Weeks 9 and 10: The Scarlet Letter!

My “showcase” unit is here and gone; Chillingworth has died of his revenge obsession, Dimmesdale’s heart has given out, and Hester has returned to gray Boston to be a beacon of hope to other ostracized women. And to my great delight, most of my 16- and 17-year-olds liked the novel!

We had our share of small-group and large-group discussions. We did agree/disagree statements, dissected characters, analyzed symbols and came up with our own themes. But the highlight of the unit, for the students at least, was the day we did “found” poems from chapters 9-12. These chapters focus on Dimmesdale’s self-flagellation, Chillingworth’s insidious evil, and the midnight scaffold scene in which Dimmesdale sees the red “A” in the sky. I gave each student a copied page, and their task was to “find” a poem by circling words that stood out to them. Some were reluctant at first — it seems poetry in any form can be intimidating — but by the end, each had created a poem, and many had decorated or rewritten theirs. Now they’re posted all over the classroom (which was quite a feat since my cooperating teacher has already covered the walls in incredible art). Here’s a handful:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We finished the week by reading a  New York Times article about modern shame punishment, and it really is interesting. My students (and I) had no idea that so many forms of shame as punishment exist in our country today. It’s interesting to look at the shame Hester endured and then realize that in some ways, we’re not so different from the Puritans. (If you take the time to read it, I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on the matter).

Now we’re back to the grueling work of writing formal essays. We spent a day revising thesis statements and writing topic sentences, and the essays are due next week. We’ve moved on to discussing the poetry of Whitman and Dickinson (who make a very nice contrast, by the way).

As for me personally, I had my second official observation by my supervisor as well as my mid-term evaluation/conference, and I have been deemed satisfactory. (Hooray!) It’s likely I’ll be observed one more time, maybe even this week while we discuss Dickinson. My tasks for the immediate future are to finish all my M.A.T. comprehensive exam paperwork in the next two weeks, watch a half-hour video of myself teaching and write about it (ouch!), and enjoy the brilliant fall days before they all disappear.

Only six weeks left now. There’s much work to be done, and I’m looking forward to sleeping a little longer in December, but I can tell already that I will be loathe to leave my students. They make every day interesting and worthwhile.

Fast forward: Weeks 7 and 8

Oh no, I’m falling behind again. Both of these weeks were mostly forgettable, but here’s the recap:

Week 7: Parent-teacher conferences were held two nights this week, and that was quite a marathon. In the half-hour after school got out, the entirety of the faculty crammed into the teachers’ lounge for an early dinner provided by the parent organization, then filed into the gym to sit at tables with little name cards on them. In the next three and a half hours, parents walked around with their students’ schedules and found each teacher, often waiting in line for extended periods of time. It seemed like English and social studies teachers had the longest lines, and ours was no exception. Both nights, we talked right until the end. There were a couple parents who were unhappy for varied reasons, and I left feeling that we weren’t able to solve all of the issues we were presented with, but for the most part it was a very positive experience. I enjoyed being able to come to school the next day and talk to the kids about meeting their families. As well, we got some guidance on which students generally need some prompting to speak in class, and other little insights. For example, we were surprised to learn that one of our students wears glasses — he sits in the back row and has never worn specs of any kind.

The tragedy of the week was that by the end of the second conference night, I came down with the flu, and then spent Thursday and Friday home sick.

Week 8: …. and I ended up staying home another whole week, which made the longest period of time I’ve ever been out of school as a student or a teacher. A word of advice: Get your flu shot! And if you can get your hands on the H1N1 vaccine and you’re a young person, do that too. That’s what did me in, and it wasn’t pretty.

It’s Monday of week 9 now, and I’m mostly better, so today I’m returning to school to pick up The Scarlet Letter. My valiant cooperating teacher stepped in and began the unit for me last week, so I’ll be trying to fill her shoes today and pick up where they left off last week.

