Student Teaching DAY ONE

So Student teaching today at the HS English department went FABULOUSLY. I'll refer to everyone in code so that school administrators who may happen to find this page will not be put on to the covert teacher drama I may chronicle here.

I am shadowing Mrs. A as a HS English teacher, and today was my first day. (Contrary to my father's belief, I was not acting as her literal shadow the whole day) I was introduced to all her classes as Miss Gray, which really tickled me pink, and several other teachers, including Mr. A, Mrs. B, and Mrs. D, were all glad to see me back and wished me well.

Today I oversaw group projects in 2R classes and helped several groups with idea brainstorming for their imagery presentations. They were all very impressed to hear that I had read Dandelion Wine (the book in question) in two short days.

I also sat in on 2 AP classes, each of whom are designing and implementing their own projects for the last 8 days of class. One class is watching Wharton's The Age of Innocence, which I am excited to be watching. the other class is doing a project that involves putting together soundtracks relative to the books that they have read so far in AP and compiling corresponding analysis relating the songs to the book. Not nearly as interesting by half.

So, I am bailing on the second AP class to observe Mr. A's History Class, which should be equally fun because they are doing a unit on the Palestinian/ Israeli Peace crisis. I'm trying to find a good clip from Lawrence of Arabia because I don't know how far they'll be in this and David Lean's filmmaking is made out of AWESOME, which I don't think these sophomores realize.

I also got to sit in on Mrs. A's 2B class, which was also very, very interesting. Being something of an english geek, I've never been in a Regular English class, let alone a Basic one. A different enviroment, to say the least. Mrs. A informed me that many of these students write at a 4th grade level and read at a 5th grade, or the other way around. Well below grade level, at any rate. And they don't get better because...they're in high school! High school English teachers are not taught how to teach reading, because that's something that - NEWSFLASH!- kids are already supposed to be able to do by sophomore year in high school. I also got to read some of their essays, which, for sophomores in high school, were terrible. My little sister writes better essays, and she's in the 8th grade.

But considering that Mrs. A and her team teacher had to teach these kids cold turkey over two weeks how to write and research a two page essay, they were good. Factoring in reading level and writing level, they were actually really good. All they needed was a little analysis. And some of the best essays I read were actually from ELL students- English Language Learners. They just needed some one-on-one conference time, I think, to really polish them off.

So that was Day One. I hope Day Two is just as good.