Whoa, melodramatic title alert! I can't come up with anything better, though. Ah, nothing like posting a blog at 5:00 in the morning because you
have game duty later tonight for the Homecoming football game and you're not
sure if the school's Wi-Fi will block access to this site or not...
What
was the most helpful aspect of summer training?
I think being in a state of constant
stress (does that sound bizarre?) and high expectations for lesson plan quality
were the most helpful aspects of summer school. Despite the amount stress I
experience on a near daily basis during the school day, it’s never as
overwhelming as it could be. Summer training built up my tolerance and as hard
as some days can be, it’s not unmanageable. (That ‘stress management’ seminar
really helped though.) To be honest, I think I was more stressed out during
summer school because of the environment. Being constantly evaluated, graded,
and critiqued sent my stress and anxiety levels through the roof. I feel I
function a little better in the absence of constant supervision; however, MTC’s
high expectations gave me high standards and I know I am better at my job
because of the continuous evaluations and feedback.
The structured formatting for the
lesson plans was also quite helpful (although it didn't always seem like it at the
time.). My lesson plans now suck compared to the ones I made in summer school,
but despite the loss of detail, I can mentally map out the time I want to spend
on each activity in class. I still frequently overestimate and underestimate
the time it will take my students to complete an activity, but time management
is slowly improving. (And what I learned this year can always be applied to
next year – at the latest.) Above all, the foundation is still there. I try to
model, give step-by-step instructions, and use I/We/You and other teaching
techniques I learned over the summer. I’ve lost some of the structure and
organization, yes, but having that foundation and those high expectations for
my lessons helps me from giving up on them entirely. Not everyday of teaching
is a good day of teaching and that’s okay. (Can you tell that I'm gigantic baby
about having three preps?)
What
things should be added to the summer training?
As nice as the UbD was to have the first two weeks of school, I
would have benefitted more from some kind of curriculum map project. Neither my
school nor my district has any kind of pacing guide and I’m pretty much making
up units (if you can really call them that) as I go/flying by the seat of my
pants/any other idiom that indicates I have absolutely no freaking clue what
I’m doing for the long term. I
hate how disorganized and unstructured my day-to-day lesson plans are. For
long-term sustainability, a [tentative] curriculum map with daily
goals/standards would be significantly more useful for lesson planning than one
UbD for one class that might last three weeks at the most. UbDs would be great
if I had the time to put that much effort and energy into just one unit. If I
even had a semester’s worth of daily standards fit into some kind of calendar,
I’d feel a lot more prepared than I do in this moment. But maybe that’s just me.
What
should be removed?
I’m not sure anything should be removed, but I do feel role-plays
should be restructured. I dreaded role-plays – shocking, I know – because they
added onto the hyper vigilant aspect of summer training. I struggled a little
being under that much scrutinization. I was more worried about responding to
the role play in the ‘correct’ manner (i.e. the manner the TEAM teachers or
other staff members deemed most appropriate, despite that none them had an
agreed upon best way to deal with the problem. I can’t tell you how many times
I received contradicting advice…) than addressing the scenario at hand to the
best of my ability and in a manner that best fit my teaching style. By the end of
the summer, the role-plays were unrelenting and ridiculous, just 10-15 minutes
of dealing with a mock classroom that appeared to be revolting. Consequences
would fall on deaf ears no matter how firm you were. I personally feel most
students will stop when they receive a consequence (somewhere along the ladder)
unless they have legitimate behavioral issues. But the way these scenarios were
run sometimes, you wouldn’t be able to guess that. Or maybe I don’t know what
I’m talking about. I haven’t had to deal with any truly problematic children.
Either way, the amount of enjoyment the TEAM teachers and other staff got out
of being the bad students was disturbing and intimidating. The amount I enjoyed
being a disruptive student – despite how difficult that made it on my fellow
MTC teachers – was also disturbing in that it was oddly satisfying to be
disruptive.
Role-plays prepared me in the sense that I’m not surprised by
student behavior. Am I baffled occasionally on how to deal with an issue? Yes,
but only because I really, really suck at consistent classroom management
procedures. No matter how many people claim, “It’ll get easier as you get more
experience,” it’s just not my personality type to be confrontational (i.e. correcting
or calling students out on their inappropriate behavior). I struggle every day
to be consistent and to stick to my procedures established at the beginning of
the year. Nearly two months into the school year and I’ve already made a
ridiculous amount of exceptions, for which I am or I will pay the price. For
example, certain students will get out their seats to get what they need in the
classroom without asking simply because I don’t correct them every time they
get up. And I still let these things slide – despite my being aware of it – but
I couldn’t begin to give a reason as to why. I’m of the mindset (unfortunately)
that it’s easier to say nothing, even if I do hate students getting up and
moving about the classroom without asking permission first.
In the beginning, I wished that role-plays had been run
differently, especially when I had no previous experience disciplining a
student. Trial by fire – or learning by doing – works when it’s not taken to
such an extreme. I wished there had been some kind of dialogue during the first
day of role-plays where we were told the scenario and what steps to follow in
dealing with the issue before going through the role-play. Of course we’re not
going to know what to do if you throw us into a random role-play and expect us
to just magically know the teacherly way to handle it. I firmly believe we can
still learn by doing without being completely unprepared. (Again, this is in
reference to the first set of role-plays. I’m not suggesting they should all be
managed this way.) You wouldn’t send a chemistry student into the lab having only
read the experiment description/steps (minimal preparation). First, you go over
the lab, what to expect, and emergency procedures. There are still a million
opportunities for something to go wrong, but the student was prepared and given
the steps to handle potential problems that may develop. Learning by doing does
not make sense when we’ve had little to no preparation. Of course, you would mess
up or freeze if you weren’t prepared properly…
I know what I’m trying to say, but I think this section has turned
into a massive rant. I didn’t realize I had so much to say about role-plays. So
maybe just model some role-play scenarios before starting the role-plays?
What
suggestions do you have for the next summer training session?
I think most of my suggestions were interwoven into other parts of
this response, but here goes nothing:
1. Have some kind of curriculum
mapping project. Give MTC first years something that allows them to go into the
first year with some kind of structured calendar for creating lesson plans. For
teachers in districts that actually have pacing guides, their curriculum maps would
be based on the material they are expected to cover. UbDs are great when you have
time to make them, but I need a tool that has a more long-lasting impact on
planning.
2. Restructure (but obviously
don’t remove) role-plays. Include some modeling, a discussion of what to expect,
and a more precise process for handling any scenario that goes beyond just
using the consequence ladder.
3. Also in regards to
role-plays, work on unifying advice. I found it frustrating when I would be
told how to best handle a situation by one TEAM teacher during the
critique/review portion of the role-plays, only to be criticized later by a
different TEAM teacher for doing what was originally suggested. (I get that
different methods work for different teachers, but the conflicting advice was
difficult to work through at times.
4. Maybe
save the workshops for a later time? They were interesting, provided various
insights to teaching, and gave us additional tools for our teaching tool belt,
but I had a hard time caring about them in the thick of summer training. I
vaguely know what most of the workshops were about, but I can't conjure up any
specific details. This is purely my fault for not paying attention better and
taking notes, but the workshop information was largely lost on me. It was hard
to care about these things when we all had super specific lesson plans to write
and other materials to create. Sitting through workshops made me super antsy
because it felt like I was losing time I could be spending on lesson planning,
grading, and homework.
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