I spent part of the semester break looking into transferring to other programs. It's still frustrating that despite my BA in literature, MFA in creative writing, experience as an adjunct professor in English and graduate teaching assistant, and decades of teaching music, it's still going to take me three full-time years to fulfill the requirements for an Ohio teaching license at Cleveland State University. I was surprised to find out that there are enormous differences in college-based teacher-training programs: one of them won't accept a single credit that was taken more than five years ago, while another won't make post-baccalaureate students take any classes at all in the major subject. I probably should have researched this more thoroughly before deciding to go to Cleveland State, but I naively assumed that state requirements were pretty standardized and so the differences between programs wouldn't be that dramatic. I also didn't have much time to make my decision: I found out in April 2010 that I hadn't been accepted to a Ph.D. program in English, and if I was going to start on my high school teaching license I would have to begin coursework in May.
Ultimately, even though I am rather annoyed at Cleveland State for having rejected my petition to waive their extremely stringent Practicum requirement (15 weeks of mornings, Mon-Fri), the fact is that I am learning a huge amount and am enjoying my classes thoroughly. I was very tempted to switch to the university that wouldn't have required any more English classes, even though it was a long drive from my house. But because of the peculiarities of that schools Education requirements, I would have had to take a freshman-level class in the fall and wouldn't have received my license before December 2012 anyway - and the credits are more than double the cost of CSU credits. So at least for the summer I am going to stick it out here, but I may reconsider later on.
Montag, 23. Mai 2011
Montag, 9. Mai 2011
Mothering, teaching
I was thinking yesterday, Mother's Day, about how becoming a mother affected my desire to become a teacher. I always admired teachers - I put them on a pedestal, even, thinking they were the most important members of society bar none. I thought I was too selfish, too concerned with my own advancement, to be a good teacher. That changed within a few weeks of giving birth, when all I wanted was to survive the 180 flip my life had taken. Then, as my child grew and I read to her and played with her, I discovered that I was a born pedagogue.
It's a discovery I think a lot of women make when their experience and knowledge base are taken more seriously than they ever have been before. Okay, teaching "Eency Weency Spider" to a 13 month-old doesn't involve a lot of classroom management technique, but it's still an addictive feeling when something you'd almost forgotten how to do yourself can bring so much delight to the most important person in your life. Suddenly, you are always right and you are always in charge. How big a step is that to the front of the classroom?
But to be great teachers we can never let the kids know that we know we are right. We should never even be in front of our students. That blocks their view. We should be behind them, leaning down and pointing over their shoulders, whispering questions to them, so that they can see and think for themselves.
It's a discovery I think a lot of women make when their experience and knowledge base are taken more seriously than they ever have been before. Okay, teaching "Eency Weency Spider" to a 13 month-old doesn't involve a lot of classroom management technique, but it's still an addictive feeling when something you'd almost forgotten how to do yourself can bring so much delight to the most important person in your life. Suddenly, you are always right and you are always in charge. How big a step is that to the front of the classroom?
But to be great teachers we can never let the kids know that we know we are right. We should never even be in front of our students. That blocks their view. We should be behind them, leaning down and pointing over their shoulders, whispering questions to them, so that they can see and think for themselves.
Samstag, 7. Mai 2011
Accountability in education
A comment by Joel Shatzky in the Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joel-shatzky/educating-for-democracyis_b_856861.html) describes how a technology official allegedly defrauded New York City's school system of millions of dollars by billing for computer-related services he never performed. This relates to something I am seeing ever-greater evidence of since it was pointed out to me last semester by Ann Cook, one of the founders of a specialized high school called Urban Academy on New York's Upper East Side.
I went to Urban Academy after watching "Talk, talk, talk," a half-hour documentary about the school, as part of my Social Foundations of Education class. Urban Academy is one of the purest examples of inquiry-based learning in the country. Cleveland State University's teacher-training program is a clear advocate of inquiry-based education; at least all the ed courses I have taken so far have sung its praises, and I'm convinced at this point.
Cook talked to me about how the private sector has been encroaching on public education for years:
- School lunches, which educate children about how to take care of their bodies for good or ill, are provided by private companies.
- Textbooks, which in many ways determine curriculum, are sold by for-profit publishers.
- Technology and consultancy fees cost state boards of education millions, if not tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions every year.
