A rolling thread where we are teachers

Hello! There are lots of us!

What do you teach? Who do you teach it to?

english, to students who almost made it to university

Neurology, to residents and medical students

Previously:
MCAT Physics, verbal reasoning and "essay" writing to pre-med students for Princeton Review
English, in Japanese high schools (on the JET program) and to private students in tutorial and conversation classes
Piano and rudimentary music theory, to semi-interested 6-16 year olds taking private lessons at Yamaha

I have no formal teacher training.

I'd like some stories on this thread, if thats viable (privacy notwithstanding) for any of you! I admire the fuck out of anyone who teaches.

English to foreign types. Favourite quote: "If I have the million pounds, I will buy big house in the cunt."

Other known teachers? Vahid/Baja?

(Me: Maths to 10-12 y/olds)

knowledge, to fools

with any luck, HS math next year (just got back from a massive job fair, have two little screening interviews this afternoon)

with substantial luck, HS English in the 2011-12 school year.

good luck, m bison!

pimpin got a campus interview tomorrow afternoon now

lol i got a job offer from another district

video production, to teenage Latinas

I teach proper deportment on a school bus.

Oh hi. I just got a teaching job that I accepted. I don't start till August but -- uh -- will be posting here!

hi 5, we are teaching bros now

when u deliver a tight lesson u should be like, son, r u scared, it looks like u just got MORDYFIED

you got Mr. Sh1n31fied more like it (no, probably kids will call me by my first name)

ESL, developmental english, and occasionally speech to adults (occasionally teenage highschool dropouts) in a small private college that is rather unique in its mission but i don't want to identify on a public message board

one of my favorite student sentences: "Workers get lezzy when the boss is away."

was waiting for you to show up LL!!

<3 !

my summer project is to read the grammar book from cover to cover :)

my summer project is to continue to develop my reading curriculum. i have not yet started working on this project, though. we're also trying to hire a new ft person, which is a little hairy.

ft --> full time fac

I've gotta find out exactly which classes I'm teaching next semester so I can prepare stuff. I've never actually done this before (did tutoring and writing center work before, but never taught a class). It's exciting!

I am a peer educator for an intro college biology class (geared toward biology majors). I have all of the fun of teaching but the prof I work for fields all the troublesome stuff, and they also come up with the lesson plans. It's the five-week summer class right now and it's so fast-paced!

with substantial luck, HS English in the 2011-12 school year.

good luck, m bison!

― horseshoe, Wednesday, June 16, 2010 2:04 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

let me just say--u will be an awesome, awesome teach

i mean im sure the rest of you guys are good too

congrats m bison! congrats mordy!

i just realized my post made it sound like we were hiring a little hairy person. this may be true, but mainly we're looking for someone competent, stable, and not likely to drive us nuts. this person could wind up being little and hairy...or not.

hi max. i might be a little tired and overwrought lately, but at any rate that made me tear up a little bit. thank you!

Amanda, you strike me as one of the hardest-working and most committed teachers I've known. god knows it's an easy job to burn out at. your students are lucky to have you!

integrated math & chemistry for 10th graders

thanks h! i do my best. mine is not an easy job, but it's one i enjoy and am happy to do. i'm glad someone notices.

it is a little known fact that horseshoe and i worked together (sort of) for a while :)

Have any of you read http://www.amazon.com/Global-Achievement-Gap-Survival-Need/dp/0465002293 ?

I've been enjoying it, and this particular paragraph jumped out at me. It's apart of a narrative being told by Helen Mountjoy, who tried to establish less test-oriented curriculum's in Kentucky:

"We were totally unprepared for the kind of response we got from our right-wing brethren... For example, it was said that these open-response tests would measure students' values, and that students would be kept in school until they could answer 'the right way.' 'Critical thinking skills' means teaching your children to be critical of you and your church.

Religious fanatics. This is why we can't have nice things.

(Curricula?)

yes

I'm a music teacher in Scotland, 5 days from finishing my probationary year and looking at unemployment after the summer if more jobs don't appear soon!

What ages do you teach, andy?

Music teacher is a brutal job most places imo - respect!

"We were totally unprepared for the kind of response we got from our right-wing brethren... For example, it was said that these open-response tests would measure students' values, and that students would be kept in school until they could answer 'the right way.' 'Critical thinking skills' means teaching your children to be critical of you and your church.

i dunno the context here but it seems like kind of a weak argument to blame the parents. if parents don't understand what "critical thinking" means in the context of standards and testing then the state board / school districts / school administrations / classroom teachers aren't doing a good job of explaining themselves to the stakeholders. we explicitly teach both values and critical thinking at our school but we're also quite explicit with parents and students about what critical thinking skills and values we're teaching and what they represent.

hi guys, i am a teacher. elementary. actually, i'm back in school this next year getting my m.ed. books i am reading lately for it:

peter maclaren: life in schools
deborah meier: playing for keeps
diane ravich's new book

remy would you recommend any of those books?

have you read 'why children fail'?

I love the first two. Maclaren comes from the Marxist/Paolo Freire camp, and he's got a good (appropriately incensed) energy that he brings to the idea of education reform. The book is dated in places, but not ineffective from a philosophy standpoint. Pretty provocative, actually. Deborah Meier is an inspiring teacher and talented author, and the schools she works in sound... pretty amazing.

No, I haven't read 'why children fail' but I've heard good things. Worth picking up?

i'll try to read those two then!

'why children fail' is good, yeah - it's very easy and pleasant to read and it's interesting - I read the later version, where he's annotating his own book, and it seemed like that'd be better. it's a bit dated fwiw but not totally so. i found it really spoke to me as the kind of teacher I am at this stage (4 yrs experience): he's very convincing about saying that imbuing a good learning strategy is the most important thing, and very honest about not really knowing how to do it (I'd love to read books that offered more on the latter, if you had any recommendations) but the stuff that really struck with me is the stuff that goes: sometimes you should asking the kid to work out the phoneme with a neutral expression and not-giving-away-the-answer and etc, and just read to the damn kid.

the meier/ravitch columns in ed week are a traet

they are, huh?

(that was meant sincerely, not sarcastically)

I really want to read the Ravitch book - it's next on my list. Have you guys seen the interview she did recently in Slate?

Here's the Ravitch interview: http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/thewrongstuff/archive/2010/05/17/diane-ravitch-on-being-wrong.aspx

What teaching related journals/magazines do you guys read regularly?

Also! Can any of you recommend a good history of pedagogy text?

a history of pedagogy? why would you want to read that?

i imagine it might be more reasonable and useful to narrow it down by audience, context and content.

I was thinking something like this: http://books.google.com/books?id=bfITAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=history+of+pedagogy&source=bl&ots=xQOHCjbq9O&sig=4g2SYh77K-b1e0ZjdfRBC30CPcg&hl=en&ei=fogdTK70CYOmNfrAqcwM&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

But more recent than 1905. I found this: http://www.amazon.com/Companion-Philosophy-Education-Blackwell-Companions/dp/0631228373/ref=pd_ybh_19?pf_rd_p=280800601&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_t=1501&pf_rd_i=ybh&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=054YP4HXE2WBKW0C0WM5

Which might actually be good, but I thought someone here might have a better idea. If not, I'll just go with probably the Blackwell thing.

Sorry about the spammy links. Next time I'll just tinyurl it.

also remy tell me your class! i bet that is an awesome class to be in.

admrl, how'd you go about starting to teach video production to teenage latinas?

It's through a community arts program affiliated with my school. It's awesome though, an all-girls' public high school in East LA. My students could "MESS" YOU UP (I probably shouldn't swear here)

High school history.

Plasmon, doing the JET program and another ALT job in Japan convinced me to become a teacher.

It is very likely that come September I will be starting the path to teaching HS level students in MA. Pretty excited about this tbh.

yay Erica! is it an alt cert program? mine technically starts in september, too, a year-long university program. taking a couple classes this summer.

I probably make reference to this too much in other posts and in my writing in general, but I teach elementary school in the Toronto area. I've done either grade 6 or grade 7 for the past decade. I'm eight school days away from summer vacation. The public just loves us for the two months off.

x-post - :D It's actually pretty confusing and I need to call the state ed dept on Monday but I *think* that as long as I pass the Massachusetts Tests for Educator Licensure, I can get a preliminary license. I'm just not clear on what that means exactly and whether or not it's good enough for the kinds of positions I'd be interested in.

i find all the certification stuff endlessly complicated, too. but yay, that rules!

:D

btw - It rules that you are also doing this and I echo what Max said above.

Is there any US equivalent to tes.co.uk - like, an actual site that respectable US teachers read and post at?

ilx?

what what, new teacher training in less than 2 weeks

me too! orientation in a few weeks. btw, don't think i've mentioned it here, one of my highschool classes next semester is US History + Popular Music.

:O hella jeal

English to foreign types. Favourite quote: "If I have the million pounds, I will buy big house in the cunt."

― rhythm fixated member (chap), Wednesday, June 16, 2010 2:34 AM (1 month ago) Bookmark

me too. favorite misspelling: "Mohammad was chosen to deliver a massage from Allah."

just found out i'm teaching mostly geometry, but one period of alg 2.

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/hs216.snc4/39154_685807015335_25406876_38972997_4079718_n.jpg

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash2/hs116.ash2/39154_685807025315_25406876_38972998_699063_n.jpg

this is what my classroom looks like rite now, have very few ideas of how to pretty it up. thinking of doing a section called IMPORTANT MATH PPL and highlight contemporary ppl doin tite math 4 a living (nate silver, that lady who got on the futurama dvd, jaime escalante even tho he is rip'ing it up now ;_;). that should maybe get 10% of the walls.

do you have to leave the desks where they are?

some of these are a little silly, but:

http://www.mathteacherstore.com/middle/midlpost/5-8/mathpostA.htm

http://www.mathsoul.com/

have shown up in my room

FRACTALS

And pictures of that pointy green cauliflower that grows in spirals. Or maybe just a fresh head of it on your desk every week. I could look at that freak of nature all day.

remy - i can do whatever with the desks, i scattered them just to see how much spread i could get in terms of width b/c they were shoved on one side when i got in yesterday morning

laurel - i will so post pictures of geometrically interesting foods, 4 real

Also: Square watermelons.

okay, these are really cool. i wonder if you could print/enlarge them?

http://www.geekosystem.com/fruit-mri-pineapple-orange-banana/

a rolling thread where we are exhausted

a rolling thread were we are still on holiday

how is this going for you?

just started orientation yesterday. already tired.

(lol. it'll be better tmmrw when i can start carpooling half hour to work and not hour + half by public transportation)

Bison do Ken Keeler in yr maths dudes talk too!

starting next monday. hopefully I can get moved into my new flat before then.

first class this morning. think of me!

Good luck, LL!

I teach rotating terms of legal writing, business law, and contracts to paralegal students at a community college. I'm a lawyer by day, but love teaching so much more than I love lawyering, so once I get a little more experience under my belt, I'm going to see how I can maybe teach full time. First bizlaw class of the term is this Saturday. I'm pretty excited, but I had foot surgery so I have one foot in a big boot thing which is going to cramp my very mobile, pacing, animated teaching style.

i lived! i think it was among my best first-classes ever. i gave good examples and tied everything together by the end of class and led right up to their homework. i love teaching.

now i am eating a salad that smells a little old/off but i am eating it anyway because the only other food i have here is a package of ry-crisps and some stale graham crackers. (file under: sad contents of teacher's desk)

Awesome! High five!!!

er about the class, not about your sad lunch.

xposts to trayce

i'm doing spec ed math, so ken keeler will be a bit inappropriate for their current level understanding, but i am going to find a way to throw futurama in there (thinkin the wall street episode, the montage where they go down different streets, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, πth street...where does pi go on the number line, BOOYAAAAA)

Yess :D

dyao – sucks. i'm not able to move into my new place until (9/1), and i'm teaching full time beginning next week (8/30) and the movers are charging me nearly $800 to move 3 miles.

that sucks remy. I schlepped my fridge (not a big one but still reasonably large) across town yesterday, was not fun. I'm moving my flat piece by piece, lucky in that I have an office to serve as a intermediary stop. hopefully will get done by the weekend. your movers sound like highway robbers!

got teaching materials yesterday for a class that starts monday. still no word on teaching materials for my other class which starts wednesday. found out for that class, it's only going to be and this other guy who's the course coordinator. he's the dude who basically plagiarized teaching materials from the web for this same course last year without giving credit, who was always late in distributing course materials, completely changed the nature of the final exam and basically screwed over the students. looking forward to a fun semester working with this dude.

