Practical lessons learned

Mrs. F., whose next rung on the ladder is to become an Assistant Principal, has been doing a lot of administrative work this week. The result is that I've been doing a lot of teaching, unfortunately without having prepared very many lessons.

In the long run this is a good thing, because I'm assuming I'll need to sub in a few nearby districts, probably for a number of years, before I get a full-time job anywhere. So being able to take over someone else's lesson plan at the drop of a hat is a good skill to cultivate. But of course it doesn't lead to me feeling as if I've done my best work at the end of the day.

I spent Tuesday reading the rest of "Crash Room" and letting the students work on their worksheets. I wasn't very happy with the kinds of questions I was asking - all "lower-level thinking" questions about what has just happened, what the first-person narrator is thinking (when he just pretty much told us), etc. It was only afterward that I realized I should have asked the students if they would ever want to work in a hospital now that they've read this story, and if so why, if not why not. I should have helped them relate more personally to it. But my Methods professor, whom I met with on Tuesday afternoon, told me that I had been "modeling careful reading strategies" for the students so I shouldn't feel too badly about it.


Yesterday Mrs. F was in the classroom all day. She went over a worksheet from last week that was related to her article on bullying while I graded the first worksheet I have ever composed. It was about an article in the local paper discussing a blood drive among local African Americans to help people in the community afflicted with sickle cell disease.

I was pretty happy with my own strategy for creating the worksheet - fewer questions, each question a little more valuable than Mrs. F's usual question in terms of points, and a 15-point "essay" (really, just a paragraph) at the end. For me, it was much easier to grade. But I made the mistake of not putting the point values at the end of each question as Mrs. F always does, and although I did say that the essay was only going to get full points for a "detailed and thoughtful" answer, I didn't say explicitly that I was looking for at least three or four full sentences.

I went over the worksheets with the students today - a day during which Mrs. F stuck her head in a couple of times, but that was it, and the sub from Monday was with me in the room - and at one point had to deal with a girl who had just returned from a 10-day suspension and was clearly out to test my mettle. I knew to keep cool and ask her firmly but politely to stop tapping her plastic ruler against the desk part of her chair, and ignore her if she tried to "hook" me into dealing with her. Either this worked or I got extremely lucky (probably the latter), because within a couple of minutes she had decided to walk out of the classroom and I told her not to come back. She received detention from Mrs. F, and if she doesn't show up for the detention she'll get another 10-day suspension.

At one point the rest of the students figured they would see how I handled myself if they started having loud conversations about rap artists across the wide space in the middle of the room, and I was a little worried that things were going to get out of hand. But when I told them that I would be happy to take their written suggestions about rap artists and rap songs to study in class, that I would work up lesson plans and we could definitely spend time on this if they wanted to - as long as the songs didn't have "cuss words" - that ended the discussion and we got back on task. I think I was happiest of all with that moment.