Growing a blogger

 I feel that this quarter I have made great strides in becoming a real blogger. Rather than hemming and hawing about the most perfect topic to blog, I have been learning to just sit down and write about what's on my mind or what most recently caught my eye. If it ends up being a topic no one is interested in, no big deal. I get to think through my thoughts on "paper" and then talk about something else in my next post. I don't think any one post in particular can show my growth as a blogger because my style seems to grow and change with every post, and I think I still have a ways to go before I can consider myself a top-notch blogger with great ideas that everyone should read.


One resource that has particular launched great part of my growth as a blogger was the mathtwitterblogosphere introduced as a class resource. I've started following many of the math teachers' blogs, and I'm learning quite a bit about successful math classrooms as well as effective blogging.

I've also learned this quarter that shorter is generally better in terms of blog posts. Looking at other people's posts has made me realize that unless it's about a topic I am really interested in, it better be short and to the point. If not, I just most on to the next post to spend my time more wisely.

In regards to commenting on other people's blogs, I feel I've also grown in that aspect as well. I've started actually remembering that it should be a conversation rather than monologues on the same topic. I've started asking questions rather than only stating my opinion, and I've started commenting on things that I may know nothing about and am simply curious about. By trying to interact through a blog, I feel my posts and comments have been somewhat more interesting (or at least I hope so.)

I commented on this blog post a while ago, and was excited to have a thoughtful reply to my comment and questions. It was also interesting to hear her further thoughts about the building and her different perspective on what the building was about. In this post, I felt that there was a great dialogue between all the commenters and the original author. I feel like all of us contributed to each others learning and thinking in a way that wouldn't have been possible not that long ago. Finally, I hope that my comment on this post helped the author go from only seeing trying to reteach in the same manor as insanity to thinking more deeply of ways in which we can still reteach students but structure it in different ways.

I can see that I still have a ways to go in my blogging growth, but at least I can see some improvement from my past posts. Maybe I'll reach a point where I don't have to ask myself this question when I have a post idea...

Taken from this blog about "why to blog"

Pendulum

Many people ask me where I want to end up as a teacher and what grade I want to teach. Prior to starting my teaching certificate program, I would have said with confidence that it would be middle school math. However, I'm finding it more and more difficult to say with surety that this is where I will truly end up. Don't get me wrong; I am loving my intern placement at the middle school level. I only teach the subject that I'm most passionate about, I get to work with students who are starting to be able to have real conversations with an adult yet still have child-like wonder and silliness at times, and it seems to have more structure and control than the elementary environment. However, I am coming to discover things about my 5th grade placement that I have surprisingly come to love and want for my furtue career.

I have found that even though I originally picked middle school because I wanted to be able to have "real" conversations with my students, 5th graders are fully capable of having these kinds of conversations. In fact, they bring more to these conversations because they are just learning how to be a part of them and have not become jaded in the slightest by reality. They bring the element of fresh imagination to spice up conversations.

Other things that are starting to change my mind are the teaching of multiple subjects, being able to bring more fun into the classroom, having (slightly) more flexibility with curriculum, having deeper connections with your students because there are fewer of them, and having a connection with the students' parents. All of these things have begun the more drastic swinging of my mental pendulum toward upper elementary teaching, and I'm not sure where my preference will end up. Being only halfway through my program, there is a lot that could change my mind, and I could end up truly anywhere.

Practice Makes Perfect

As I get farther into my practice of student teaching, I am continually surprised by how much more difficult teaching is than it looks. Every Wednesday and Thursday I watch my teacher teach math to 7th and 9th graders, and I think, "I could do that, easy. I just have to do what he does, easy." During the last couple weeks, I've started taking over parts of lessons and have found out that it is not easy to emulate his lessons. I forget to say things I had planned on saying, I forget to show specific ways of solving problems, I forget to wait for the kids to be quiet before I start talking, I forget the students names (well, there are 150 names to learn), and sometimes I forget how to solve the word problems by the method I'm supposed to teach (oops). Although it is starting to get easier as I get more comfortable teaching, I'm realizing that it's going to be a less easy process than I was expecting...I guess that's why I get to have 6 more months of practice!