- Standardized tests that purport to measure "student achievement," and which are now supposed to be the fulcrum on which teachers, principals and entire schools are to be jettisoned under No Child Left Behind - and, last but not least, which all too often determine the remainder of the curriculum not entirely spoken for by the textbook - are also examples of how much money there is to be made when your client is the Department of Education and the product is the future of our children.
Earlier this week I phoned into a local Cleveland radio talk show called "The Sound of Ideas" when I heard that the new Ohio budget plan slashes public school funding in favor of new vouchers and charter schools. The first-in-the-nation badge of shame for Ohio is that these schools, funded with taxpayer dollars, can be run by private management firms. At the same time, practically all regulation and accountability rules will be removed - even the requirement of receiving a certain level of competence in basic skills as measured by standardized tests taken by every other student in the state. On the show I called it "the privatization of public education." But what I really should have said is that is was an immense government subsidy to for-profit school management companies.
What will be the result of this? Same thing as we used to hear about in the military-industrial complex all the time: $500 hammers and multi-billion-dollar Star Wars defense systems that couldn't swat a football stadium-sized hydrogen bomb out of the sky.
I really wonder whether the current large-scale attack on teachers' unions isn't so much politically motivated as economically motivated. If you have teachers as powerless as waitresses to affect their salaries, benefits and working conditions, you have a great situation for the school management companies that want a piece of the $800 billion (http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/education_chart_20.html)U.S. education spending pie.
I went to Urban Academy after watching "Talk, talk, talk," a half-hour documentary about the school, as part of my Social Foundations of Education class. Urban Academy is one of the purest examples of inquiry-based learning in the country. Cleveland State University's teacher-training program is a clear advocate of inquiry-based education; at least all the ed courses I have taken so far have sung its praises, and I'm convinced at this point.
Cook talked to me about how the private sector has been encroaching on public education for years:
- School lunches, which educate children about how to take care of their bodies for good or ill, are provided by private companies.
- Textbooks, which in many ways determine curriculum, are sold by for-profit publishers.
- Technology and consultancy fees cost state boards of education millions, if not tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions every year.
- Standardized tests that purport to measure "student achievement," and which are now supposed to be the fulcrum on which teachers, principals and entire schools are to be jettisoned under No Child Left Behind - and, last but not least, which all too often determine the remainder of the curriculum not entirely spoken for by the textbook - are also examples of how much money there is to be made when your client is the Department of Education and the product is the future of our children.
Earlier this week I phoned into a local Cleveland radio talk show called "The Sound of Ideas" when I heard that the new Ohio budget plan slashes public school funding in favor of new vouchers and charter schools. The first-in-the-nation badge of shame for Ohio is that these schools, funded with taxpayer dollars, can be run by private management firms. At the same time, practically all regulation and accountability rules will be removed - even the requirement of receiving a certain level of competence in basic skills as measured by standardized tests taken by every other student in the state. On the show I called it "the privatization of public education." But what I really should have said is that is was an immense government subsidy to for-profit school management companies.
What will be the result of this? Same thing as we used to hear about in the military-industrial complex all the time: $500 hammers and multi-billion-dollar Star Wars defense systems that couldn't swat a football stadium-sized hydrogen bomb out of the sky.
I really wonder whether the current large-scale attack on teachers' unions isn't so much politically motivated as economically motivated. If you have teachers as powerless as waitresses to affect their salaries, benefits and working conditions, you have a great situation for the school management companies that want a piece of the $800 billion (http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/education_chart_20.html)U.S. education spending pie.
Freitag, 6. Mai 2011
Intro
I'm a native New Yorker and a graduate of The High School of Performing Arts in Acting. From 1978-80 I attended the Juilliard Theatre Center and then went to Bennington College, where I majored in Literature & Languages (emphasis: Creative Writing) and minored in Music. After graduation I worked for a couple of years as an editorial assistant in New York, the classic English major job, and then got into the Iowa Writers' Workshop. I started doing journalism at Iowa, becoming the main arts critic for The Daily Iowan, and stayed in Iowa City after graduation to work at the University of Iowa Foundation as a staff writer and to finish my first novel. Eventually I moved back to New York and started freelancing, which I've been doing ever since.