Just found out today that I'm teaching an 8th grade class of boys a lit semester themed around Survival that is including at the very least "Alive" and "Into Thin Air."

a nickel will get you a dime that lord of the flies is on the syllabus. yeah?

oh yes, most definitely

Good job LL! I'm always so nervous about first class back - it seems such a leap to go from 'not having taught for 2 months' to "I expect your unconditional loyalty and devotion starting RIGHT NOW - ps we are studyin' numbers" - like, I know I can do it, but it seems like a kind of magic that I always expect to be exposed in!

oh
my
GOD

i just tripped over some cords and fell flat on my belly in front of my speech class -- it was like slow-mo
as i did this, i squealed WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
did not get injured, unless you consider loss of cred an injury

sweet jesus

once I taught for a full hour without realizing my fly was open. :o

hole in the back of my pants on the day i wore my lucky elephant boxer shorts (in fifth grade class)

First assignments distributed this week.

Oh -- I'm an adjunct professor of English.

Ok so I'm finally home now. In my final piece of inspiration to my speech class, did I implore my (adult) students to pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and continue if they fall down during their speeches?

You know I did. It's a corny teacher moment, but they seemed to like it. I don't have any native speakers in this class, so that makes it a little more fun. Ah well.

aw, I bet your students aren't even going to remember this accident a month from now.

from the advice of a colleague, created a separate facebook account for interacting w/ students with. think it might be a useful way to convey information about due dates, requirements, etc. & maybe an interesting alternative to e-mail.

oh, i meant to tell you -- the merriam webster's learner's dictionary website is fantastic. they have a blog with posts that should be interesting to students of your level, word of the day, pronunciation exercises, a place to create your own dictionary, all kinds of neat stuff. i think they recently made it a lot different/better. also recommended: visual thesaurus (dot com). great for vocabulary, words with two different definitions that are 2+ parts of speech, demonstrating language shit in an interesting way, etc.

wow, thanks for the tip! going to check it out right now

:) my pleasure

my coordinator just came by and dropped off the materials, still crappy, still plagiarized. \(O_o)/

oh yeah while I was showing him my iPad he made a joke about "don't show me all the porn I know you've got on there!"

...

way to project, loser

(him, not you)

hah - also word on the street is he's dating a 25 year old who used to be a student (not sure if she was his student specifically or not) at his last university. on facebook they are 'engaged.' he is 45.

he is giving all of us a bad name

i'm taking tesol classes at the moment. teaching english has always appealed to me so i decided to give it a try. i like reading you people's posts about it.

oh! wonderful -- you will salvage our collective reputation if anyone can.
if you have any questions, i'd be glad to answer them :)

LL, that was a Good Save! I think the only way to recover from those kinds of events is to be self-deprecating and corny.

amanda is the bestest tesol teacher btw

awww <3
certainly the clumsiest

i'm feeling really unusually motivated this semester. it feels good!

aw thanks, ll, i'm sure i will have questions as i go along.

first two classes went okay on Monday, another one today...

the course packet for the above mentioned plagiarized course is pretty lol.. I can pretty much take a sentence from any page in the packet, google it, and find the original source...

that is super lame
would not pass for student work, don't see why it would pass for administration?

today in my class we were talking about how new words are born, and it was really fun
i love my job

yeah. I dunno, my school uses TFQ (teaching feedback questionnaires) as its primary way to evaluate teachers, and it kind of sucks - you just need to entertain the students & get them to like you in order to keep your job (which is what this guy does). stanley fish wrote some good oped pieces earlier this summer about the drawbacks of using TFQs as primary evaluation devices.

it all depends on how they're written, imo. sometimes they can elicit better information, sometimes not.

yeah, I def agree they can be valuable, but I don't like the idea of basing hiring decisions on them (sorry should have mentioned that in my post - my school basically decides whether to hire or fire you based on how good your TFQ is)

also, grammar question for all the ESL/EFL teachers itt: I'm working on teaching comparisons and comparative structures right now. the grammar book mentions that with adverbs that end in -ly, you need to use the 'more X-ly' construction. i.e. more slowly, more brusquely, more sharply (examples from the book). however what's the difference in meaning between:

John works more slowly than Peter does
John works slower than Peter does

to my ear, both of those sentences sound the same? whereas with the following two

Bill dresses more sharply than Adam does
Eric dresses sharper than Rick

the second example definitely does sound a bit off.

has anybody here used Blackboard? My school just switched from WebCT to Blackboard and I'm wondering if I want to get hot n heavy with this software and use it for setting up email groups so students can read each other's weekly response papers to the reading. Thoughts?

our school uses Blackboard, and my university used blackboard too. you can set up discussion forums on blackboard. for one of my classes we did something similar to what you're suggesting - everybody posted their weekly response on blackboard. but I don't know how many of the students actually read the other students' responses.

it seems really powerful and flexible, I just don't want to "bet the farm" on having students submit lots of content to it if they're not likely to look at it / use it. But I can see the advantages in terms of messaging people about course related stuff.

teachers at my school don't really seem to know how to use it, they just use it as a storage place for all their course files.

anyways, I've answered my own question upthread - the book was just describing tendencies for choosing between the -er and the 'more' form, there is a great degree of flexibility in choosing. ugh english is so hard to teach

has anybody here used Blackboard? My school just switched from WebCT to Blackboard and I'm wondering if I want to get hot n heavy with this software and use it for setting up email groups so students can read each other's weekly response papers to the reading. Thoughts?

Blackboard is terrible software for stupid technophobes.

Personally, I'm phobic about wasting my student's time and energy, and my own time and energy. I make no claims to be a code-writing fiend, but that hardly makes me a technophobe. Kind of busy with the content of the course (an upper division seminar for undergrads on Edmund Spenser which asks them to read all of "The Faerie Queene"). Just trying to talk to other teachers about whether they've enjoyed using this software. Oh, and are all technophobes stupid? Or are there some people who happen to be both technophobes and stupid? And in either case, are you actually accusing me of being a stupid technophobe, or just claiming that anyone who is skeptical/curious about a new piece of software's utility in the classroom is a stupid technophobe?

John works more slowly than Peter does
John works slower than Peter does

to my ear, both of those sentences sound the same? whereas with the following two

Bill dresses more sharply than Adam does
Eric dresses sharper than Rick

the second example definitely does sound a bit off.

as i read it: prescriptively, the second sentence in each pair is technically inaccurate. one of them sounds more inaccurate to your native-speaking ear because descriptively, people do say that. less so the second example. but in terms of language teaching, which is usually done somewhat prescriptively so as to avoid serious confusion, i would say go with the more + adverb formula. it's safe, and students are not going to benefit as much from what flies descriptively. imo, of course.

i would be thrilled to use blackboard, as most of my students are technophobes. instead, we have moodle.

thanks LL, that sounds about right.

I'll probably use Blackboard next term, at least as a place to house documents and links. We used it when I was in law school and I hated it, but it's all we got.

Also, a lot of my students don't have easy access to computers and I don't want to make their grades dependent on their being able to get to a computer lab at school. Just getting them to type their assignments in legal writing was like pulling teeth.

I've been in the last couple of days setting up the classroom. Well, yesterday I actually just sat at the computer--I need a day to get re-acclimatized to the simple fact of being there. I've been working my way through The World Is Flat over the summer. Made me extra glad I'm a teacher and don't have to worry about "high-value added skills" and all that stuff.

just putting this out there:

http://eltj.oxfordjournals.org/content/current

is pretty good and I've got an institutional subscription. if any of the articles look interesting to you guys let me know and I could, uhm, share.

thanks!

As a continuing ed instructor, I get paid by the student and I just found out yesterday that I have 23 in my class this term. That's a lot! And, bonus, this is not a writing class so unlike last term when I had to read 24 legal writing assignments every week (omg), I just have to grade 23 midterms and 23 finals.

I had my first class this past Saturday and I have a lot of really interesting students. In a good way! That's one thing I love about continuing ed - my students are v. interesting individuals that I enjoy getting to know.

my teacher ed program started this week. officially freaked out

oh please, you're a natural
stop the freakouts before they start imo

aw <3 means a lot coming from you, Amanda
i think i will maybe just take a nap and calm down

yeah just remember that in order 2 b a good teacher, u have to not freakout, ever

doing responsive classroom stuff today. it is good and all, but kind of... obvious?

sorry but need to vent - hate it when that dude I'm working with from upthread e-mails me about his sessions and says something like "many of the students are not very strong..." (happens all the time)

have you ever thought that you are just not teaching them effectively

also, just turned down a request to write a rec letter. that felt bad. but I honestly think lukewarm rec letters hurt more than help. need to have a range of stock responses stored for next time.

Not much, just fractions to a niece, and it was frigging harder than I ever imagined it would be. Sister-in-law got a laff watching.

I won't write rec letters for everybody either. Some of my students, as much as I might like them personally, are just not very recommendable.

dayo, how did you tell the student that you would not write the letter?

Does anyone happen to know of any EFL schools in London looking for teachers? I've been doing agency work all summer, and it's abruptly dried up.

I sort of hemmed and hawed and told her that she did pretty good work (B to B+ student I would say) but I said that she was very quiet in class, I didn't really notice her contributing during group work, etc - also explained that I could only write her a fair letter, and that would probably hurt her application more than help. not sure if she fully understood. I tried to soften it by saying I would help her look over her application, give her advice on her essays etc. xp

That seems like a nice way to do it!

is there any way we could move this thread to 77 or deindex it or something? i'm getting a little nervous about it.

lalech, twice in the past two weeks our tesol teacher has almost tripped on a cord, and each time i've immediately thought of you and lolled, which probably makes me look mean and/or inappropriate.

hahaha
i insinuate myself into many unusual situations

i have a funny story but i want to wait to post it til the thread is safeguarded
today was full of conflict and crying

i was not the one crying fyi
it's week 3 -- usually someone cries by this point

as soon as the thread is safe i want to hear this story.

can we move it to 77? is that ok? i don't want to exclude anyone...but i am dying to tell this story

it's a good idea. and anyone who isn't on 77 and wants to be just has to ask and they get added so there are no real issues with exclusion.

mod request requested

i'm mad paranoid and love my job* too much to endanger it.

*really, for real i do actually genuinely ENJOY what i do for money

i can tell!

i asked the mod board and they suggested starting a new thread on 77. i'll wait til the morning to start it, and will let you know if/when i do. i would rather have a high level of privacy if we're talking about something that -- for some people -- is be as controversial as teaching.

i don't want to get burned or drowned or blacklisted for this. it's not that the story is so good, it's just that we're dealing with a sensitive subject here.

is be == can be or is, depending on which way i rewrote that sentence like 5x

I just started one FYI

Could someone here send me a 77 invite? I'm not on there yet.

just ask on this thread and a mod will add you.

Request Access to 77 Borad

so I'm confused about one activity that keeps on coming up in my materials. we're practicing listening and I'm supposed to ask them to do a 'pre-listening' activity where they 'predict' the content of the recording before listening, based on the title of the recording, and then try to see if what they predicted matches up with what is said.

is there a pedagogical base for this? does it sound stupid to anybody else? I can't recall doing anything similar at all to this in my language classes in school.

ability to prejudge ilx threads as clusterfucks

ha, i had an exercise yesterday where ss had to predict what an article called "about engineering" would be "about".

i guess maybe it has smthg to do with developing the ability to glean gen ideas from key words in texts where they won't know many of them (wds). same as we've been practicing "skimming" as a skill. just speculating on the intent though, and no idea really if it's at all effective.

so I'm confused about one activity that keeps on coming up in my materials. we're practicing listening and I'm supposed to ask them to do a 'pre-listening' activity where they 'predict' the content of the recording before listening, based on the title of the recording, and then try to see if what they predicted matches up with what is said.

is there a pedagogical base for this? does it sound stupid to anybody else? I can't recall doing anything similar at all to this in my language classes in school.

― dayo, Monday, September 20, 2010 11:38 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

some of the stuff i'm reading for my teacher ed program suggests doing this. i guess it's to get them in an active reading/listening posture? it is hard for me to imagine not seeming stilted in the classroom, but what do i know?

yeah maybe it's designed to make them more active listeners? idk. the thing is I can't take it for granted what vocab if any my students know about the subjects at hand, and it's rly hard to guess what passage called 'there is no right or wrong answer' is going to be about?

it's a standard thing in esl teaching to ask students to "predict" what something will be "about" -- what they're really doing is making inferences about limited context clues, something we all do without thinking about it. when you see a thread that says "thread where we are teachers" you use your previous understanding of ilx to know that this is a thread for people who are teachers, not a thread where people teach you how to do things. when you see a thread that says "clusterfuck thread" and it's about different kinds of international soft cheese, you realize that you predicted incorrectly. it's just developing that skill to correctly infer what something will be "about." like critical thinking, it's a skill that must be developed.

okay, that makes sense - thanks LL. I'll try to use it more in my next few classes

I'm doing my own social studies this year for the first time in a while. We covered the Beringia Land Bridge Theory yesterday, lead-in to our Native Canadians unit. For the first and last time in my life I was thinking, "You know, I could really use Sarah Palin as a guest lecturer today."

