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Today was my first time in a Junior High classroom in 12 years. I have been assigned an awesome mentor teacher (I’ll be hereby referring to as Mr. K) in a school not too far from the city. I spent the day following Mr. K around from class to class, observing his kids and classroom management strategies. By the looks of it, come mid-November I will be planning and instructing Science classes in the 7, 8, and 9th grade level. I’m pretty stoked. The kids seem alright, your typical Jr. High students that are easily distracted by stories from the weekend and the opposite sex. One kid remarked on how the only point of going to school was to find a wife. Another kid inquired on the usage of “etc.” in Mr. K’s notes, and how his Dad claims that means somebody doesn’t really know what they’re talking about. Nothing too exciting otherwise.
The kids have very diverse backgrounds and the class is setup primarily to help them get it together for the provincial exams. Mr. K is incredibly flexible, is a total pro at reading kids, and barely pauses for a break during his lectures to deal with them. He barely even has a lesson plan as well, a consequence of teaching (and having designed) the program for almost a decade.
I am sharing my experience with another student teacher as well (who I’ll refer to as Mrs. J). We’ve been assigned the task of putting together a project that will benefit the school community as a whole. One of the ideas that we might run with is a “Red Friday”, basically the same idea as the Wear-Pink days (where everyone shows support for non-violence by wearing pink). Red Friday is the idea of getting the students to show solidarity for kids with family members in the military by wearing red after Rememberance Day. I guess there are a lot of kids in this particular school whose folks are away for extended periods, and it takes it’s toll on them. Politics aside, if there’s a way we can put this project together from an angle that doesn’t lean in support for the reasons behind Canadian troops stationed in Afghanistan, I think it will be a fun challenge.
Lastly, I have to put together a dissection lab. The animals to be dissected are grasshoppers and earth worms. Reminds me of this classic episode:
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Update. Turns out the ridiculous exam I wrote the other day was designed to put us in the position of a kid who has difficulties taking tests. I’m sorting out my feelings regarding the whole procedure. It was the cause of much duress in my peers, and a few friends have remarked on how that was neither the time or the place to conduct such an assessment. But is there really a perfect time and a place to make a point like that? I would argue that the test achieved its purpose and I hope to take that feeling of confusion and failure with me as a tool for empathizing in the future. Like I’ve said before, this term is so dependent on your attitude. Jumping through hoops is one thing, but finding their relevance is keeping me from flipping this thing off.
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In many of my classes this semester, we are required to keep reflective journals. The point of which being to have the ability to go back on the mass of content we’re absorbing, reflect on it and use them to build our philosophies of teaching. I figure since I haven’t written in this thing for some time, I’d incorporate into it my journal entry for today.
This week was a drag on my mental state. It was full of so many inconsistencies that by today, I was really starting to idolize Christopher McCandless‘ response to such arbitrary societal interactions. Let me explain;
It all began with an exam I wrote on Wednesday which was, without a doubt, the most poorly assembled exam I’ve had the opportunity to complete in my life. For a program that is supposed to be one of the best in the country, I felt embarrassed walking out after handing in my paper. Considering the hundreds of thousands of dollars given to the institution by people in that class, I could not believe how unreliable and how poor of an assessment the exam was. Nearly half the questions were incomprehensible, I kid you not, and when I approached my instructor for clarification he practically just handed me the answers to several questions. A move that I would appreciate in high school, but I thought I was supposed to be learning something here? Like how to make a positive impact on kids lives for over 1/4 of their day…
This was followed by an exam that basically tested my ability to conduct a fair assessment. Funny in that while studying for that, I recalled the exam I wrote the previous day and identified just how poor of a reliable assessment it was. But this one was long, monotonous and constantly restated questions asked earlier in different forms. A waste of time.
Top that off with a discussion we had in one of my classes on the role of the education system in which I deduced that schools are basically becoming widget factories through their marketization and the drive to create an environment of competition between schools. Competition for what though? Producing better citizens? A more compassionate electorate? Or consumers and do-nothing functionaries?
An interesting thing occurring in Alberta is an emerging thought that in order to make schools better, we should forget about all of this student centered hippy-dippy-doo instructional methods and return to good old teacher-centered instruction, rote memorization and writing skills. The contradiction comes when you look at the rationale for creating competition in the education system (in that competition will create people with the skills to compete in global economics). I ask myself, how will this happen if we return to early 20th century methods of instruction?
Another thing we were talking about is moving education away from the hands of the government and towards private companies. Charter schools. Something that absolutely terrifies me as a prospective teacher. Two things, the No Child Left Behind Act in the United States must be addressed to help make sense of this issue. Basically in the States, schools will loose Federal funding if students do not perform up to standards set by the state in areas of Math and English skills. If they do not perform up to these standards, the private sector can be brought in to improve education. In other words, charter school conversion. A little note on charter schools (ie. schools that are privately funded), New Orleans is currently the focus of an experiment in which after the hurricanes, nearly all public schools were dissolved and over half of the ones that re-opened are charter schools (See the Shock Doctorine by Naomi Klein). So yeah, one more step in deregulating everything and letting the invisible hand of capitalism take care of us! (PS, Alberta was the first province to give the a.ok to charter schools)
Kind of scary. Not to mention there was less than 30% turnout in our municipal election the other day which does not give me faith that people are plugged in and concerned about what’s happening in our city.
So after all of this went down I sat back and picked up the deck. There are so many ridiculous hoops were jumping through so we can be certified to teach, but how many of them are really relevant and more importantly, is there a point to all the irrelevance?
One last thing, let me tell you about one amazing thing I learned about this town. Downtown there exists a school that takes in kids up to age 24 (most of them are homeless) and provides them with an education. A relevant education. The school receives funding in grants for special needs students to sustain itself and currently has over 150 kids enrolled. The teachers who started in it over a decade ago have seen their pay raised from nothing, to minimum wage to nearly scale. This altruism warms my heart and brings me back to why I’m doing what I’m doing. I’m jumping through hoops so that I can at least try, and at the end of the day be able to say I tried, instead of selling out to some company for quick cash or buying into an industry of egomaniacs.
Ethically, that’s all I can do right now.
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I am incredibly tired right now. Probably in one of the top 5 states of sleep deprivation I’ve ever experienced. If you can’t get a hold of me, it’s because I have been a assignment zombie for the past week. In leu of an intelligent discussion, I’m just going to submit 5 things that were on my mind today. Here they are, in no particular order of importance.
1. Plastic bags are a waste. I’m committing to bringing my own reusable bags to the grocery/market as often as I can.
2. Democracy is failing hard right now. Ontarians were left uninformed regarding the issue of proportional representation and like B.C. missed a huge opportunity for democratic reform yesterday during their election. The Liberals are also going to crap the bed hard this fall. Just watch. Another painful year of Stephen Harper selling us out is coming our way.
3. My cat is a bum. No, both of my cats are bums.
4. I really like riding my bike, but 2 people have been killed in Edmonton within the last two months by total douchebags and it’s making me nervous. If your voting in the municipal election on Monday, consider one of the candidates with an idea of how to manage city growth by means of transportation that don’t require 260 million dollar overpasses. This is a result.
(grown men in Alberta actually decorate their automobiles with plastic testicles.)
5. I really really really really really…. really like Panda Puffs.
