from an e-mail to prof. barry o'connell:
we're two days and an eternity into our hell week of lesson critiques. we plan and teach a lesson every day for 8 days, and teach two lessons on one of those days. we're being observed and commented on by a group of hand-picked veteran teachers. by its nature, the process is grueling - but seems to be approximating school year routines (or at least school year stress levels) fairly well. also, the teachers who are observing us are giving excellent feedback. unfortunately, some of my colleagues are a little too used to grade inflation, and seem resistant to the fact that we're recieving the occasional - and mostly justified - C (and lower). i'm operating under the impression that i'm a functional teacher, but in no way harbor the notion that i'm consistently proficient in all the instruction areas i need to cover. furthermore, while i lean towards the romance of the "natural teacher," it's increasingly clear that there is a fair amount of substance within the curricular education training approach. that being said, it's nice to be taken to task in those pockets of instruction left uncovered by my youthful charm. at times, however, there seems to be an inconsistency in both the structure of our training last month as it relates to our assessment this week, as well as the strictness and interpretive flexibility of our observers as they grade us with the given rubric. yet, this itself is a teachable episode - the communication flaws of administration, the philisophical discrepancies of a faculty, and the manifold tug-of-war between relevance, application, communication, production, and consumption. problems and meta-problems in the desk and at the chalkboard (or, more appropriately and less poetically, the dry-erase board).
**
so that's that. a system of not wholly unjustified frustration in most/all cases. there's plenty that could have been done last month to prevent what seems to be a huge case of people not being on the same page, and people feeling like they've been instructed contrary things, or being held responsible for things they were un- or underprepared for. this high-pressure assessment environment should have been more present during the summer school session - where many teacher corps members were given carte blance in their classrooms, and few if any of us recieved even the least sort of active instruction/real assessment on anything beyond classroom management (which is, agreeably, something we all need to learn). the irony of this last point is that many of us have no performed comfortability with the concept of assessing our students during lesson plans (i, most certainly, am in this set of people); we were modeled a situation of little/no accountability, and most of us developed a teaching routine in a sink-or-swim environment of little beyond peer support. this, again, is a strangely ironic and mete-pedagogical problem - perhaps structurally similar to those failures in the public schools system that we are trying to address. to take this a bit further - classroom management is more than just the ability to manage/manipulate students as socio-behavioral individuals, it is also to manage/manipulate them as thinking individuals.
unfortunately, i feel like i'm at quite a loss of structured preparation to deal with this latter element of classroom management - and i'm being called to task on it in a way that is rather unexpected. nevertheless, this is worthwhile. though my "grade" suffered today (and i'm at no end of intolerance with people whose frustrations are scoped mainly within their concerns about their graduate school gpa, or their feeling that the basic case of either being in a graduate program or being in a public university in the south implies generous grade inflation in favor of their previous insitution; to this latter set of conditions, i'd like to offer a reminder that the teacher corps is a graduate program in name only, and that its an alternate route teaching program - by definition we've never had substantial curricular exposure to teaching, or teaching instruction), i have tangible, understandable holes in my instructional strategies, and i intend to fix them. contrary to the response that 2+ hours of lesson planning were all for naught, and that i'd have no idea what i'd have to do if that weren't enough - i think the eventual response to my shortcomings will be a realization that i'm doing too much work in the wrong areas of planning. i'm going to have to plan a steady stream of 50 minute lessons every week for at least two years - i'd venture a guess that the response to most of mine and my colleagues needs is one of focus and economy. however, i do believe that perhaps we were never given any real instruction on how this economy might be developed, that our time in the month of july was not managed properly/efficiently (indeed, perhaps in ways similar to how my lesson was not managed well today), that this high-pressure environment may be creating plenty of avoidable stress, but - at the end of the day - i'll hit august with at least some of the screws tightened. at the very least, i'll have been given an opportunity to work with peers and veterans to decide on which screws are loose, or at least be reminded of them.