Thursday we were doing the five kingdoms of living things, and I had a girl read "amoeba" off the board as "Obama." I was able to milk that for laughs the rest of the day. "Bacteria" was up there too--if only someone had read that as "Gingrich."

just wanted to share this with all my other ESL teachers, found it through a link from a link that LL originally sent me

http://www.voanews.com/learningenglish/home/

they have a youtube too!

http://www.youtube.com/voalearningenglish

also this story is awesome and uplifting

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/education/28school.html

we're doing something similar at my school!

this is key: “Let me help you,” was a response committee members said they often offered to reluctant colleagues who argued that some requests were too difficult.

Ughh I think I just had my least favourite lesson since I got to the basic-class-control stage 3 years ago: there is a HUGE FUCKING DRILL right outside school and the whole building is shaking? Ughhh I like talking about decimals and all but I just want to put a pillow over my head.

sharing another cool website that I use fairly frequently

http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/esl/videos.html

http://eslonthehill.wordpress.com/

lots of good stuff for higher level ESL teaching

Hello,

I was hoping that there may be discussion of How To Write A Teaching Philosophy on this thread, but there is none. How does one compose one of these things?

I found a lot of samples and just went from there

http://www.crlt.umich.edu/tstrategies/tstpts.php

hoo boy

I teach English to foreign students and I teach people how to teach English to foreign students and sometimes I teach people how to teach people to teach English to foreign students.

Does anyone know anything about getting single subject teaching credentials (e.g. for high school, etc.). I know it varies by state.

yes. you have to pass CBEST (in CA). You have to have a certain number of hours of student teaching. You can apply or look for some programs where you can actually get this credential while teaching at a private school, thereby still getting paid (because otherwise you don't get paid, and it makes it kind of hard to get a credential).

I missed this, thanks kyle!

Anyway, I start teaching film production in 3 weeks. Who wants to get schooled?

back to school tomorrow

just went to my classroom to hook up my laptop / PowerPoint and practice my first lecture to a giant, empty lecture hall

stoked!

So guys, I didn't get hired this year. I'm too expensive ... 2 Masters and 3 years experience put me out of the running in my cash-strapped state, and as of tomorrow morning I am an unemployed elementary school teacher. I've signed up for sub lists, etc., but this is ... very very difficult, and I'm looking at a year with low and irregular cashflow,as well as a more difficult time getting hired next year. In all, I sent out roughly 100 applications, with custom cover letters and glowing references and ... not one of my references got called; I didn't get an interview between May and today. It really sucks, and I'm not really sure what to do with my life right now.

This won't make you feel any better, but once I got about five years into teaching (also elementary), and was high enough on my board's seniority list that I was never in danger of being excessed, my lack of any extra qualifications--no ESL, no special ed, no French--actually became an advantage in making sure I'd always have my own classroom. There's nowhere else to put me.

I spent a few years supplying/substituting before going full time, and then--and now--the sub work in my board is extremely steady. I think our subs draw probably 90% of a full year's salary, some more.

remy, that is so disheartening. ordinarily I wd just say come to Texas but even jobs here are hard to come by now (you are still welcome to come to Texas, tho, if u don't mind 109 deg heat right now.)

Teaching: we enlist for the opportunity to counsel and educate tomorrow's youth, but we stay for the extra-long vacations.

had to sub a sixth grade health class
subject: body odor

apropos.

awesome

how do you teach about body odor? what's the lesson like?

"Okay: everybody gather around Tommy's desk for a second."

i did not have any prep time. So I talked extemporaneously about deodorant as a public service; we discussed the many implications of the phrase "your rights end where my nose begins" took a brief detour into the farts vs. pit odor discusison, and then talked about empathy, and how to pull somebody politely aside rather than publically call them out for stankiness.

Hello ILX.

I teach History, to 11-17 year olds in Northwest London.

Did do 2 years of TEFL in Barcelona.

I have plenty of body odour problems with my students routinely not showering but the worst thing is when students unilaterally decide to unload a bottle of deodorant in the room. But hey at least I don't have the problem of nits that my primary colleagues do.

Am off until Thursday!

can we keep teacher stuff on our 77 thread?
i plan on keeping anything personal on it at least

remy i'm curious what the discussion about noses and rights was like. feel free to bump the other thread though.

it's tuesday!

Tell me about your attendance policies! Especially if you teach at a post-secondary level. This is my first time getting to make up my own and I have some ideas, but I would like to compare them to what other people have done to see if I'm way off base. Thanks!

I am loving teaching right now. I got a real thrill yesterday imparting some arcane, theoretically impractical (in real-world terms, anyway) tech knowledge to one of my students yesterday and seeing him start to dig the process. I only wish teaching paid more (like enough to pay my student loans!) and I would do more of it =(

i taught my students the following words today and it was very satisfying:

monotonous/monotony/monotone
mellifluous

Did you kno that the "melli-" part is from the Latin word for "honey"?? A voice as sweet as honey!

I have some Mountain Flower Honey here on my desk and it's PRETTY SWEET.

I have laryngitis right now, and I had to teach yesterday entirely without my voice. Either in spite of, or because of, I taught a really amazing math lesson (on scale factor) and transformations using fake shrinky-dinks made from #6 plastic

"did you know"
Laurel, do you know me? Gah!

;)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/science/new-test-for-computers-grading-essays-at-college-level.html?hp&_r=0

where are these clowns getting the 'keep resubmitting until you get it right' idea from?

also

Mark D. Shermis, a professor at the University of Akron in Ohio, supervised the Hewlett Foundation’s contest on automated essay scoring and wrote a paper about the experiment. In his view, the technology — though imperfect — has a place in educational settings.

With increasingly large classes, it is impossible for most teachers to give students meaningful feedback on writing assignments, he said. Plus, he noted, critics of the technology have tended to come from the nation’s best universities, where the level of pedagogy is much better than at most schools.

“Often they come from very prestigious institutions where, in fact, they do a much better job of providing feedback than a machine ever could,” Dr. Shermis said. “There seems to be a lack of appreciation of what is actually going on in the real world.”

= let's not kid ourselves southwest northern state u

e-boox watch students, report on them to teachers

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/09/technology/coursesmart-e-textbooks-track-students-progress-for-teachers.html?pagewanted=1&_r=4&hp&

“They caught me,” said Mr. Tejeda, 43. He has two jobs and three children, and can study only late at night. “Maybe I need to focus more,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/20/education/score-corrections-qualify-nearly-2700-more-pupils-for-gifted-programs.html?hp

The errors were discovered when two parents, one a statistician, complained that their children had been incorrectly scored, the department said.

According to Pearson, three mistakes were made. Students’ ages, which are used to calculate their percentile ranking against students of similar age, were recorded in years and months, but should also have counted days to be precise. Incorrect scoring tables were used. And the formula used to combine the two test parts into one percentile ranking contained an error.

Earlier this week, the department said that score reports for 400 students had been lost, but that those tests had been found and were being scored.

One parent, Rena M. Ismail, 36, who had been told that her 5-year-old son, Hyder, was not eligible for a gifted seat, said the department informed her that her son had scored in the 89th percentile, when, by her math, he was in the 91st.

“I knew he got it,” she said. “I could see it. They told me I was mistaken.

“I am an educated person. I know how to add and multiply, and I knew he got in by his score sheet.”

http://www.citypages.com/2011-02-23/news/inside-the-multimillion-dollar-essay-scoring-business/full/

Then came the question from hell out of Louisiana: "What are the qualities of a good leader?"

One student wrote, "Martin Luther King Jr. was a good leader." With artfulness far beyond the student's age, the essay delved into King's history with the civil rights movement, pointing out the key moments that had shown his leadership.

There was just one problem: It didn't fit the rubric. The rubric liked a longer essay, with multiple sentences lauding key qualities of leadership such as "honesty" and "inspires people." This essay was incredibly concise, but got its point across. Nevertheless, the rubric said it was a 2. Puthoff knew it was a 2.

He hesitated the way he had been specifically trained not to. Then he hit, "3."

It didn't take long before a supervisor was in his face. He leaned down with a printout of the King essay.

"This really isn't a 3-style paper," the supervisor said.

Puthoff pointed out the smart use of examples and the exceptional prose. The supervisor just shook his head and pointed out how short the paragraphs were.

"You know, it's more of a 2," the supervisor repeated. "Not enough elaboration."

Puthoff quickly learned these were not arguments he could win. But as time went on, he found himself having more and more of them.

The great myth of rubrics as an objective panacea. They've been front and center in my board since I started 15 years ago--in the provincial marking I did for a few summers, in this thing that came in a few years ago called TCLP ("Teaching Critical Learning Pathways"--took me forever to stop accidentally calling it TLCP, after the "No Scrubs" group), in just about anything we come up with at the grade level (speeches, art assignments, etc.) They definitely make life easier--check, check, check, 3+, next--but the idea that you can eliminate the whims of subjectivity (setting aside whether you've even want to) is an illusion. From the linked article:

Although DiMaggio had been through a training process, he found himself tripped up as he began scoring the essays. What made the organization "good" as opposed to "excellent"? What happens when the kid doesn't answer the question at all, but writes with excellent organization about whatever the hell he wants?

And the people who do the training often have no idea either. I still remember a question on mean and median from one of the provincial tests--check that, assessments--I marked one summer. At first we were instructed that if the kid did everything right but had the two concepts backwards, that was an NE--not enough for a grade, essentially a zero. After 15 or 20 minutes of debate about this, word came back within the hour that such answers should be given a Level 2 (in the C-range). I guess you could say that's good, that they ultimately got it right, but I wonder instead about their original contention that such an answer deserved a zero.

What I generally do with a rubric is work backwards: go with my initial sense of what grade I want to give, then make the rubric fit the grade. I don't think where I end up is any more subjective than working in the other direction.

otm. grading is the art of pretend objectivity.

this is not surprising at all
i have friends who do grading for TOEFL and IB essays and everyone acknowledges that it's a bit of a farce but also not a bad way to make some extra cash
i don't think it means that grading rubrics are useless, just that factory grading is flawed

That's actually why I stopped doing the provincial marking: for the first few summers, there was lots of really valuable discussion every step of the way ("Is this a low 3 or a high 2? Why?"), which went on for as long as necessary, but gradually that gave way to no discussion, here's the rubric, now mark x number of booklets in y amount of time or you won't be invited back.

I don't know, LL--the main value I see in rubrics is from the teacher's point of view, that they make it easy to mark a class set of something very quickly. I don't know how much students get out of them. They're supposed to clarify for the student why a certain grade was given--look at the categories, look at the criteria--but if I try to write thoughtful commentary to go along with my grade (which takes time, which is why they can be useful as a teacher), to me that's just as good.

Actually, I realize they're supposed to be prescriptive, too: here are the expectations for the assignment, here's how the grade will match up with how well you meet those expectations. But I think I do that anyway when I make up an assignment sheet: here's what I'm looking for, and there'll be (for example) 12 marks for your information, 5 marks for the quality of your writing, and 3 marks for neatness and overall presentation. I think that plus relevant commentary when you mark the assignment works just as well.

i'm not gonna sit around on a sunday morning debating the utility of rubrics, but i find them useful for more than just speed and ease. just as one little example, my students sometimes also like to use them as a checklist to make sure they're paying attention to the assignment and have done what they need to do in order to succeed on the assignment. assignment sheets help, but they need to see it in several different places/ways sometimes. the usefulness of a rubric really depends on a wide array of very different factors, many of which don't really apply to the situation being described in the mass standardized grading above.

I'm positive the Velvet Underground's "Sunday Morning" was all about debating the utility of rubrics. No other time makes as much sense.

ILXteachers: i'm hoping one of you can help me out -

my friend and her partner are thinking about moving to california from NZ, and i'm trying to find info on how teaching jobs work for foreigners. she is just finishing up her teaching degree this year, so she has never actually worked as a teacher. my amateur google skills didn't turn up much info, so if anyone has a useful link or two, i'd greatly appreciate it (i REALLY REALLY want my friend to move here).

what part of california? a lot of districts aren't hiring right now because of the state budget crisis.

here's the best link for finding public school teaching positions: http://www.edjoin.org/advancedSearch.aspx

i'm not sure her teaching credential would have reciprocity in california. but supposing it did, here's how she could parlay that into a california teaching credential.

http://www.ctc.ca.gov/credentials/leaflets/cl870.pdf

thanks! i think they are looking at LA, but i don't know how soon it would happen - it all depends on her partner's job situation. in fact, i think there is only a slim chance that she will be able to even get a work visa for herself, but i still want to track down info for her.

ILXteachers: i'm hoping one of you can help me out -

my friend and her partner are thinking about moving to california from NZ, and i'm trying to find info on how teaching jobs work for foreigners. she is just finishing up her teaching degree this year, so she has never actually worked as a teacher. my amateur google skills didn't turn up much info, so if anyone has a useful link or two, i'd greatly appreciate it (i REALLY REALLY want my friend to move here).

― just1n3, Friday, July 19, 2013 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://j1visa.state.gov/

Best of luck to both of them!

