Miss Bennett, a first-year Teach for America elementary teacher, is struggling and exhausted.
I feel like I spend more time trying to get them to be quiet and listen to me than I do actually delivering academic content. My PD came by today and I was telling her how I feel like I’ve got about 5 kids who, no matter where I seat them, will speak, non stop, regardless of rewards or consequences. She suggests contacting parents. She’s right of course. I’m just not the good teacher who has already established a positive relationship with my families. I’m trying. Honestly, I’m a little intimidated by how these conversations will go. We don’t speak each other’s language and I feel like it’s obvious to everyone that I have no idea what I am doing.
Miss Bennett is looking for advice on “how to plan for workshop in Open Court.”
Ashlee, another novice Teach for America teacher, also is tired and sick. She taught fourth grade for a month and then was switched to kindergarten. In addition to teaching and lesson planning, she’s taking hours of graduate classes in education and going to TFA meetings, which she sometimes feels are not helpful.
Teachers, please visit their sites and give them encouragement and advice.
This might help Miss Bennet:
Blog entry on Workshop in Open Court
After reading both blogs…good grief.
And we wonder why teachers burn out or quit early?
I don’t wish to be cruel, but they don’t strike you–particularly Ashlee–as more than a bit ineffectual? And the first one speaks of her students with what sounds very much like contempt.
I guess I get that impression of all the TFA bloggers I’ve read (but then, I thought most of them were sped teachers, so maybe I’m just a victim of linking blogger selection bias.
On the principal thing, for example: given that principals need teachers badly, why would a principal be anxious for Ashlee to quit if it weren’t for the fact that she was causing far more trouble than benefit? I ask that seriously–for all I know, the principals are uniformly awful and tell all their teachers to quit.
But when I read stories about these TFAers, as well as other new teacher experiences, I’m struck by how many of them are really just utterly clueless, with no instinct for children at all.
I suspect it’s a case of the wrong people sign up for teaching–as Palisadesk mentioned, a teacher today is probably someone who loved school, loved learning, and longs to nurture children. Not only aren’t these unnecessary attributes for teaching, most of them are undesirable features. But the people who would be good teachers are unlikely to be drawn to something like TFA.
I hadn’t looked at TFA before, but after looking at the blogs and the website this evening, I have to say, this is really disturbing.
Are the teachers in the program aware that they are being submitted to cult-like condition?
Making people work all day, from the early morning, then subjecting them to programming, in the form of TFA evening meetings, reminds me of the Marxist study groups of Soviet Russia or communist China.
Whatever the educational problems may be in the United States, I have my doubts that attempting of exhaust and indoctrinate teachers is the solution.
Hey, Ashlee, forget about the graduate edumacacation classes unless your goal is to get out of the classroom. They’re a waste of your valuable time and energy.
“Hey, Ashlee, forget about the graduate edumacacation classes unless your goal is to get out of the classroom. They’re a waste of your valuable time and energy.”
Unfortunately for Ashlee, she is *supposed* to take these classes.
From the TFA website:
-Mark Roulo
In Ashlee’s case, it sounds like the administrator is part of the problem. Especially with such gems of advice as “Go home and think about all my suggestions, plus any other suggestions you were given, and then implement mine”. Then in the next post, the principal is sending the teacher off to go home sick after three hours of work and complains that she hasn’t implemented all the suggestions yet. (And informs the teacher that she is not getting paid for the hours of work because she has to go home sick.) I’ve been teaching for almost 10 years, but I don’t think I could do that kind of turnaround time. Nor do I expect teachers to instantaneously implement the suggestions that I give them. This teacher is in the miserable position of being completely new and needing instruction and support, but expected to tackle a tough situation that even a qualified, experienced person might struggle with. And with a supervisor who is clearly not demonstrating the ability to guide a new employee along.
Good teaching takes time. Time to review the results from the students, time to plan, time to research what has worked elsewhere, and time to rest so that one is fresh and ready. These teachers obviously have no time. They are constantly bounced around from place to place and subjected to an endless barrage of lecturing and assigned work. What’s missing from this is actual focus on the work being done in the classroom every day – the supervision and guidance that a teacher education program should be providing.
