Week 4 Blog.

So it's time for a real reflection. Something a little bit truer and deep.

I didn't know if I wanted to be a school teacher when I entered teacher's college. I looked at it as a year of experimentation. I'd get to taste test a variety of classroom settings all the while getting a degree at the same time. I said to myself if I get into teacher's college, great. If not? than it's not meant to be.

So I am onto my second taste test, a grade four classroom at Givens / Shaw. This in someways is the elementary school teacher holy land. You are working in a school that has access to resources with a supportive parent body. You have the beauty of Trinity-Bellwoods all around you. You have a class of grade 4s - that magic age where kids can take care of themselves but haven't developed into attitude yet. And you have an AT who is genuinely kind and seems to have a magic amount of patience for childhood misbehaviour and antics.

And the central question that I have been asking myself throughout every practicum continues to be... Does this fit? Does this fit? And the truth is, it doesn't. If I can't find resonance in a classroom where all of the externalities are seemingly ideal, than it doesn't. And the truth is I already knew it. But you question yourself. Can you try again? Can you make it fit? Can you give it another try?

But this experience, like all experience in this so called Life Class, has taught me some very profound things.

To start, to be a really good elementary school teacher - you know one that creates magic for kids lives , you really have to believe in the magic of childhood. You need to see childhood as a precious time that needs to be safeguarded. You need to see the innocence in children. You really need to get high off of seing children grow and blossom into the potential that they could be. and You need to be a person who sees children as a vehicle back to your own sense of play.

I don't think I have that. I don't really see the magic in childhood. I see small humans who don't know how to self-regulate yet. I see that aspect of themselves that is ageless. In a way that is a good thing, but it doesn't allow me that inexhaustible patience that is necessary to teach children, to be abundantly kind to children even when they are being crazy, wild mischief-wagons. And I feel like being around children takes me away from my own inner child. It makes me serious because I have to play up that disciplinarian part of myself.

I guess when you are thinking about being a teacher, you have to ask yourself what is the aspect of teaching that you get high off of. Because seriously, if you are not getting high off of some aspect of teaching, omg you are going to die. of exhaustion. And for some, like my good friend Cat Cyr - it is childhood. It is seeing children transform. And that makes you able to overlook all of the bs of teaching. For me I think it's something different. When I taught ESL to adults, something clicked. Content aside, it was teaching adults to be children again. It was teaching them to reconnect to their sense of play. and that is something that makes me high. That is something that makes me giggle in the classroom. Watching a seventy year old get jiggy with it. So i guess what I am suggesting as we close up second practicum is to ask ourselves, what is the aspect of teaching that makes you high and are you getting it here?

I learned something else at OISE lifeclass. It was never my idea to apply to teacher's college. For teaching ESL it was an idea that came from within. It sprouted like a small flame that nagged at me until I had to do it. it percolated for a while, and by the time I was teaching in the classroom I was having grinch moments every day. I could feel my heart stretching in a visceral way. I never knew I could feel that big. Teacher's college came from my dad. It was his way of taking my idea and conforming it to his beliefs about making money. 'I'm just gonna take your idea and make it a lil' more Jewified.' What he actually said was, "Hey, you're into ESL. Why don't you apply for teacher's college." So what I learned in lifeclass here was to listen to my gut more. When making big life decisions I need to start to listening to only myself for real now. It's time to cut the cord with the parents opinions and be brave enough to pursue that things that come from within. And it's hard to silence our parents' voices. But when we do actually pursue only the things that come from within, we get to have to those jobs that give us grinch moments, feeling more than we ever thought we could feel.

Week 3 Reflection

So we finished our science unit this week. My students are absolutely done with the light unit. We literally studied light every afternoon since week one, and now we are done. I kind of felt bad by the end, inundating them with science experiments. Today we played a trivia game on light. I divided the class into two and asked the students questions about things that we had learned in our light unit. And every single kid knew answers to the questions. and they got a little excited about it. I think every question I asked except 3 were answered with accuracy, and this includes the low ability kids. :) I'm really happy that they absorbed lots of the information. Lesson learned here I guess is to not let kids peer pressure you into teaching quickly so that they can play more.