Mix It Up

This week at my student teaching placement the middle school was having spirit week, and they had a special day called "mix it up" day. This day has many elements meant to "mix it up" including having the kids sit with someone they don't know at lunch and the teachers change up what and how they teach for the day. My cooperating teacher, who is a 7th and 9th grade math teacher, did an intense, moving lesson on being understanding of others and bullying. 

He began by talking about the human tendency to react with emotions to stressful situations and other people who are emotional. He said that it can be very difficult to react rationally and calmly, especially when your brain is still developing, but it's an important skill to learn how to be calm in stressful situations.

He next had an activity where he read a statement about a type of stressful situation like "if you have ever lost a parent, sibling, or immediate family member" and had students stand if the statement pertained to them. It was eye opening to me and the students to see how many students had experienced serious life stresses in their young lives. One of his points in doing that exercise was to have the students realize that everyone has stress in their lives, that we need to be aware of that when interacting with others, and that we should always make a point of being considerate of others. He followed the activity by reading his own experience with being bullied in middle school.

Next came the climax of the lesson in showing two emotional videos. I was surprised by the teacher's choice to show a video talking about kids who had committed suicide due to having been so severely bullied. I don't know if I would have been brave enough to even think about showing something like that to middle school students, but it ended up being an appropriately powerful message for the kids to handle especially because he followed up that video with the music video of Josh Groban's "You Are Loved."

Unfortunately, the class didn't have enough time to have a reflection immediately following the lesson, and they had to do their reflection in class the next day. I feel that the students really needed a reflection immediately following the lesson because it was so intense, and if I ever did a lesson like this I would make use that the would be enough time to decompress before sending them off for the rest of the school day.

What do you think of the lesson? What would you add or take out, or would you even want to do a lesson like this at school?

Read Aloud on Negative Numbers

When I was given the assignment to read a book aloud to my middle school math class, I was lost as to what I should read. After getting the suggestion from my cooperating teach to find a book about negative numbers to read to the 7th graders, I searched around the internet and found this book, Less Than Zero, by Stuart J. Murphy.

Less Than Zero is a book in a series of books by Murphy relating mathematical concepts in story form. This particular book has the following succinct summary on the back cover:

Perry the Penguin needs 9 clams to buy an ice scooter—but he’s not very good at saving. As Perry earns, spends, finds, loses, and borrows clams, a simple line graph demonstrates the concept of negative numbers.

To add to the summary, Perry has ‘less than zero’ clams for a part of the story because he borrows clams to buy things besides his ice scooter. In the end, Perry gets enough clams to buy his ice scooter by getting a loan of 4 clams from a neighbor that he will pay off by working shoveling snow, so he ends the story with a debt of negative 4 clams/hours of work.
 
This book has two possible messages to talk about with students. One message is about negative numbers and what negative numbers mean when applied to amounts of money. The other message is telling students that if they borrow more money than they have, then they will be negative in how much money they have. Furthermore, the second message also puts being negative money as something unfavorable and should be avoided.

Although I read it with middle school students, it could be used with almost any age to introduce negative number concepts, graphing practice, or just as a story about saving money. My students thoroughly enjoyed it, and I hope you find a use for it with your students. 

Wading through it all

This blog was set up as a course assignment, and I have blogged as assigned periodically over the last 6 months. My posts have felt like they came very naturally as a response to something I read or experienced, yet this week seems like I have nothing useful to contribute to the great blogosphere.

I feel like there is so much information out there and being constantly added to (I actually got stuck in all of it for a few hours trying to come up with something to blog about) that I don't feel like I should always contribute to all that noise. Although I do find endless awesome sites and ideas on the internet, it can take a while to get there. Wading through all that information can be time consuming, tiring, and stressful. My technology class has been introducing great tools for finding information and sorting/filing great information, but even using all of those tools can get overwhelming at times.

My teacher says of twitter that there is just too much information out there for you to keep track of; you just need to dip your bucket into the river every once in a while to see what you can get.

Within the last couple months, I have applied this concept to my entire internet usage. I have discovered a great way to make me a happier person and reduce my stress level over finding information by stepping away from my computer much more often. A rule I have for myself is if I find myself browsing things for more than a half hour that don't help me complete an assignment for school or specifically help me do something that I'm learning to do, I need to get off the computer and do a physical activity or hobby. It has actually helped my mood and outlook on my life, and I have started doing things that make me happy rather than just looking at websites that I will probably forget about the next day.

