A rolling thread where we are teachers

Hello! There are lots of us!

What do you teach? Who do you teach it to?

english, to students who almost made it to university

Neurology, to residents and medical students

Previously:
MCAT Physics, verbal reasoning and "essay" writing to pre-med students for Princeton Review
English, in Japanese high schools (on the JET program) and to private students in tutorial and conversation classes
Piano and rudimentary music theory, to semi-interested 6-16 year olds taking private lessons at Yamaha

I have no formal teacher training.

I'd like some stories on this thread, if thats viable (privacy notwithstanding) for any of you! I admire the fuck out of anyone who teaches.

English to foreign types. Favourite quote: "If I have the million pounds, I will buy big house in the cunt."

Other known teachers? Vahid/Baja?

(Me: Maths to 10-12 y/olds)

knowledge, to fools

with any luck, HS math next year (just got back from a massive job fair, have two little screening interviews this afternoon)

with substantial luck, HS English in the 2011-12 school year.

good luck, m bison!

pimpin got a campus interview tomorrow afternoon now

lol i got a job offer from another district

video production, to teenage Latinas

I teach proper deportment on a school bus.

Oh hi. I just got a teaching job that I accepted. I don't start till August but -- uh -- will be posting here!

hi 5, we are teaching bros now

when u deliver a tight lesson u should be like, son, r u scared, it looks like u just got MORDYFIED

you got Mr. Sh1n31fied more like it (no, probably kids will call me by my first name)

ESL, developmental english, and occasionally speech to adults (occasionally teenage highschool dropouts) in a small private college that is rather unique in its mission but i don't want to identify on a public message board

one of my favorite student sentences: "Workers get lezzy when the boss is away."

was waiting for you to show up LL!!

<3 !

my summer project is to read the grammar book from cover to cover :)

my summer project is to continue to develop my reading curriculum. i have not yet started working on this project, though. we're also trying to hire a new ft person, which is a little hairy.

ft --> full time fac

I've gotta find out exactly which classes I'm teaching next semester so I can prepare stuff. I've never actually done this before (did tutoring and writing center work before, but never taught a class). It's exciting!

I am a peer educator for an intro college biology class (geared toward biology majors). I have all of the fun of teaching but the prof I work for fields all the troublesome stuff, and they also come up with the lesson plans. It's the five-week summer class right now and it's so fast-paced!

with substantial luck, HS English in the 2011-12 school year.

good luck, m bison!

― horseshoe, Wednesday, June 16, 2010 2:04 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

let me just say--u will be an awesome, awesome teach

i mean im sure the rest of you guys are good too

congrats m bison! congrats mordy!

i just realized my post made it sound like we were hiring a little hairy person. this may be true, but mainly we're looking for someone competent, stable, and not likely to drive us nuts. this person could wind up being little and hairy...or not.

hi max. i might be a little tired and overwrought lately, but at any rate that made me tear up a little bit. thank you!

Amanda, you strike me as one of the hardest-working and most committed teachers I've known. god knows it's an easy job to burn out at. your students are lucky to have you!

integrated math & chemistry for 10th graders

thanks h! i do my best. mine is not an easy job, but it's one i enjoy and am happy to do. i'm glad someone notices.

it is a little known fact that horseshoe and i worked together (sort of) for a while :)

Have any of you read http://www.amazon.com/Global-Achievement-Gap-Survival-Need/dp/0465002293 ?

I've been enjoying it, and this particular paragraph jumped out at me. It's apart of a narrative being told by Helen Mountjoy, who tried to establish less test-oriented curriculum's in Kentucky:

"We were totally unprepared for the kind of response we got from our right-wing brethren... For example, it was said that these open-response tests would measure students' values, and that students would be kept in school until they could answer 'the right way.' 'Critical thinking skills' means teaching your children to be critical of you and your church.

Religious fanatics. This is why we can't have nice things.

(Curricula?)

yes

I'm a music teacher in Scotland, 5 days from finishing my probationary year and looking at unemployment after the summer if more jobs don't appear soon!

What ages do you teach, andy?

Music teacher is a brutal job most places imo - respect!

