I don't mind the break in heat, but watching the gray resettle where the sun has been and getting caught in a light drizzle reminds that summer is never really promised, especially not here. It snowed in late June and here it is barely the end of July and already getting cool. I'm trying not to care, but each cloud reminds me that my fabulous month and half staycation is rapidly coming to an end. On Friday, August 1st, I start my new job. Part of me is excited. I like teaching and I like my school community. I've spent my summer bumping into students and parents and future coworkers, and every experience has just reinforced the positive vibe I feel from the job.
The other part of me associates work with the dull mindnumbing irritation that was the job that sucked my soul...while I know things will be a million times better at the new job, I still can't quite shake the feeling of impending doom. I don't want to work. I want to win the power ball and spend the next month picking out a new home in Wallingford where I will sip mojitos from my second story porch hammock and make perfect omlettes at 2:00am with all the lights on and the music at a respectable level simply because I can. I want to be independently wealthy and learn to surf in Hawaii and visit places like Bora Bora and Martinique. I want to have vacation houses in Brazil and Bali and have a personal trainer who closely resembles the Rock...scratch that, I want the actual Rock to be my trainer...why should I skimp, it's my fantasy.
But my reality is lots of cool little kids and hopefully some time and structure to finally finish my first full novel. It's going to be great, I just have to let go. In the meantime, like the true procrastinator I am, I spent most of today reading through the thick packet of summer reading I recieved a month ago. Apparently as part of out professional development all us teachers have to read and subsquently discuss some articles on education.
So far, it's got me thinking. There was an article questioning if google is making us "stoopid" and one about morality, but thus far the most interesting article comes from the Journal of Educational Controversy. It's titled: Dispositions for Good Teaching by Gary R Howard. Since I made the decision to interview for this job I have been kind of stressed about it. I guess change, even good and totally long overdue change is kind of scary. It's silly. I know I am a good teacher, and I don't feel conceited saying that, I've worked hard to learn how to teach and I have a natural ability to connect with my students and get them to understand things. I've taught for two and a half years, not including this past year of subbing, but in the past I've always taught English.
Teaching Spanish was never in my plan. I mostly learned Spanish to chat up cute guys and make poetry out of swear words. I'm good at it. Though I tested into the lowest Spanish level when I first moved to Spain (I spent my junior year abroad there), by the second week, they were asking me to move up because there is something in my brain that just connects with communicating. I remember the panic I felt during my first few weeks. I was scared of getting laughed at, of not being understood or worse of not understanding, but I got through it and learned an impressive array of Cadiz street slang. I can still curse like a sailor and tell jokes. I can even explain how to play my favorite card games and how I like my mojitos made, but none of this can be taught to 4th and 5th graders. What am I doing? What if I am a disaster at teaching Spanish? I got through my demo lesson and my interviews and stuff, but I keep having these anxiety dreams where I can't remember how to say carrot and the kids keep asking me how to say things like ninja or hammer and I just can't remember and then they mutinee because I'm stupid.
Okay I think I'm digressing. I was starting to talk about this article I read in which Gary Howard examines two big questions: "First, what are the qualities of personhood that the adults in our nation's classrooms must embody to be worthy of teaching our richly diverse students? And second, how do we best prepare ourselves and our colleauges for this work?" The short answer is that I don't really know. My guess is that as long as you are smart and patient and don't mind fart jokes that teaching 4th and 5th grade should be okay, but I guess I just don't know how to prepare myself for another adventure into the unknown. So for lack of something better to do, I am reading and taking notes and thinking and taking long walks around greenlake and counting down the days until I actually have to have the answer to both those questions.
In the meantime I am also deciding what to do about my training. Several months ago, I wrote a proposal and received funding to attend a global learning seminar where I met with colleauges and worked on developing a training for faculty on best practices when taking diverse groups of students abroad for short term study abroad programs. Come September I will no longer be affiliated with the job that sucked my soul and therefore am not entirely obligated to follow through with the training. Quite frankly one of the reasons I chose to stay here this summer, as opposed to leading another trip abroad myself, is that I have felt burnt out and I needed time to recover. So now that it's all ending and the time for my training to come to fruition is near, I am still kind of numb. In my head I know that this is a unique opportunity to really walk the talk. It's cutting edge stuff in my field, but even more importantly it's a training that could potentially help better the experiences of the many students who will travel abroad through my ex-institution.
As I contemplate this decision, I think about Howard's questions. What does it take and how can the admin prepare you? This is essentially what my training would wrestle with only in a unique global learning context. Howard talks about how the teachers and the students' identities and dispositions create the context in which educational experiences are framed. Though I know I have all the peices to put together this puzzle...I have the experience, the book knowledge, the research, I still feel a bit daunted. What if my answers are wrong?
No comments:
Post a Comment