And speaking of which, I have spent far too long on the computer today, so I shall say goodnight to the internet for tonight...well, maybe at least for a couple hours...

Comfortable classrooms

When I had my class on the middle school learner last spring, we talked a great deal about how classroom environments could be made more comfortable for the students and match their physical needs better. Most of what we talked about we're great ideas, but I feel that ideas like tables students could stand at and squishy balls to play with are rarely implemented. It probably doesn't come to fruition due mainly money and partly simple follow through. However, I observed a class today that through the generously of a PTA grant had exercise balls available for students to sit on instead of chairs. Although it wasn't necessarily apparent whether they aided in attention over the 40 minutes I was observing, I was so thrilled to see the students getting their wiggles out during class in a generally non disruptive way. Great use of grant money in my opinion.

Math Manipulatives in Algebra

I just started observing a junior high class and was pleasantly surprised when the teacher pulled out Manipulatives to help the students visualize balancing algebraic expressions. I had never seen or experienced their use in learning algebra, and it gave me wonderful new ideas of how to use them in my future teaching.

The Manipulatives are used to represent the x terms and the integers and differentiate positive and negative terms. In this way students need to follow logical rules of keeping the equation balanced by literally taking away or adding the same thing to both sides. The long bars represent 1x and each small square represents 1. Furthermore, both bars and squares are positive when green/yellow, and negative when red. I think it's a quite brilliant way of physically representing a potentially abstract concept for learners. I definitely plans on utilizing this type of manipulative strategy in my future classrooms.

Below is an example of an equation being represented by the manipulatives. 3x-5 is represented by 3 green bars and 5 red squares while x-3 is represented by 1 green bar and 3 yellow squares. To solve for x, students would first remove a green bar from both sides and rewrite the equation to be 2x-5=3 with the visual matching. They would next add five yellow tiles to each side which would cancel out the red squares on the one side while adding with 3 to be 8 on the other side. The equation would then be written as 2x=8. The final move of the Manipulatives would be to divide the positive eight squares evenly with the two remaining green bars(x's). This would mean there would be 4 squares per bar, meaning x=4. I wish I had pictures for each step, but I don't at the moment. I'll try to update when I get a chance to take pictures of other examples.

 

Day Eight: Food Journal Reflection

I have been using the MyFitnessPal calorie counting app on and off for the past year and a half, but this was the first time I dutifully used it for absolutely everything I ate for more than five days in a row. Part of why I would use it so intermittently is because of my crazy weekend eating/drinking habits. I didn’t want to acknowledge how many calories I was actually consuming on the weekend, but this forced my to acknowledge this and make some personal decisions based upon what I saw.

I decided to cut down on my drinking, not just because of this assignment, but it helped keep me accountable. It also helped finally keep myself accountable for the things I was eating; not just the amount, but also the content.

MyFitnessPal keeps track of things like sodium, fat, sugar, and vitamin content, but I hadn’t really paid too close attention to these amounts prior to this assignment. After one week of keeping track of everything, everyday, it was apparent that I wasn’t getting nearly enough vitamins and potassium, so I made that my goal/priority to make sure I was getting enough of these things in my diet. I started actually taking my daily vitamin daily and trying to eat more foods rich in potassium. While I still am having a hard time getting enough potassium, I’m generally getting better amounts of other vitamins and I am actually feeling better.

I could see food journaling activities to be potentially very beneficial for my future students. Hopefully they would be able to truly apply the activity to their lives and make reflections upon how their food affects their health much as I did. They would at least be somewhat forced to at least start seeing and thinking about the things they’re putting in their bodies.

I also feel like even if there wasn’t any time specifically dedicated to teaching health that this activity to easily be linked to other subjects individually or as the tying factor between multiple subjects. Science could be brought in in the terms of nutrition, what food is made of, and how we get energy from it. Math could be brought in for calculating the amount of calories and other nutrition facts based upon the serving size and actual portions eaten. We could also set goals and analyze the journals in writing. Social studies could even be tied in to study typical diets of different cultures. It could easily be the tying theme for all of these subjects as a nutrition unit. I hope that I will be able to use my ideas for a unit like this sometime in the future; I think the students would really learn a lot from the experience.