"We were totally unprepared for the kind of response we got from our right-wing brethren... For example, it was said that these open-response tests would measure students' values, and that students would be kept in school until they could answer 'the right way.' 'Critical thinking skills' means teaching your children to be critical of you and your church.

i dunno the context here but it seems like kind of a weak argument to blame the parents. if parents don't understand what "critical thinking" means in the context of standards and testing then the state board / school districts / school administrations / classroom teachers aren't doing a good job of explaining themselves to the stakeholders. we explicitly teach both values and critical thinking at our school but we're also quite explicit with parents and students about what critical thinking skills and values we're teaching and what they represent.

hi guys, i am a teacher. elementary. actually, i'm back in school this next year getting my m.ed. books i am reading lately for it:

peter maclaren: life in schools
deborah meier: playing for keeps
diane ravich's new book

remy would you recommend any of those books?

have you read 'why children fail'?

I love the first two. Maclaren comes from the Marxist/Paolo Freire camp, and he's got a good (appropriately incensed) energy that he brings to the idea of education reform. The book is dated in places, but not ineffective from a philosophy standpoint. Pretty provocative, actually. Deborah Meier is an inspiring teacher and talented author, and the schools she works in sound... pretty amazing.

No, I haven't read 'why children fail' but I've heard good things. Worth picking up?

i'll try to read those two then!

'why children fail' is good, yeah - it's very easy and pleasant to read and it's interesting - I read the later version, where he's annotating his own book, and it seemed like that'd be better. it's a bit dated fwiw but not totally so. i found it really spoke to me as the kind of teacher I am at this stage (4 yrs experience): he's very convincing about saying that imbuing a good learning strategy is the most important thing, and very honest about not really knowing how to do it (I'd love to read books that offered more on the latter, if you had any recommendations) but the stuff that really struck with me is the stuff that goes: sometimes you should asking the kid to work out the phoneme with a neutral expression and not-giving-away-the-answer and etc, and just read to the damn kid.

the meier/ravitch columns in ed week are a traet

they are, huh?

(that was meant sincerely, not sarcastically)

I really want to read the Ravitch book - it's next on my list. Have you guys seen the interview she did recently in Slate?

Here's the Ravitch interview: http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/thewrongstuff/archive/2010/05/17/diane-ravitch-on-being-wrong.aspx

What teaching related journals/magazines do you guys read regularly?

Also! Can any of you recommend a good history of pedagogy text?

a history of pedagogy? why would you want to read that?

i imagine it might be more reasonable and useful to narrow it down by audience, context and content.

I was thinking something like this: http://books.google.com/books?id=bfITAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=history+of+pedagogy&source=bl&ots=xQOHCjbq9O&sig=4g2SYh77K-b1e0ZjdfRBC30CPcg&hl=en&ei=fogdTK70CYOmNfrAqcwM&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

But more recent than 1905. I found this: http://www.amazon.com/Companion-Philosophy-Education-Blackwell-Companions/dp/0631228373/ref=pd_ybh_19?pf_rd_p=280800601&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_t=1501&pf_rd_i=ybh&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=054YP4HXE2WBKW0C0WM5

Which might actually be good, but I thought someone here might have a better idea. If not, I'll just go with probably the Blackwell thing.

Sorry about the spammy links. Next time I'll just tinyurl it.

If I had to guess, that would be mine, the second--he really did look like this was beyond his control (and that trying to talk to him in the moment, which I did initially--very calmly--was pointless and even counter-productive). He did seem to have acquired one coping mechanism: he just stood in the middle of the gym until the VP arrived.

I go to this school regularly. It occurred to me later that this particular student was probably the reason for many of the lockdowns the school has initiated while I've been there (which just means classroom doors are closed for 10-15 minutes and no one can leave the room).

A retired teacher in Ontario is allowed 50 supply/substitute days. During the pandemic, that was bumped to 95. I thought that was a hard cap, but because my 95th day will fall right at the beginning of May, I can continue working for the rest of the month. Which means by the end of the year, I'll have done ~110 days--almost 2/3 of a full school year. (I really got hit at tax time for teaching ~85 days last year.)

I'm happy about this--I still like being in the classroom--but I really hope I don't get too many calls for intermediate the rest of the way. It feels like the pandemic has affected them much worse than young kids--there's this real us-vs.-you thing right now, worse than what you normally get with intermediates. (And it doesn't seem to be reserved for supply teachers, either.)