Highlights of this coming week: Found poems, a fishbowl discussion, an observation and midterm evaluation by my supervisor, recording myself on video and being forced to watch it, and the ITED test for 9th-11th graders. For the rest of the semester I’ll try to get back on track with postings. I’m assuming I’m immune to being swined again, so I’m hoping for an illness-free eight weeks. Thanks for reading!

Week 6: Frenzy, and a conference

A belated posting: My brother came to town this weekend, and so did the sun, so blogging was forgotten. We went to a beautiful park and ran through prairie fields with his two dogs, and all was right with the world. But now the rain is back, and it’s back to business.

Last week I was at school for three days, and I spent most of each day grading more Crucible essays. I taught a couple short stories in American Lit, including a simply gruesome one by Poe called “Hop-Frog,” but I spent more time at my desk than up front overall. And I definitely learned that time goes by more quickly when you’re teaching. You can only look at so many essays without going cross-eyed.

The exciting part of the week came on Thursday and Friday, when I went to the state English teachers’ conference in Johnston, IA. I got to carpool with with a PhD student who also happens to have taught at my current high school for several years, and she was excellent company. The keynote speakers were David Dowling and Deborah Appleman, two rather big names in the world of English Education. I even got to speak with Deborah, whose book I read in a class two years ago, and she encouraged me to stay in touch with her by email. (Yay!). I found almost all of the “breakout” sessions I went to helpful. In one, I got to sit around a table with seven real live English teachers and hear their ideas about teaching The Scarlet Letter, and this couldn’t have been better timing; my task for the weekend was to come up with a three-week unit on precisely this novel.  In another, I learned about teaching rhetoric through analyzing documentaries and having students make their own short films. And so on. Thanks to my sister-in-law, who encouraged me to go even though I didn’t think I would have company. Conferences really are worthwhile. I came home feeling motivated and inspired.

And that’s that. Week 7 will be more exciting: parent-teacher conferences, Hawthorne short stories, midterm grades, rampant swine flu, and so much more.

Week 5: Homecoming Week

For the first time, I felt really overwhelmed this week. Our American Lit students had final drafts of essays due Friday, and every day several brought us drafts to look over. Many were truly terrible, and the students clearly needed help. But I’m used to having a little down time during prep periods or passing periods, and it just didn’t happen. Each day I left in a mental fog, depleted of coherent thoughts or helpful words.

I had a bit of reality check this week, as far as what I’m capable of doing. I decided to bow out of the choir I’m in for the rest of the semester, and that brings me down to one weekly event: tutoring my awesome adult students from El Salvador and Mexico. I was mostly useless every night after 8:00, and I have big assignments hanging over my head: preparing my Scarlet Letter unit, getting an application together for international teaching, and working on my M.A.T. comprehensive exam requirements. But it’ll all get done, right? Right!? Big thanks to Tim for getting me through some hard early mornings and late nights.

So, the big event of the week: Homecoming! I took part in a few spirit days (Class Color Day, Green and Gold Day, and Triplet Day), but opted out of Superhero Day and Sports Jersey Day. Though, I imagine it would have been fun for students to have their English teacher teach with a Superman cape on. I went to the homecoming football game, and our team won its first home game in three years. The first half was a battle, but four interceptions in the second half made a nice gift for our embattled team. Needless to say, pandemonium almost broke out in the student section, and yes, the parent/staff section too. Tim and I chaperoned at the dance last night, and though we mostly stood around, it was fun to see my students in a different context. Instead of bearing heavy textbooks and beleaguered faces, they had suits and ties, every sort of dress imaginable, and smiles. (Don’t worry, they do smile in class — sometimes). I’m almost 10 years out of high school now, but the whole weekend brought back memories of my days wearing obnoxious marching band uniforms, going to football games and standing for hours in the noisy student section, and getting ready for dances with friends. Though my two high schools are thousands of miles away from my school in Iowa City, we all share a distinctly American tradition. If we end up teaching in another country, I’l be curious to see what student events there are.

Next week: Grammar instruction with the freshmen, more short stories in 10th, and a round of Poe short stories in American Lit. And my job every free moment: grading two class sets of Crucible essays.