This is the teacher programme: http://j1visa.state.gov/programs/teacher

a j1 visa is how i got here! and that was 5 years ago... actually, it hadn't occurred to me to get her looking at that, i was focused on how she would get a work visa as part of a couple since her partner will get job sponsorship, i think.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-OLldU8Vi8

it's an education, anyway

so tired

Back at it tomorrow. As I'm standing outside trying to round up kids in my class, thinking of asking each one of them "Are you going to bust my chops this year?" before entering the school. If they can't answer no to that question, I don't want 'em.

What if they say, "No, I was thining of busting your nads instead."

Both expressions turn up in Scorsese films (slightly different rendering of the second)--I went with the milder. If that is their comeback, I'm going to assume they've seen Goodfellas, and then it's "Welcome aboard!"

I'm positive the Velvet Underground's "Sunday Morning" was all about debating the utility of rubrics. No other time makes as much sense.

This is brilliant.

Parent interviews tonight (and tomorrow). I've been doing these for 15 years--the tank's empty, nothing left to say. A teacher and I were saying it'd be fun, one year, just to take out the report cards and read from them word-for-word for the entire interview. Or to at least respond to every question in report card-ese:

Parent: "How are you tonight?"
Me: "With some assistance, I am doing fine."
Parent: "Where should I sit?:
Me: "You are encouraged to sit there."
Parent: "So--any hope for my child?"
Me: "You consistently demonstrate an ability to ask exactly the right questions."

our father came home from one of these one time and said to my sister, "your teacher said you don't even have the brain capacity of a gnat but i defended you and said that you do."

I'm goofing around, and not referring to any particular student. If your sister's teacher actually did say that, that's amazing--you'd be out of a job today!

Australia != Canada, Phil.

(Sorry)

new zealand != australia, james redd and the blecchs.

Knew that was coming.

new zealand is australia's canada tho

A rolling thread in which we are incompetent geography teachers

we won't fret about any of this.

No, wouldn't want to let a little thing like this come between me and my favorite far-flung posters.

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/11/when-parents-yank-their-kids-out-of-standardized-tests/281417/

Teachers at Seattle’s Garfield High School voted unanimously earlier this year not to give the district’s required reading and math test. They encountered predictable resistance from district officials and harsh criticism from outside observers. Many students and parents, however, sided with the teachers.

The PTA and student government leaders voted in support of the teachers, and many parents sent in “opt-out” letters to exempt their children from testing that they viewed as an inappropriate measure of teachers’ effectiveness. And so when administrators came to class with lists of kids who needed to take the tests during the spring testing period, many students were exempted and others students simply refused to go with the administrators.

bonkers

jess hagopian is doing the lord's work

now i just wanna opt out of all kinds of stuff

or get my mom and dad to do it on my behalf

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/11/great-teachers-dont-always-want-to-become-principals/281483/

just realizing recently that everyone around me with power over my employed life, for the rest of my career, is likely to be a questionable teacher or someone with fantasies of administering control, i.e. an administrator : /

that is one of the scariest moments, agree
also why i will not be pushed any further in that direction
it's where creativity and enjoyable human interaction goes to die

i still wanna be an administrator at some point tho if i ever just become a full time journalism teacher, prob not

http://www.fastcompany.com/3021473/udacity-sebastian-thrun-uphill-climb

"We were on the front pages of newspapers and magazines, and at the same time, I was realizing, we don't educate people as others wished, or as I wished. We have a lousy product," Thrun tells me. "It was a painful moment."

suck it, barbarians

haha, my first thought was "eat it, losers"

…

the folx at work imply that if i am gonna wanna be on their good side i am gonna wanna learn about adminispeak pedagogical techniques and prove that i can use them :/

'statistics show' that i should, apparently

ugh instructional design

how can a field full of educated people who educate others be so submerged in idiocy and sloganeering

ambition

these people need copies of orwell's 'politics and the english language' in their faculty mailboxes

or someone needs to force them to do a beckett and write everything in a second language so that they're denied every single little encrustation of verbiage whenever they want to express their thoughts

i have so many things to say but i am not going to 1) type them all out or 2) do so here.
but yeah, try doing all this in a different language and then get back to me with some hella jargony bs

hey i'm not saying it's not an impossible task, i'm just saying, goddamn

guys can we just do this from now on

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2013/12/19/photos_open_air_schools_for_sick_kids_in_the_early_twentieth_century.html?wpisrc=hpsponsoredd2

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/01/theres-a-cheaper-more-effective-way-to-train-teachers/282778/

it often seems to me like this kind of model—apprenticeship under good and experienced teachers—is obviously right, even for higher ed. (where that could conceivably be more like the european model, save for the fact that that's often a matter of research-lead-and-subordinates as much as it is master-teacher-and-apprentice?), but when i think about the teachers i've had, i would only be willing to be apprenticed to a handful of them from the entirety of my educational career. it seems like maybe at all levels we have an allergy to requiring people to be under the authority of others, especially outside of institutional settings where people are temporarily, formally subordinate to others (i.e. schools)?

-1 the Atlantic

I'm in a program like this, but the mentor teachers are all hand-picked for not being pedagogically conservative buttholes. Although they are pedagogically conservative in some ways, their employer, who runs my program, gives them a pass for not fulfilling the butthole part and for having some teaching chops. They also have to have at least ten years experience.

If I follow you correctly, you're right that they'd run into a lot of buttholes-without-chops if a program like this was expanded to include every new teacher. Or maybe you're just saying that students would bristle at being under someone's authority, in which case, it's nice of you to consider them. My program director is also working at the state level (California) to try to change credential testing to make it more "authentic." She helped implement PACT, which consists of 2 unedited 10 minute clips of the student/intern teacher teaching and a thesis-length analysis and explication.

I think the number 1 most effective school reform would be an emphasis on goodman/glasser/kohn-style student and teacher autonomy. From the teacher side, you can't really police what a teacher thinks or says or does in a classroom, and when you try you get, e.g., the anti-teacher, anti-union standards movement, which has cost a lot of money and has accelerated the bean counter philosophies of school and district management, but has arguably (not arguably) made American schools worse. So you can't very effectively (and without repurcussions) tell a teacher what to do or who to be, but a new teacher participating in a schoolwide democracy, in which consensus and consent are foregrounded elements of the occupation, and in which the administrative mandarins take a backseat in directing school function and policy, is a new teacher who will learn to be a school leader, to be better educated about state and district policy and law, and to be more conscientious about their curriculum and planning. A lot of traditional schools with revolving door administrations already have crippled versions of this model in place, because the schools would die if the teachers didn't assume, of no one else's volition but their own, leadership roles. These schools would do much better to just restructure and forget about hiring that principal or vice principal or "guidance counsellor."

i don't think it's just being nice! i seriously question how much someone doing that job can be told what to do or who to be, even to the extent of taking guidance from a 'master' / mentor for a limited period of time. i know that it HAS been done, that arrangements like that are not unheard of (thinking of old-timey disciplinarian schoolmarms or whatever, to dig that far back?), but it literally just perplexes me. something about the idea of one person who is supposed to enjoy/exercise some degree of authority visibly/tangibly being directed by a superior exercising their own authority, same place same time, gets something wrong about the work that's being done. (i suppose that is why this program gets pitched primarily as 'observation', 'helping' etc.?)

once in graduate school i happened to have (this was in no way the norm, for obvious reasons) a fellow graduate student as a t.a., for one of my first classes of my own in fact, and one day i heard her sitting in with some students engaged in group discussion, and the stuff she was saying made me just want to stop and say SHUT UP, DON'T RUIN THEM WITH YOUR MEDIOCRITY, but of course i couldn't quite do that so i just tried to leave her with few responsibilities so that she would disengage from the class for the remainder of the semester instead of trying to chip in. (now, with less of a need for control over all the aspects of the course, i could handle that better, but even late on i had a nightmare of a t.a. who i just had to cross my fingers would not ruin her students' chances of getting anything out of the class.)

'let me teach you how to teach someone else' kind of leaps over the fact that you're the one who has to do it, in the end. and in some way which is not exactly the same as say with a surgeon, 'let me teach you how to perform this procedure'. or 'explain thing x to someone else the way -I- tell you to explain it', which is a little closer maybe. with certain things, you can tolerate the requirement that your own explanation essentially repeats one you were given / told to give. but when the requirement bears on your own manner of giving the explanation / relating to others?

I agree with you. I meant it's nice of you to think of them because no one else will, because they're students, and nobody cares about students, even if they're adults. I see you're addressing it from a much more practical point of view, though.

You're perfectly describing one of the key motivations for decentralizing schools! Structural changes will always trump reforms that emphasize behavior.

'but how can we make improvements if we don't tell people what to do and then look to see if they did it?!'

http://dianeravitch.net/2014/01/22/north-carolina-greatest-insult-to-teachers-ever-cooked-up-in-backroom/

“The NC 60/30/10 Plan, which “embraces high teacher turnover,” would place teachers on one of three tracks: Apprentice, Master or Career.

“Sixty percent of all North Carolinian teachers would make $32,000/year in the Apprentice category and be allowed to teach for up to twenty years, at which time they must retire or move on to another industry.

“Thirty percent of teachers would be eligible for the Master category if they have been teaching for three years, have completed an online training program, and can demonstrate mastery of the teaching method based on “customer survey data.” Master teachers would earn $52,000/year.

“Ten percent of teachers would become Career teachers, making $72,000 if they have an advanced degree and can innovate and lead.

“All teachers would be able to serve in North Carolina for no more than 20 years. If the plan were to be adopted, all teachers in North Carolina would be required to reapply for their jobs in 2015.

wau

i guess the tool hawking the plan has since said they are backing off the most bonkers part, the 20-year limit for 'apprentices'

though now that i look more closely, the 'masters' aren't just more highly trained, they're trained in 'the teaching method based on "customer survey data"', surely one of the cornerstones of any solid customer-teacher relationship

fuck corporate ed reform forever

this is disgusting

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25906736

UK Government allegedly briefs against the schools inspection body, partly for the right reasons but largely for the wrong reasons:

...the wish for schools to develop their own approaches to teaching was being held back by child-first orthodoxies among inspectors...

...who were stifling innovation

I would not disagree that Ofsted stifles innovation, not least because teachers have little time to really plan because they're too busy shuffling paperwork and fabricating Ofsted-pleasing frameworks.

hiya, if you are or know of a good maths teacher in london (up to a-level) who's in the market for a part-time role in a good school, do get in touch with me!

This seems like the place to share my series of recent essays and how-to notes on authority, classroom management, and the Law of the Jungle. I wrote this for myself, while in grad school and while subbing, but wonder if it could help others too. I'm really interested in people's experiences with any of the phenomena described, and your reactions to anything below.

Main essays/outlines on Fred Jones (on "say, see, do" teaching, preferred activity time, "meaning business," Alfie Kohn, cooperative learning, and more):
Instruction.
Motivation.
Discipline.

Offshoot essays:
John Taylor Gatto's 'Dumbing Us Down.'
Why classrooms aren't communities.
School and the Law of the Jungle.
Teaching or violence.
John Locke, A.S. Neill, and authority revisited.

i've read some of those, pete, but it's a lot to take in and pitched way below my student level, so i might need a think on it.

meanwhile

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAy3vJn4pbs

http://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinehoward/2014/02/12/no-college-left-behind-randy-bests-money-making-mission-to-save-higher-education/2/

on the illiterate businessman whose company 'academic partnerships' is raking it in helping businesses and schools convert to online course delivery

http://spartandaily.com/119401/online-proctoring-raises-privacy-concerns

sure, no big, we'll just be watching you through your own camera while you pay $20 to take this test

well, watching you and half a dozen other test-takers, night-watchman style

yeesh

Nguyen said he is also concerned with the type of personal information he was asked to provide to ProctorU.

In addition to showing the remote proctor his driver's license and entering in his student ID number, Nguyen said he was asked to answer four personal questions about himself.

One was to pick a family member's name out of a list of names.

Nguyen said that his uncle's name was on the list, although he isn't sure how they had his name since he's never willingly shared that information in a public context.

The questions, Hayes said, are a security measure that is also employed by some credit card and insurance companies.

He said all of the information is compiled from public records and databases by Acxiom, a data-brokering company.

"We're looking for something that you are, something that you have and something that you know," Hayes said, explaining the comprehensive verification process.

fuck ed tech in whatever orifice is convenient at the time

there are no orifices, they are remotely located and you receive updates about them in an app on your phone, which does not work

the worst
ugh
so gross!

cool i will just give this ed tech to my students
*it is broken within a week*
welp
*prepares paper lessons*

i spoke up against educational products during our HLC visit this week
feel good about that

been following this dude

https://twitter.com/Beaker_Ben

who is a regular from one of those college instructor griping blogs

and he has made a habit of retweeting students tweeting about their teachers

good GOD are they vituperative and abusive about the most innocuous things when they're doing it in a public backchannel

best to avoid shit like that
you can't even start to think about it

also are you an old ilxor with a new name?

nope, same one my mother gave me

This story is really bizarre. Teacher jail!

http://www.thenation.com/article/179605/where-shame-policy-inside-las-teacher-jail

http://inthesetimes.com/article/16691/a_boycott_today_keeps_the_testing_at_bay

http://www.geoffshullenberger.com/archives/269

against 'adaptive learning' platforms

That Nation story is both crazy and sad: “They want to dehumanize the profession as a whole, because if you can bring this profession down, if you can make people lose trust in this profession, then you can do anything.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/10/does-england-have-the-solution-to-the-grade-inflation-problem/381571/

The U.K. is not immune to disputes about grade inflation. But it’s telling that the most common grade by far is still a second, not a first. When employers all accept that a second-class degree already provides a stamp of quality, it removes the narcissism inherent in minor differences. There are also fewer incentives for professors to assign higher grades if students recognize that the majority of them will receive the same mark. And sticking to four grades hasn’t harmed the UK’s stellar standings in global university league tables.

