning, lots of writing.

I don't think she realizes that she's also creating a population of people that will always do the absolute minimum required, and will always be lost for a way to start an assignment until someone shows them how to do it.

I don't know about you, but I for damned sure don't want to hire anyone for my business that's been trained like this. Not sure I'd want my kid marrying someone that just did the bare minimum, either.

She also said that while they're taking a quiz (even an open-note quiz) I need to be standing up and circulating through the room to make sure that they're not cheating. She says that they can be very sneaky and ingenious about trying to cheat if they want to. I suspect that's true, particularly if you create a system of oversight that makes them work incredibly hard to sneak anything by. Necessity is the mother of invention. Maybe if they don't have to work so hard at sneaking anything by me, they'll be sloppy and easier to catch trying to cheat. I'm not really concerned about it in any case. I trust my students, and the ones that don't know the information tend to throw in the towel pretty easily (remember that bit about doing the bare minimum?), and I can't imagine many of them putting in enough effort to cheat.

This post is not about my dog dying

I had to let my dog die last weekend. (she's the one on the right.) I miss her, but she's not what this post is about.

Monday morning one of my students complained that she didn't have time to finish reading the novel because she had to do the family thing over Thanksgiving weekend and also had to work. The novel is really written at an 8th grade level, so I don't think there's any excuse for a 10th grader to skip 30 pages of light reading over a 4-day weekend. She wasn't the only one that hadn't finished the reading, but it surprised me because she's a good student and she knew we have a test coming up at the end of the week.

In all honesty, I didn't accomplish quite as much as I should have over the weekend, either. And I felt that I had no excuse. Dixie's death shook me up a little bit, but not enough that I had any excuse not to get my work done. This is the lesson we need to drive home to our students.

Everyone faces personal conflict on a regular basis. Those that are successful manage their lives and their work so that neither is a burden on the other.

There's good reason that it was snowing when I left school today.

Right now I'm teaching only 9th and 10th grade at major suburban high school with a good reputation. Keep this in mind while you read.

In the last four days at my school...

Lynn told me that she can't read and understand, even though she tests fine. Turns out that her mother has convinced her that she's not capable and she believes it. I promised her that if she worked with me I wouldn't let her fail, but I've only got two and a half weeks left to help her.

Four fights broke out. Two were major enough that two hall monitors were injured badly.

Two kids from the street broke into the school with a knife and a beebee gun.

Jamal turned out to be a drug dealer and was suspended for threatening a teacher's life. The system's failing him and he's going to get pushed in worse directions.

Mandy identifies too closely with the main character of the book we're reading (who has an abusive father), and told me that most days she wants to run out of class crying because it hurts too much to think about.

Before that, I found out that Jason lives in a crack house, Carl was beaten so much as a kid that it created emotional problems that have caused learning disabilities, Pete is an alcoholic and has been going to AA for a couple of years, Johnny drinks and smokes pot every day (though is still one of the best kids in the class), Natalie is going through some heavy stuff at home that she won't share, but it's obviously affecting her deeply... and these are just the ones I know about.

If not me, who?

Small successes

A week or so back I wrote about how I was disappointed in myself for not feeling a sense of accomplishment by helping my students who struggle the most. I've always put myself on the side of the underdog, so this really surprised me. Maybe I just needed to be a little more patient with things, because my experiences with the struggling students in the past week have made me feel a little different. I've made breakthroughs, no matter how slight, with a few students in the past week and it really feels good.

Maybe I needed to realign my expectations, too. Any improvement in a kid's skills or attitude should be celebrated, but I'd let myself get in the rut that Mrs. Teacher 2 is in where anything less than an A is noteworthy only to judge how much a kid is failing. Most of these kids aren't going to get As. Most of them barely attend school enough to pass. One of the kids I'm thinking of felt so alienated during my first lesson that he tuned out completely and ditched class the next day, but now comes to class and jokes with me.

I'm not changing this kid's life forever, but if I can get him on a pattern of finding small successes for the next month maybe he'll be able to keep it up after I leave.

From the notebook

One of the things we forget easily in the digital age is that the physical act of writing is closely tied to memory. Write it down and you're likely to remember it and let it sink into your mind and your heart. Before I started teaching this fall I started a notebook to write some of these things down in. There are things I'd learned while teaching, things I'd learned from teachers, things I learned about myself and about others. Here are some of the highlights.

Focus on developing strategies; both developing strategies as a teacher and inhelping students develop strategies for themselves.

What people hear is sometimes more important that what you say.

