What kind of teacher do I want to be? Part II

One of the sections of Milner that resonated most strongly with me was Building Public Trust. 

One reason I was so interested in this section is because I am shocked by how often pre-service teachers are reminded to behave professionally. I don't know whether this is common to all teaching programs, but the folks in charge of my program apparently believe that we are all strippers with anger issues who are just one spring break party away from posting photos of ourselves shooting up on Facebook. It's insulting and disappointing and it makes me doubt that they actually do view us as professionals. Which makes me wonder whether they really see themselves as part of a noble and respectable profession, either. 

The Products of our Process

I've been thinking about the issue of student engagement a lot lately, in part because of the work we've been doing in my methods class and in part because of the work we've been doing in my New Literacies and Media Class.

Teaching Poetry

I don't remember liking poetry when I was a teenager. I loved Shel Silverstein when I was a kid, and I wrote some witty, rhyming verse of my own in homage to his genius. But by the time I got to high school, poetry seemed old-fashioned and dense.


In contrast, prose was fun. It told stories! With characters and a plot and dialogue. Some of the other kids in my class wrote poetry. I thought they were insufferable literary posers. I wrote short stories. My writing was real fiction; their writing was basically a glorified diary entry.


Yeah, I was a pill.