So here's an interesting story. So I have this student. We'll call her *. A couple of nights ago, I had this dream where she was chasing me and trying to murder me..... I woke up in a sweat. Three weeks of practicum, and I am having death nightmares about my students. oh my god. My colleages thought it was funny. I didn't. Today though, * ran up to Jane in the stairwell to tell her that I was a good teacher. Omg I got through to her. I can't believe I got through to her.

We did art again on Friday. We did that lesson from art class where we draw with pastels and wash over it in tempra paints. I had the students paint pictures of nature or line drawings. They really liked it. I had to be pretty strict about what they were going to draw because they keep on doing things like bombing each other when left to their own devices. That's all for now. - Laura M.

Week 2 Blog

So week 2 was interesting.

On Wednesday, Jane came to see my class. This was also my first Language class. I chose to use that ginger-bread man cut out from Language class to talk about character and inference.

I also chose to use the book How to Talk to Girls as our starting point. ......
I thought, This book is a book of opinions about dating by an eight year old kid. So it will be really easy to figure out facts about the character (read the bib at the back), really easy to figure out specifics of what he has to say, then we can put those two things together (our clues) and figure out deeper information about the character -- INFERENCE.

yes I know what you're thinking... WHAT WERE YOU THINKING!! they are in grade 4!!

The students were ... excited, crazy, freaked out, desperate to speak, angered by the fact class clowns don't get girls. I mean really angry. They were desperate to hear me read more, yet totally freaked out by the content of the information. They decided that the author - 8 year old Alec from Colorado - was desperate and didn't have a clue about dating. I was thinking that little do they know that this kid has just spelled out everything they're going to learn about dating in the next 20 years. He's saving you some grief!!

Would I do it again? Maybe in grade 6.

Week 1 Reflection

So on Friday, I tried my first art lesson. We were doing still lifes of oranges to consolidate our learning from the Light Science unit. Everything that could have gone wrong went wrong. Oy.

Anyways - so that kids get to class, and they are seriously offended that they are going to be drawing oranges. They think that they are circles, and this is beneath them.
Then I have set up the class in a giant circle (like a real art studio) and controlled the lighting so that the students can see all of the highlights and shadows in a dramatic way. Within 2 minutes of the class, one of the students tripped on the cord of the lamp that I was using and shattered the bulb. Because I had blacked out the window light, students couldn't see their own papers.

Before you know it, I am getting choruses of does that mean art class is over? This is bad for us isn't it? So at this point I am started to get a bit wired so I go a try to do a demonstration on the board. and all of the chart paper fell onto the floor. It was actually a circus performance. One kid started to cry. Oh my god.

Anyways, what I learned is that set up of an art class is crucial. It doesn't matter what you are teaching if the set up doesn't work. I tried the lesson again this week (on Friday), and it was night and day.

This time I didn't try to control the lighting. I used reflective surfaced objects (Christmas ornaments) so that additional lighting did not need to be used. I put still lifes at each of the table clusters so that everyone could see up close. I changed the activity so that students did not need to worry about mid colours: this time students each got red or green construction papers and a piece of white chalk, pencil, and a tissue. With their tools they had to block in the highlights with chalk and shade in the lowlights with pencil and blend it all together with tissue. The still life was of red or green Christmas balls so they did not have to worry about capturing the colour. Another change that I made was doing the demonstration up on the chart paper easel. I hung an ornament over the top of the easel so that everyone could see the same highlights and reflections (another BIG problem from week one) and taped a piece of green paper underneath it so that everyone could see. Then I modelled how to draw it. Another change that was made was showing the finished work before starting so that the students don't think drawing circles is lame.

That's it for now.

Last Post

So here is my last practicum 1 post.

I got a package from the TDSB Professional Library with resource materials on how to teach Maus.

And in it, there was a note entitled: Rationale for Holocaust and Genocide Studies

It reads:

Dear Teacher:

I am a survivor of a concentration camp. My eyes saw what no man should witness:

Gas chambers built by LEARNED engineers. Children poisoned by EDUCATED physicians. Infants killed by TRAINED nurses. Women and babies shot and burned by HIGH SCHOOL and COLLEGE graduates.

So I am suspicios of education.

My request is: Help you students become more human. Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths, educated Eichmanns.

Reading, and writing, and arithmetic are important only if they serve to make our children more humane.

                                          Haim Ginott

That same day, a student came up to me and personally thanked me for sharing the story of my grandparents with her.