Find ways to celebrate students' achievement without extrinsic rewards.

The broken record technique: If you catch a student misbehaving, repeat the rule until they relent. i.e. "In this class we do not interrupt others while their speaking." Repeat every time they argue. Do not accuse them of anything, this just opens up something new to argue about.

Use the things that students do best to help them learn what they need the most.

Emphasize the knowledge and skills that students already have rather than focusing on what they don't know.

Grading papers is hard work. Be sure that any assignment you give the students is also worth the effort you need to grade it.

We tend to equate silent, obedient kids with good learners, but the opposite is probably true. Active learning creates energy, and lots of it. Energy creates sound, heat, and motion.

Be positive. Try hard.

If a large portion of a class scores poorly, it shows that the teacher is not meeting the needs of the students, regardless of how other classes performed or how well the methods used worked before.

Students must be able to see themselves in the curriculum in order for it to be relevant and meaningful to them.

Showing a movie at the end of a book unit probably doesn't have much value. Showing it at the begining can help front-load the reading and give it more context, and showing scenes interspersed with the reading can help increase understanding.

Find a way to keep the morning classes awake. (If anyone figures this one out, please let me know!)

Setting priorities

A week or so ago I wrote about how hard it's been to balance student teaching with the rest of my life. Last week I finally snapped.

It's been tough to try to prioritize one thing that I love over another, but I finally realized that one of the things I love is too much of a drain and does not help me recharge, so I dropped it. I'm a search and rescue volunteer and training coordinator for the Air Force Auxiliary. Well, I was. That's been a role that defined me as a person, helped me grow as a leader, and provided great friends, but I had to give it up, at least for a while.

It was a painful decision to make. How do you tell a group of people that have been relying on you that you can't do the job for them anymore? I hated doing it, but in the time since I decided to set my priorities more carefully I've been more relaxed at school, able to put more thought into my lessons, slept a little more, been out on a date, played my guitars for a few minutes every day...

This is something I should have done long ago.

There's an energy in the room that these kids have when Mrs. Teacher 2 isn't around, and that energy transmits right into me as well. At first I thought it might have been that they think I'm softer than she is so they were more talkative and rambunctious, but I've come to believe more that it's because she bores them to death. So when they see the possibility of not sitting through English class with her, they're so excited that they can't help themselves.

Energy is going to manifest itself in the form of heat, light, sound, or motion. Kids are amazing containers of energy and can transmit it in all of these forms. As teachers, we need to be able to help them change their energy from one form to another in a way that makes our classrooms energizing places for all of us. We need to be able to reflect their light back to them and make them see their lightness themselves. We need to direct their sound in ways that it can be received. We need to turn their motion into work.

And we need to help them find energy that they can take with them after they leave our classrooms.

So this is what it feels like...

During our student teaching seminar a few weeks ago we were asked a question. I don't remember exactly what the question was, something akin to "describe your teaching experience in one word," or maybe something about our philosophies of education. A lot of the answers, including mine, were focussed on the craft, how we set up our lessons, etc. Jayme's word was "joy."

This made me feel jealous and guilty all at once. We were probably a month into student teaching, and by that time I had not experienced anything I would have called joy in my classes. We'd had fun with a few lessons, there were a few lessons that I thought really kicked my students in the ass and woke them up, but nothing that made me walk away from school with a smile on my face. I'm tough to please, though, so I don't think I really expected it anyway, not until Jayme said something.

But finally, after about 12 weeks of teaching, I walked away from school with a smile in my heart. My back was sore from standing half stooped over all day and I was tired, but I finally came away from a school day feeling the same way I do after getting lost in a good Motown record for a while. (Let me humbly suggest the Temptations Gettin' Ready or Meet The Temptations. Any greatest hits disc will do you good too.)

There was nothing spectacular about today. Mrs. Teacher 2 was sick and left lesson plans for the two classes that I haven't taken over yet, and they were really pretty light lessons. My classes were continuing to do research in the library, so with them I had to just keep them on track. I was pleasantly surprised to see most of them making good headway and didn't need to give them too much guidance.

The two lessons with the other classes were about as simple as could be, and I barely had to talk besides reciting the directions if I didn't want to. But I wanted to. I haven't worked directly with them very much, so we don't know each other well, but I could tell that they were anxious to change that. How much more flattering can a group of teenagers be to an adult?

