Ongoing "Student Teaching" thread

Hey folks. After a long, long wait, I am finally getting ready to start my student teaching semester. Tuesday will be my very first day. I'll be spending 7 weeks in a high school, followed by 7 weeks in a middle school. The high school rotation is up first.

I have been VERY fortunate with my placements. I was placed with the same teacher I had during my internship for the middle school rotation, and she has a great group of kids. My high school placement has also been fortunate. While most of my friends have been placed with teachers whose schedules are composed of mostly standard classes and students who only show up to meet their probation officers, my mentor teacher has three classes of 9th grade honors English and two classes of advanced creative writing. I REALLY lucked out with this schedule. On top of that, I found out that my advisor has been assigned as my University observer (Great guy. I had him for three classes), and my high school mentor teacher knows my advisor (my advisor was his first department chair). This cuts down a bit on the pressure, because I won't be as nervous on my observation days. I've taught in front of my advisor loads of times.

I decided to start and maintain this thread for two main reasons. The first is that I know there are folks here who are either considering a career in education or are nearing their student teaching semester themselves. I thought an ongoing "blogesque" thread might give them an idea of what to expect. The second reason I started this thread is to take advantage of the many quality teachers we have on this board. I'll be responsible for putting together an entire unit for each rotation, and I fully intend to lean on the collective expertise and creativity we have in this community.

In the spirit of that second reason, I have my first question to pose. I have recently discovered that the text I'll be responsible for teaching during the high school rotation is Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. This is a staple of the 9th grade curriculum across the nation. I have a bunch of ideas regarding how I want to teach certain parts of the play, but I am always open for more ideas. My first question for the group then is, have you ever taught R & J in the past, and what lessons worked particularly well for you? Any input/ideas would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance for any ideas, and I'll be sure to update this thread as this semester rolls on!

 

Not too concerned about that outcome. I never wanted to teach. English was the only major I had ever really been passionate about, but I knew that would never get me a job by itself. I took an education course on a whim two years ago, more to kill time than anything else, and I ended up loving it. It's so much more involved and creative than I ever thought it would be. That course led to others and now, at the end of the road, I find that I'm just as excited about teaching now than I was during that first class. I didn't decide to teach because I thought it was an easy job, or because I was out of options. I took one class and then just couldn't stop taking them because of how interesting it became.

To give a short update: This first week has been spent mostly observing and setting up the preliminary unit plan. I've got the first week (background info) all set up. The only thing I have left to do is write the formal lesson plans and get the materials together.

I plan to spend about a week on each of the 5 acts (I am having them do scene performances, for the person who said it really needed to be performed). I've got a handful of different ideas for group activities for the different acts, but this is definitely the thinnest part of my unit plan right now. Anyone have any great lesson ideas for how to go over individual reading assignments? I'm trying to shake up the way they go over the material so that it's not just the same old thing after every reading assignment.

 

Not a problem in this case. My mentor teacher is absolutely fantastic. He gave me all of the materials he could find from last year's R&J unit, and then told me to use it, change it, throw it out or bronze it, whichever most struck my fancy. He said he was given plenty of freedom to experiment with different teaching techniques when he was a student teacher, and he wanted me to have that same freedom. I give him my formal lesson plans and discuss how I plan on approaching each week in advance, he gives some suggestions and pointers and, as of Monday, I get to run with it. I can't wait. Although I'm still a little light on ideas for how to involve the class in the individual reading assignments.

 

I've got three sections of honors 9 and two sections of advanced creative writing, so hopefully they will actually read the material. The freshmen will be reading Romeo and Juliet, along with a few articles I pulled that relate to R & J (like that story about a real life Serbian Romeo and Juliet). They also have to complete an outside reading project this quarter, and I was thinking of having them do it on genre literature. They will have to read selections from a particular genre of their choosing (approved by myself) such as horror, romance, legal thriller, science fiction, etc. They will then have to write a short essay describing, using specific examples, what constitutes that genre. They have to find out just what makes a legal thriller a legal thriller, and what traits most legal thrillers have, for example.

My creative writing classes will be reading lots of stuff. I will have them listen to the first half of Harlan Ellison's "Jeffty is Five" and then complete the story, to give them practice at ending a tale. I plan to have them read "There Will Come Soft Rains" by Ray Bradbury, as a way to show them the importance of setting and non-human characters. I want to do something with them regarding choosing a good title (they are absolutely dreadful at it so far). I have some other selections I want to work with, including some work by Poe and maybe Tim O'Brien. It should be fun. I don't get control of that class for another couple of weeks yet though. My mentor is giving me the freshmen classes first, and once I'm far enough ahead in my planning with them, he's going to ease me into the full, 5 course per day workload.

 

Well, today marked my 9th consecutive class-day in front of the three sections of Honors 9. We wrapped up Act 1 of Romeo and Juliet. The hardest thing for me so far has been the sheer fact that so many students simply don't do the homework. They have been made well aware of the fact that it counts for points, but so many of them just don't do it.
I think that most of them are starting to get the hang of the language, so that's a plus at any rate. I did a "search for the sonnet" activity today, where the class had to find the "hidden" sonnet in Act 1. A lot of people were able to track it down quickly (it's in scene 5, when Romeo and Juliet first meet for you non-English folks).