This approach might be called the Goldilocks principle of grading. It suggests that students, teachers, and employers can all find their way in a system where grades are not too high and not too low, but just right. And that might mean the majority of students get exactly the same grade.

it's called a C, people

Ban grading aside from pass fail

http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2014/12/pearsons-renaissance-1-history-and.html

this crank's anti-corporate-reform-gobbledygook blog makes me happy

Odd German film from a few years ago--looks and feels more like a television show than a movie--but very good in terms of what it's like to face the reality of class control when you're starting out (not that that issue ever really goes away):

http://www.filmmovement.com/downloads/photos/Forestfortrees_hi.jpg

The teacher's personal life belongs in a Fassbinder film.

The black hole/Bermuda Triangle of elementary teaching: marking a class set of stories. Some never make it back.

I'm halfway through one about a new gaming console that does everything from waking you up in the morning to getting you something to drink:

"Ahh now that is one tasty glass of lemonade" said Jake relaxed.

Pulp Fiction reference, I'm pretty sure.

I like marking math.
I don't mind marking art.
As noted above, I hate marking anything with words.

the wordst

I love this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fn_vAhu_Lw

http://wishtv.com/2015/07/12/indiana-schools-report-shortage-of-teacher-applications/

School districts across Indiana are having trouble finding people to fill open teaching positions amid a nearly 90 percent drop in the number of teacher licenses issued by the state.

The Indiana Department of Education says the state issued about 7,500 teaching licenses for the 2007-2008 school year. WTHI reports that number fell to 934 for the 2013-14 school year.

Licenses for teachers with at least 10 years of experience fell from 333 to 4 in the same period.

yeesh

Wow--I'll know where to direct all the underemployed supply/graduating teachers here. It's really hard just to get on my board's supply list (i.e., substitute, if you're American--I remember an American friend once thinking we hired teachers to man the supply cupboards).

that's a key position tho

If you don't have the key, you'll never be able to open the cupboard, so yes.

the hell's going on in indiana?

http://www.salon.com/2015/07/18/charter_schools_worst_nightmare_a_pro_union_movement_may_change_charters_forever/

ha ha god bless unions

Let’s say, hypothetically, that the charter-union movement starts picking up steam. Is there any chance that Wall Street, which has been a massive supporter of charters, will abandon it because of their views on unions?

Yes, I think that’s definitely a possibility. That’s something that various union people said to me. Jesse Sharky, from the Chicago Teacher’s Union, said that right, there’s a lot of businesspeople and entrepreneurs who are very interested in the charter school sector, and if that sector became more heavily unionized, it’s not so clear that suddenly it would be such an interesting or intriguing investment for them to make.

at a top-tier university, how many pages can you expect undergraduates (these days) to be able to read per week? i am composing a syllabus from scratch for the first time in a very long time and im realizing i have no idea what's a reasonable expectation on my part.

1000

ha there's an undergraduate class at my institution that's gonna be reading the entirety of A Remembrance of Things Past. i wonder how that's gonna go.

^i did that as an undergrad (though can't remember if it was grad course) & it was one of my fave courses ever

can't remember if it was 2 semesters or one (prob 2)

god years of grad school is like river of lethe

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/634624c6-312b-11e5-91ac-a5e17d9b4cff.html#slide0

Student monitoring service Skyfactor, which is sold in the US and used by 130 universities there, advertises itself as a risk management service, promising to help academics “quickly see which students need attention and resources now — before it’s too late”. Course tutors are given access to a dashboard that documents each student’s class attendances, assessment grades, participation in sports practices, and visits to the campus financial aid officer. A door icon placed next to each name, either closed or open, signals the program’s prediction of how likely the student is to leave the institution early. If their high grades drop, or their passion for basketball begins to wane, Skyfactor will flag these individuals in red.

David McNally, chief technology officer at Macmillan Science and Education, which owns Skyfactor, says the early warning mechanism is beneficial for all involved. “In the US more than the UK . . . losing a student is a very expensive loss to an institution because they pay high annual fees,” he says. “If you can get to a student before they drop out, you can keep them in the institution.”

When asked about privacy implications, McNally says his company — a competitor to Pearson, current owner of the Financial Times — is “extremely serious” about abiding by both US and UK data security laws. He adds that the information is “being used for the greater good, which is better education for everybody”. He insists it is not only students being tracked: the same programs that measure their performance are being used to compare how effective their tutors are and how well one school is teaching its pupils compared with another. In the future, it will be possible to compare entire local education authorities.

That's pretty creepy. We do data analysis with stuff like Revel - interactive digital textbooks that allow tutors to monitor reading and have micro-assessments that enable changes in performance to be tracked over time, and it's pretty common to have centralised systems for attendance / grades, but i don't think we would ever want to monitor extracurricular activities or "visits to the campus financial aid office".

it has 'sky—' right in the name

i mean cmon

units of alcohol served on student card, nights spent not in own bed, pages read per week

good lord

http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-human-proof-classroom.html

http://edushyster.com/i-am-not-tom-brady/

is this even like

real? how could ppl???

One of my best and weirdest moments ever as a teacher at dismissal today. A former grade 6 student of mine, now in 8, came up and asked me what my five favourite films are. Interesting student, related to a Nobel Prize winner in literature--he seems to be just getting into movies, and he'll occasionally drop around to tell me about something he's just seen. Anyway, I rattled off a quick list of the usual suspects, then asked him what his were. His list: 1. Pulp Fiction, 2. Zodiac, 3. The Shining, 4. There Will Be Blood, 5. Taxi Driver. Remember, this a kid who's 13 or 14. Allowing that there was probably a small element of him wanting to impress me, it was extremely gratifying, even though I had to go through the motions of doing the teacher thing: "M_______! What are you doing watching these films--these are not for someone your age. You've got to stop watching stuff like this immediately...warning, warning...blah blah blah...isn't Zodiac amazing?" I'm taking 15% of the credit/blame here.

Going back to grade 3 next year after 15+ years of 6/7. (I asked for 4--pretty close.) No more "Smells Like Teen Spirit," Warhol, Godard, Kent State, or Republican debate clips. Well, I can probably keep going with the latter--they'll understand.

i teach 6th grade, i'd love to hear what from godard you were showing to students!

Every year on his birthday, I'd show a clip--usually the five minutes from 2 or 3 things with the coffee cup, some years the dance from Band of Outsiders.

Cool, thanks

I mentioned an ex-student of mine a few posts back, how excited I was that he coming up to me all the time to talk about the Scorsese, Kubrick, and similar films he’d been watching. He joined the film club we run, worked away on something at home for the past couple of months, and we watched his finished film today (hadn’t seen any of it before today). Fantastic! It’s called A Trek Through the Cold Wilderness, and he’s going to enter it in the experimental category for our board competition. The film’s exactly as advertised, about five minutes’ worth (he told me how much he’d liked The Revenant, and I’m guessing that’s the guiding influence), with an operatic score and lots of great Cinemascope-like shots of snow and fields and trees. You can take it straight-up, and just watch it as a really impressive piece of work for a kid his age; it’s also a pretty good comp for an SCTV parody of a Bergman or (if they were around today) a Béla Tarr film. We were just killing ourselves watching it.

We fought the law, we won.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-teachers-ruling-1.3545989

Took 30 students to my board's film festival today. Exciting seeing two of our films on a big Cineplex screen. The funniest thing was one that started like a horror film, leading to a character getting a phone call from her future self: "Donald Trump is president," followed by 10 seconds of first-rate screaming.

Found this very encouraging: out of the 30 films we saw (ranging from grade 3 to grade 8), two of them--one very specifically, one more symbolically--amounted to "Put the fucking device away and open your eyes."

(Probably filmed with iPhones, but it's a start.)

chicago teacher among the 1000 fired recently:

http://www.progressive.org/pss/official-phone-call-don%E2%80%99t-tell-me-it%E2%80%99ll-be-fine#st_refDomain=www.facebook.com&st_refQuery=

xian is one of my teacher heroes. he's v active on twitter and with the educolor group.

I call parents so infrequently--usually only when some piece of work is egregiously overdue--that when I do, like right now, the conversation generally begins, "Hi, it's Mr. D_______...Johnny's teacher...Right, right--we met last October."

ha, i teach mostly seniors and i think i made one phone call home this year, it was bad

should say ENTIRELY seniors now

I assume you're speaking to the seniors themselves, not their parents...

He means 17 year olds

Yeah yeah, I talk to them all the time. I am VERY popular *pops gum*

Only job in the world where 7 cm of snow can make the whole day a nightmare, but 8, like today, is pure bliss.

One of my boys today was distraught because he couldn't find his yogurt. Boy across from him: "Maybe it's in your pencil case, J_______." Opens pencil case. "It is in your pencil case--I found it!"

Destined to be either the world's most ingenious detective or most inept criminal.

Was it a gogurt? How does a yogurt fit in a pencil case? Poured into the bottom?

I am starting my first big PBL in a few days. Kind of intimidating!

good luck ... YOU’LL NEED IT!!

j/k you’ll be fine

its just i worked at a 100% PBL school for four years and still have PTSD when i see the letters

I’m toeing the dread/anticipate line.

I do a lot of project-based work already, but I keep it pretty buttoned-up and teacher-structured. This new unit is interdisciplinary, month-long, standards based, and requires ~10 different types of student roles. The outcome is more conceptual, and I have NO idea what it’ll be like.

doing new stuff is fun. i am teaching a music appreciation course this semester and, aside from the textbook, have built all my materials and assignments from scratch. it's a lot of extra work but i am really enjoying it. learning a lot too!

it's tempting to wish for a rut in which to relax
i figure that is what summer is for

also it's really only brutal the first time
the next time, at least the framework is there

Was it a gogurt? How does a yogurt fit in a pencil case?

A gogurt, yeah--I didn't realize they had a different name.

http://www.generalmillscf.com/~/media/images/product/product-detail/yogurt/yoplait-portable/42163000-yoplait-simply-go-gurt.ashx

I'd never heard the term "PBL" before--figured that must mean project-based-learning from the subsequent posts. We call it "inquiry" up here. If the movement is 100% in that direction, that's one more reason I'm ecstatic I'm done next year.

It is very much in that direction. In theory it is great. In practice, it's been ... bumpy.

x-post to LL: I have always had to make all of my materials from scratch. It's not by choice, though. My district requires expects extensive personalization/adaptation of all curriculum, and my colleagues are sometimes pretty protective of their materials. Or, their materials are freely shared much more lecture-y than my wont. In short, I've never found resources that are differentiated enough for the classroom I run. In one room I teach G&T, gen-ed, and special-ed inclusion, and most prepared materials have (at best) an "extension question" or a hokey graphic-organizer as supplmental to the orthodox design. Out of 20-25 students, I usually have, say, six to eight different variations running at a time, and at least a few ELLs. I'd say that in an average year I've had to create ~ 300+ pages of new documents. It's exhausting, and I truly don't think non-teachers have any idea of how much work goes into my prep.

This year, though, I started teaching two subjects and the prep got overwhelming. My supervisors have been good and they've been steering me to use lots of materials from tolerance.org, Smithsonian, commonlit, and the Choices program (out of Brown University). There's some great stuff out there, but I would LOOOOVE if somebody had a year-map for my content area(s) so that I didn't have to sequence day-by-day, week-by-week, and semester-by-semester. I used to adore creating new content/new units, but at this point it would be a delight to go back to previous material.

That's something I've always been terrible at (or just plain lazy): differentiation. I do it to a certain extant, but a lot of times it's just "You do this, and you that too, but less of it." (Also, ditto--good luck.)