Week 4: Horror, tears, and sinners

Week four’s done, which means I’m done with a quarter of the semester! I’m still having school dreams and a bit of anxiety at times, but for the most part my heart has stopped beating double-time when I get up in front of 6th period, I’ve gotten my routine down so I don’t end up leaving important things at home, and I think I know all 120 students’ names, at least most of the time. Here are a few moments from the week.

• I had my first official observation by my supervisor. I did a dramatic reading of “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Poe, and the students were definitely into it. We had a great discussion about the story, including picking our favorite horrific details. By the way, while I prepared to teach the story, I found a great video of the American actor Vincent Price acting it out. I got a lot of tips from the video about how to make the reading even creepier. My supervisor gave me mostly positive feedback; her one comment was that during class discussion, five students remained silent. I think this will always be something to work on, because some students just don’t like talking and have an uncanny ability to go unnoticed for days.

• The annual football game between our school and our cross-town rivals was on Thursday, and as most people expected, our school was defeated soundly. But the students still wore their green and gold with pride. I like their indefatigable support for their school, regardless of the team’s record.

• In American Lit we watched the movie version of The Crucible, and I was relieved to find that I wasn’t the only person crying at the end in 7th period. That’s pretty good when you can watch a movie three times in a row and still get teary.

• I spent this weekend grading two class sets of tests over the colonial period and The Crucible, and boy was that fun. One test question was, “What did Jonathan Edwards write?” The correct answer is “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Which answers would you give credit for? These are all real answers from my students:

– “Sinners at the Hands of a Wrathful God”

- “Sinner in the Hand of a Wrathful God”

- the sermon threatening those who were not devoted to God

- an angry sermon about sinners

- church sermons

Is it the title that matters, or the fact that the student knows what the piece was about? All sorts of issues can arise in one little test, even when the answers seem so clear-cut.

Next week: Reading short stories by Zora Neale Hurston with the 9th graders, working with the 10th graders on how to to do close textual analysis in essays, and beginning the Romantic period of American Lit. On Friday the American Lit students are turning in their first essays (all on The Crucible), which means next weekend will be another wild ride of grading delights!

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading! I’ve really appreciated your comments. 

Week 3: The vicissitudes of the classroom

The Lows

I’ve noticed that when I’m in front of my class, two things are at the forefront of my attention: the need to cover specific content, and the need to keep my students engaged. I engage in friendly banter with my kids, make jokes and references to popular media, current events, and anything I think will keep students hooked into what we’re doing. I know very little about the personal lives of the 120 or so students who pass in and out of my room, but as long as they’re either smiling and participating, or at least following along in a passive sort of way, I assume we’re all on the same page and things are good.

My happy teacher bubble was burst early this week when I learned that one of our students suffered a personal tragedy in the very recent past. I often wondered why this particular student, in addition to one other, was so quiet among a class of intelligent, personable honors students, and was almost to the point of calling them both by name to get them to participate. (We track participation in class every day, and these two students don’t have a single check mark by their names). Then out of the blue, my cooperating teacher made the connection because of the student’s last name: an immediate family member had recently died. Suddenly I found myself revisiting everything I’d said in class so far — my off-the-cuff remarks about everyday occurrences such as squabbling with siblings and clashing with parents, the way I pressed the class to go deeper into Anne Bradstreet’s feeling of grief and loss in her poem “Some Verses on the Burning of our House,” and even more inconsequential interactions. I didn’t have a clue that someone in the room had suffered such a recent and deep loss. I can’t fathom what it’s like to lose someone so close, and yet to have to go on with life, to have to manage all that high school entails, from homework to extracurriculars to social life to college applications and SATs. And yet we keep teaching every day, expecting each person to stay in lockstep and do the work. I haven’t completely altered the way I view this student, but I think my willingness to understand should any bad days come has greatly increased. And I’m a bit haunted by the fact that there are probably dozens of other serious situations among my students that I’ve not aware of. The wounds are too big and too many for any one person to fix, but at the least I hope that I am one approachable, friendly face that appears in the blur of each day’s activities.

