Even Teachers Need to Learn Their ABC's

The best way for me to describe how a teacher needs to behave when it comes bettering themselves, would be to compare it to a horse with blinders. I think when someone has been teaching for a long time, they will get stuck in their ways and will, in essence, have blinders on which keep them from seeing how society has been progressing. 

In reading the article about diversity, it is interesting to note that diversity has now expanded past outward appearance and includes the inner workings of an individual. We need to be aware of how society evolves and changes. This means that we need to adapt our teaching style to what is occurring to be considered inclusive.

In California, teachers have been required to go and obtain an ESL/TESOL certificate because it has become evident that the classroom now has a majority of students that do not have English as their first language. This is one example of what teachers are doing to re-teach themselves.

Basically, we need to continue our learning process as well as furthering the learning process of our students.

Is there a light at the end of the tunnel?

The end. Is there such a thing? As the saying goes, "all good things must come to an end." But after my bout with this semester's 1301 students I don't know if I would necessarily label this experience as "good." Long, arduous and a monstrous learning experience...YES! 

We have talked before about how writing is never done. There can always be another avenue to explore within your topic or a question to refute. To have an end to composition, to me, would mean complete and perfect understanding of all the aspects of writing. I, for one, don't think that there is anyone that has ever fit that criteria. The closest that one could get to the "end of composition" would be the ability to place the writing into the category of "unfinished, but almost done." This is kind of odd I know, but it is how I grasp the idea of the end of composition.

Service Learning...was the bane of my existence in undergrad...until Evil came along.

 

By the time I reached my last three semesters in my undergraduate work, about 90% of my classes contained a service learning component. I came to despise service learning until I had my senior seminar. The title of the seminar was "The Problem of Evil." Sound tempting doesn't it (pun intended). For our paper what we had to do was find a problem within society and present a solution. The catch was that our service learning had to encompass either the problem or the solution. For instance, I chose to examine needle exchange programs. I worked with a needle exchange program, since there were about thirty within a 30 miles radius, for the durations of about 5 two hours visits. We were exposed first hand to the problem and how to confront it. Other people worked in domestic violence shelters, a cancer ward, and even an arboretum (he was troubled with deforestation). By the end, we walked away with a more complete and comprehensive view of not only our problem, but the world. 

Now, how does this connect back to classes here, specifically 5060 and our CI and DI positions? I actually have a proposition. To incorporate service learning into 5060 seminar, what we could do would be to have class on Tuesday (or whatever day would work) and the other day would be spent with an instructor in the classroom. It would be similar to the master teacher idea, but a bit different. You would stay with the same instructor for the duration of the semester and observe, teach, help, or whatever you worked out with your instructor. There would be guidelines, such as you had to teach some many lessons or plan out lesson plans for the instructor. This would give everyone hands on experience without disrupting the CI/DI distinction. Just a thought.

Plan "B"

As to the question of what a FYC teacher to come to class knowing...I believe it is two fold. One, the teacher should come to class knowing the entirety of the semester and what the overall purpose is in the class. This will help when they are planning lessons for each day because then they can try and connect each lesson to lead up to the students having an overall and completely knowledge of the course materials. Two, I believe the FYC teacher should come to class knowing the exact specifics of the lesson plan for that day. The paper lesson plan should be a back-up plan incase the students get the teacher off track with questions and they need to remember where they were at. 

The student should come to class prepared for that class. PERIOD. That is the biggest issue that I see with students today. They come to class without reading, or fully doing an assignment. They expect the teacher to hold their hand through the process of experiencing a college course. Um...I'm sorry, no. Not gonna happen. You are adults and you will be treated as such. 

To be prepared for plan b, essentially means to me to be prepared for working at the bottom level of the middle range. You are not adapting to the "laziest" student in the class, but you are not zooming ahead without regards for your student. Plan B is the ability to relay the material in multiple ways and at multiple depths.

The performance of teaching

"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women are merely players: They have their exits and their entrances... " ~ Shakespeare

I believe that Shakespeare hit this one out of the park, except let me amend the saying a bit: "Every classroom is a stage, and all the instructors are merely players: They have their exits and their entrances..." ~ Me. 

