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

I was surprised by how many thoughts and emotions Milner's Becoming a Complete Teacher churned up inside me. Each individual component of being a teacher feels do-able, but taken together, it feels like an impossible task. 


I am not a calm person. Or a patient person. I get angry and lose my temper. I am often cynical. I hate hard work and I cry when I feel overwhelmed. 

How can I possibly be a good teacher?

Being a Composer

I participate in a writing group, and it's one of the highlights of my week. The group has fluctuated in size and focus since it began a couple of years ago, but over the past year it has really gelled. In addition to reading and critiquing each others' work, we have also started a collaborative writing project that's a lot of fun.

Judging good exercises

I've read bits and pieces of Atwell's In the Middle before, but reading the first two chapters for my methods class this semester, I was struck by her observation that oftentimes teachers rely on "exercises" rather than giving students autonomy over their own writing process. I've been mulling this over for a while, now, because I'm one of those people who almost always hates participating in writing exercises. Or, rather, I hate participating in too many writing exercises.

Having "The Talk"

Yesterday, my methods class talked about how to teach difficult texts to students. It really got me thinking about how many potential landmines there are in an English classroom. Students are old enough to engage with challenging material - everything from bad language and drugs to rape and racism - but they are not all at the same maturity level. They also have different life experiences, so what might be acceptable for one student might feel very upsetting for others.

Plan more, worry less

Reading Tchudi and Mitchell's chapter on creating instructional units, I could feel myself getting tenser and tenser. I actually had to stop reading and walk away. Five times.


Finally, I just started skimming the article, forcing myself to finish it, without reading too deeply. I felt that if I slowed down and thought about the reading in too much detail, I would panic. It felt too big, too overwhelming. It felt like I would never, ever be able to do it all.

Grouping Knowledge

Human beings like to categorize stuff. We sort things alphabetically and by color. We notice differences in size, shape, and texture. We differentiate between salty and sweet, loud and quiet, hard and soft. Give a little child a bag of toys and it won't be long before she organizes it according to some kind of system. It might be as simple as "toys I like" and "toys I don't like" but still...it will be sorted.

Education in the First Person

After several weeks without Internet, I am posting a whole bunch of stuff at the same time. Here is post #1:


Reading Kozol's essay "First Person," followed by Baxter's short story "Gryphon" reminded me how abstract education can feel. Far too often, there is school and there is real life. There are books we read for pleasure and assignments we read because the teacher tells us to. There emails and notes and poems we write because something within us compels us to communicate our thoughts and dreams and opinions and needs. And there are papers we write because a syllabus tells us they are due.

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?"