I'd say that in an average year I've had to create ~ 300+ pages of new documents. It's exhausting, and I truly don't think non-teachers have any idea of how much work goes into my prep.

this is horrifying
300 pages?! every semester?! that can't be helping you deliver individualized instruction.

i have the same issue

i spend so much fucking time making worksheets its ridiculous

it's my fault for always working at charter schools that implement cost-cutting measures like ... not buying curriculum

it's one thing to do it once -- why would you have to do that every semester, or even every year? what is the administration's rationale for requiring this?

i make changes to my materials all the time, but i don't make 300 pages of all new materials every time. that would not leave me time for eating and sleeping and general physical maintenance.

then again i am also a course coordinator and have tp prepare materials for classes i may or may not be teaching
that's another issue though

oops TO prepare

in my case, it's because i'm always teaching new courses - i am authorized in chemistry, physics and math. so when i teach math i tend to get switched around between different levels. and the switch from california standards to common core meant a lot of redesign.

i teach regular and AP chem and physics, and they (college board) redesigned AP chem in 2013 and AP physics in 2014, so i had to redesign my materials. for regular classes i also had to redesign from california to NGSS.

and then on top of that i've been at three different schools in 12 years. the first was 100% PBL with a very high proportion of special ed students. the second was very traditional in a super high-achieving school with very high SES. and now i'm at a 100% free and reduced lunch school with a very high proportion of language learners. so every time i switch schools i have to re-jigger my materials for a new population.

i'm hoping it settles down soon ... but it's kind of been a perfect storm i guess ...

To be fair, I create three hundredish pages per year, not per semester. My school year runs 185+ days, and I create something new at least a couple of times per week, usually 2-3 pages in length. Then I modify and adapt. I’m a big advocate of a student-led classroom, and when I’m roped into a set/previous curriculum I end up feeling like a cart before a horse.

Middle school is really hard to teach, because in the same classroom I’ll have kids reading/writing as college freshman, and kids struggling w/ comprehension on a third grade level. I’ve never found a textbook/curriculum that is interesting enough to engage both ends of the spectrum - but it’s no sweat to make something compelling on my own from ready materials (i.e. why we read Robert Frost and ee cummings and Gary Soto and Amy Tan and Avi and Sandra Cisneros and Judy Blume and Langston Hughes)

The cost of this, though, is that I don’t get to spend a lot of time thinking up creative pedagogies, and my in-room practice has gotten increasingly stale.

i agree with you completely about customizing and the lack of utility of a pre-made curriculum
know what you mean about teaching multi-level classrooms
my mom taught middle school for 30 years and there are extracurricular challenges that no amount of worksheets and handouts could solve

ultimately we all have the same problems -- people expect us to be wizards monomaniacally focused on teaching above all else
i don't think this is fair or reasonable esp considering the compensation, grief, and, who knows, arms training we might need to go through :(

plus everyone thinks they know how to do our job
godspeed, everyone

Hello, thread. I am a) old (early 40s) and ii) an RQT, teaching English at a secondary school. I'm a classic midlife crisis, basically. The job is fucking mental, isn't it? It's a bit like parenthood in that if anyone could actually communicate the day-to-day chaos of it, no one would actually do it. That said, I do love it. Most of it. Well, bits of it.

if anyone could actually communicate the day-to-day chaos of it, no one would actually do it

The disconnect there is why the longer you teach, the more you're inclined to let every new initiative go in one ear and out the other. It's all well-meaning, but most all of it takes place in some fictional classroom that has very little connection to the day-to-day chaos.

Yes, I'm slowly coming to terms with this. I'd no real sense of just how autonomous teachers actually are - how, after a time, it's really you and the chaos. This is still half-formed but... it's a mixture of that and managing what is essentially an always already paranoid teaching subject by which I mean the teaching-ego that's formed in that first, unbelievably intense first year, where one is watched, and critiqued mercilessly, is by design and nurture, self-critical ('the best teachers are self-reflective!') to the point of madness. I still feel that watching eye, even now. That might be just my particular pathology, though.

That's spot-on. After a few years it's just you, the kids, and the chaos; I would guess, in the last 15 years, a principal has been in my room watching a lesson or activity fewer than 10 times--and some of that was the annual 5-year review. It gets to the point where you can't even convince someone you're doing a lousy job when you absolutely know that you are. I was having a nightmarish time last year--wrote about it somewhere in here, I think--and whenever I'd share that with another teacher, that I had no idea at the time what I was doing and wasn't helping anyone, it was always "No, no--you're doing a great job." Some combination of politeness, support, and the shared assumption that merely getting through the year counts for a lot.

time for eating and sleeping and general physical maintenance.

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Thursday, February 22, 2018 12:57 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

in my experience you can choose one of these 3 (i choose eating)
srsly my health is in shambles but i'm a pretty decent teacher now and im happy

i think it should bother me more that ive put on like 80 pounds the last few years but im still extremely fucking cute so whatevs

That's spot-on. After a few years it's just you, the kids, and the chaos; I would guess, in the last 15 years, a principal has been in my room watching a lesson or activity fewer than 10 times--and some of that was the annual 5-year review. It gets to the point where you can't even convince someone you're doing a lousy job when you absolutely know that you are. I was having a nightmarish time last year--wrote about it somewhere in here, I think--and whenever I'd share that with another teacher, that I had no idea at the time what I was doing and wasn't helping anyone, it was always "No, no--you're doing a great job." Some combination of politeness, support, and the shared assumption that merely getting through the year counts for a lot.

I've been thinking about this a fair bit, amongst general introspection about the madness of the job. We've just had a few snow days which were like a window of sanity. I got to read, which was novel, and sleep relatively well, not dreaming about Y11. But yeah, simply being there is a thing, isn't it? No matter that you feel half-powered most of the time, if not worse.

about to start year #9. im stoked bc i'm going to have a full academic decathlon team and we're actually going to be competitive. i...might be teaching AP? they still havent told me LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL goddammit. im in my last semester of grad school before i graduate in december which means i'll get some of my life back in the spring.

have you ever taught AP before?

the first year is brutal, esp if the course has been recently revamped (mine has)

i'm not sure if i'm going to do science olympiad again this year ... the last two years we have not been competitive and honestly the event as a whole is kind of a drag (in that it's very parent-driven, not that engaging for the kids, and not really structured toward developing scientific understanding, creativity, etc) ... but i am sure i will have some kids come begging for something to buff up their resumes

i already had to tell the kids that want to do rescue committee firmly no because they had been so useless the last two years

well it wasn't a firm no

it was "no until you bring me written plans with deadlines and deliverables for three meaningful student-run service projects", no more "raising awareness" bs

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/30/us/tm-landry-college-prep-black-students.html

man

been sitting with this article all day, incredibly fucked up

what a nightmare

not the only alternative school out there that's functionally a cult, from what I've heard

I've been keeping a Google classroom page this year--better than the board-created page I used to use (which wasn't bad). I posted a novel-study assignment today: "Joey Pigza - Culminating Task." (Jargon...I rail against it, but sometimes I give in.) The kids--grade 3 and grade 4--love to post responses, some of which kill me.

From V___: "thank you so much for the joey pigza culmination"

Culminate away.

(Can I just post, being a parent, I'm in awe of teachers. Many tell me I'd have been good at it. But since I feel rub as a parent, I'd prob fuck that up too. The chaos description seems apt. What I find most saddening/maddening is the intro of technology/direct communication. So many patents pester the teachers. Question their authority. I myself have never done so. There's a distinct: that's the school/classroom. The teacher gets to decide and apply their rules. I even told teachers: if they are in the wrong, you are in charge. Not I.)

I was looking over some of the stuff I've posted here the past few years and came across the back-on-forth on rubrics six years ago. No better example of how they never settle on anything before moving onto something else. Rubrics are so passé now--it's task requirements and success criteria. ("Co-created," of course.) Our resource teacher--someone I like, and she's helped me at times--is a true believer in all this stuff, I'm most definitely not, so when she asked me a few weeks ago if I knew the difference between the two, the question put me off enough that I made it a point to make up an antiquated rubric instead. (I'm finished this year, so at a certain point, it's like nobody cares what you do anymore. It's a great feeling.) Would bet a small fortune: four or five years from now, the words "task requirement" and "success criteria" will never be heard.

When I started teaching in earnest (ca. ‘03) it was all about “learning opportunities” which now seems both quaint and de rigeur.

i still use rubrics and don't feel shame about it

my students like them too. sometimes i use a checklist to get them ready to turn in an assignment but the grade is determined by the rubric. i hate grading. however, i love teaching.

GRADING, you say?

more like DEGRADING if you ask me!!

Once a year--today was that day--the kids will be working on a math test and I'll take out some chocolate and say, "You guys work on your math test; I'll be sitting here eating chocolate." I'm going to miss that.

<3

I'm on the clock.

Swine! Seriously though, good luck and enjoy those 100-odd days.

(Just for a minute there, I read DeLillo and thought, Don!)

I can't tell you how many times people come up to me on the street and start asking about arcane plot points from Underworld...Thanks; only about 70 of them in the classroom.

Things I will miss, part 83: learning stuff I never knew, in this case what games and sports Ancient Egyptians played (from a grade 4 slide show):

"What the Egypt people played: fishing, rowing, football, basketball, golf, hockey, tennis, swimming...chess, weight lifting, wrestling, long jump and other card games."

i mean i bet there are people in egypt in 2019 who do that

Pretty clearly, their research led them to a page on Egypt today--happens all the time with kids. The thought of King Tut standing over a three-foot putt on 18 still made me laugh.

dying @ "long jump and other card games"

Dying @ ancient Egyptians golfing

one of my students got into yale!!!!!!!!!!!!! yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(for reference of how big of a deal this is at my school, more of my former students have been convicted of murder than gone to ivy league schools)

That's great--I've had other success stories, not an Ivy League school (that I know of), and they always mean a lot.

In 21 years of teaching, I've had to administer standardized provincial testing in all but four of them. (Students do it in grade 3 and grade 6 here.) It came in one year before I started, and I wouldn't be surprised if it only outlasts me by a few years. I think--I hope--it is gradually dawning on the public what a rigged charade it is.

The only useful things I've gotten out of it were 1) marking it for the first few summers, which was genuinely worthwhile from the standpoint of learning how to assess (and allowed me to put away some money), and 2) the signs I post on my door every year while we're writing it.

http://phildellio.tripod.com/eqao.jpg

One regret about leaving now: I won't be around eight years from now, when I'd have a class where half the boys and a couple of the girls are named Kawhi.

just got back from graduation. always a dope experience.

I always enjoy the grade 8 grad at our school. This year, though--with an incredibly small class of 14--I've never taught any of them (I've coached two or three).

i teach primarily 12th graders (high school seniors) so it's an annual thing for me now.

When I write my half-arsed 'the impossible profession' book, one of my chapters/sections will be titled 'getting used to holidays - the unspoken something or other' because, four years in, it's still really weird. I'm all a) BIG PLANS - do the garage, shave the cat, make the garden less like a jungle, write a poem a day b) spend every second with my family! c) read everything d) sleep and laze about etc etc.

A) I'm quickly reminded I'm shit at big plans and trying to actually do anything with b) being such a big factor is the key.
B) Well, christ.
C) I'm currently in the grip of this and literally trying to read everything and it's driving me mad.
D) This gets old quite quickly and a), b) and c) are like gadflies.

Anyway, yes, I'm turning having 6 weeks off into a ballache - what of it?

summer is def too long

i spent the entire time either dealing with a tooth infection or complications that arose from it. awesome vacay!!!!!!!!!!

i would rather have some scattered time off during the year than one time per year when i can try to accomplish something substantial and fail due to circumstances that happen to coincide with that one time of year

Can I still post here, or do I have to look for a "Rolling Thread Where We Were Teachers" thread? There are a handful of year-round schools in my former board that are exactly what LL describes above--a bunch of scattered two- and- three-week breaks throughout the year. I always needed the long break and was never tempted to apply to one of them.

tbh i think we all need the long break because it's the only break we get -- i wouldn't need it so badly if i had more breaks!

i literally spent my entire break being sicker than i have ever been and dealing with monster physical problems
now that they have been handled on my break they are invisible to my coworkers, who inevitably expect me to be feeling chipper and refreshed after a lengthy "break" when i barely feel able to function. this is not healthy imo

also i have stopped referring to it as a vacation. it's "time between contracts"

amen

This is how a teacher in Gaza welcomes the children in her class every morning.
❤️🇵🇸 pic.twitter.com/LdVvz29AMV

— James Melville (@JamesMelville) August 10, 2019

that is so precious and totally a kid-friendly way to teach about consent!!!

I love that.

A friend interviewed me about teaching just before I retired last spring (link at the top):

http://andyoucandancetoit.wordpress.com/2018/04/02/podcasts-interviews-radio-shows/

If anything, it's mostly about how difficult the job was even 20 years along. There's some stuff on my various principals that I contemplated removing, but I decided in the end it wasn't that big a deal.

I've invented a new term for supplying a couple of days a week after you retire: load management.

If you ever get the chance to supply (or, for Americans, substitute) post-retirement at the school you just left, especially if you were there for a long time (21 years for me), I highly recommend doing so. The kids know you, so you get zero grief; you get to see all your old students, who basically give you a hero's welcome; you know all the staff. My old room is being used for storage this year, so even my nameplate is still up there. As close as I've ever gotten to getting well paid for doing nothing. (I was in for an old friend last week, and she told me she needed me to actually teach for two periods--she was practically apologetic.)