And with that kind of open gesture coming from a group of 15 year olds, how on Earth could I not return the favor and put as much energy and creativity as I had into their lesson on prepositions? What would have been a slightly cute (but still boring) lesson on prepositions with a short passage from Dr. Seuss became a shout-out-loud contest to see who could get through a tongue-twister fastest. There was no great epiphany about what it takes to enjoy my job, but for the first time I walked out from work thinking about how much fun we just had and that I can't wait to get back to them tomorrow.

...so little time...

One of the things that I love about going to the seminar class every Monday night is that I get to spend a little time with my colleagues. Student teachers are in a unique--and sometimes very tenuous--position in schools. We have to take charge but still act as a guest in another teacher's classroom; we need to experiment and find our own style of teaching, while often being supervised by cynical and unimaginative teachers; we deal with supervisors who manage to make a month's worth of observations and comments in 40 minutes... And one of the things that I hate about this class is that the little time we spend together is far too little to really know each other and communicate in the ways that make people open up to each other. We share our thoughts, but rarely do we get to the point where real emotions come out. Some of us have a lot to be frustrated about, so some nights our conversations are much more frustrating than they are cathartic. I know that there are a lot of talented educators in my class, and I suspect that some of their talent comes from the way they are able to negotiate their emotions and make their student teaching a more rewarding experience. As someone that was raised in a family of glass-half-empty people, I wish I had more opportunity to tap into that. Most weeks after class I walk with Jayme out her car (our campus is situated in the middle of some questionable neighborhoods, this is one of those if I don't do it, who will? sort of things), and am rewarded with 5 minutes of good conversation on the level that is most rewarding to me. As important as the topics we discuss in the seminar are, sometimes I feel like it would be so much more rewarding to sit down at a coffee shop with four or five other student teachers and our supervisor, sit in some of those big, goofy, mismatched chairs and couches, and just talk for a little while and relax. Lord knows I need to relax more these days...

Another frustrating thing about these classes is that I always leave with so much more to say (or write) than I have time or energy to devote to the process. Tonight I'm ahead, so we'll see how much I can really cover.

It's late now, the dogs have been taken care of, dinner made and cleaned up after, laundry done, and my writing electrons don't have the positive spin energy they had when I walked home from class tonight. My glass-is-half-empty reflex is taking over and causing me to focus on something that one of my colleagues said about his teaching. He said that he was happiest as a teacher when he reached the kids that were struggling the most. And this bothered me.

I was always one of those kids that struggled in English. So it doesn't bother me because he said it, it bothers me because this was one of the things that motivated me to become a teacher, but I just don't find myself feeling that way. I feel like I'm barely keeping up to serve the kids that are doing well, and I know with total certainty that I've already made two struggling kids at my new school feel alienated. It's hard enough to be a teacher and talk with teens sometimes without making them shut down, but now I've made them close themselves off and I don't know what I can do to get them back. My cooperating teacher has already written them off and hasn't had any constructive advice besides not to let it worry me too much.

It doesn't help that the curriculum is boring, the teacher is boring, and she has trained her classes to be boring students. Critical analysis is out right now. They can find facts in a book, but they cannot tell me what they think at any level deeper than "this book sucks." I'm not sure how to get them off of this track and onto one that's more fulfilling for all of us, and my mentor is short on advice. At this point I feel more like I should just do what it takes to get through student teaching than to work on changing the atmosphere in my classes.

This is not the way I wanted to feel about my performance midway through student teaching.

If I won't do it...

One thing that you should never do if you want to have any sort of balance in your life is to become a student teacher. Everything is off-kilter: whatever youthful idealism I have left, my philosophies as an educator, my sleep, my ideas for great lessons, my social life, my sleep, my relationship with dogs and family, my sleep... Any attempt I make at putting one of these back into balance winds up throwing all the others even further off balance. I've come to grips with this and decided that everything's just going to be out of whack for a while. The worst part is that I really miss personal relationships with people and feel incredibly guilty whenever I can't spend the time I'd like with friends, or God forbid, even go out on a date. It's a shame, too, because there are a few great friends out there whose company would be incredibly energizing right now, and there's even a girl out there who seems like she has the potential to be amazing. I just hope they all have patience with me.

And I feel guilty that I started this journal and have little time to add to it. I know of at least three people that have been reading it, and now that I know there's an audience I feel guilty that I haven't been filling them in with all the good stories. There's been so much on my mind since I last posted that I had trouble deciding where to start.

So I've decided not to start. At this point there's no value in going back through the last few weeks' experiences to catch up. Instead, I feel like it's time to write about something that's been on my mind for the last few years and that has become increasingly important since I started teaching this fall. There's one question that has motivated me (through both inspiration and guilt) to get through quite a few rough spots: If not me, who?

