Switching Gears

At first, the reading was a drag because it felt like I was reading the same things over and over again. I wanted something more practical rather than theoretical. Like Sarah said, we are at a point in our lives where we feel frustrated. We feel like we're at that stage where we want to go off and teach already, yet we are scared out of our minds because we still doubt ourselves about things like classroom management or the ability to plan a smooth coherent unit, let alone lesson plan. I'm taking away good information from readings, like ideas for activities, how to set objectives, scaffold, model, plan lectures, discussions, and cooperative learning activities, CCSS, etc. but I still can't help but feel anxious.

I'm anxious about getting started. I hope that what I am reading will help me in the future, but what I am coming to understand with myself is that I am already prepared to teach. During my observations, I feel confident and comfortable enough to believe that I could actually take over the class, and this for me is mostly because of the relationships I'm building with the students. I don't know exactly because I've never had my own classroom, but I think that the majority of what we are reading about mostly caters to the "business" aspect of teaching. I haven't come across a methods text yet that teaches you how to be friendly with teenagers that you don't know and vise versa. I haven't read much on what to do when students fight in a classroom. I think about these things constantly because knowing how to create a relationship with students, to me, is the first step to good teaching.But maybe that is because books can't teach you these things, which is interesting to think about. We won't really know how to handle these situations until we are in them, and that is the scary part. But for now, I am content with what I am learning from these readings about teaching this crazy subject we call English.

I wanted to comment specifically on Beach's Social World's reading, about getting students to identify issues based on their experiences, examine certain components of social worlds that shape characters' actions, and studying the history of that social world where students can then relate it to the present world. I think it does a great job of setting up this structure where students could engage in meaningful discussion that requires them to refer to a text and the world in that text, and the be critical of that world and relate it to their experiences. I found that I really enjoyed reading this chapter, for some reason it made sense to me. (I don't have much luck with methods books)

Wow, I just looked at my title for this blog and completely forgot to mention why I titled it "Switching Gears." It is simply because even though I've always been in the teacher mode of thinking, I feel like I'm really settling into the teacher position, what with the observations and coming close to student teaching, and also because I just feel like I'm naturally switching gears in my thought processes as a teacher rather than a student.

Thanks for reading, I hope the unit planning is coming along (bask in all the glory of its ups and downs, this is our first time doing this!)

Until next time,

Ramina Odicho