… and thank heaven for the Highs

We finished reading The Crucible this week, and it simply rocked. Even in the quiet class, the students seemed to experience the frustration and helplessness in the face of blatant injustice that Miller managed to infuse in every scene of the play. It hurt so good. One day this week I was particularly happy with how well 4th hour seemed to respond to me. I think we’ve developed good rapport. I’m still working on 6th hour, but I’m learning how to put on a boisterous, confident front for them, and they do seem to become a bit more lively when I’m chatty and extra-humorous. I feel like a bit of a fraud when I do that, but perhaps teaching sometimes calls for a bit of acting at times. Plus, a silent classroom of staring, almost-drooling faces is to be avoided at all costs … it’s simply a nightmare!

"I want to be a real boy!"

One last note: This week we had Back-to-School night, and it was fun to meet so many parents. The best moment was when a father came up to me (yes, me!) and said, “My daughter talks about you.” I have no idea what she says about me, but with those five words I felt myself turning from a see-through, dotted cut-out version of a teacher into the real deal: someone knows I exist at the front of the classroom! And, more students have been calling me by name, yet more acknowledgments of my existence. And, two of my students who are on student council asked me to chaperone the homecoming dance!  I’m real! Things are looking good.

Next week: Two days of teaching Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” to the freshmen, an official observation by my supervisor, three days of watching the film version of The Crucible, working on thesis statements, and maybe a flu shot.

Week 2: Vocab, snot, grading, and adultery

Hey all, thanks for joining in on the teaching fun. Here are the highlights from the second week of school:

• The freshmen took a vocabulary test and I got to hover over them with the intent of deterring cheating. I’m not sure it worked. Our room is crowded with desks, which are arranged in a U-shape. The joints of the U make especially good cheating spots since other students’ papers are directly in their line of vision. It’s hard to say, “Hey you, stop looking straight ahead!” It was slightly amusing to watch students who clearly hadn’t studied; they stretched, sighed, furtively looked around, perhaps hoping something on the walls would reveal the difference between “gape” and “gibe,” occasionally looked up at me with wide eyes, and ultimately settled down to fill in the blanks at random. [Click here to see how I suspect my students study.]

• I learned why hand sanitizer in the classroom isn’t a bad idea. I got to grade the above-mentioned quizzes, and after watching no less than four students (OK, they were all boys) wipe their runny noses on their arms and sleeves repeatedly as they took the quiz, I was loathe to touch their slimy papers. Rubber gloves might not hurt either. Did I mention that a student in another class was out this week because she might have H1N1?? (Help us, Elmo!) Welcome to public school, the grand interchange for communicable diseases.

• I finished grading expository essays on “The Truth About the First Thanksgiving” from the book Lies My Teacher Told Me, and to my great relief, not one of the 45 students returned to me with complaints about their marks even though one class had particularly low grades. Since it was my first time grading, I was overly diligent in my comment-writing. But spending up to half an hour on one one-paged paper isn’t a pattern I’m hoping to continue!

• I took over all three sections of American Lit this week, which means that I’m no longer watching my teacher cover the material in one class and then “mirroring” her in the next two; it’s all me. We’re in the middle of The Crucible at the moment, and though I’ve read the play before, I’m finding myself frantically rereading and annotating every night, and just barely staying ahead of the students. I taught a total of about 12 class periods this week, and all went well except one.  Not surprisingly, it was the 6th period class, and this Friday they lapsed into their silent ways again. But 7th period helped me again recover my hopes: they walked in five minutes after my sad 6th period encounter, and chaos promptly ensued. After a rousing performance of Act II, in which John and Elizabeth Proctor deal with the aftermath of John’s affair with the beautiful, desperate Abigail Williams, almost all of my 17 students were jumping up and down (some literally) in their excitement to throw their opinions into the arena. At some point I abandoned the dictatorial practice of calling on people with their hands raised and we all talked at once, sometimes hearing each other and sometimes not, and we analyzed the heck out of those Proctors and ourselves. It was simply delicious.  When the bell rang, two students proclaimed, “Today was really emotional for me!” and “Oh, that was such a good class, Ms. Orsino!” Music to my ears, children. And I’m sure they don’t have a clue their comments have brought me smiles all weekend.