If I'm not willing to put forth the effort to work hard to help the troubled kids in school, who will? If I'm not willing to work hard to make my classes interesting enough for students to want to be there, who will? If I'm not willing to break up a fight, who will? If I'm not willing to stand up and say "we're not doing things very well and we need to change," who will? It sure as hell ain't a lot of the teachers I've seen.

I almost didn't write about this, if for the sole reason that I hope to substitute this journal for a paper and want to get credit without making the professor feel like I'm kissing up, but the synergy I felt when Bill Washburn asked this same question in our seminar a few weeks ago made me think that this is the time to write about it.

Nearly all the problems I've encountered (and I mean anywhere, not just in schools) seem to stem from apathy or laziness. Kids are getting lost in the system because adults are unwilling to do what it takes to make them succeed. I don't believe it's because they can't do it, I believe it's because it's hard. When I was working on a new seating chart with my new cooperating teacher, she mentioned that one of the boys wasn't doing very well and that he might benefit from being placed in a group that can help him. I asked if he had a learning disability or if she thought he just wasn't doing the work and she replied that he very well might have a learning disability, but he probably hasn't been tested. I'm new, so I don't know all the procedures involved, but I asked if it's possible for a teacher who suspects a learning disability to refer the student for evaluation The answer is yes. I thought that I posed the question in such a way that it should be obvious that maybe she should refer the kid for testing if possible, but the conversation hasn't gone anywhere. I asked the question twice, and her answer the second time made it apparent that she is not going to do anything. I just met her, so I'm not going to push it yet, but if I find real signs of a disability in this kid you can bet your ass that he's going to be evaluated before I leave the school in 6 weeks.

If I don't do it, who will?

Before I close this, I want to introduce you folks to Jayme Velez. Jayme's a friend going through her student teaching trials as well. I've read some of her lesson plans, and I honestly think that I'd learn more by observing her in action than I did from experienced teachers. If I had to assemble a task force of guerrilla educators to parachute in to a troubled school armed with whatever tools and weapons we need to fight the good fight she'd be on the A team. Whenever I feel like there are insurmountable obstacles, it's people like Jayme that make me believe that there are ways to get over them.

I'm a tool.

In some ways I'm a new-age kind of a guy. I had an idea of how well I'd done with the 11th grade class, but I wanted to know what they thought, so I asked them. Today's journal entry was the only one they turned in to me, without names on them. I told them I wanted their honest feedback about how the last 6 weeks have gone, what I should keep doing, what I could do to improve, etc. I promised not to read them until after I graded their last assignment, but this one was on top and one of the girls just had to show someone the last line: "P.S. Nice shoes." (I'm pretty sure that this remark was sarcastic as my shoes are nothing special.)

So I couldn't help but read the rest of it as they were on their way out. The first line was "You're a tool." They ended it by saying that I wasn't a tool and had a couple of decent comments in the middle, and I probably should have expected this. It was a tough unit of Puritan lit, some of the most boring stuff they'll read all year. I was at a loss as to how to make it interesting, engaging, or valuable, and Mrs. Teacher was no help. In fact, she laughed at me when I told her what the in-class reading was one day. "They're going to hate it," she said. I knew that already. But when I asked what she normally does for the unit I got no response. I should have expected that too. She's the kind of teacher that goes in chronological order, and this is what was next in the textbook.

So, I'm a tool. It's been cast in stone for all eternity. At least in the eyes of these 11th graders.

What do you want to do?

I started class last Tuesday by asking the 12th graders something I don't think they'd ever been asked before: "What do you guys want to do?"

I believe strongly in a student-centered classroom, although I'm fudging it a little bit since in a true student-centered class the students would help design the curriculum. We're stuck with the reading list that was chosen for us, and I admitted to them that I was out of ideas on how to make The Canterbury Tales more interesting and engaging. So I asked them "What do you guys want to do?"

It's easy to tell that they had never been asked this question before because they had given it no thought. They seemed sure that their job was to come to class, and that my job was to tell them what to do. A couple of them said that they just wanted to read the book and take a test, but that was completely out of the question. First of all, I'd feel lazy and uninteresting doing something like that to them. That's the sort of thing that made me hate English classes when I was in high school and I am not going to torture my students that way. And I didn't admit this to them, but it would also require me to read the book much more carefully to create a good test, and I was just barely keeping up with their reading and finding meaning to discuss only through the Spark Notes for the book.

