Administrators at my placement school routinely prescribed “engaging lessons” as a remedy for nearly every classroom problem. Yet so many teachers, who were well-liked and regarded as effective, leaned toward accountability or control as the panacea for off-task behavior, disrespect, or low achievement. Sadly, the children I taught were not accustomed to joy in learning,…
read more »Is anyone familiar with the kids’ book The Big Orange Splot by Daniel Pinkwater? The main character lives on a very boring, uniform street. One day, a bird drops some paint on the roof of his house. Instead of painting over it, he supplements the Big Orange Splot on his roof with lots of other…
read more »It’s spring break! I always enjoy the change of pace and chance to recharge come this time of year. As in past years, I’ve spent large parts of my spring break on school-related items: attending a national conference, writing my summative reflection for administration (why is our school a better place because you are here?),…
read more »Two years and some odd months later, I’m back! Those were some long months of learning myself and the prevailing methods of the American education system, at least through the lens of my Atlanta middle school placement. Much of my reflection was turned toward action-oriented classroom items, many of which were difficult to write about…the…
read more »I passed both of my GACE exams with over 250 on each of them (above 85%)! It’s actually getting real that I’ll be teaching math now. Time to write an Instrumental Analysis pre-lab and head to bed.
read more »Today is the day I get my GACE (Georgia Assessments for the Certification of Educators) scores. Sometime between 5 and 10 PM I’ll have an email in my inbox as to whether I will be teaching secondary math in June or if I’ll be paying a ton of money to go back to Georgia to…
read more »Yesterday I sat in my fiancé’s living room with his roommate and my good friend J. We were celebrating the coming of the weekend (no Friday classes) and lightly discussing our plans for after graduation. J had finally sent his résumé to Oscar Myer – we’re all crossing our fingers that he becomes a Weinermobile…
read more »I recently read a post by a teacher who was concerned about the Common Core’s apparent focus on making sure that kids are understanding the math they are learning, as opposed to simply being able to just calculate correctly right away. I have a strongly differing interpretation of a story she shares about her son…
read more »I currently serve with City Year and I taught as part of TFA last year. On my way to the airport for winter break, I saw public recruitment advertisements both for TFA and for City Year. The City Year ad was on the public bus I took to the airport. The TFA ad was glued…
read more »It is very frustrating to me that many students (and an apparently-increasing number of administrators, politicians, text book authors, and even teachers) seem to think that the most effective way to learn math is to have students practice problems that are the same as problems that the teacher has already shown the class how to…
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