7.12.2005
7.07.2005
the students will (TSW) label all radians and coordinate points on the unit circle
the title is a transcription of one of the listed objectives for my model lesson today; and it is, when interpreted at face value, a drastically impossible/impractical objective. clearly, the intent is to label all "common" and/or "important" and/or "special" radians and coordiantes on the unit circle (this is where i wish that i had enough rudimentary HTML knowledge to post a graph), e.g. 0, 30, 45, 60, and 90 degrees in the 1st quadrant (again, more advanced computer competence would allow me to actually present these in radians, as well as give their coordinates) . however, when i raised a question regarding both the validity of the objective as it was stated as well as the acceptability of such a presented goal, our veteran teacher responded - in effect - by stating that (a) i was able to understand what it meant, and (b) you don't want to overcomplecate your written goals.
my problems with this -
(a) i was only able to understand what this meant via focused intuition, and only this after doing a double-take when actually reading the objective. this, in my mind, is a situation wholly insufficient for maintaining the academic integrity of a classroom; a student - or any person in the classroom - should not be left to fend for themselves - especially on intuitive grounds - in order to understand with confidence the very premise of the day's lesson. this is a particuarly difficult situation when you're dealing with a population for which this material is new, and who may not even notice the logical snag in such a written objective as the one give above - which can only lead to some reducto ad absurdum in their mathematical worldview somewhere down the line, and thus rather uncecessary confusion. if objectives are not internally consisent, then they have no place as focal points of discourse.
(b) the words "common," "special," and "important" are not overly complex terms. rather, they are in the exact set of words that serve to demystify the situation. furthermore, these radians are actually useful within our setting, due to their functional smoothness with those properties of math we usually deem worthwhile. so, i can't see how any emphasis on the powerful substructure of these objects - which resurfaces again and again in various mathematical fields - can serve to overcomplicate, rather than merely provide both logical consistency and further narrative boost to the character of these coordinates.
so this was today. yesterday, during another model lesson, our veteran teacher was questioned about the role of austria in the marshall plan - an inquiry sparked by the teacher's drawing of the "iron curtain" across post-war europe, signifying those countries east of the line as soviet satellites, and those left of the line as recipients of marshall plan funds. austria was on the western side of the line, and - whether it belonged there or not, i do not know - a student wanted to check that this was the case. the teacher responded - in effect - that we would talk about austria later, when the cold war intensifies and austria joins the ottoman empire.
clearly, both this and the "all radians and coordinates" case were most likely simple mistakes. however, in both cases, surprising difficulty arose in attempts to discuss what seemed to be factual missteps on the part of the teacher. perhaps this is due to a degree of defensiveness on tha part of the person questioned, but it seems that these sorts of inquiries are not inappropriate in a teacher-training scenario. in the austrian case, the veteran teacher responded to my inquiry that talk of austria and the ottoman empire would be covered in a later lecture. when i persisted in wondering what post-wwII austria had to do with the ottoman empire (which i primarily associate with turkey and wwI), she continued to stress the fact that these connections would be covered in a later lecture, when the class would go over "new maps" vs. "old maps." though still unable to see how this validated what seemed to be either an untruth or a huge analytical stetch, i did not push the issue further.
i don't know what to make of all this - i witness similar factual messiness on part of some teacher corps colleagues (and they very well may have anecdotal evidence of my own inconsistencies in this field) during the summer school placement last month. as i find the mere dissemination of untruth (regardless of any relation to intent) something of a cardinal sin (excuse my popery) in the ritual of the pedagogical performative, i haven't taken these instances lightly. on the other hand, as any sort of dialogue about these observations carries a high risk of offense on the part of those observed, i haven't known how to procede. regardless, due to the high instance of these sort of jarring events, i'm worried that there is some sort of structural weakness in the very theories of teaching that i'm coming into contact with, at least as i parse them with my staunch opposition to the dissemination of untruth.
a last anecdote: during a different lecture/discussion that i encountered yesterday, the dialogue shifted from the role of mississippi oil & gas companies in state efforts to fund education reforms to a broader discussion on the global oil economy of the 70s and 80s. as a start, the teacher mentioned the drastic drop in oil prices during the 80s - this happening after the confrontation with the state government over educational funding (the governor at the time wanted to raise the severance tax on oil to fund public schools - specifically kindergarten programs. the oil & gas companies wanted nothing to do with it). then, a student asked about the gas shortage in the 70s, and whether this had anything to do with the companies's opposition to the tax raise. the teacher said that while the gas shortage played a major role in the exploration for oil in mississippi, he had no idea how this may have related with the industry's response to the severance tax. what is more, this person worked on the governor's staff during this very period. in contrast to the jarring equivocation earlier that day, this person's very honest admittance of limitation seemed particularly impressive.