After a couple of years back in the New York metro area I met a German guy in a bar across from Lincoln Center and fell in love, which might be regarded as a strange move for a nice Jewish girl from the Bronx. It was right after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and we started a long-distance relationship. After 18 months I moved to Berlin; the relationship fell apart soon after, but I had started singing in "kneipen" (pubs) and formed a band so I stayed. I worked as an English teacher, correspondent and music teacher as well as gigging regularly in Berlin and environs. I was one of the first Western performers to work with East German musicians, and we toured the now-defunct East German youth club circuit for a few years.
In 1993 the former "Radio In the American Sector" (RIAS) television news station was taken over by Deutsche Welle TV, the German equivalent of the BBC World Service. I started working there as a translator and voiceover specialist, and eventually worked my way up to producing English-language adaptations of half-hour documentary programs on everything from the history of Santa Claus to the science of aging.
I met my now ex-husband at a meditation weekend in the Bavarian Woods (and thereby hangs a tale, but it's not one I tell much anymore). He lived in a small mountain village outside of the town of Rosenheim, about halfway between Munich and Salzburg, and I moved there full-time when we got married. Soon afterward, I became the German correspondent for The Hollywood Reporter. At the same time I was still teaching music and recording my own songs as well as working for Deutsche Welle.
In 2003, at the age of 42, I became a mother. As is so often the case, the stress of parenting put enormous strain on my marriage. I moved to Ohio with my daughter in June 2009, to a place that was about a 10-minute walk from my brother and his wife's house.
After an adjustment year, I started the post-baccalaureate teacher licensure program at Cleveland State University. That's where I am now. I still teach piano and early childhood music, and I'm the Song Leader at Fairmount Temple in Beachwood, OH. I also sub, although not as regularly now that I'm in school. I've recently written the first draft of a young people's novel telling the Exodus story from the point of view of two 12 year-old Israelite twins who are about to become slaves to Pharaoh. I'm calling it THE GOSHEN TRILOGY, and planning to e-publish in the fall once I've had a chance to revise it.
My goal is to be a high school English teacher. I'm thinking of this blog as an unstructured opportunity to reflect on teacher training in this country at a time when education is such a controversial topic. Please feel free to comment, to "like" the blog or to contact me on Facebook.
After a couple of years back in the New York metro area I met a German guy in a bar across from Lincoln Center and fell in love, which might be regarded as a strange move for a nice Jewish girl from the Bronx. It was right after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and we started a long-distance relationship. After 18 months I moved to Berlin; the relationship fell apart soon after, but I had started singing in "kneipen" (pubs) and formed a band so I stayed. I worked as an English teacher, correspondent and music teacher as well as gigging regularly in Berlin and environs. I was one of the first Western performers to work with East German musicians, and we toured the now-defunct East German youth club circuit for a few years.
In 1993 the former "Radio In the American Sector" (RIAS) television news station was taken over by Deutsche Welle TV, the German equivalent of the BBC World Service. I started working there as a translator and voiceover specialist, and eventually worked my way up to producing English-language adaptations of half-hour documentary programs on everything from the history of Santa Claus to the science of aging.
I met my now ex-husband at a meditation weekend in the Bavarian Woods (and thereby hangs a tale, but it's not one I tell much anymore). He lived in a small mountain village outside of the town of Rosenheim, about halfway between Munich and Salzburg, and I moved there full-time when we got married. Soon afterward, I became the German correspondent for The Hollywood Reporter. At the same time I was still teaching music and recording my own songs as well as working for Deutsche Welle.
In 2003, at the age of 42, I became a mother. As is so often the case, the stress of parenting put enormous strain on my marriage. I moved to Ohio with my daughter in June 2009, to a place that was about a 10-minute walk from my brother and his wife's house.
After an adjustment year, I started the post-baccalaureate teacher licensure program at Cleveland State University. That's where I am now. I still teach piano and early childhood music, and I'm the Song Leader at Fairmount Temple in Beachwood, OH. I also sub, although not as regularly now that I'm in school. I've recently written the first draft of a young people's novel telling the Exodus story from the point of view of two 12 year-old Israelite twins who are about to become slaves to Pharaoh. I'm calling it THE GOSHEN TRILOGY, and planning to e-publish in the fall once I've had a chance to revise it.
My goal is to be a high school English teacher. I'm thinking of this blog as an unstructured opportunity to reflect on teacher training in this country at a time when education is such a controversial topic. Please feel free to comment, to "like" the blog or to contact me on Facebook.
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