Week 1: Taking the stage

I’ve just ended my first week of student teaching, and though my body was physically exhausted by Friday afternoon, as evidenced by my early bedtime of 8:00,  I’m exhilarated. My teacher is gutsy, and perhaps in attempt to share that gutsiness with me, on my second day she gave me the opportunity to teach our last class, Honors American Lit. I jumped at the chance, and suddenly I was in student-teaching heaven: a small class of 18 eager, animated juniors and seniors met me with smiling faces, responded to my every question with raised hands and (mostly) insightful comments, and even laughed at my little jokes along the way. Since then I’ve taught 7th hour most days, and seeing these students is always a treat at the end of a day; even if I’m tired, they liven me up.

 The low point of the week came the first (and thus far, only) time I taught 6th period, another section of American Lit. We were reading a poem by Anne Bradstreet, and they simply wouldn’t talk. I’m an amateur at teaching poetry, to be sure, but I was bewildered by the fact that a packed room of intelligent honors students wouldn’t work with me. I had five minutes to regroup between periods, and to my great relief, the same material went off without a hitch in 7th.  I learned two lessons that day: first, be prepared! If one discussion question isn’t working, have another one ready. Or find a way to help the kids connect to the text directly. In this case, the poem was about losing a house in a fire, and the 7th hour kids were tripping over themselves to answer the question, “What one thing would you save if your house was on fire?” And the second lesson: Sometimes lessons just flop. You can put on a one-man circus up front and they still might not respond. But the period is only 55 minutes long, and when it’s over, it’s time to move on and think about tomorrow.

Leading up to this semester, I’ve had my share of nervousness regarding how students will perceive me as a student teacher. In this high school, many students’ parents are highly regarded professionals at the university. The son of my department chair is  in my 6th-hour class. But one trick I’ve found is that simply acting confident in front of students can go a long way. At times I’ve grumbled about how long I’ve been in college or doing jobs I don’t love, but this week I was extremely grateful for those extra years of life experience. I’ve read more and seen more than others who start student teaching when they’re 20 or 21, and more importantly, I’ve had time to get comfortable in my own skin and become a much more confident person than I was in my young college years. I’ve become a little more impervious to embarrassment and getting flustered. Yesterday in 7th period as I was sitting on a table gesticulating about Mary Rowlandson’s account of being kidnapped by Indians, my books and notes went sliding off my lap and onto the floor. I said, “Whoops!” and laughed, and everyone else laughed too, and someone rushed to help me gather my papers. A few years ago, I probably would have gotten flustered, but yesterday it was actually kind of fun to give them a reason to laugh. (We’ll see if I remain in their good favor when I return their expository essays on Monday).

Overall, the week reminded me of the reasons I wanted to get into teaching in the first place. I get to work with incredibly interesting young people. One of my favorite professors used to begin every semester by saying, “When I look at you, I see your faces shining like the sun,” and through the teenage smells of cologne, body spray, and yes, sometimes unpleasant odors, and despite the guises of toughness and coolness, I see hints of that shining brilliance too. And in addition to interacting with fine human beings all day, it’s my job to be an intellectual. When questions come up in class (“Did Puritans think it was a sin to be emotional?” or “What’s a hawk’s bell?” or “What was Christopher Columbus’s real name?”), my job is to find the answers. I love doing reseach on these kinds of things between classes because I get to keep learning, and the material stays fresh. I love that this job keeps me on my toes. I’ll never know everything, or be able to read every book on every subject, and this is a comfort to me: I’ll never get bored unless I let myself stop caring, and as a teacher there are a million reasons to care.

Goodbye testing, hello teaching.

