Friday, July 2, 2010

One Week Down!


So, I survived my first week of Summer Institute. :) It has been an interesting week to say the least. On Monday, I drove to Charles H. Flowers High School, where our Institute is going to be held all summer, and started the day off with the opening ceremony. Upon arrival, I got a teacher bag (!) full of books - a discipline guide, a professional values guide, a binder full of our Institute curriculum, etc, etc. Then, we each took a picture before going into the auditorium. (I was so frazzled and I had no idea they were going to take individual snapshots!!) At the opening, we got to have some elementary schoolers sing some African folk (?) songs and some middle schoolers read some of their poetry. They were hilarious. Finally, a current Fellow came to talk to us about his experience. And of course somewhere in all of that, we were reminded of that horrendous achievement gap.

Then we had a quick reception and headed off to classes. By the way, this year's Institute theme is "The Amazing Race." When I heard this, I was so excited - I love The Amazing Race!! And I totally want to do it one day. But I was kind of disappointed when I got upstairs to our Fellows floor... There is so much room for creativity with the theme (I was hoping for something reminiscent of my high school homecoming days where we decorated halls by theme and it was pretty extreme). However, I know that the staff was probably all wrapped up in other things, so I do think they did a good job. I must help out next summer though! Decorating a school? I'M THERE.

So classes - my class is all secondary math and science Fellows, mostly SPED. We have two instructors who are pretty great. On day one we talked about, what else, the achievement gap, professional values, Fellows accountability ...measures? (FAMs), high impact teaching strategies (HITS), etc. I love meeting everyone - everyone is so nice! - but these classes are not hitting the spot for me. As an education minor, I find myself bored a lot of the time. We talk about thing that I have already learned, we move relatively slow and... we're kind of treated like children. Our teachers might be modeling techniques for us to use, but it gets kind of annoying to be asked to put my thumb up every time I'm done with my assignment. Needless to say, I'm totally not doing that with my students.

As classes went on however, I saw one really big flaw in the way we were being taught. We run on a lesson plan that is stuffed with activities that are timed by the minute. However, as we learn more and more, we naturally have a ton of questions rushing through our heads. But time for questions aren't really scheduled into the day. This is a big problem because our questions are pertinent to our growing understand of education and how to be good teachers. This was especially noticeable when we were taught about SPED and IEP's yesterday. Questions galore. But few were answered. We were all overwhelmed. We start practice teaching in summer school on Tuesday. We need to know.

To be fair, there is a "parking lot" bulletin board in the classroom, where we are supposed to post it up our questions, but questions answered in context make so much more sense. And the amount of paper that is being used is making my head spin. AND THE LACK OF RECYCLING BIN IS DRIVING ME NUTS! PGCPS, come on!

So on my class - so diverse! We have people from other countries, recent graduates, career changers, people getting married, people already married, people having babies... I'm slowly getting to meet the other Fellows not in my class too. There are 51 of us :) that means 51 people worrying about our jobs, our ability to teach and our online SPED class which is going ridiculous(ly bad). That is a whole different story.

Truthfully, of course, there are those who I think are going to be more amazing teachers than others, but I honestly hope that everyone here is in it for the long run. Like myself, I know that many others have other career aspirations that we want to pursue before we retire, but I plan to devote a good chunk of my life to working with students in the area.

So far my favorite thing is just talking to other people. Other Fellows, other previous Fellows, current teachers... I LOVE PICKING PEOPLES' BRAINS! :) One of my least favorite things... learning to pack my lunch and not knowing where my home away from home is going to be in the fall. I really hope it's a high school, but it's all good.

QUESTION OF THE DAY -

One thing that I did want to touch on is a question I raised in class that made me feel really uncomfortable. We were reading about "people first language", referring to SPED/disabilities, and the article said that "people first language" is not about being politically correct, it's about being respectful. I asked, "isn't it kind of about being politically correct...?" I was told to parking lot my question. Don't get me wrong, I am all about being respectful to people, referring to them as they would like to be referred. However when I heard the term "mentally retarded" has been changed into "intellectually disabled", I had to ask. Sometimes, I'm like, let's call a spade a spade. I'm short. I'm not vertically challenged. But maybe I don't care about being called a shortie because I love being short most of the time. Perhaps I feel this way because I am not fully understanding of disabilities yet. But of the things I do not like about myself, the negative things, I accept or try to change them and if I cannot change them, I don't let it define me as a person.

I think people with disabilities for the most part take that outlook too - they don't let their disabilities define them. Tip-toeing around terms makes it seem like those terms are so negative and sensitive that we have to tip-toe. We don't tip-toe around positive things, so by tip-toeing I feel like we're reinforcing that negative connotation.

1 comment:

  1. I think your question is kind of all about connotation - and I would agree that it's about being politically correct (which, again, is largely about connotation).

    It reminds me of when I was an RA in college. Our hall directors always used to tell us that we didn't live in dorms, we lived in residence halls. Why? Because people thought of dorms as unfriendly buildings devoid of community. We were told people inhabit dorms, but people live in residence halls.

    Mentally retarded is kind of the same thing. It's an appropriate term, but a lot of people have used it as an insult toward those who aren't mentally retarded and, as a result, it's garnered a negative connotation. So now we need a new term that doesn't have that connotation. As soon as fifth graders start calling each other intellectually disabled as an insult though, we'll need a new term to escape its newfound negative connotation.

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