The affect on young kids won't be known for a few years; it'll probably be worse, either socially or academically or both.

Effect, that is. Teacher here.

I'm a terrible ILX poster these days; I only seem to post when I have some mildly shitty life event to bitch about. Sorry everyone.

But basically I got laid off AGAIN a month or two ago because my school decided to phase out the French program. I just had my first interview for an English position, at a school I really wanted to teach at, and I was so nervous I completely bombed it. This sucks and I'm really tempted to take this as a sign that I should just get out of this damn profession but I don't know what else I can do.

<3 i dont have advice, just a fellow teacher offering my support from across the internet

Thank you!

Sorry to hear all that. So different here...They can't fill the jobs that are open. I get e-mail every night with anywhere from five to 20 LTOs open (two boards).

Especially French, I think.

i'm sorry, Lily, and i completely understand if you want to move on to another profession, but you'd make a great English teacher!

Agreed, Lily!

It seems I might be back to adjuncting uni again in the fall, at a local arts college’s creative writing program.

I realized that while I worked hard hard and made some good money last year doing medical editing, my most potent creative moments were when I had more time to myself. With the workshops and other work I do on the side, I should be fine— sometimes I just need to remind myself that there isn’t one path, and I’m not trying to build a career, just support my other pursuits.

Thank you, everyone! I don't think I'm being hired this round of interviews, though I got a friendly "we liked your interview and encourage you to reapply if there's another opening" rejection call today, which is slightly encouraging.

What this is all telling me is that it's time to start saying no to the French jobs, which just keep demanding a ton of prep time and taking me further away from teaching English. That might mean a year of subbing or adjuncting, but after pandemic teaching I wouldn't mind a more low-key year to recharge.

Table, I know exactly what you mean, and that's about where I am too. Sometimes you just need a job that doesn't soak up all your energy. Adjuncting creative writing sounds fun - do you like it? I've only taught composition classes.

Are teachers in a perpetual discussion about 'leaving the profession'? It certainly feels that way sometimes.

I'm considering my position at the moment - mainly because of what Lily said about needing a 'job that doesn't soak up all your energy'. I've always found it exhausting - physically, emotionally - but since I had covid back in October, I'm dragging my sorry arse through the week; by Friday, I'm running on empty and my weekends are a write-off. This Friday was kind of humiliating, really - one of those days when you have nothing in the tank, the kids sense it and walk all over you. Cue a weekend of introspection and blah blah blah.

Anyway, that's me at the moment. This probably feels like a luxury when you're looking for a job, so apologies there. All the best with your search Lily. Don't lose heart!

In the upcoming Ontario election, one of the parties is promising to reinstate grade 13, which would require an additional 10,000 teachers. When asked where they'd find them, the response was that there are currently 70 or 80 thousand teachers who are certified but not teaching, many of them because they've been ill-treated by the current government and have left the profession; they'll be able to get 10,000 to return.

My sympathies, Chinaski, and I hope the fatigue lessens soon. I'm in much the same state, really. I don't know if what I had a couple months ago was covid or not, but it was followed by some pretty severe fatigue that's better but not gone. Teaching has always felt a bit like being two people - Teaching Persona and Me - but it now feels like there's only enough energy for one of them and Teaching Persona gets all of it.

So if anything, it feels like a luxury to have the potential prospect of a doing a year of something else and then coming back, without having to sacrifice an established position in order to do it.

Yeah, Lily and Chinaski, it really is about energy and also engagement for me— when I’m reading tons of poetry and student work, I am also much more interested in pursuing my own work. When I’m doing other kinds of work, poetry feels more like a funny hobby.

I love facilitating creative writing workshops. I venture to say it is what I am best at as an educator— creating an environment where students feel free to make the things they want to make, as well as giving them permission to push boundaries.

Yeah that's a really good point, and it's one thing I've been missing since I switched from teaching English to French. I don't write for publication, or write very much by the standards of anyone who is writing for publication, but I do write, and it's important to me, and teaching French seems to divert that particular creative channel.

Yeah that balance is important to me, and as I try to recover from the grief and loss of being laid off, it's important for me to be able to make money without the emotional investment of teaching.
Today/tomorrow I am grading my final project podcasts (that I have 72 hours to complete/turn in final grades) and have to take a break to go work at my other job waiting tables, where I have no prep work or any work outside working hours whatsoever. It's neither good nor bad, it just is the way it is.

