Live Blog: Seabiscuit on American Experience

Teaching with Technology

Okay, so the fact that I'm a student teacher two days a week with a mentor teacher doing most of the teaching should be the first indicator that my experiences so far don't represent how things will be in the future. But it's a good place to start. Having spent so many weeks exploring ways to incorporate new technologies into classroom instruction hasn't really changed my mind about the essence of teaching, that it's really about the interaction between the student, the teacher, and the content. With or without twitter, that reality is constant and it should be a comfort to us all. Perhaps when I'm a full-time teacher in my own classroom, I'll view technology as something more than just a nice bonus because I'll have total control over how to best use it. But for now, the best thing, by far, about technology and teaching is the sheer volume of INCREDIBLE resources available online for teachers to steal. And I mean steal in the legal sense! Part of me is skeptical about the purpose of designing anything from scratch anymore. Everything has already been done and it's likely been done by someone far smarter and more experienced than me. Why create a brand new worksheet on Jacksonian Democracy when the National Endowment for the Humanities has an entire site devoted to lesson plans and classroom materials on the subject? What's the purpose of developing assessments from beginning to end when countless sites make countless examples available for anyone to use? Why not take what's already out there (and what has been shown to work) and modify it for your own purposes?

Being a new teacher, I think I can safely speak for many of us that the biggest concern I have relates to content mastery. My mentor said that it can easily take five years or so before you really feel comfortable that you "know" your stuff and can teach it without studying too much beforehand. Five years is a long time! Planning lessons and units is really challenging and I don't think that I would have been able to produce the level of quality that I want without the help of all these online resources for teachers. No one wants to rely on the textbook all the time. Now I can go to one of any number of great sites to find specific information that I need about a specific event or concept or person. For learning the content, there's nothing better than having web access. Now, I don't suggest that everything out there is reliable. Of course not! As a history person, I had better not depend on resources that I tell my students to back away from slowly. But in a pinch, you can almost always find what you're looking for. And if you're developing something more indepth, it's absolutely invaluable.

I do love technology. But so far I love it behind the scenes!

Population in Claymation!

Okay, not the greatest claymation video of all time but not bad for a first time attempt! Stefan, Sade and I put this together in class yesterday. Enjoy!

The hiatus is over

Well, that was an unplanned break from blogging! They warned us that the fall would be insane and they were right (they being the faculty and former students of the MAC Program at U-M). But it's important to find time to post, it's a great way to get some of the disparate ideas swirling around my mind into some sort of coherent structure. Otherwise they will continue to float in the ether, taking up space and clogging my neurons from processing new information. Okay, I made that up. But it sounds real enough, right?

Teaching is such a unique profession. Now that I've spent some time in an actual classroom with actual students and an actual teacher, I can rest assured that I chose wisely. It just fits, you know? In my former life as a theatre guru, I never quite felt comfortable. I felt capable but not necessarily confident and I definitely didn't feel the passion. But now I can't wait to get to school in the morning! Tuesdays and Thursdays are my favorite days of the week because I get to be with my kids in my classroom (okay, it's not technically mine, but I can pretend!) talking about history. It's a blessing to have the opportunity to make a living doing what I love to do and even on my worst days, I will always know how lucky I am.

It's great to be a Michigan Wolverine!

Blue is BACK!

first days, first impressions

So the first week in our placements is over and I'm absolutely amazed at how many stories we already have to share about our mentors, our students, our schools and our classrooms. In just two days of observation (and limited participation), we've seen icebreakers ranging from classic name games to staged altercations, introductions to school rules and classroom expectations, hallway fights, transgendered students, embittered administrators, frazzled teachers - an endless array of vignettes that will shape our experiences throughout the year. Some of us have been privileged with mentors that expertly model our ideal style of instruction while others are learning what NOT to do. In some schools discipline and order define the culture while a more freewheeling attitude prevails a few miles away. Disparities in resources, student ability, teacher quality, and administrator competency are not just anecdotes in a reading assignment anymore, they are concrete, observable, and utterly frustrating. Welcome to public education!