**
in other news: i bought ten ties today at a thrift store.
my problems with this -
(a) i was only able to understand what this meant via focused intuition, and only this after doing a double-take when actually reading the objective. this, in my mind, is a situation wholly insufficient for maintaining the academic integrity of a classroom; a student - or any person in the classroom - should not be left to fend for themselves - especially on intuitive grounds - in order to understand with confidence the very premise of the day's lesson. this is a particuarly difficult situation when you're dealing with a population for which this material is new, and who may not even notice the logical snag in such a written objective as the one give above - which can only lead to some reducto ad absurdum in their mathematical worldview somewhere down the line, and thus rather uncecessary confusion. if objectives are not internally consisent, then they have no place as focal points of discourse.
(b) the words "common," "special," and "important" are not overly complex terms. rather, they are in the exact set of words that serve to demystify the situation. furthermore, these radians are actually useful within our setting, due to their functional smoothness with those properties of math we usually deem worthwhile. so, i can't see how any emphasis on the powerful substructure of these objects - which resurfaces again and again in various mathematical fields - can serve to overcomplicate, rather than merely provide both logical consistency and further narrative boost to the character of these coordinates.
so this was today. yesterday, during another model lesson, our veteran teacher was questioned about the role of austria in the marshall plan - an inquiry sparked by the teacher's drawing of the "iron curtain" across post-war europe, signifying those countries east of the line as soviet satellites, and those left of the line as recipients of marshall plan funds. austria was on the western side of the line, and - whether it belonged there or not, i do not know - a student wanted to check that this was the case. the teacher responded - in effect - that we would talk about austria later, when the cold war intensifies and austria joins the ottoman empire.
clearly, both this and the "all radians and coordinates" case were most likely simple mistakes. however, in both cases, surprising difficulty arose in attempts to discuss what seemed to be factual missteps on the part of the teacher. perhaps this is due to a degree of defensiveness on tha part of the person questioned, but it seems that these sorts of inquiries are not inappropriate in a teacher-training scenario. in the austrian case, the veteran teacher responded to my inquiry that talk of austria and the ottoman empire would be covered in a later lecture. when i persisted in wondering what post-wwII austria had to do with the ottoman empire (which i primarily associate with turkey and wwI), she continued to stress the fact that these connections would be covered in a later lecture, when the class would go over "new maps" vs. "old maps." though still unable to see how this validated what seemed to be either an untruth or a huge analytical stetch, i did not push the issue further.
i don't know what to make of all this - i witness similar factual messiness on part of some teacher corps colleagues (and they very well may have anecdotal evidence of my own inconsistencies in this field) during the summer school placement last month. as i find the mere dissemination of untruth (regardless of any relation to intent) something of a cardinal sin (excuse my popery) in the ritual of the pedagogical performative, i haven't taken these instances lightly. on the other hand, as any sort of dialogue about these observations carries a high risk of offense on the part of those observed, i haven't known how to procede. regardless, due to the high instance of these sort of jarring events, i'm worried that there is some sort of structural weakness in the very theories of teaching that i'm coming into contact with, at least as i parse them with my staunch opposition to the dissemination of untruth.
a last anecdote: during a different lecture/discussion that i encountered yesterday, the dialogue shifted from the role of mississippi oil & gas companies in state efforts to fund education reforms to a broader discussion on the global oil economy of the 70s and 80s. as a start, the teacher mentioned the drastic drop in oil prices during the 80s - this happening after the confrontation with the state government over educational funding (the governor at the time wanted to raise the severance tax on oil to fund public schools - specifically kindergarten programs. the oil & gas companies wanted nothing to do with it). then, a student asked about the gas shortage in the 70s, and whether this had anything to do with the companies's opposition to the tax raise. the teacher said that while the gas shortage played a major role in the exploration for oil in mississippi, he had no idea how this may have related with the industry's response to the severance tax. what is more, this person worked on the governor's staff during this very period. in contrast to the jarring equivocation earlier that day, this person's very honest admittance of limitation seemed particularly impressive.
