November 19, 2008

Does Testing Equal Teaching?

Filed under: New Teacher Diaries by miss brave @ 10:31 am

[Editor’s note: miss brave is the pseudonym for a second-year elementary school teacher in Queens. She blogs at miss brave teaches nyc, where this post originally appeared.]

scantron

I recently spent an entire week grading my students’ TC assessments. Back in September, they took these new Teachers College spelling assessments. We were told we would eventually get together as a grade and go over the procedure for grading them (it’s not as simple as “correct” or “incorrect”; they actually get points for various word features like initial consonants and short vowel sounds).

The giant pile of assessments sat on my desk for a month, until one day, when we had our meeting where we learned how to grade them and were informed that our administration would like us to finish grading them by Monday so they can be plugged into the computer. Excuse me? (more…)

November 17, 2008

The Mean Girls

Filed under: New Teacher Diaries by Just Miss @ 3:22 pm

[Editor's note: Just Miss is the pseudonym of a second-year teacher in a high school in the Bronx.]

An unwritten perk to being a high school teacher: there are plenty of opportunities to revisit one’s own high school memories (ahh, The Awkward Years, Volume 1). The things that were unfair to me then are still unfair to my students. The things I tried to pull past my teachers are still attempted in my classroom.

My mind regularly flashes back to moments of my 14-year-old self, like not quite understanding what that sex joke meant but laughing along so no one caught on. Heh heh, oh I get it!… heh heh, good times… (Ironic that I should be teaching sex ed now?) My Adolescent Self and my Adult Self have never been closer.

Facebook is not helping. (more…)

November 13, 2008

The Business of Being a Snitch

Filed under: New Teacher Diaries by Senorita in the City @ 12:21 pm

[Editor's note: Señorita in the City is the pseudonym of a second-year teacher in a high school in Manhattan. She blogs at Señorita in the City where this post originally appeared.]

Stop Snitching

One of the many hats a teacher wears is that of “mandated reporter.” The law says if I suspect or am told by a student that they are being abused, do not feel safe, are planning on inflicting harm on themselves or someone else, that I must report this immediately to the higher ups who will then further investigate. Before I started working I went through a mandated reporter crash course. We read scenarios aloud discussing whether or not we would report the situation and the steps we would take in handling different things we may be faced with, you know, good preparation for the “real world.” Recently I was presented with a situation, and yes, I stepped up to fulfill my duty. Well, to the best of my ability anyway. (more…)

November 10, 2008

Bad at math

Filed under: New Teacher Diaries by Jonathan Stewart @ 11:01 am

[Editor's note: Jonathan Stewart is the pseudonym of a second-year teacher in a high school in Brooklyn.]

“I’m bad at math.” This is what one of my ninth graders told me in the first semester of last year. She had missed a number of days in the marking period and when one of her friends, who was in the same class, came up to me to see what her grade was, Shanna wanted to see her grade too. It was a 37. It wasn’t because she was good at math or bad at math, she just had been absent so much that she was missing homework, projects, and a test.

I told her, “Shanna, you still have a week left in this marking period. You can sit down with me and make up the work that you need to make up and you can still pass the marking period.”

Shanna replied, “I’ll try again next marking period. I’m just bad at math.” Even her friend was a little shocked at her unwillingness to try to pass that marking period. (more…)

November 6, 2008

It Happens

Filed under: New Teacher Diaries by Ms. Bindergarten @ 11:48 am

[Editor's note: Ms. Bindergarten is the pseudonym of a second-year teacher in an elementary school in Queens.]

Please clean up after your dog

Last year was my first year of teaching. Reflecting back on the experience I can wholeheartedly say that my kids taught me more than I ever could have possibly taught them that year.

