It's the last day of my first week as an intern and I feel like it's gone as well as it could have. I've made a few small mistakes and even had to scramble to fill in time one day when a discussion fizzled out sooner than planned. I feel like I'm developing a pretty decent rapport with my students. There are a few that I think will be difficult (and one that I did not expect to be difficult... and one that I thought would be difficult, but who is actually turning out to be one of the most active and attentive students in the class), but that's to be expected. British literature really isn't everybody's cup of tea and I can respect that.
We're just shy of half-way through Beowulf. The students started drafting their Anglo-Saxon heroics yesterday and are due to turn in five lines to me for in-class workshopping today. This is something that I experienced in high school (I'm sure in no small part because of Penny Kittle's [http://pennykittle.net/] role as department head) and it's a teaching technique that I believe truly produces results. I'll be writing a poem alongside my class in order to model the writing process and to show them that even teachers struggle sometimes. To workshop these drafts (since they only need five lines) I'm going to collect hard copies and just transfer them to the board. Normally I'd probably ask for electronic copies so that I could project them onto the screen or print them onto overhead projector sheets, but I still have to do a "Google-How-To" with them because they're new to the whole idea of Drive/Docs.
On a slightly more humorous note: I'm only 5'4" and wearing flats for the first time this week. I'm quickly realizing that a good portion of these high school students are actually taller than me. I have never missed my heels more than I did today while I was fighting my way through the throng of students and was mistaken for "one of them" despite having my lanyard and ID around my neck.
Friday, August 30, 2013
Thursday, August 29, 2013
A Welcome
So this year I start the second leg of my journey in becoming a secondary English teacher and I thought it would be a good idea to catalog my experiences, to write down my struggles and successes so that I might look back on them later when I'm a (hopefully) wiser teacher.
I'm interning in an English class at Exeter High School--last period British Literature. My class is almost entirely boys and it's very small, but I really like it so far. The students are pretty well behaved for being in last period British Literature and we've had some pretty good discussions. I think my favorite so far is when our discussion on the traits of a hero became a debate on whether the Emperor from Star Wars could be considered a "hero" because, from his perspective and that of his followers, he fit many of the traits we had listed of a "hero".
There's two boys who are infinitely amusing. They sit across the room from each other and just love to debate ideas and topics. Unfortunately, the subjects they want to talk about aren't always relevant to the class discussion. It's still nice to see two teenage boys, a group whose interest is very hard to grasp if you aren't doing something active, become so involved in a discussion. I'm really looking forward to the papers that these two will be turning in eventually.
Right now we've just started our journey through the British Literature canon. We're about a third of the way through Beowulf and after that we'll be moving into some of the Arthurian Legends and then The Canterbury Tales. I'm going to have the kids compose "epic" poems in the Anglo-Saxon style (minimum 20 lines, at least 1 kenning per every 10 lines, no more than 50 lines) about a time when they felt heroic. For the Arthurian Legends unit, we'll be watching some pop culture adaptations of the legends and comparing/contrasting them. I haven't yet decided on a direction for The Canterbury Tales. I'm open to suggestions, though. I want to make it a fun unit because I know that the story itself is very, very dry in parts. I was thinking of showing either part or all of A Knight's Tale since it is a loose interpretation of one of the tales and this class has already asked for movies.
Later in the year we'll touch on Shakespeare--Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing (I really want to show them Joss Whedon's adaptation). The Victorian Era holds Frankenstein and King Solomon's Mines alongside poetry galore. We'll definitely get to Lewis Carroll (especially since I've had a few requests for his work in particular). More modern adventures will most likely include a trip through the galaxy with Douglas Adams and a look into a world that is frighteningly like what ours could become with 1984.
Since I'm just an intern, I don't have full access to programs like Moodle, turnitin.com, and the online gradebook used by EHS. To get around this, I've decided to expand on my knowledge of Google's services like Calendar and Drive/Docs to have students turn in work and to be able to post their assignments online for them to see. It's a huge experiment for all of us. I've used Drive in a similar fashion before, but never on this scale and the students are fairly new to the whole idea of Drive as far as I can tell so I may have to plan a technology how-to day in the near future.
For now, a farewell.
PM
I'm interning in an English class at Exeter High School--last period British Literature. My class is almost entirely boys and it's very small, but I really like it so far. The students are pretty well behaved for being in last period British Literature and we've had some pretty good discussions. I think my favorite so far is when our discussion on the traits of a hero became a debate on whether the Emperor from Star Wars could be considered a "hero" because, from his perspective and that of his followers, he fit many of the traits we had listed of a "hero".
There's two boys who are infinitely amusing. They sit across the room from each other and just love to debate ideas and topics. Unfortunately, the subjects they want to talk about aren't always relevant to the class discussion. It's still nice to see two teenage boys, a group whose interest is very hard to grasp if you aren't doing something active, become so involved in a discussion. I'm really looking forward to the papers that these two will be turning in eventually.
Right now we've just started our journey through the British Literature canon. We're about a third of the way through Beowulf and after that we'll be moving into some of the Arthurian Legends and then The Canterbury Tales. I'm going to have the kids compose "epic" poems in the Anglo-Saxon style (minimum 20 lines, at least 1 kenning per every 10 lines, no more than 50 lines) about a time when they felt heroic. For the Arthurian Legends unit, we'll be watching some pop culture adaptations of the legends and comparing/contrasting them. I haven't yet decided on a direction for The Canterbury Tales. I'm open to suggestions, though. I want to make it a fun unit because I know that the story itself is very, very dry in parts. I was thinking of showing either part or all of A Knight's Tale since it is a loose interpretation of one of the tales and this class has already asked for movies.
Later in the year we'll touch on Shakespeare--Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing (I really want to show them Joss Whedon's adaptation). The Victorian Era holds Frankenstein and King Solomon's Mines alongside poetry galore. We'll definitely get to Lewis Carroll (especially since I've had a few requests for his work in particular). More modern adventures will most likely include a trip through the galaxy with Douglas Adams and a look into a world that is frighteningly like what ours could become with 1984.
Since I'm just an intern, I don't have full access to programs like Moodle, turnitin.com, and the online gradebook used by EHS. To get around this, I've decided to expand on my knowledge of Google's services like Calendar and Drive/Docs to have students turn in work and to be able to post their assignments online for them to see. It's a huge experiment for all of us. I've used Drive in a similar fashion before, but never on this scale and the students are fairly new to the whole idea of Drive as far as I can tell so I may have to plan a technology how-to day in the near future.
For now, a farewell.
PM
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