I should be getting the creative writing classes next week or the week after, but I'm not too worried. I'm still really settling in with the Freshmen. There are SO many things that they just don't/can't prepare you for in a college class. I know it sounds stupid, but it never occurred to me that students would be absent. I've been barraged this week by kids who have missed 2, 3 or more days. The class is on Act 2, and these folks barely remember the Prologue (which was the last day some of them were in class). I'm spending the weekend preparing a web-site and a new classroom strategy/set of rules for handling make-up work.

Students today seem to have more of a sense of entitlement than I remember (though it's true that the grass is always greener etc etc). I gave a homework assignment on Tuesday, to be due on Friday. Some students missed class on Thursday for a field trip, and to see their reaction when I asked for their homework, you'd think I had asked them for a kidney. They were shocked that I would expect the homework to be done when they weren't there the day before. I told one particularly irate student that "the assignment was given when you were in class." Her response: "But we weren't here yesterday to get a reminder!" Unbelievable.

I gripe, but I'm still generally having a blast. I've got a few really great kids, including a small group in my favorite class that I caught planning to go to Center Stage (a local playhouse) for a performance of Two Gentlemen of Verona.

The first real quiz (the one for Act 1) is on Monday, so we'll see how that goes. I'm about five steps past exhausted, but I wanted to update this thread as I really haven't in quite a while. I hope everyone is doing well.

 

Well, interims (progress reports) are out, and I'm averaging about 10 A's, 15 B's, 5 C's and 1 E (what the hell happened to the F? That's not even a grade anymore in Maryland) in each of my three classes. Thanks to two consecutive snow days, I have a 4-day weekend and by Monday, I may be caught up on planning, grading and web-designing for the first time all semester (I've been busting my tail in an attempt to put together a kickass website for the student teaching semester. When I finish, I'll link it here for suggestions).

The students had been on pace to finish the play by the time I left, though the two snow days will surely mess that up. I may have to cut the viewing of the movie at the end of the unit, which is a good thing and a bad thing. On the one hand, I was a little bit nervous about showing the Zeffirelli (sp) Romeo and Juliet. It's the one my mentor teacher always shows and he asked that I keep it in the unit, but with the "morning after" scene, including gratuitous backside shots of Romeo and a breif chest flashing of Juliet, I was concerned. My mentor teacher said he'd never had any problems with it, but that was before this FCC crazyness, and I really don't want to be sued before I even have a job. On the negative side, I had really planned on using the time the class spent watching the movie to grade their final exams. Oh well.

I officially inherit the creative writing classes on Monday, so I'm putting together a 3 week mini unit to do with them. I'm a bit annoyed because I can't find a story I REALLY want to use with them. Anyone here know of a story called "A Birthday Party"? It's told from the perspective of a person eating alone in a diner who watches a couple eating dinner. The wife has a cake brought out for the husband's birthday and the husband gets ticked off about the spectacle of it and leaves. It's a REALLY short story. I've been trying to track it down all week.

The job search/final race to graduation starts next week. On the 3rd we have a mandatory job fair for Maryland schools, which is kind of cool, even though I don't know for sure that I want to teach in Maryland. I'm still considering teaching in New York state, and nobody here is being very helpful with information on how to do that (the push is on to recruit all of us to Maryland in general, and Baltimore County in particular). Anyone here know anything about the set-up/job search process for New York state?

Also, March 1st is the date we all have to be fitted for caps and gowns, which really makes it clear for the first time that college is (at long last ) almost over.

Next week should be hectic, but, with only 3 weeks to go until the end of the high school rotation (at which point I start all over again with a 2 month stint in a middle school), it's beginning to wrap up nicely.

I hope everyone is doing well.

 

Well, it's been ages since I've updated this thread, hasn't it? It's been a crazy semester so far. What they say about student teaching is true: You just don't sleep. I've finished my high school rotation (my mentor teacher gave me the highest rating in every category!), and for the last few weeks I've been working with 5 sections of 6th graders for the middle school rotation. So far I'm having a total blast. I don't have a ton of time to post massive updates (it's almost 5am), but I did want to post the link to the webpage I developed and have been working with this semester. Any suggestions/feedback would be much appreciated. Thanks!

http://tiger.towson.edu/~soneil4/english/hello.htm

 

OK, this just made my day. From an e-mail I got from a parent:

Talk about a good way to head into the end of the week.

 

Well, believe it or not, I tend to listen to everyone. I don't implement everything I hear or see, and I usually add my own style to it at the very least. Thanks for the thoughts. I did use background to begin the Romeo and Juliet unit. We spent two days on Shakespeare and Jacobean England. We spent a couple of days on Iambic Pentameter and poetics. Then we got into the play. I've been done with R and J for over a month though. The average student in my freshmen classes had an 84% overall unit grade, which I was pretty pleased with.
I've been at the middle school rotation for a little over a month now. My G/T 6th graders are doing sentence patterns (I'm a grammar nut) and reading The Miracle Worker. My standard 6th graders are doing Sadako and the 1000 Paper Cranes. Two and a half weeks to go until graduation.