I am going to begin this post and may add on as I go haha...yay for being able to edit!
I will respond to the book and also to the AR question...
I started reading this book and was suprised how fast it went-a really quick read. I liked hearing other new teachers talk about things I was worried about too as a new almost-teacher. Sometimes it feels like everyone else has it together but me! But what I didn't like about this book was that it was SO elementary centered! As a secondary teacher, I have so many different situations and problems than these teachers did. I could take advice about being new to a school and about job searching, but I still felt very different than these teachers. I feel like this program as a whole is VERY elementary centered. Still, I could definately relate to these new teachers. It's also great, in my opinion, that some of these teachers took time off for their families. It was refreshing to hear that sometimes it's ok to work on your personal life and come back to teaching. That makes it a lot less overwhelming for me.
As for my AR, I would say it went pretty well. It was a challenge because I had to scale it down to 6th grade when it was made for 8th grade. May not sound like a big difference, but it was! I had to work with my teacher to implement skills that normally would not be taught for 4 or 5 months. She very graciously worked with me. My project was implementing rubrics and letting students help create rubrics to try to increase their writing skills and also increase their interest. Did it work? Yes, in that they became more skilled and they enjoyed getting to help make the rubric. Do I feel like it was an education-changing experience in their lives? No, probably not. I say this because I had to be very technical and really walk them along the writing process-it was very watered down. If the students had been older I think more of their creativity and their opinions would have been in the writing and it would have been more successful. Still, I am happy that it was able to be implemented in a real-life classroom and that I did a project that focused on my students and how they felt about assessment. I was letting them help take charge of their success and that was the most important thing, in my opinion.
When I read this book I was lucky to have positive experiences from my home PDS in the back of my mind. I would definately take a job at my PDS. It is a strict school with a lot of structure, but the teachers are all very involved. There is a lot of team teaching. The principal is for the most part a good listener and is definately an advocate for her teachers.
If I had to change something about my PDS it would be that I don't think they value new teacher input. The school values learning new skills and always is improving technology, but I was never sought after as a resource of new advice. If I taught there I would have to follow the lead of the teachers in the book and very gradually make changes. There are many older experienced teachers and sometimes they get stuck in a rut of thinking their way is the "only" way of teaching. I would like to gradually make change, but it would have to be gradual.
Ok, that is all unless I think of more! Good book!
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After reading posting after posting about new teacher input not being valued, I'm wondering if my new teacher experience was atypical. I wasn't the only new kid in the department, which made a HUGE difference. Actually, we were all new, except for the department chair, who'd been there a year. The new principal had revamped the entire language arts department, so we were working together as a group to figure out what we wanted language arts instruction to look like.
So given that my situation was atypical and most of you will be in already-established departments, what might you do to enact change? What about a teacher share during an already-scheduled meeting time (so nobody complains about extra wasted time)? Instead of debating about issues like why some kids are out at the vending machines during class or which type of hall pass to be using school-wide, teachers come with one activity they use that they feel really works for their students. Nobody requires anyone else to implement that idea; instead, it's about sharing what you're doing. Maybe not very many people come-- but it's a start.
Yeah, this book was written by elementary folks, but they were elementary folks with a heavy literacy orientation, implementing many strategies secondary language arts people use. There's really not a lot out there about new teacher issues in general, and so I was hoping that the fact that these were elementary teachers wouldn't throw people in the group. Hmm . . . anyone thinking about authoring a secondary-focused book in the next few years?
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