*being laid off from my longtime FT teaching job

Collected field-trip forms for a teacher today, and the students had to fill out a Google Form pertaining to an upcoming dance; tomorrow I'm with a class that's doing Jump Rope for Heart. Actually feels like school.

Next week I start what will hopefully be a long term gig, instructing a few 1-hr classes in creative writing to young teens (middle school aged). Mostly 2nd or 3rd gen Chinese students living in the Bay. Seems like the parental terrain might be a little fraught, but judging from the sample classes I watched, the kids are pretty all right and into what’s going on.

Le table, if this sounds like a ballache no probs at all, but I'm shit at teaching the creative writing element of our Language GCSE - do you have any useful tips/places to look/texts etc?

I mostly know poetry. One book that contains a lot of different prompts and ideas re: poetry is this volume: http://www.matthewjohnburgess.com/new-page

It also does a good job of mixing contemporary poetry with older poems, which is essential when teaching poetry— can't have students thinking there are no poets any longer.

As far as my own strategies, so much isn't taught any longer, so that I often spend an hour-long session going through basics like euphony and cacophony, another session going through metaphor, another going through parataxis, etc. We also read a lot of poems aloud and listen to/watch poets read their poems so that the kids feel they're more alive.

Another good strategy for getting things started is picking a quote that might be related to the lesson of the day, even if the quote is from someone who isn't a poet or fiction writer or whatever. Having kids talk about what they think the quote means and how it means what it means gets their brains moving in a creative direction, so that the segue into talking about poems— whether their own or someone else's— is easier.

I have some other strategies, too, but I should mention that one of my big things from the beginning of *any* class is to inform students that it is an okay space to get weird and really be *creative* with language...good poetry isn't staid or stuffy!

I forgot to say thank you for this, Tabes! Some really interesting ideas. So much is about trying to get people to 'forget themselves' in some way - get past the barrier that they're awful at it etc and a lot of these techniques are about making the process exploratory or whatever. Thanks again.

Telling sign that your math text may be out of date: the one in front of me, in the data unit, has a graph of the year's top-selling albums:

1. Rockinghorse, Alannah Myles
2. Reckless, Bryan Adams
3. Greatest Hits, Anne Murray
4. Boy in the Box, Corey Hart
5. The Thin Red Line, Glass Tiger

(Also a telling sign the school may be in Canada.)

I detect some dissimulation on the part of the publishers: there's no way Corey Hart's 1985 album was still selling that well in 1992, when the Alannah Myles album came out.
Just find 2023 versions of those artists to enlighten your students: e.g. Bryan Adams = Drake.

Mathpower Eight--the front page with the copyright has been ripped out. Does sound suspect (though I don't doubt the Anne Murray album might still be hanging around).

i heard from a teacher friend that the librarian in their school was tasked with making posters for black history month highlighting black scientists and this guy made them using AI art generators rather than, you know, using pictures of ACTUAL BLACK SCIENTISTS. He apparently doesn't understand the problem.

The high school music club has started a Music League and one of my students invited me to join. I can't express the level of pride and responsibility I feel at being invited into the high school music nerd space.

yayyyyy!! that sounds so much fun!

Some parent from the board I teach with was posting on Facebook today about how her kid's school won't allow the students to take soccer balls (or any kind of ball) out at recess. This is preposterous. I can guarantee that what she's talking about are days when the field is out of bounds because of weather, and everyone's confined to the hardtop. On those days, sure, the school will likely say "No soccer" because of safety.

Some of the comments have pointed this out, but of course some of them are like "The inmates are running the asylum."

Did you know that some people hate teachers?

Just the kind of email you want to get from the homeroom teacher the day before:

Thank you for picking up my job. I am going to warn you this is a tough crew. I have a few kids who like to express themselves through behaviour.

I am in the office as Teacher in Charge so you can call if you need me.

Here are a few notes to get you going: I am trying to paint a clear picture here for you...this looks overwhelming though (sorry).

...followed by notes on 12 (!) students I have to be aware of.

If I don't make it back, tell the world my story.

