To Respond, or Not to Respond
While
this class was an incredible amount of work, I am stepping away from it with a
sense of accomplishment. In all of the
years that I have gone to school, and those are many, this quarter has been the
most intense and daunting ever. Even
when I did the original fifteen lessons (for the “composition” unit) they took
so much out of me, mentally, that I almost started crying when I found out that
it was all (almost) for naught. I guess
I am a stereotypical male in that I don’t (didn’t) read the directions before
beginning. I was just so excited to get
going! I have loved education for most
of my life, were it Sunday School or teaching my own kids. Being in any education class gives me a sense
of excitement.
The
assignments I worked on this quarter broadened my horizons. From learning how to create a blog to
learning eight other works of literature in one day, I feel more prepared for
what is to come. The blog was fun,
because it is something that I always wanted to learn how to do. The book talk was fun as well as well as
enlightening, because it gave me the chance to talk about something that I have
great appreciation for.
The
literature mini-lesson went well, but not as well as I would have liked. Again, I included something that I hold dear
to my heart. Comic books provided an
escape for my life as a kid and young adult, and I was thrilled when I noticed
similar storytelling styles in the Sherman Alexie text. In my mind I envisioned me teaching a great
lesson with the “students” ending the lesson with sloppy smiles on their
faces. They didn’t have to be singing halleluiah,
but I wasn’t trying to count my chickens too early. When I began to teach the lesson though, two
things frustrated me: that the “students” weren’t accessing the information as
well as I wanted them to, and that time was slipping away far too quickly! I would love to, in the future, take some
time to give this lesson the treatment it deserves—a full class time, while
integrating some of the information and techniques that I observed from the
other mini lessons. The “negative” vs.
“positive” space ideas were genius.
Also, this lesson does require some serious modeling!
Now,
the unit plan. I was relieved when, in
my placement classroom, I came across a binder on my mentor teacher’s desk
titled, “Persuasive Writing.” As I
adapted it to my own fifteen lessons, I made an attempt to be honest; I didn’t
“beg-borrow-steal” too much of it, I just used it mainly for inspiration. Regardless, I learned a big lesson that day
in the instructor’s office. Besides to
simply read the directions of any task, I learned to pick myself up from the
dumps. I had never put more into an
assignment as I did that composition lesson.
His advice was sound though—don’t scrap all of it. I made a new outline for the unit, and began
again. My family had to do without me
for a few more days, but, in the end, I had a product that I am more proud of
than the composition one.
Even
though this class was more work than any other one that I have taken before, it
fits right into some of the other feelings I have been feeling over the weeks
of this quarter. In EDUC, someone asked
if all of this was worth it, meaning all of the work. It took me a few weeks to answer this
question, and the realization wasn’t that the financial rewards would be
enough. What all of this work translates
to is showing us, the perspective teachers, whether we really wanted to do this. I
can’t speak for everyone else, but I really, really do want to do this.
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