After a week, they finally started to realize that choice is good, although it requires more effort on their part. I gave them two choices for their final assignment: one a creative work and the other a traditional research paper, for those that are less creative. The only complaint: the 10th grade had three choices for their final assignment.

What happened to being on time?

I don't know if everyone will see the humor here that I do, but...

Second day of school, first time that the 11th grade has English this year. The teacher is nowhere to be found. I'm the student teacher and it's my third day, I still need to think twice to remember which hall leads to the library. And the teacher is nowhere to be found. Apparently she didn't think it was important as I did for her to be present for the first day of class.

Mrs. Cavanaugh is at a huge advantage because this is a small school and she taught all of these kids before, but she didn't even bother to tell me what the plan was for the first day.

This poses something of a problem for me.

I let the kids talk for about 5 minutes, then decided to close the door so that the din wouldn't disturb the other classrooms. I took a minute to stick my head in the hallway to see if Mrs. C. was out there, but saw only the empty hallway. I'm a take-charge kind of guy and decided that if Mrs. C didn't have anything for the first day then I needed to have something.

They're good kids and only had to be asked to quiet down twice so I could introduce myself. After a very quick intro I asked what they wanted to do, and one of them jokingly said that we should play "7-up." There's the plan! Twenty minutes of the first day were spent playing 7-up with 16 year olds. For those that don't know this game, the only explanation I'll give is that I first played it in 3rd grade, maybe earlier. At least it gave me a chance to start learning their names.

The only times Mrs. Cavanaugh has been here for the start of class have been the times when she was already at her desk.

The importance of one minute

It takes only one minute to change a student's day.

It might not even take that long. Make sure that it's a positive change.

All day, every day, these kids are surrounded by people telling them what to do and that they aren't doing it well enough, and rarely telling them how to do it better. I can see it in their faces as they move through the hallways. They walk smiling with their heads held high past some teacher's rooms, then stare at their shoes passing others. The practices we try to put into place in our lesson plans to help the students grow academically are not put into practice in our hallways to help them grow in the same way.

There will always be plenty of people working in a school playing the role of the drill sergeant to get the kids in line with all of the rules. If there's a reason for everything, then the reason I'm here is to help the kids smile and be confident.

If I can do this in a minute or less, then there is no excuse for not doing it.

Be positive. Try hard

"Be positive, try hard." This is my new mantra. It's amazing how effective it is, and how easily it applies to everything in my life.

This was my zen lesson for a class of freshman honors English students who, after a week and a half of class, were convinced that their teacher hated them. Mrs. Cavanaugh is not the kind of person that most students would find endearing right away. She only yells at someone she cares about, and you know that if she stops then you've really done something wrong. These kids had not yet figured out her personality, and were pretty badly shaken when she rode them pretty hard about their first quiz. I thought the scores showed decent performance from most of the class, but Mrs. Cavanaugh focused on the fact that the lowest score was in the 40s and there were no perfect scores, even though the huge majority of the scores were between 85 and 92. The kids picked up on the negative statements and took them personally, which leached all of their enthusiasm out into the ether and left no obvious way to bring them back.

The next week Mrs. Cavanaugh left early to attend a conference, which left me as the substitute for the remainder of the class. I don't teach the freshmen but I'm usually in the room while they're here and they know me, so it didn't surprise me much when they said "She hates us," almost in unison.

I knew this was coming, and I'd already realized that no one had ever explained to these kids what is really expected of honors students. So before they started their assignment for the day I tried to spend a couple of minutes explaining that Mrs. Cavanaugh didn't hate them, but that she didn't think they were performing the way honors students should and outlined what was expected for a minute or two. Deaf ears. They heard what I was trying to say as a deriding lecture. This was obvious when every one of them started quietly working. I had not delivered the motivational talk that I wanted to.

Fortunately for everyone, tomorrow is always a new day, and with young people one day is completely different than the next. When they started filing in for class the next day, I could see the trepidation in their faces. They all wanted to do well and have fun here, but none of them knew how to make this happen and it showed on nearly every one of their faces.

The five-second zen lesson : "Be positive, try hard, and you'll do well with her." I said this to every one of them was as much encouragement and authority as I could manage before Mrs. Cavanaugh came to class. It was a different class that day. You have not lived until you've seen a group of 15 ninth graders who are suddenly determined to do well, and know how to make it happen. These kids will change the world one day if we can keep the rest of their teachers from taking this away.

Be positive. Try hard.

Who thought it would be this much work?