The punchline: not middle school, grade 3/4.

oh lord

Glad the teacher told me up front; lowered expectations help. The really bad thing is that it looks like rain the entire day, meaning I can't bribe them with outdoor time, and also that they very likely won't even get their regular recesses.

doesn't everyone like to express themselves through behaviour

I think she's euphemizing.

Wasn't all that bad. Sent one kid out early (the homeroom teacher was TIC--"teacher in charge"--so she was there), basically fine after that. But I can see where this'd be a tough class every day.

I'm hoping one day (wish I'd done it myself before retiring) a teacher leaves me a dayplan that just says "Be afraid--be very afraid."

I had to leave early today for a doctor's appointment, so I set up my last class with their project before leaving them with the sub. As I was trying to give them the overview, they were like, "Why are you leaving? Are you going to see Bruce Springsteen again?" I told them it was a doctor's appointment, and one of them was like, "Ok hear me out. WHAT IF...you walk into the doctor's office and Bruce Springsteen is THERE?"

hey that does happen sometimes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NinSGaFDXM

Lol that’s cute, Lily

There are plans that aren't nearly enough, and then there's the opposite. I'm in for kindergarten tomorrow, and I'm looking at the dayplan the teacher has emailed (8 pages of 12-point type over two separate documents) and the three pages of supplemental notes. It's overkill. To be fair, she emailed it two days in advance, but I'd much rather have a clear, simple dayplan of about two pages to look at the morning of.

https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/034/711/Screen_Shot_2020-07-24_at_11.33.38_AM.jpg

only way to respond to that plan, good lord

Definitely a challenging day--12 Ks who felt like 25--but the micro-developed dayplan hurt more than it really helped.

The kind of thing that makes anyone who's been at this for a while just shake your head: major revamp of the Ontario language curriculum, released yesterday, government wants it in full effect by September. That's bad enough, but the funny part is the new focus on phonics (and reintroduction of cursive!). When I started supplying in the early '90s, anything phonics-related was being phased out for "whole language," and when I started full-time in '98, phonics was practically verboten. My board purchased some expensive, rather insane program around that time called First Steps. Every three or four years, there'd be something else new come along--First Steps went from the number-one focus to something you monitored on a casual basis to something you dashed off as an afterthought in June to a piece of paper buried in the deepest recesses of each student's OSR. Now everything's come full circle.

I know cursive is a nice skill to have, but seriously? In today's world?

https://globalnews.ca/news/9787008/cursive-writing-reintroduced-ontario-schools/

Very humid outside, storm looming, end-of-year intermediate dance (whole school), Friday afternoon, A/C not working--truly one of life's best experiences. I had cafeteria supervision: thought I was going to pass out. Was also reminded of the eternal mystery of how anyone gets through adolescence. There was this one kid, sort of looked like Michael Cera, who wandered around for the full two hours clutching this large box of Welch's Fruit Snacks. I don't know if it was his way to ingratiate himself with others--there was something sad about it. I did see four of five students wearing Expos hats, so maybe that's a thing now.

Very last thing you want to see on a dayplan: instructions for vacating the room in case your one student-of-concern has a meltdown. I think I run into this once every couple of weeks now. Luckily, I haven't yet had to follow through (and today, the student-of-concern is absent). Before I retired, there were two such students in the room next to me (grade 1/2). They'd clear out frequently, leaving whichever one of them was having the meltdown to turn the room upside down while an adult stood there and watched.

Last day for me; they didn't bump the retired-teachers days, so I've hit my limit for the year. I've got stuff to attend to but expect I'll go crazy anyway. Five months off will be the longest not-working window of my life, along with that first COVID spring-summer--which, because there was so much to monitor and think about and discuss, didn't feel like a layoff.

Half-day in a middle school to finish, and they're having a pre-Easter fun day. One period in the gym for a school-wide rock/paper/scissors tournament, one period co-supervising the games/art room (where I am right now). Free money.

Why I'm posting: one of those absurd moments that still makes me love this job. As 300 adolescents filed into the gym, all hopped up on cinnamon swirls--I mean hormones--whoever was in charge of music had Black Sabbath's "Paranoid" blasting. Surreal and thrilling. When the tournament got underway (class winners going against each other in a double-knockout format), the noise level was enough that I had to get some tissue paper and make impromptu earplugs. Insane--how did ESPN not cover this?