I'm just entering my fourth year of teaching (fifth, if you count the *shudder* training year) and it's been a really tough start. It's an Outstanding school and we've just had what are basically the best results we've ever had. Due to the Oustanding status, we've not been Ofstedededed for over ten years and since that privilege was recently officially removed, everyone is shitting themselves. We've always been left largely alone, with a 'let teachers teach' mantra but the purported Ofsted visit has meant a whole bunch of shit pouring in from above: directives for seemingly every kid - on various lists -, new safeguarding measures, new disciplinary procedures which is resulting in 100+ kids every night in detention. It's making for a really odd atmosphere: embattled, faintly aggressive, stressful. I've properly fallen out with both my Y11 classes and I'm sure it's transferred stress. I've also managed to fall upwards into a 2nd in department role, under a part-time HoD, which is intense and seems proper ad hoc at times. I'm also really aware for the first time of the problems associated with teaching the same texts over and over - great for planning, but also an edge of drudgery, which I'm concerned I'm communicating to the kids.

Anyway, short version: this fucking job, eh?

I must say that I am very anxious to get away from this place. I have become very weak in health and do not seem to recover myself here or likely to do so. Teaching is very burdensome, especially when you have much of it: I have. I have not much time and almost no energy - for I am always tired - to do anything on my own account.

Gerard Manley Hopkins on teaching

Ontario's a huge mess right now. Rotating strike-days board to board (my old school was out today), a province-wide strike-day next week, endless sniping in the media, escalating job action (onto extra-curricular) if there's no settlement by Friday. I was supposed to supply next Monday/Tuesday, but Tuesday's another strike day; I'm at my old school, so I'll stick around and walk with them.

Just read your post from three months ago, chinaski...Some of it didn't make sense to me (Ofsted?)--are you in Britain? My standard advice for stuff pouring in from above is smile, nod, and let it go in one ear and out the other. But I know that's not always possible.

G.M. Hopkins otm as usual.

Clemenza - yes I'm in the UK; Oftsed is the government office for standards in education. And they are as Orwellian as that sounds. I mean, they were set up to introduce some sense of accountability, which I can understand, but the relationship has become so toxic and punitive that they basically exist to make teachers' lives a misery. I'm lucky, in that my school remains largely untouched, but schools in 'special measures' or 'requires improvement' are under what amounts to outside rule and governed by whatever directives are imposed upon them. It's hideous. Our previous head was brilliant in shielding us from the latest bullshit but we've had a new head and she has retained the basic ethos but there are things creeping in...

Anyway, aye - GMH otm.

Teachers...you remember them.

Got a FB birthday notification today for a former student (I was still substituting at the time) celebrating his 40th. Felt like some kind of a vicarious milestone.

A Brooklyn high school teacher died yesterday from COVID-19.

http://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/nyregion/coronavirus-death-brooklyn-school-principal.html

The mom of a student I had 20 years ago posted some old photos on Facebook this week, one with me, so we're FB friends now. From a post she just put up: "I’m running out of batteries......get yer mind out of the gutter." Geez--moms!

My wife (public school librarian) got a linkedin email from an old lawyer colleague (literally named Karen) who was looking for public school teachers who "might be looking for extra work" to run some pod for her kids and a couple other rich families. My wife gently told her that she wasn't interested and that she wasn't comfortable with the ideas of these pods given the huge equity issues they raise.

Felt a pang of deep shame when I saw a former student at my part-time job and I recognized them first. Not really sure they even remembered me when I told them how we were supposed to have known each other.

no need to feel shame about that! i love recognizing people and if they don't recognize me, oh well!

the separation of fortunate children into private learning pods makes me feel ill; i can see the temptation to do it esp for unemployed teachers or those who are looking to gain experience or whatever reason but it's just so wrong. still, i know it's coming and probably not too long before some people i know are even hiring private instructors for their kids :( :( :(

thinking of taking a pod gig and seeing how long i can teach age-appropriate lessons on das kapital b4 i get fired

Well this is interesting:

San Francisco officials are readying an unprecedented educational assistance program for the fall meant to help up to 6,000 children with their distance-learning needs, as parents and students confront the reality of starting the school year without classrooms during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Starting in September, dozens of recreation facilities, libraries and community centers across the city will be transformed into “learning hubs,” spaces where young students who may struggle with remote instruction can go each day to access their digital classwork and the social interactions that virtual schooling cannot provide.
[...]
Officials are prioritizing low-income families, children in public housing or the foster care system, homeless youth, and others in living situations that make remote learning particularly challenging. At first, the hubs will serve students in kindergarten through fifth grade, a group that has lower rates of infection, but officials will consider making the hubs available to older students. They will operate five days a week during ordinary school hours and will be staffed by experienced nonprofits and other organizations — many of which already partner with the city to provide after-school programs.

Hm. Well then I guess if rich people want to pod up (in San Francisco, at least), have at it? What do you guys think?

Three weeks out, I still haven't decided whether to supply/substitute or not, though I'm leaning towards yes.

I don't think in-school will last past September--it'll take one school with three or four cases to shut everything down--so if I don't get some days in before that, I think the year will be a write-off. I lost my last 20 days last year, costing me about $5,000, but was lucky to have gotten in 30. Because all it will take is a sniffle for a teacher to book off, I'm sure the work will be there.

I honestly don't know how risky it'll be. And I'll be leaving a town with no cases to teach in a municipality with the second most in Ontario (although not even remotely close to what's going on in the States--there are currently 159 active cases there). And I'm still not sure how vulnerable I am personally; I've always had reason to believe I have a very strong immune system, but who knows.

What's actually going to happen three weeks from now, the province seemingly hasn't figured that out.

Someone alerted me to the supply-substitute/itinerant-long-term-care-worker analogy a couple of weeks ago--hadn't really thought about it--and I decided I would at least limit myself to my old school.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/supply-teachers-covid-ontario_ca_5f4fcb2fc5b699772e2aada9

I'm trying to get onto the supply list where I live now; I suspect it was a disqualifying admission to let them know I was still planning to do the occasional day with my old board.

Just taught my first online French class. It sucked. I suck. The students were bored to tears. I'm feeling like crap about my general language teaching abilities now, even though I know a lot of it is just not having any remote teaching skills yet.

It doesn't help that they hired me a week into the semester, I've had none of the trainings or practice time the other teachers have had, and scheduling has been messed up so only half my students were even there, making me unsure of what I should even do on Day 1. Still, I should have planned a better/ more interesting class and I'm mad at myself.

What grade level? Almost every elementary teacher I know hates online teaching.

Seventh and eighth. The kids are great, actually - they're attentive and doing their best. I just didn't have a sense of how long it takes to ask a question and get an answer, how to quickly direct them to an activity, and how to sustain attention when you're not physically there. I tried to keep it simple, since only half of them were there - just have them introduce themselves and say how they were doing, and then talk about the class and have a Q&A, and then a short activity to practice one of the apps we'll be using. But I ended up talking too much, and spending too much time trying to navigate the tech, and none of my explanations were clear and we never got to the one actual activity I had planned. It felt like the very first day of teaching rather than the first day of a new class.

The adjustment is just very weird, from being able to tell them to turn and talk to having every interaction be between you and individual students. All my teacher senses - pacing, student talk time, how I'm coming across to them, etc. - are completely thrown off.

I don't think I could do it, and I'm glad I got out before I had to. I'm not even sure how you teach math to struggling younger students, say grade 3 or 4, with the requisite social distancing in a school. To help kids with math, you've got to be right there next to them, looking at their work and finding out what the problem is. You can't just talk kids through math.

Yeah, language is very weird too, because typically you would have students turn and talk every few minutes. I knew you couldn't do that remotely, and that it would be weird, but I didn't have a good sense of just how flat everything would feel without movement or turn-and-talk.

Don't beat yourself up - teaching remotely is brutal and so hard to get used to! As you say, all of those cues you're used to - human heat, basically - are gone and impossible to replicate online.

I eventually got into a rhythm, which was much less of me rambling on, and more 5 minutes of instruction, 15/20 minutes of them carrying out a task. Quizzes on Teams/Forms worked well, as did Show My Homework. I think you have to direct the energy you'd use in a lesson towards creative forms of feedback on their work: you could try audio feedback, email, target setting. Jamboard is worth exploring (in Google Classroom), Whiteboard (in Teams) - you can collaborate in both of these and see multiple students' work in front of you in real-time.

I came to accept that I was performing a slightly different function as an online teacher; I also had to accept that I simply didn't have the same level of control and that I lost some students altogether. It's shitty but you're still doing an amazing thing.

Thank you, that's very helpful and reassuring.

I'm an English teacher btw, and it's so fucking *hard* to do this stuff when you can't see faces and gauge emotional responses. I'm back in the classroom now and I'd forgotten that that's hard too, but that simple fact of being able to question and respond to body language and not let students get away with half-arsed answers is *everything*. Hang in there because it's not forever.

Thank you! I'm an English teacher too, most of the time, but the last couple years I've gotten stuck teaching French, which is stressful in itself because I'm still building up my basic language teaching skills.

Do you have a sense of how long you'll be doing it for?

The most frequent conversations I had with other teachers were along the lines of 'I didn't sign up for this!', which is a way of saying for all its maddening aspects, the job is about relationships, and online you're just jabbering into the black mirror and the feedback is distorted. Having said that, certain students do blossom online - more introverted kids who find classroom situations intimidating etc. Eck, it's an adventure, innit. Tech troubles are part of the ridiculous bullshit of it all

I hear you all — don’t be too hard on yourself is the only advice. That will prevent self immolation/burnout. It’s the clarity of the moment I realized that being hard on myself was a self destructive habit and started to just do my best and self preserve when necessary.

I am managing, absolutely not doing my best, and giving myself full permission and encouragement to care for my personal needs and those of my loved ones.

Thanks to both of you. I have no idea how long this will be for. Right now my district is online-only for the fall; they'll make a determination about spring at some point.

everyone otm about everything. this is nerve wracking at best.

i got a cheap lavalier mic, it's helping me not shout into the void

aside from that i have no good advice that hasn't already been mentioned. maybe do what i did and draw a stick figure in a hammock on a post it note with the words relax written on it too and put that post it on your laptop to remind yourself to relax.

One of the teachers at my old school posted a list of goals for teachers this year: "and we'll try to learn something along the way" (or words to that effect) was fourth on the list. Which is basically saying what you've all been saying.

Just wanted to thank everyone who reassured me after my first remote teaching day. It's still weird as hell, and I still don't know how to plan remote lessons to be both interesting and productive, but the actual talking-to-the-screen part of it has gotten much easier and I think most of my students like me okay.

It seems like everyone is more or less struggling. One of the science teachers at the school I'm working at just retired today - did a month of remote teaching, then went, "Nope, this isn't working for me," and peaced out.

God bless for fighting forward; this is just the worst for everyone.

My friend with two intelligent, artistic teenagers told me the other night that they're both failing multiple classes, despite the best efforts of teachers and admins to make due. Their senior year is a waste.

She thinks they should have scrapped the school year or gone with a Montessori model of learning, so that students could get some credit for engaging in their own interests. I agree with her, to be honest!

I am teaching in person on Tuesday. I will be in two rooms of ~ 12 students for three hours at a time, during which they will remove their masks for lunch.

MicroCovid calculator puts my risk at 2-4% likelihood of contracting corona per day, assuming all protocols are effectively followed.

That's basically what I've doing as a substitute--but it's one room for six hours at a time. Didn't realize the odds were that high.

yeah are they really that high? This is now week 5 of our term, I've been teaching in person 4 hours one day per week (2 hours with about 30 students, then 2 hours with about 15 students). As far as I know there haven't been any cases among students or faculty. The rooms are big enough not be packed too badly.

The school where I substitute has zero documented cases right now, so technically that'd be 0%, except I know you have to account for potential asymptomatic carriers--I'd have to take a two-week timeout to be sure.

You can check your risk here — https://www.microcovid.org/ but it’s hard to get the numbers exactly right.

My town had four confirmed cases this week, but it is wealthy and testing is not readily available.

I am actually less worried about my safety in the building than I am about what happens if/when I DO get sick. (Because we do not have subs, shared lesson plans, and the expectation is that we work from until we can’t).

The erosion of workers’ rights is one of the scariest parts of this whole situation.

I could not agree with you more on that. My rights (and those of my few remaining colleagues) have been eroded to such an alarming degree that my internal bells are all going off. All the time.

Most of the public will be appalled, but I agree with the West Virginia superintendent who made news today announcing that snow days will remain in place there.

With remote learning in place now, I know a snow day can't really be rationally defended. But if you've taught elementary (can't speak for secondary), you know what a godsend they were. Even a no-bus day--which at my old school, meant maybe 30 kids total in attendance--was a gift in terms of catching up on marking and organizing the room. The superintendent is selling this in terms of the students--tobogganing, frolicking, etc.--and sure, students love them too. But a snow day for a teacher is pure joy.