Day Seven: Book Discussion

I was somewhat disappointed with the very limited amount of time we got in class to talk about The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. Because we were to pick a theme and create a poster on that theme in the limited amount of time, we didn't really get to discuss all that much or get in to differing opinions. One of my group members in particular had an extremely different view of the themes and events of the book due to her background, and we didn't really get to discuss our differing views while coming to a consensus for our poster. I'm looking forward to digging into the meaning in the book on my own as I write my reflection paper, but it would have been interesting to have more time to discuss as small groups and as a large group.

Day Six: Experiencing Organs

Today in class we got to see actual lungs, livers, hearts, and a brain. To be honest, it freaked me out a little, but it was also very informative and somewhat cool to actually see (and touch) the organs that are inside each and every person. Although I had been told that the brain is heavy, it didn't really sink in until I actually picked it up today. Similarly, seeing an extremely enlarged heart due to blood pressure and fat build-up had an immediate response in my head of thinking about the condition of my heart and what I can do to prevent my heart from becoming like that. I think if I had another opportunity to see/touch these organs again, I would opt out, but it was very informative and interesting to do it once in my life.

Day Five: Active Activities

I really enjoyed our challenges and relay races today, and it was very inspiring. The activities really kick started my thinking about integrating active exercises in all subjects and settings. Many schools cut PE and recess to make more room for more "academic" material, but without the movement, students are less likely to stay engaged and attentive when sitting still. However, if teachers utilize activities that require a lot of movement, we can make up for the deficit. Like art, movement and active games can be woven in to any subject, and it makes the material more engaging for the students. I'm excited to start trying out some of the ones we learned today and the ones I've just begun to think about.

Day Four: Micro-teaching

Presenting first for a class is never easy; especially when you only have a couple days to complete a group project. Giving my group micro-teaching lesson this morning was no different. It was particularly difficult due to the group aspect of the assignment and the limited amount of times we were able to meet. Although the content of our lesson ended up being strong, our presentation of said material could have worked much better. Each person got an unequal amount of speaking time during our lesson, and the flow from section to section was rough. I feel like if we could have had another day to work or even had the insight to figure out our exact groups the day we signed up for the project, we would have been able to even it out more and maybe even practice. Oh well; it is what it is, and all I can do is reflect and learn from the experience.

Third Day: Child Abuse

Since it was my third time taking a child abuse reporting course, there wasn't much content in today's class that I haven't seen.  However, it never ceases to surprise me how knowing the laws and signs and whatnot doesn't make many situations easier to determine whether there is an issue of child abuse or not. I plan to always err on the side of caution, but it's interesting how one case, of say not getting a child needed prescription glasses, can be completely different from another due to context, history, and even due to lens of observation. I know as a teacher I will always have support of my fellow teachers and administration to figure out what to make of situations, but from my experience I know it is still unnerving to always need to be watching for signs of child abuse regardless of support systems.

Second Day: Intro to Lesson Plans

In class today I learned about important things to think about and record when creating a lesson plan. One included section was academic language required for the lesson, and this was something I hadn't ever considered when thinking about lesson planning. It makes quite a bit of sense to draw attention to the terms and language that the students will be using during the lesson so that the teacher doesn't forget to emphasize new vocabulary and its meaning. Furthermore, it also draws reflection on whether there is fairly vocabulary being used that students may or may not have been exposed to yet in their lives. What an interesting thing to consider.

First Day: Initial Thoughts

We started out our class today creating a flowchart of important topics of health education. As our group started off, we initially thought of each topic and relationship linearly. We came to figure out fairly quickly that every topic and subtopic within health education is connected in an all encompassing way rather than branching linearly like we had initially thought to represent them. Physical Health cannot be completely separated from Emotional Health because things like physical exercise affects endorphin levels which directly affect ones happiness and energy levels for future exercise. One facet of health education cannot be separated without also talking about connections or effects each facet has on another. I think this will be an important idea to keep in mind for teaching topics in health.

Reflection on Community and Inclusion

I have come to understand some of the true meanings of community and inclusion throughout this quarter and particularly through reflecting upon these readings within the last week. Christenson (2007) and Lyman (2001) both taught me that sometimes the toughest topics are the most useful to creating and strengthening a classroom community. They also gave me quite a bit to reflect upon and contemplate ways I may be able to use death, violence, or other challenging topics to advance education rather than try to keep them hidden. Sapon-Shevin (2001) brought about a fuller reflection upon all-level student integration within the classroom, and how it could bring about positive environments and change in educational settings. Finally, Harris (2001) and Beaton (2001) opened my eyes to the toll traditional discipline takes on classroom communities and feelings of inclusion. I know that I still have much to continue to think about and reflect upon, but I am glad I read these articles to give me a foundation for my thoughts as I move forward.

