Future Teacher, Forever Student

One pressing question that is at the forefront of my mind as I consider lesson planning, content delivery, and the alignment of my teaching with my philosophy as a progressivist educator is this: how can I maintain a balanced representation of perspective and experience when teaching the humanities? The incorporation of multiple, coexisting, and/or simultaneous realities when examining the past and present is what makes the humanities (and really anything, for that matter) worth studying. A large part of my senior thesis for my American Studies/History program last semester highlighted the importance of teaching World War I through the eyes of those who experienced it and its repercussions, not only from the trenches, but also on the homefront, during the interwar period, and beyond. The fact that experiencing history was and is not limited to white voices, white authored textbooks, and old white men who started wars is enough of a reason for students and teachers to demand a wide rang...

After a busy week of planning warm-ups and parts of lessons around school assemblies and team meetings, I am grateful to have this morning (Saturday) to reflect on the past few days of my student teaching experience. While there were many ups and some downs throughout the week, I would like to highlight the so far successful lesson plan and materials I designed with the support of a special educator to accommodate one of my students with Down Syndrome. Our class is still focusing on Westward Expansion in the United States, and together with reading and writing activities, our students are also working on developing map comprehension skills that combine identifying geographic locations with an understanding of cardinal directions. For the lesson I created, I chose to harness my student’s major interests in identifying shapes on a map as certain places, creating a mini timeline project that tracks the addition of new states to the Union as white settlers pushed west. Source: ...

Source: https://www.lourdes.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/MLK.jpg In memory of Martin Luther King, Jr., his legacy as a civil rights leader, and his call for social action against discrimination of any and all kinds, EMS devoted the half day of classes on Monday (MLK Day) and some class time on Tuesday to talk about the major social issues that impact the lives of our community members (and the human race) daily: fighting against racism and discrimination, embracing diversity, standing up for personal beliefs, creating equitable learning environments, and finding common ground were major themes within our studies. Team Nova decided to start the difficult conversations about diversity, social justice, and inclusion with our students by first screening three films centered around the fight for equality in the United States. I watched Remember the Titans with Mr. J and a third of our students, while the rest of our team was divided between Hidden Figures and Selma (all grea...

There is nothing I dislike more than when a catch–all phrase is used to justify otherwise unacceptable behavior: “Boys will be boys,” “If the shoe fits,” and “Happy wife, happy life” are all common examples of phrases employed as blanket excuses for a wide variety of social situations. Of course, such idioms exist in a similar way to many stereotypes in that they may be true in some cases, but not others. While the situation I am about to describe was not justified in any way by its participants or bystanders, it was a scenario I believe many would label as one where boys were just “being boys.” For this post, I would like to reflect on the dilemma many educators face when establishing classroom norms for behavior management, particularly teachers of students who are coping with the rapid developmental changes of puberty that can sometimes lead to chaotic choices. Source: https://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/04/12/sunday-review/12BOYLAN/12BOYLAN-master675-v2.gif A group ...

I am a firm believer that learning never ends, and as a future educator, I aim to support the continuous growth and development of my students’ knowledge and skills by providing them with multiple opportunities for formative assessment and revision before any summative demonstrations of learning. Unfortunately, not all mandated assessments for students attending schools in the United States offer the same sort of “test, reflect, revise, and repeat” cycle that nurtures continuous learning in the same way that I strive to do in my unit planning. From my own experiences, Massachusetts’s MCAS testing was a high stakes exam for my teachers, but students also felt the pressure to meet statewide curriculum and performance goals. The value of standardized testing is a hot debate topic among educators, and while the progressivist teacher in me tends to stand against standardized testing (after all, standardized tests focus on state statistics and curriculum in a way that reduces the centrality...

“The Mondays:” A sometimes chronic case of fatigue, procrastination, and disinterest in laborious tasks, all wrapped up in a lack of motivation. Unfortunately, “the Mondays” seems to be a plague that most humans can’t quite shake, no matter one’s age or occupation. However, as I reflect on my classroom observations from the end of last week and the beginning of this one, I can’t help but wonder how legitimate a case of “the Fridays” may be for the human race as well. By “the Fridays,” I do not simply mean the perceived lifts in energy levels or the peaks in overall happiness as students and teachers look forward to the weekend. While excitement does build for many school community members as Friday morning fades into Friday afternoon, I have started to notice (and even feel) how the anxiety and dread that affects a majority of people on Monday morning is a reality for some on Friday, too. No one has a perfect home life, and it is important to recognize that “perfect” is also entire...

Happy Thursday! As the first week of my student teaching semester comes to a close, I thought I would take some time to reflect on the introductory lessons to our Westward Expansion unit. Although most of today’s class time was absorbed by Vermont’s STAR reading exam (I will post my thoughts on the STAR as I learn more about it in the coming days), students had an opportunity to continue their westward expansion work during whatever class time remained after they turned in their exams. By tomorrow (Friday, 1/10), students are expected to have completed the work for the three introductory lessons reviewed earlier this week. From my observations, most students appear to be on track for tomorrow’s due date, but only time will tell! For now, I’d like to focus on the multiple forms of media employed in these opening lessons, and I will note some major points of consideration that I am still pondering after four days of learning. The introductory lessons for the Westward Expansion unit a...

Picture this: You walk into your eighth grade humanities classroom (or, maybe your middle/junior high school split social studies and English Language Arts into separate courses, making ELA more applicable here). Your backpack is slung over your shoulder and casually dropped onto the floor as you settle into your seat. It’s the classroom routine to start working on a “Do Now” prompt as soon as you get to class, but you notice there isn’t one written on the board. Then, you see it. Next to the first bullet of today’s agenda is the word “mugshot” printed in bold letters. Is today Picture Day? You look your outfit up and down in a panic, but soon your teacher enters and hands everyone a worksheet with a matching MUGshot title. No, I am not trying to bring back the dreaded memories of middle school picture day, shining faces and gleaming braces included. I’m talking about a warm-up activity centered around Mechanics, Usage, and Grammar (a.k.a. MUGshots). In short, these activities ask...

Happy Monday! What a wonderful start to my first full week of student teaching at Essex Middle School. As someone who loves great timing, I was very excited to find out that today, our eighth graders would begin a new unit on westward expansion in the United States— how could I not love starting a new teaching adventure with the start of a new unit? Absolutely perfect, if you ask me. Since I would like to give myself some time to process the classroom dynamic at the start of our new unit before writing a post (and of course, I would love to pair my reflection as a teacher with the coming reactions of students as we dive deeper into the unit’s introduction), I decided that I will reflect on the unit’s opening days later this week. For now, I would like to focus on a phrase that was said between students last week while working on their literary device poster projects, and then came up again in casual conversation today: “It’s a rough, rough, rough draft. Things can always get bette...

Happy New Year, Old Sport! That’s right, I am back in action with the start of 2020 (and hopefully, these ‘20s are even better than the Roarin’ ones!). The new decade also brings an early start to a new semester here at Saint Michael’s College for me and my fellow education majors. The beginning days of 2020 hold a lot of promise for me in particular, and I am hoping to keep up this initial momentum for an exciting year: I have started to pursue different publishing opportunities for a novel I have been working on since I was a senior in high school, I am eagerly waiting to hear back from the Fulbright Fellowship board about my pending application, and yesterday marked the first day of my last semester at St. Mike’s as an undergrad. As a secondary education major, my final semester will be filled with the preparation, practice, and learning opportunities that naturally come with a hands-on student teaching internship. In order to better process and document my time as a studen...