**
in other news: i bought ten ties today at a thrift store.
7.05.2005
the last required; #4, my summer at summer school.
(pre-blog shout-outs: (1) the illustrious, oft-essential laurel a. kilgour, for showing up, (2) a small enclave/conclave in amherst: if you haven't picked up on it yet, i never really get to any point, or - alternately - i never really betray the non-space of the point itself (points, if you remember, are zero-dimensional mathematical objects; perfectly fit by a rumination of coordinates; there is nothing linear nor volumnious (a word?) nor temporal about them), (3) sarah, of jake and/or sarah, who pointed out an error in my disney reference.)
as i'm tapping away at the free internet pod at san fransisco bread co. on jackson ave., and since i have 13 min before i go to lunch w/ my roommates, this summer reflection blog will most likely fail to get outside its own meta-blog costume, much to the dismay of nearly everyone involved (re: a discussion w/ robbie, where i admitted that my response to the near-necessary self-loathing that results from the production of blog-text is a constant parenthetical chain of a sort of textual self-awareness of my own poor wheat v. chaff ratio [re: a daniel hall e-mail]).
so, my summer school teaching experience - itself so varied in scenario, and so obviously divorced from a more-or-less normative classroom environment/culture. nevertheless, a happily controlled, non-confrontational lab space for the application of educational strategy; a well-padded playground for getting my feet wet. all this layered with a short list of desires, cravings (1) my own classroom, (2) a mathematics course, (3) curricular direction. perhaps, then, my appetite is whetted.
things that are more interesting:
(1) i almost failed a child. scenario: a large book report project, involving paragraphy on setting, characters, a plot summery, and a critical review. event: octavius, one of the ms. savage-dubbed "molina's mafia," turned in a branstorming packet in what was clearly not his handwriting. later, turned in a typed rough draft (in this - sentences obviously not his). upon confrontation/conversation, the argument that his cousin had helped his with - among other things - his grammer - crumbled easily after being loosely quizzed on the content presented in the book report. arguments that i thought his family was stupid, or that i was out to get him - similarly short-lived. aftermath: failed all sections represented in rough draft, though able to accrue points in those absent (to his credit, he had been working hard on his critical review in class, and had made much progress therein). poss points: 60. extra credit opportunities (offered to the whole class a day or two before) stressed in his case: involved various exercises on poems from norton anthology, outlaw bible of american poetry. result: 40 points accumulated via book report. some reluctance to poetry extra-credit; began by paraphrasis wc williams, slugging through langston hughes. octavius saved his ass on the penultimate day, via a long conversation about some poems he had rushed through (dickenson - "a fly buzzzed," hughes - "the negro speaks of rivers," "harlem (2)," wc williams - [something about old age]). sidenote: qualin, another mafia staple - and a scarface fan- spent a long time one morning shuffling through the outlaw bible, his interest sparked by d.a. levy, and a poem with the word "mcdonald's" in the title.
[note: it is now 1:07 pm - long after the estimated departure time for lunch. i fear i will soon be taken away from this computer. further elements will be quite abbreviated.]
(2) the last day of summer school was bizarre: brief, cumulative vocab test; first half of morning spent doing nothing while children rehearsed their "plays"; second half of morning spent watching aformentioned plays - all loosely based on the "pilgrims coming to america," all loosely put in modern context (highlights: (i) quote, "where can i find this chief trees," (ii) an america's most wanted spoof - "the new world's most wanted"), all involving some sort of poster or diaramma (sp?); last moments of morning spent by being awarded various randomly assigned titles and pins (mine was service-based), and feasting on subway sandwiches, hot wings, donuts, and cupcakes.