Teaching Metaphor

Teaching is a jigsaw puzzle.

The parents, the principal, the volunteers, the superintendent, the curriculum, the other teachers, and the community; these are the exterior pieces. The ones who help frame and hold the puzzle together.

Each student is an interior piece in the puzzle with its own unique picture and shape. Each piece has its own unique interaction/fit within the puzzle that can be replace by no other piece, yet its fit may change with wear and time.

The teacher is the puzzle master, trying to figure out where each piece goes, how each piece interacts with the others, and how the pieces fit together to make a beautiful picture.

The entire picture/finished puzzle is a collaborative, functioning classroom. The pieces are interacting in their optimal capacity. Each child is learning and growing through the help of one another. The teacher can see the whole picture, see how the pieces fit together, and adjust the pieces if the picture or optimal fit needs amending or adjusting.

The puzzle is incomplete without any one of the pieces and will never be complete without a competent puzzle master.

Standardized Test

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I stumbled onto this picture quote while I was wondering around the internet today, and it immediately linked to thoughts I've had about standardized testing. The tests assess kids in such a particular way that it could be related to simply testing on their mental ability to climb a tree. Kids who do generally do well on standardized tests come from a certain demographic in which the questions are written for, and  the way in which the core subjects are tests do not correlate with the way many kids understand and think about these topics. Furthermore, the scope and methods of the tests do not cover many topics and abilities important for becoming a critically thinking, problem-solving, functional human being. Even further still, each child learns, thinks, and communicates differently than other children, yet they are tested in the exact same way as all other children.

So, if a kid thinks creatively but grows up speaking something other than proper English, how do you think they will do on a test that is written in proper English, does not take into account creativity, and has incorrect answer options which would make sense in this child's mind? It's like trying to test a fish on climbing trees, who has grown up learning how to move and communicate in a way different than squirrels. This child will not do well on the test and spend years thinking that it is somehow worth less than other due to a score that shows nothing of what they are actually capable of doing and thinking.

I think that we need to do away with standardized testing and come up with more relevant, more complete, and more human ways of assessing children.

Be Prepared

Just as the teachers of the Oklahoma tornado demonstrated, the lives of children are safely entrusted in to the hands of teachers every single day. If parents are entrusting the lives of their children to teachers, why can’t teachers be entrusted with making the decisions regarding curriculum and how they will teach? If teachers have already fully committed to making these students productive adults, why would they sabotage their own ability to teach with shotty curriculum and teaching methods? The community and nation needs to trust in the emotional connection and entrust the curriculum to the teachers just as they entrust us with the lives of the children.

How can we ensure that each teacher is prepared for this kind of responsibility? In Monday’s class, we were talking about creating a uniform, nation-wide standard for teaching certification. Rather than basing teaching performance on standardized tests after the fact, why not ensure that every teacher is fully competent and prepared to teach to a high standard before they even get to the classroom? We should funnel the money spent on standardized testing in to teacher education and enrichment. What better way to make sure teachers are up to par than actually making sure they have the tools and the education to be up to par? After they become teachers, we could have inspecting programs rather than testing; trained professionals who come into classrooms to observe and give feedback to the teacher about their ability and curriculum. Why can’t we focus on what the teacher is actually doing rather than on test scores that may of may not accurately represent what students are learning and are capable of learning? It’s time to change from unemotional paper interaction and assessment to a more appropriate, human interaction way for teachers to be held accountable and for students to be assessed.

Where I'm From

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I am from acres and barns

owned for five generations

where weather patterns are important

I am from home improvements and projects

handcrafted in dad’s shop.

from the willow who wept

when the tree house fell out.

I am from lefse across the field,

from a blue Dodge colt vista

on two lane county roads.

I am from carsick family bonding,

from summer camps, enrichment,

and empty school hallways.

I’m from you two look so similar

and you look nothing alike

from old family recipes

made up on the spot.

I’m from you’re the light of my life’s

and singing before sleep,

from Lutheran quarrels

and suppressed emotions

with the family rifts they caused.

