In 30 days I will have completed my first real day of teaching. 120 students will have come in the door, sat in the seats, made judgments about me, and filed out again. I'm a little scared.
My practice teaching ended on Friday and I have three more days of training. It was called practice teaching, but its worthiness is debatable. We taught, but to eight kids in one of the best schools in Philly. Not exactly what I'm going to face in ONE MONTHS time.
Two fellows were placed in a classroom with the cooperating teacher (CT). Our CT, Ms. Finkel or The Fink as she became known, was a 50ish year old veteran special Ed teacher. She was exactly the teacher I do not want to be.
Here's a quick list of her misdemeanors:
1. She constantly humiliated the kids in front of class. Her choice of humiliation was usually calling their parents in the middle of class. For me, this is completely unacceptable. But this was her only form of management, so a week into summer school the calling lost any power it may have had and became a constant nuisance.
2.She gave us absolutely no feedback on our teaching, but was heard bitching about the fellows program and us personally to other teachers.
3. She made her terrible opinions known to all. A class on immigration was a great example. In Philly recently a scandal broke out when Geno of the famous Geno's stakes posted a "speak English only" sign in his restaurant. Ms. Finkel used this as a jumping off point to launch into a tirade about how everyone in America should speak English and how when she went to Florida she thinks it’s unacceptable to be surrounded by Spanish speakers. There was a Hispanic girl and a boy from Puerto Rico in the class.
4. She pronounced water "wooder". (This is a Philly thing but coming from her it was grating.)
5. She constantly moved the class from room to room because SHE was too hot.
6. She was unable to listen to anyone without cutting him or her off and inserting some completely irrelevant fact about her life.
7. She called one student "crazy" to his face and constantly repeated how she deserved a medal for putting up with him.
The list can go on and on, but I feel so much better for getting all that out! So happy I will never work with the fink again.
Apart from that joy, training has been great. The people on my course are seriously fantastic. I'm coming around to thinking the training doesn't really prepare you for what is about to happen, but it does give you a huge network of like-minded friends that are all in the same boat.
Love you all
Listening to: a clicking fan
Thinking: water doesn't have any o's or d's damn it.
Feeling: annoyed the fink bothered me so much.
P.S. Ooo, I drove in the city for the first time today. No crashes, sideswipes or freak-outs. I feel very proud!
Sunday, July 30, 2006
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