Another semester; another blog

This is my last semester before student teaching, and I'm taking a class called Strategies for Teaching English Language Arts. I think this might be the class about which I am most excited, because it feels the most relevant to me as a future educator. It might also be exciting because I finally feel like I "get" how this MAT program works and what is expected of me. But I also responded really enthusiastically to the readings, especially one by Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner titled "What's Worth Knowing?"


I found this article challenging, because it raised questions that I also find myself asking. Last semester, I struggled with this question a lot, in part because I didn't feel as if we were really talking about this topic in any of my classes. Or, more precisely, we were talking a lot about it, but mainly from the perspective of, "Question the canon!" Which is good - and I suppose it's better than the alternative, "Adhere blindly to the canon and never question it!" - but didn't give me a lot to work with, from a practical perspective.


My summer YA Lit class helped a lot, because it offered some specific advice for where to find YA lit and how to approach it with students. But I still felt really cast adrift in terms of how to convey thoughts/knowledge/information to students in a meaningful way. It didn't help that so many of my classes were/are "project-based." I felt like I knew lots of activities to do with students, and lots of ways to engage students, and even plenty of ways to assess student performance on those projects and on their participation...


But I guess what I'm getting at is that I still didn't feel like I was learning how to teach students. So I felt frustrated and sad and scared a lot.


And then I did the reading for ECI 509 and I thought, "Well, Hallelujah! Finally someone is giving me some real actual teaching tools - not just activities or strategies (although that word is embedded in the course name). But actual ideas for teaching."


It's funny how some things just resonate with you, isn't it? I enjoyed reading the Tchudi and Mitchell article about preparing for the first days of teaching. And I thought the Milner text did a great job of highlighting some of the different approaches to structuring classroom instruction and establishing an effective classroom environment. But it was Postman and Weingartner who made that tight knot in the middle of my stomach (the one that is really, really afraid that maybe I will not be a good teacher and maybe I will actually make my students hate school, and maybe this was all a huge, terrible mistake) unclench for a minute.


What is the profound wisdom contained in this article? Well, I'm glad you asked! Postman and Weingartner offer ... a huge list of questions. Then, they proceeded to challenge the idea that "curriculum" has neat, clearly delineated boundaries. They reminded me of something I knew when I entered the MAT program, but I forgot somewhere along the way (probably around the time I completed my gagillionth project): so much of teaching is just about talking with students, interacting with them, getting to know who they are and how they respond to the material.


Well, I can do that! In fact, it's one of the things I enjoy most about young people: their inquisitive approach to life. Postman and Weingartner reminded me that it is both more enjoyable and more productive to engage with a topic holistically, as part of a comprehensive worldview, rather than compartmentalizing knowledge into discrete "subject areas." 


Wow - what a wonderful, rejuvenating reminder!