I am from music and instruments,

piano played by my mom,

from waking to Raffi

and afternoon spongebob

at every stage of my life.

I am from cats, chickens, and a rabbit

half gone to coyotes,

the other half to time.

I’m from corn fields camouflaging

barn kittens gone feral

and what it cost to get rid of them all.

I am from soccer cleats and turf shoes

injuries and proud bruises

at every time of year.

I’m from raspberry bushes in an orchard

separate from the garden out back.

From bonfires and fire pits

and the roasting of slugs.

I am from frog songs, train calls,

and silent starts in the clean air of the night.

Relevant Education

In Seth Godin's Stop Stealing Dreams, he talks a great deal about the purpose of schooling and the shifting need of how students should be taught and what they are learning. Schools were introduced to create obedient workers that needed trivia facts memorized. Godin says "memorizing large amounts of information was essential. In a world where access to data was always limited, the ability to remember what you were taught, without fresh access to all the data, was a critical success factor." One can see the importance of school providing a means of memorizing information for workers of that time and age. 

 

However, our society and technology has made endless memorization almost unnecessary in many circumstances, and has started valuing creativity and independence over knowing facts and obedience. Yet school form and instruction remain the same with increasing pressures in assessment of things other than creativity and in ways that do not comply with the ways most students function or apply what they know. "Workers aren’t really what we need more of, but schools remain focused on yesterday’s needs," Godin elaborates.

 

So, in this new world where data is no longer limited and you can find endless information on your smart phone just as fast as you can take it out of your pocket, why are were still spending school instruction hours memorizing facts rather than learning how to navigate the issues of today's world in a meaningful way?

The Equality of Public Schools

Reading Fire in the Ashes was an incredibly heart wrenching and thought provoking experience. Although we were only assigned a couple chapters to read for a class, I found myself flipping through many other the other chapters. In the discussion following the story chapters, I came across a long but all-encompassing thought that Kozol was trying to convey with most of the stories within the book. The thought is as follows:

"The point I need to emphasize again is that all these children had unusual advantages. Someone intervened in every case, and with dramatic consequences...it is not that we should celebrate exceptionality of opportunity but that the public schools themselves in neighborhoods of widespread destitution ought to have the rich resources, small classes, and well prepared and well-rewarded teachers that would enable us to give to every child the feast of learning that is now available to the children of the poor only on the basis of a careful selectivity or by catching the attention of ...another grown-up whom they meet by chance. Charity and chance and narrow selectivity are not the way to educate the children of a genuine democracy" (Kozol, 2012, p. 303-304)

This issue of Public Schools not being created equal and poor students not having nearly as many opportunities as wealthy students has bothered me quite a bit. It's quite irritating that people want to live in a better world, but they only want to provide privilege for their own kids. How does ensuring your child's school has laptops while ignoring the fact another doesn't have textbooks help build a strong country? It doesn't. It creates dropouts and ignorance within communities and states.We should be equalizing opportunities and finances for all public schools and ensuring high quality teachers are everywhere. Hold teachers accountable for their classrooms and their commitment to every child; only allow highly trained and qualified individuals to become teachers.

To make this country better, everyone needs to be educated. Education allows people to create a better life for themselves, their families, and their country. If we are to become stronger, the people need to be stronger and able to support this great democracy. Without equal education for all, this country will slowly crumble beneath the growing weight of ignorance and poverty.

Pretend Play

In week three of my courses, I came across a quote in an article that said "'pretend' play among young children is actually a rehearsal for later activities in life" (Tenorio 1994). This idea has had me thinking about some of my readings and the activities of the children I supervise in a new light. 

For example, the next week we had another reading which described a group of preschool boys pretending to have babies and care for them, and they pretend to be seahorses in order to be able to be the ones having the babies (Pelo). So what then are these young boys rehearsing for? I would think that they are trying to express their knowledge of how to raise a baby and practice for caring for younger siblings and/or even their own children, although they probably don't conscientiously think this. But the part about transforming into seahorses so they can have the babies themselves, what are they rehearsing with this? Are they expressing a want of independence, or just coming up with a creative solution for a problem at hand?