Public: good point, you don't get enough fucking time off already.

Public: good point, you don't get enough fucking time off already.

The public would break into a cold, nightmare sweat and go weak in the knees if their job suddenly became walking into a classroom full of 35 sixth graders day after day and they were required to teach them the curriculum for seven hours straight with minimal breaks. It would break them in pieces before the end of the first week.

No argument here, but with an unreceptive audience, I've found it impossible to move that conversation past SUMMERSOFFSUMMERSOFFSUMMERSOFFSUMMERSOFFSUMMERSOFFSUMMERSOFFSUMMERSOFFSUMMERSOFFSUMMERSOFF...

ppl tend to stfu abt summers when i explain to them how much grading / planning / tutoring i do outside of my "work day"

Having my life dictated by the academic calendar for 14 years now I can say that the “summers off/bust ass beyond reason 10 mo/yr” model is actually not a very good one.

Imagine getting to travel when you want, to have 4 weeks of vacation (or some ppl I know get “unlimited” PTO *as needed*)

Instead you work doglike for 10 mo, need a month to recover and then you get the other month to relax but it’s always the same month of the year and this will never change. Your entire life revolves around this calendar.

Even with the envied “summers off” it’s a raw deal. My school switched to year round and offered us no secure PTO. Raaaaawwwwest deal

I understood the arguments for year-round (from a teacher's point of view), but I never even considered applying one of the two or three schools in my board that offered that.

Instead you work doglike for 10 mo, need a month to recover and then you get the other month to relax but it’s always the same month of the year and this will never change. Your entire life revolves around this calendar--dead on (though I'd say it was more like half the other month to relax, because the anxiety started up in the third week, and the fourth I was in the school setting up). And even with all that, I still wanted those uninterrupted two months away from the school.

Yes agree, the two weeks before going back were fraught so yeah two good weeks in there.

Is it normal to be fried to a salty crisp like this? I don’t believe so. I’m on burnout outreach if anyone needs resources.

Three months off = six unpaid weeks

also lmao at "summers" i literally get july and a week on either side.

honestly it's not that bad though. i could think of worse things i could be doing, and workload or no at least i got to talk to teenagers about escape velocity and car accidents for like nine hours today instead of whatever lame shit ppl do at desk jobs

Guys, Friday’s my last day before winter break, and even so I just don’t know if I’m going to make it. This year is crazy.

I feel like I spent the last month putting my students through a bunch of really dreary classes that were just repetitive and content-focused and no fun. Mostly because I had a ton of election/post-election anxiety and headaches, and kept having to work through headaches where I could barely think. I feel really bad because I know my class started out pretty fun and I feel like I'm losing my students. This week I have good plans and good energy, but I can tell my students have lost momentum. Wish I could rewind and do this whole month over.

if it makes anybody feel any better i know a lot of ppl (teachers students and parents) at a lot of different schools (primary secondary and higher, large and small, poor and rich, urban and suburban, high and low performing) and nobody, i mean nobody, has anything good to say abt this year

there's a fucking plague, what can you do

amen

I like that this has resulted in more small-group teaching sessions. I hope that carries over into the future.

im gonna spend some time over the break refiguring what i want to do with our class time bc i judt do no trust anyone higher up than me in the leadership chart to know anything right now

I've just broken up for Christmas and feel utterly destroyed. Not entirely sure how we've made it through, to be honest. And, just as the kids are exiting the gates, the DfE announce that the start of next term will be delayed and we'll be teaching online. Would it be possible for these fuckwits to get a little bit more organised? Three more days notice and we would have been able to get students set up with resources etc. Now, the start of next term will be a mad rush. Happy Christmas!

I've been in school since September, fwiw. We've been incredibly lucky and had minimal cases and haven't had to rely too heavily on bought-in supply staff.

Can't remember where you are, Chinaski...Ontario's being a little coy, but some teachers at my old school think the break will be extended for a week or two extra (i.e., move online). Interesting theory from one of them: so no teachers would have time to book a holiday in the Barbados or wherever. (A highly subjective theory, I should add: she's a dedicated traveler.)

Glad I've banked 25 supply/sub days so far, in case there's an even longer shutdown. They raised our ceiling this year from 50 to 95--I'll be content to get to 50 later in the spring and summer.

Less coy today: “Our chief medical officer of health has confirmed that the transmission of COVID-19 in schools has remained low … however, the public health environment in Ontario continues to evolve rapidly,” the document said. “The government is continuing to monitor the COVID-19 situation, including recent trends in hospitalizations and intensive care unit patients. As a reminder, we are recommending that boards encourage students and staff to take home any materials that they may require for remote learning before they leave school for the holiday period so that we can continue to be ready for all scenarios.”

All right, here goes: I think I want to become a high school teacher. I know it's a lot of work, thankless, etc etc.

But I don't want to work a desk job. One day sitting at a computer, making edits on PDFs for pharmaceutical companies, confirms it. I love teaching, and I'm pretty good at it.

Any tips or pointers accepted.

yyyyyeahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! it's a shitty year for teaching, but it gets so much better.

what state are you in?

PA.

it looks like they do have an alternate route for folks who are already degree'd up: https://www.education.pa.gov/Educators/Certification/BecomeAnEducator/CertificationPathways/Pages/CPIntern.aspx

An alternate route where they don't actually explain what the fuck you have to do. Jesus, this is exactly why I've always given up on this type of stuff— the bureaucratic language is so thick that it makes it impossible to understand the basic steps one needs to take to get into the program.

I mean, I figured it out, but the whole page is gonzo in how confusing it is, imho

My advice, as someone who went from college teaching to secondary, is to do as much of the traditional teacher training, with student teaching included, as possible. There's A LOT to secondary teaching that I didn't know anything about before I did my training, and when you're working with large class sizes and have discipline issues to think about, it's good to have at least a semester, ideally a year, of student teaching before you have to handle everything on your own.

Another thing to think about is how many content areas you could be endorsed in. I went in hoping to teach English but so far have only been able to find jobs in French because it's in higher demand. That's let me get my foot in the door of the district I want, and hopefully I can transfer to an ELA job at some point.

Thanks Lily. I'd probably try for English, History, and French, with more emphasis on the former. Would love to teach history, really regret that my only university experience in teaching American Studies occurred during my first semester...many things I would have done differently!

You two should join us on the French borad some time:

https://www.ilxor.com/ILX/NewAnswersControllerServlet?boardid=725388455

My French probably isn't good enough for it, but I'll try.

Everyone is welcome!

I got into teaching when I turned 40, Table. I'd had literally zero experience in the classroom but was male, had a decent subject-related CV and I'd barely signed a bit of paper before I was in a classroom. I'd 100% agree with Lily: get as much experience as you can because, curriculum-wise, you'll always know more than the kids, but you won't know how to manage/orchestrate a room and that only comes with time and experience.

We have a thing called SCITT in the UK, where you basically learn in school (school-centred initial teacher training) - as opposed to the University-based route. I'd look for something similar to the SCITT if it's available: you're in school from the beginning, aside from a six-week period at a second placement, you'll be in the same environment for the whole academic year. I'd look closely at where you're going to be based and try to get a good sense of the levels of support because you'll need it! It varies so much from school to school and it's utterly ridiculous. By support I really mean time - what you're looking for is how long you'll have with the class teachers, mentor etc but also if they're available to be in the room with you when you're stumbling through the early phases of teaching. It's hard because it's basically all criticism early on, but it's invaluable. So many training teachers just get bunged into the classroom with no support and it's bullshit. No wonder so many people bail out.

This is all UK-related so apologies if it's not all relevant. Happy to discuss via email if that helps. Good luck! From what I've read on here, any school would chew both arms off to have someone like you and the kids would bloody love you.

Back to online teaching. Two days in and god this is soul crushing.

Guess students are even more apathetic second time around?

Yeah, very much so - and very clued-up on how to cut corners. The worst thing is the 'talking to the void' aspect of it. A Y10 class who are cheeky, noisy and boisterous in the classroom were completely mute with me today. Not a word.

Hello, my former institution offered me a class for the spring semester, which begins next week. Online, with a weekly synchronous session that's 1hr40 minutes long.

The pay is not terrible, but I just started work in another industry that promises to be more stable in the long run (medical proofing and editing).

Legit have no idea what to tell them.

I think if I were in your position, I’d decline. Even if the pay is not terrible, it’s unlikely to be commensurate with the amount of work you will do. I adjuncted for a while in grad school and after dropping out, and my quality of life improved whennI just stopped being lured by the siren call of adjuncting. It was always exploitative.

Yeah, I think I'm going to turn them down. Too much work for too little reward.

God, this winter feels endless, and it's not even close to finished. Obviously that mostly has to do with the pandemic/lockdown/stay-at-home order, but I realize it's also because I'm retired and not teaching. I was regularly supplying last winter, so I didn't notice as much.

When I was full-time, there wasn't a winter as such, but a series of small blocks you had to get through to move onto the next one. You started with first report cards/interviews; then Halloween/Thanksgiving; Christmas; second reports; March break; and when the long Easter weekend came, you were done. Now it's just winter, forever.

Schools were closed here through January, so I had my first supply job since before Christmas today. I retired as soon as I could because I'd hit the wall with reports, interviews, meetings, and the rest, but I do miss being in the classroom (which is that much more fun when you don't have to worry about that stuff). I found out today from one of my grade 3 guys about a YouTuber with 39 million views who says that 80% of your weight is supported by your two big toes, and also that zombies are real. The first actually seems to be in the neighborhood (it's a bone below the big toe, and 50%). I'm just glad for the warning with the second.

Something else I miss: I didn't even know what a YouTuber was till six or seven years ago. I used to do an art lesson where they'd sketch a famous face; I had a slide show and printouts with about 40 people I really liked--Janis Joplin, Jackie Robinson, Warhol, etc.--and they'd do one of mine, and then one of their own choosing that I'd print out for them.

"Can I do Petey Pie?"
"Who's Petey Pie?"
"A YouTuber."

"Can I do Tree Stump?"
"Who's Tree Stump?"
"A YouTuber."

A lot of recent talk here an elsewhere about in-class learning. I didn't really feel any more vulnerable today than before Christmas: the classes are even smaller now, from 10-15. But the big thing is the variants. On the way in, the radio said there were eight new variant cases in Toronto (I was next door, in Brampton). Also, I was in for coverage, so I saw six different classes--obviously, the complete opposite of bubbling or cocooning or whatever.

Just had an observation that didn't go great, and now I have to wait until Monday for my post-observation meeting. Ugh.

I hate being observed, it makes me nervous and I overthink both my planning and my teaching.

observations are, in fact, Bad

I've got my first interview in 23 years this week to get on the supply list where I live (rather than driving crazy distances to the school I retired from). One of the main reasons I stayed there forever is I hate interviews, and they hate me. It'll be done online. I'm assuming I'm not expected to wear a jacket...I will change out my pajamas.

Observation is such a bullshit concept. We've moved to a coaching model, mercifully; we pair up, pick something you want help with, then get some useful feedback on what you might do differently. There is no grading and it's basically half hour per term.

I had my first week back this week. It was, to be frank, fucking mental. After three months of a (relative) quiet life, I couldn't cope with the sheer amount of input and questions, particularly from adults. The testing has been managed really well, but it does mean huge disruption to staffing, as it's manned by LSAs and PE teachers. We had a positive case late on Friday and we're a teacher down in the English department.

The main issue is around Y11 (15/16 yr olds) who should be doing their GCSEs this year. It's all teacher-assessed, which is fine, but there's an 'appeals process' in place, which has already been advertised. It means we're going to need as much evidence as we can, to beat off angry parents and Ofqual, so we're basically putting them through a whole round of assessments. These are 'optional' apparently and won't actually be sent out to schools until the end of March so we have no idea what we're actually preparing them for. It's so stressful - for us and the kids. Bollocks to all of it.

Good luck with your interview clemenza. I'd go into like Red at the end of Shawshank Redemption.

Appreciate that. I've decided my "strategy" will be to emphasize what mattered to me re supply/substitute teachers when I had my own class--I won't even try to fake my way through jargon.

By "observation," I take it you mean what would be called performance appraisal in Ontario, which happens every five years. Is this your first? The deeper you get into your career, the easier principals are about that. When you get to the last couple, I figured they don't have much choice at that point but to let you skate by. The alternative--"After letting this person teach for 15 years, we've finally decided he/she isn't very effective"--don't look good.

Man, I wish this were the case where I am:

As of Monday, teachers and educators in all 50 states will be eligible to receive Covid-19 vaccinations. The eligibility comes as the US ramps up vaccination efforts in hopes of curbing the spread of coronavirus variants and setting a course toward some sense of normalcy again.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/13/health/us-coronavirus-saturday/index.html

idk what the administrations are like in Canada (you're in Canada right?) but when there is a new administration, you do indeed need to watch out for being told you aren't good enough and being sent on your way IN SPITE OF your commitment and experience.
just sayin -- time will not protect you, at least not in the USA