(3) i babysat ari's hog this weekend. highlight: visit to lake patsy, where (a) the hog followed me around quite intently/contently(?), (b) we made a small patch of mud for the hog, in which he rolled around, (c) the hog chased me as i ran around [this event caught on video], (d) the hog ate a burnt worm.
(4) i saw dave chappelle twice. read robbie's blog (robert pollack, "celebrity sighting," and "chapelle, continued" - also, robbie's a hell of a writer) for the story.
(5) margaret visited. powerfully.
as i'm tapping away at the free internet pod at san fransisco bread co. on jackson ave., and since i have 13 min before i go to lunch w/ my roommates, this summer reflection blog will most likely fail to get outside its own meta-blog costume, much to the dismay of nearly everyone involved (re: a discussion w/ robbie, where i admitted that my response to the near-necessary self-loathing that results from the production of blog-text is a constant parenthetical chain of a sort of textual self-awareness of my own poor wheat v. chaff ratio [re: a daniel hall e-mail]).
so, my summer school teaching experience - itself so varied in scenario, and so obviously divorced from a more-or-less normative classroom environment/culture. nevertheless, a happily controlled, non-confrontational lab space for the application of educational strategy; a well-padded playground for getting my feet wet. all this layered with a short list of desires, cravings (1) my own classroom, (2) a mathematics course, (3) curricular direction. perhaps, then, my appetite is whetted.
things that are more interesting:
(1) i almost failed a child. scenario: a large book report project, involving paragraphy on setting, characters, a plot summery, and a critical review. event: octavius, one of the ms. savage-dubbed "molina's mafia," turned in a branstorming packet in what was clearly not his handwriting. later, turned in a typed rough draft (in this - sentences obviously not his). upon confrontation/conversation, the argument that his cousin had helped his with - among other things - his grammer - crumbled easily after being loosely quizzed on the content presented in the book report. arguments that i thought his family was stupid, or that i was out to get him - similarly short-lived. aftermath: failed all sections represented in rough draft, though able to accrue points in those absent (to his credit, he had been working hard on his critical review in class, and had made much progress therein). poss points: 60. extra credit opportunities (offered to the whole class a day or two before) stressed in his case: involved various exercises on poems from norton anthology, outlaw bible of american poetry. result: 40 points accumulated via book report. some reluctance to poetry extra-credit; began by paraphrasis wc williams, slugging through langston hughes. octavius saved his ass on the penultimate day, via a long conversation about some poems he had rushed through (dickenson - "a fly buzzzed," hughes - "the negro speaks of rivers," "harlem (2)," wc williams - [something about old age]). sidenote: qualin, another mafia staple - and a scarface fan- spent a long time one morning shuffling through the outlaw bible, his interest sparked by d.a. levy, and a poem with the word "mcdonald's" in the title.
[note: it is now 1:07 pm - long after the estimated departure time for lunch. i fear i will soon be taken away from this computer. further elements will be quite abbreviated.]
(2) the last day of summer school was bizarre: brief, cumulative vocab test; first half of morning spent doing nothing while children rehearsed their "plays"; second half of morning spent watching aformentioned plays - all loosely based on the "pilgrims coming to america," all loosely put in modern context (highlights: (i) quote, "where can i find this chief trees," (ii) an america's most wanted spoof - "the new world's most wanted"), all involving some sort of poster or diaramma (sp?); last moments of morning spent by being awarded various randomly assigned titles and pins (mine was service-based), and feasting on subway sandwiches, hot wings, donuts, and cupcakes.
(3) i babysat ari's hog this weekend. highlight: visit to lake patsy, where (a) the hog followed me around quite intently/contently(?), (b) we made a small patch of mud for the hog, in which he rolled around, (c) the hog chased me as i ran around [this event caught on video], (d) the hog ate a burnt worm.
(4) i saw dave chappelle twice. read robbie's blog (robert pollack, "celebrity sighting," and "chapelle, continued" - also, robbie's a hell of a writer) for the story.
(5) margaret visited. powerfully.
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