Another example in the Pelo came in the form of a young boy and an even younger girl playing daddy and baby. The teachers dislike that the boy carries the young girl around and manipulates her body as if she is a helpless newborn. They see this as more of a rehearsal in dominance where the pretend play is teaching the girl to be submissive and teaching the boy to be dominant. But what else could they be trying to rehearse or express? Could it be more of an expression by the boy to be a caring father? The children did call the game "daddy and baby," so wouldn't what they are rehearsing be more about age difference and caring for another? One of my classmates asked the question, what if telling the two children not to play that game reinforces in the boy that caring for a child in this way is not what he should be doing? It's interesting to consider that this boy may stop trying to express his paternal instincts later in life due to the negative feedback from this rehearsal.

Autobiographical Poem

As I was reading chapter 2 of William Ayers To Teach, I came upon the examples of autobiographical poems on page 40. The format for these poems is as follows:

First Name
       Three words that describe you
       Something you love
       Something you hate
       Something you fear
       Something you wish for
Last Name

I found the two examples of the kids' to be quite profound and revealing. They also created quite a bit of room for conversation between Ayers and the students which wouldn't have been available otherwise. Ayers wouldn't have learned or this "raper man" that one student was afraid of, and he began to see this student in a whole new light after their conversation turned to his brother being on trial for murder. While the student's main teacher had wanted to get rid of him because "His mind [was] wandering and he [didn't] want to work," Ayers stumbled onto the root of the problem through this simple exercise.

It bothered me that Ayers didn't talk about the other boy's poem though. The other example creatively used the three words in the first body line to read "flunky but funny" creating a sentence rather than a list of adjectives. It also had the line "I hate being whipped." What? What did that mean? Ayers didn't say anything about this child or whether he asked this child about his statement. I would be very surprised if Ayers had not asked about it, but he didn't even touch on it in his description of this exercise. I wanted to know more and find out what this child's experience with whipping was. Did he actually get whipped by someone, or was it a figure of speech for losing badly? I may never know.

However, this conundrum did not stop me from thinking about my own autobiographical poem. Maybe it will start a conversation, and maybe it wont. It will, however, enable me to reflect upon myself in a different way and provide insight for me to continue my journey to becoming a teacher. And also provide me with an example to use with my class when I use it in the future. ;)

***
       Awesome Ambitious Reliable
       I love creating beautiful things
       I hate close minded people
       I am afraid of spiders
       I wish for more time
******

The road is long

The road is long; particularly my road to teaching. My road has been relatively short compared to many others in my newly acquainted teaching certificate program, but I feel as though my road to teaching was longer than it needed to be. If I may begin to elaborate....

In junior high and high school, I toyed with many career options for myself, one of the forerunners being teaching. Being a math teacher seemed like a great choice for me in that I loved math, my favorite teachers were my math teachers, and I had a knack for teaching/tutoring others in the subject of math. 

So why did I go to college with my eyes set on a dual degree in architecture and construction management? 

First off, my beloved math teachers seemed to think I shouldn't go in to teaching. Not because I wouldn't have made a good teacher, but because teaching wasn't something they would have recommend to many, if anyone at all. Similarly, my mother, who is also a teacher, discouraged this career path because of the extremely poor monetary compensation of the profession.

Secondly, and somewhat connected to the first reason, was this societal notion that teaching was somehow not a high ranking or intellectual career. When I read this notion presented by William Ayers in To Teach (2010) just the other day was when I finally made the connection to this concept and how it had actually affected my career path. My math teachers didn't want me to teach because they thought it "beneath" my "skill and intelligence level" as Ayers says on page 18 of his book. Furthermore, I felt this pressure as well in my personal competitiveness with my sister who had chosen to pursue civil engineering. I wanted to show the world I was a smart, intellectual person by choosing a challenging and rewarding profession.

I reasoned that I like art as well as math, and the combination, therefore, would be architecture. Architecture would get me further in life and more praise than other careers I had 'previously considered.' 

So, after wading through prerequisites for the program, battling for admission to the architecture department, challenging myself with topics I pretended to be fully invested in, adding the intense dual degree in construction management, and avoiding the computer programs needed to succeed in the profession, I realized that the construction industry was far from what I wanted for my life.

I talked with my mother about my unhappiness and my regret for not going for teaching, and she relented saying that I should do what makes me happy; she finally gave me her explicit blessing to pursue teaching.

I finished my dual degree, researched certification programs, completed general knowledge prerequisites, was accepted to a program, and am currently in my first month of instruction.

Let's see where the road takes me now.