So I guess despite how uncomfortable this has been for me, it's been ok.


Blogs I commented on: Patrick Shannon, Laura Argiropolos, Jasmine Toews, Kevin Hewitt, Vivian Thomas

Short stories from this week.

So I went to Parent-Teacher interviews yesterday, and some of the stories just broke my heart.

One mother was telling me that her son had gotten so excited about history and was going home to her and talking about all the different concentration camps and some movie that he had watched (i.e. my all about me presentation). And then she told me that the subject matter was so painful for him that he went home and cried.

This is what I was afraid of. Hurting sensitive souls. And of course everybody says to me that it's good for him, that he's just sensitive anyways. I would argue that most of the kids in my homeroom are sensitive; that's why they have learning blocks. And if I bombard them with traumatic information, I can be the person who provides them with more. I have to ask myself the question: what is the fundemental purpose behind education? Is it to develop academic skills so that these students are well-developed brains. I think most people would argue that yes, to some degree, that's what education is. But I am not so sure anymore. What about the idea that we want to grow these young humans into well-adjusted, happy, joyful, trusting, authoritative human beings. Is the teaching of the Holocaust at all something that contributes to this objective. I am not entirely convinced anymore that the teaching of many world histories is contributive of happy, healthy human beings. In some ways so radical, I really am questioning what education means to me, or at least what part that I want to play in it.

I know at least that I got through to these kids. They have softened in front of my eyes. They have exposed themselves and brought extremely beautiful and sensitive reflection to the table. But I am not really sure that I am happy with what I've done here.

Another story that touched me this week was another mother at parent-teacher interviews. Her son has severe ADD. And with me, she shared personal and really sad stories of the amount of anxiety her son was going through in attempts of completing his assignment. Their job was to write anthropomorphic short stories. This student just got so lost in the detail that he couldn't remember what he was doing anymore; he reminded me of a younger me. A me that would get so anxious trying to complete assignments because I would be constantly hitting walls and breaks in my brain. I would watch myself be unable to complete tasks that I knew other people could complete. I would watch myself conceptually understand what to do and physically be unable to complete the task. So this woman was grasping at seams. She was looking for resources, and I could smell it on her because I recognized it in myself. So I gave her one contact name; the first person that I had worked with. She's gentle, and knowing, and calming, and comes across as a person that you want to grow yourself into. And she hugged me. A complete stranger hugged me and said, 'We've been looking for answers to this for so long, and I didn't think that I'd find it here at parent-teacher interview night.'

The Things I've Learned

So here are some things that I have learned about teaching J/I.

1. The Minds-On must be teacher-centred, or you will lose control of your class. Group work is by nature an energy generator, and as a teacher of pubescent kids, you need to focus them and reign them in before you let them lose into activity land.

2. High-level conceptually-based discussion must be teacher-centered. Students will not get it otherwise.

3. Activities are successful when students have very clear criteria and a very narrow objective and scope.

4. I can teach Holocaust history and well, but it burns me out like a mother......


The rewards of my week.

So I did my All-about-me on my grandmother's experience in the Holocaust. This is the feedback that I got.

When I told them our Holocaust unit was over, the students responded awwwwwwwww.
When I gave them a choice of doing poetry or the graphic novel Maus for our second two weeks, citing Holocaust burn-out - the Students voted Maus. They wanted more Holocaust.
When I suggested to the students that we stop reading for the day, they said aaaawww.
When they showed up for history class, they said, can we read Maus during history class.
When I asked the students if they wanted to take turns reading Maus, they said, No, we love it they way you read it.
And when I had the students to RRR's for my All About Me, they were so beautiful they made me cry.

One girl - you know the tough one with all the attitude wrote that she didn't know Ms. Michaels was Jewish and that her family went through so much. She has been a softy ever since. Another student said that he learned about how much a family can care about one another from the all about me.

I have handed them all back except one so I can remember the details, but here is what one student wrote. He's one of the cool kids in the class...

' I can relate to Ms. Michaels's story becayse my parents had a love story like Ms. Michaels's grandparents story. Ms. Michaels's story was amazing. I liked how she made sure she included every detail. I also liked how she explained every thing and made sure we knew it. I thought at the part when she said her grandparents went in the gas chambers, I thought they were gonna die. But when they didn't they were very lucky.'                         :)


There be a lot of hearts up in this club. :D