There was some delusional part of me that thought I would actually have time to do things like update my blog regularly while doing this student teaching gig. Holy caffeine, Batman! On the few nights that I have enough work done by 10 PM that I feel like I can spend a little time with the dogs, with the guitars, or watching "Dukes of Hazzard" reruns, I get so excited that the elation of finally feeling like I'm no longer sinking in a sea of yet-to-be-read papers and books keeps me up anyway. I think I'm averaging about 5 1/2 hours of sleep on school nights.

I'm not complaining, not by a long shot. I love what I'm doing and learned a long time ago that nothing is ever going to be quite as perfect as I'd like, so I'm taking the good with the bad. So far the only real downside is all of the reading that I have to keep up with. I'm teaching 3 different subjects with books that I've never read before (and in fact, I've avoided reading a lot of them as much as I could until now), I'm reading for my student teaching seminar every week, and taking a Spanish class as well. Two weeks ago one of my students asked what I read for fun, and I kind of laughed. I had to quickly explain to her that English teachers have the least free-reading time of anyone, and told her how happy I was two nights before to take half an hour to read a bit of one of my aviation magazines.

One of the big things I've learned so far this semester is to realign my expectations with reality. I am not going to have as much time to spend with friends as I want for a while. I am not going to give the dogs as much attention as they need. I am not going to be playing at the open mic very much. I am not going to have as much time as I'd like to put into a relationship (should this one become an issue. I'm working on it...) A lot of sacrifice goes along with this part of my life, and this is something I'm willing to accept because the rest of this gig is so rewarding and I know it's not going to last forever.

Zen lesson of the day (and every day), given to me by Dr. Bill Washburn, who may or may not know what an incredible influence he is on my teaching: Learn to spend your energy wisely while being present in the places where you find yourself.

School starts Monday...

School starts this Monday. Not only does school start, the beginning of a new phase of my life begins as well, and I'm getting a little freaked out. Now, you should know that "freaked out" for me means that I'll think about it more than twice today and that I don't know what to expect. My blood pressure and stress levels are normal, I'm not about to panic and quit before anything gets started. I'm not really a nervous person, so this is much more stress than I feel about a lot of things.

The big deal is that when school starts on Monday I'll officially be a student teacher. I've taken all of the necessary courses to learn to prepare curricula and lessons, but none of this really prepares you for the day you walk into a high school for the first time and start working with your cooperating teacher. I don't think anything can prepare you for that, really. That's the start of a very close working relationship that is completely individual to the teacher, and the only way to learn to navigate it is to jump in and start trying. Like a mouse trying to find its way through a maze. (and btw, I'll be teaching English and I know that last sentence wasn't technically a sentence. It's a style thing, learn to live with it.)

I've got a few things on my side, though. I don't actually start at the high school for another week. On Monday I start all the university stuff that goes along with student teaching, so I've got a little bit of time to get back into an academic mood. And the professor in charge of my seminar is probably the most inspiring teacher I've ever had, and there's no doubt in my mind that he's going come up with some little morsel of quasi-zen philosophy that will make any question I have make sense. He's the kind of guy that makes you feel good to be in his classroom, like he's really glad that you're there and can't wait to see you again. And I've got age on my side, too. I turned 30 at the beginning of the summer, and there will be a lot of 23-year olds doing their first student teaching too. I used to worry about being a 30 year old rookie in a profession where the majority start in their early 20s, but talking to a few experienced teachers has set my mind at ease about it. All of them said that they'd rather take a 30 year old rookie that demonstrates a lot of poise and maturity than a 23 year old with a year of experience that doesn't have that same presence.

And poise I got. The only times I ever get nervous when being put on the spot is when I don't have any sort of plan. Even if I have a rough outline of what I want to say in my head I'll be fine. Thinking back to the times when I felt incredibly nervous, everyone else around told me how calm I seemed and they were glad I was there because they were freaking out. So that's an easy problem to solve, right? All I have to do to keep from being nervous is think ahead a little bit.

I'm going to approach this like I do most things: running headlong with no plans of slowing down.

It'll be good.

Welcome

First post. Never done this before. But I thought it would be good to keep a journal of some sort while I start student teaching and then transition into being a first-year teacher. Problem is that I hate writing to myself and need an audience of some sort, even if it's just one or two people.

So I promise to keep writing about what I see and what I learn if you promise to keep reading and post every once in a while to let me know that there's someone out there paying attention. If you've got anything to add, go right ahead. I'd rather see a good discussion going than to think that I'm up here on a soap box by myself.

-Eric