This is my philosophy of teaching. Walk with me down this road of enchantment if you will. As a teacher you are part of an ensemble. Beginning back in kindergarten, a student is presented with a wide array of "actors." Each and every year, the student sees a different performance, but what is special about this type of a performance is that the student has the opportunity to learn and gain experience. Over the course of a student's academic career, he/she comes across several different archetypes of actors. You have the "Good, the bad, and the ugly" to quote the title of Sergio Leone's beloved western. 

The "UGLY." You see the performance for the first time and you wonder if there is any way that you can trade you season tickets for another performance without hurting your dear ol' mum's feelings. (You know she is always going to ask you EVERYDAY how it was.) Unfortunately, the majority of the time, you must sit through each and every performance. Nothing is done right by this "actor." Timing is off. Cannot understand the words he/she is saying. These are the actors that make you hate this genre of performances.

The "BAD." Throughout all the performances that you see, you realize that the actor never fully steps into the role that he/she was assigned. Whether it is lack of organization or lack of experience, you can always take things away from the performance, but not every time. This can seem like a waste of time and energy to the audience.

The "GOOD." You ever go and see a movie or a play and you feel that you are actually in that world because of the way the actor(s) perform and even interact with the audience? You leave feeling as though you have stepped into another world where every thing makes sense. 

Now, at this point you may be wondering what acting and performance has to do with a teaching philosophy. It is simply this: each and every day a teacher performs for her class. She gives it her all every time because she wants the student (audience) to fall in love with the world that she is portraying. This world can be literature, poetry, fiction, even teaching. Here's the kicker; just like an actor, the teacher may never hear or see the reaction of the audience. She will never know if she made an impression on the student because once the students leaves the class at the end of the semester, the teacher is no longer involved in that student's story anymore. Yes, you are able to see progress at the end of the semester, but how does this actually effect them in the long run? The actor will go off stage, many times, before he/she can see the audience's reaction. This is way each and every performance must be the best. This is the only way the "actor" can influence the minds of the "audience."

Hope you enjoyed walking the path of analogy with me.

TTOPIC...should die...I mean...I got to go...

As pretty much everyone has discussed in the past few weeks, we are all frustrated with the way the system works with FYC. For me the main problem is the quotas. The "25 per week" load gives the graders a optimistic view that once those are completed everything will be graded. Oh how wrong that is. You might have gotten our quota done, but their is a truck load of ungraded assignments that are awaiting to sign your death warrant...too harsh...ok, I apologize to the innocent briefs.

What I would like to see happen is accountability set up within the system itself. Because having only 25 per week as a quota is not cutting it, if there could be a way to determine the amount of briefs each person would need to grade in order to get each set of briefs completely done, then that is what the quota should be. Outside of that quota that is where you responsibility stops. This may sound harsh and potentially unfair to the students because what if they get stuck with a grader who is behind with grading. Well, I have been told that I should look at myself as being a "student first" then a grader. I cannot do that with a clear conscience if I know that there are 500 briefs in my groups queue.  Having specific individual quotas could potentially creating a personal accountability with each grader. If they do not grade their amount, then THEY will have to make up for it and not the group. 

Venting session...done.

Round of applause for Bruffee...clap clap clap clap clap

Collaborative learning...the first thing that comes to mind is GROUP PROJECT. I must say that I despise  group projects. OH!...every time we had to do one in my undergrad course I wanted to scream. I hated the fact that my grade rested upon the shoulders of the slouched, barely awake, never contributes anything to class, "student" who happened to reside next to me the ENTIRE semester. Why, God? Why? It just felt so unnatural. This is not how we are supposed to learn. We are supposed to learn by lecture and papers and test...not by collaborating on a project that determines 70% of your final grade. For awhile I thought I was alone in my tormented thoughts. But...I found similar thoughts within the gems I like to refer to as English majors. None of us ever liked it when we were given a project. The farthest I got to liking a "group project" were the discussions that I experienced in my seminar classes. But guess what...?!!!

[insert drum roll]

Bruffee says that that is normal for those that are in humanistic study!!! There is light at the end of the tunnel. There has slowly been a pull to more and more collaborative learning within the classroom and I find that I am getting more and more accustomed to it. But I was just so pleased to know that someone actually recognized this fact!