After the first week of school I was convinced I needed a radically restructured master’s program in elementary education. I felt like nothing I had learned in all of the 45 credits at my university—the observation hours, field hours and rigorous testing—had prepared me for what I was experiencing. Here’s a story that I’ll never forget: (more…)

October 31, 2008

Arthur Miller and the Baby Mamas

Filed under: New Teacher Diaries by American-Chick-Lit @ 1:52 pm

[Editor's note: American-Chick-Lit is the pseudonym of a second-year teacher in a high school in the Bronx.]

The Crucible

The Crucible was going to be a tough text to teach to 11th graders, and bringing the culture of Puritan New England to the Bronx was going to be a challenge. At least that’s what I thought at first.

How will students born in the ’90s grasp the Puritan ideals of Reverends Hale and Parris? How will we break through the archaic language of “aye” and “Goody” and other unknown daily utterances and get to understand the depths of the themes of this play? (more…)

October 29, 2008

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

Filed under: New Teacher Diaries by They Call Me Teacher @ 11:03 am

[Editor's note: They Call Me Teacher is the pseudonym of a first-year teacher in an elementary school in the Bronx. She blogs at They Call Me Teacher where this post originally appeared.]

Some of our students (most of the boys, actually) act like different people outside of our classroom walls. At lunch and before school they are out of control, rude, disrespectful, and loud. For the third day in a row (in our post-Columbus Day four-day week), my co-teacher and I walked out to pick up our charges from recess only to find mass chaos and fights either taking place or on the verge of erupting.

Wednesday’s fight was going on when we arrived, and sadly, it was between two of our boys. It was the first fight we’ve seen, with our own eyes, involving our students. Once upon a time I thought that our boys were a bit more civilized than the rest of the school… I was wrong. (more…)

October 28, 2008

The Sophomore

Filed under: New Teacher Diaries by Sue Denim @ 12:17 pm

[Editor’s note: Sue Denim is the pseudonym for a second-year special education teacher in a high school in the Bronx.]

This is my second year as a special education teacher. I’ve quickly discovered that as many rules and regulations as there are for education in general, there are even more for special ed. Our students have special needs, and there are all sorts of requirements to make sure their needs are met. In our system, however, these requirements don’t always make it to the classroom.

Most of my kids are supposed to be in a 15:1:1 environment (no more than 15 students, one teacher, and one paraprofessional). Most of their IEPs say they’re supposed to be in a 12:1:1 environment, but that’s just a leftover from middle school. High school students can be in a 15:1:1 environment; middle schoolers and below aren’t supposed to have more than 12 kids in the class. But creating and updating an IEP is a sloppy process, and details are often neglected. (more…)

October 23, 2008

Lost In Translation

Filed under: New Teacher Diaries by Senorita in the City @ 3:38 pm

[Editor's note: Señorita in the City is the pseudonym of a second-year teacher in a high school in Manhattan. She blogs at Señorita in the City.]

Enrique Iglesias

The first days of school are the ideal time for teachers to set rules and establish routines. This year it only took until week five for one of my Spanish students to break a major rule: No plagiarism or use of online translators.

In September I take extra care to walk the class through my syllabus and the special section dedicated to plagiarism and online translation Web sites. I explain that translation Web sites translate word for word and very rarely make sense. I encourage the freshmen to try their best with the Spanish they are learning each day — that’s what matters. I remind them that turning in work that is not theirs will be considered plagiarism and that there will be consequences. And then I share with them my own embarrassing translation story. (more…)

October 21, 2008

First-Grade Flashback

Filed under: New Teacher Diaries by Miss Clemens @ 11:25 am

[Editor's note: Miss Clemens is the pseudonym of a second-year teacher in an elementary school in Queens.]

I was filled with unease – a bit terrified, really – the first day I was to step foot in my classroom. Probably more so than others because, while my fellow first-year teachers were starting a new career, I was, in a way, heading full circle.

I had been in this classroom before, back when I was six years old, going on seven. It seemed a lot bigger then. I attempted to ignore the fact that from kindergarten to fifth grade I spent most of my waking hours in this very school. I tried to put aside the strange feelings that come with having to teach a first-grade class in the same classroom where I sat as a first-grade student. (more…)

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