A few days ago I worked my last day for Iowa Testing Programs, the creator of the famous ITBS and ITED assessments. For a little over a year, I worked as a research assistant with the person in charge of writing the high school language tests for the ITED. It was a rare privilege to be included in the many processes that go into creating a final form.

Here are just a few things I learned:

• It can take years, not months, to create tests.  Once the long process of forming a good passage and item set is done, the test is tried out on students in Iowa, revised, tried out nationally, revised again, then made into a final form. And let’s not forget the countless internal and external reviews for interest level, fairness in regard to regional bias, gender bias, ELL students, and any other sort of bias you can imagine would affect a test. Then there are the teacher panels, days-long events in which teachers pore over our work and bring us back to the reality of the classroom. Tests take time. In fact, one of my last tasks this summer was revising a set of items I worked on last summer.
• Test-makers are not drones, and the testing company is not as much of a machine as I imagined. Everyone looks fairly human-like. They sit in regular offices, some with windows and some without, they have office plants, and like to eat snacks.  Most, if not all, of the people I worked with have graduate degrees in all sorts of fields. My boss, with whom I  worked almost exclusively, has decades of experience in assessment, but is also a wizard when it comes to the English language. I believe that she could easily have taught in numerous subjects at the college level or been a successful writer in other fields, but it’s the world of assessment that was lucky enough to catch her. I have met few people who are as intelligent, meticulous, and thoughtful as her, and working with her forced me to raise my own standards. I’m relieved to know that there are people like her making the tests my future students will take.
• This may blow your mind: Test makers do not expect teachers to “teach to the test.” In fact, the test makers I know bend over backwards to find out what teachers are teaching. My boss’s bookshelf holds several high school textbooks that she refers to frequently. Recently, when I was creating a set of vocabulary items, she sent me to the university’s curriculum lab to pore over the most recent versions of textbooks and vocabulary instruction books to make sure we’re testing relevant, grade-appropriate content. There is no hidden agenda behind what gets tested. This fact is seen most clearly in teacher panels. Thoughtful teacher comments have the power to kill an item, or even an entire passage if their arguments are convincing enough.
• Standardized assessment isn’t evil. One of my professors once commented, “Our students deserve to be assessed. They deserve to have a professional evaluation of their skills.” I agree with this. Though she may have been referring to in-class assessments such as feedback on essays and grades in general, I think it can apply to standardized assessment as well. Testing is currently a method our country employs in an attempt to give a fair, quality education to every child. No Child Left Behind has clear problems, but the massive bi-partisan support with which it passed shows that its intent was a good one.  And to approach the issue from another angle, my boss mentioned the other day that standardized testing in school makes a lot of sense when you consider that the SAT and ACT are prerequisites for attending college. With as much pressure as there is for people to get college degrees, it makes sense that students should be given some instruction and practice taking standardized tests in earlier years. And finally, test results can be used and abused in terrible ways, and this is what makes people like my boss cringe: we’ve spent countless hours creating an interesting, fair test, but how those results are used to determine a kid’s future is completely out of our control.

Though this was a mentally exhausting job, I’m glad for the insight it’s given me. I wish every teacher could have the experience of seeing the creation of a standardized test behind the scenes, because not only would it make them better test writers for their own classes, but it might help heal the chasm that has sprung wide open between educators and test makers. In the future I hope I remember what I’ve learned and stay tuned to the concerns of both sides.

Going to school to learn to teach

This fall I will be student teaching in a local high school with a highly energetic, experienced teacher. I’ll have three different classes: Freshman English, Honors 10 English, and Honors American Lit (11th and 12th graders). I’m excited for the chance to put a year and a half of education courses to work. I also imagine I’ll see a wide range of abilities, interests, and developmental levels as kids from grades 9-12 cycle through our classroom each day. I’m setting up this blog to entice myself to write about my experiences as a pre-service teacher. I hope to record my student teaching experiences here, and down the road, my experiences as a ‘real’ teacher, possibly in an international school.

Here’s to teaching, and to learning. Please feel free to leave comments — I want to learn from you, too.