When I was a student teacher, I spent three days a week in the classroom, working closely with a cooperating teacher and an advisor from my graduate program. I had the chance to observe a skilled person planning, implementing, and re-engineering based on kids’ performance. I tried out lessons with the head teacher in the back of the room, helping me to manage behavior while I honed my instructional skills. This was the single most helpful experience that graduate school provided me – way more helpful than sitting in a meeting after the fact and chatting about how things were going. I was placed as a student teacher in three different schools – a private school, a public school, and a nonpublic special education school – with three different age levels. So that year also provided me with the opportunity to decide what age group was right for me (in contrast to Ashlee, who was shunted directly from 4th grade to kindergarten – which any teacher would find a difficult transition!) And, I learned was was typical for schools, as opposed to what was a unique situation or educational philosophy at one type of school.
I’ve never had a high opinion of TFA as a teacher producing program. Many of my classmates in graduate school were in TFA and had miserable experiences to relate, as well as some resentment when they realized how much tougher their lives were than the rest of us. I do admire the folks who take it on and try to do something positive, though I wish they would consider taking a different path that will allow them more guided experiences instead of just throwing them to the wolves. I’m not advocating for everyone to spend four years in graduate school the way I did, though for me that was what kept me in the field when I was burned out and ready to decamp. At the very least, it’s good to volunteer in classrooms or work as an aide. Anything to get classroom experience before jumping in with both feet.
And here’s the million dollar question – if Ashlee leaves, are they going to throw some other poor inexperienced person in to take her place? And how long before THAT person is informed that she isn’t good enough, either?
I’m a former TFA-er (2002 LA) … and I must say I was a bit shocked to see a somewhat “formal” organization of corps member blogs formed… as it would be a TFA PR NIGHTMARE!
Ashlee can’t “not” go to her graduate school classes since it’s the only way she’ll keep her job teaching! Welcome to post-NCLB TFA corps. The program is boot camp from start to end, and you really don’t have any sort of chance to breathe during the 2 year experience. I was never going to stay in the classroom past my introduction period (it lasted for 3 years thanks to a transfer to a charter school during my 2nd corps year), and neither will most of these individuals. Just like MOST introductory teachers, some will find out they crave the excitement and others will feel the job is better off in someone else’s hands.
My personal journal emulates many of these entries… especially those during institute and my first year of teaching. In the end, I got kids to ace the algebra state exams in 8th grade when they barely passed pre-algebra the year before. I still would never call myself the best teacher… but I got to be good and I never ever stopped trying thanks to TFA. It’s not any sort of solution, but at least you’ll get someone who wants the right results in the end.
I cannot understand wasting education dollars on inattentive or disruptive students. This is an administration failure. It is also a failure of the teacher unions, in that workplace conditions are a proper subject of collective bargaining and any union that allows such treatment of members is defrauding the membership.
Cal – Teachers looking at students with contempt? Who would have thought? I certainly had no such illusions, especially after flipping through my yearbook from my junior year of high school and reading some of the comments the teachers has published.
Cal: “a teacher today is probably someone who loved school, loved learning, and longs to nurture children. Not only aren’t these unnecessary attributes for teaching, most of them are undesirable features.”
Please explain. Are you saying that someone who hates children and hates learning is going to be a good teacher? When I was in school, I encountered a few teachers who seemed to dislike children, and many who clearly disliked learning, and neither group were good teachers.
At the risk of seeming to speak for Cal, I took that statement as meaning that some teachers go into it thinking that because they LOVED school and LOVED learning that EVERY student is exactly like them, and therefore, when they encounter children who dislike school and learning there, the attitude is so alien to them that they simply do not know how to react.
I ran into quite a few teachers and principals, especially as I traversed middle school, who positively hated children, and it showed. Some things are obvious, even to children.
MarkM, how did you get from “loving school, kids, and learning is not necessary and in fact not desirable” to “hating kids and learning IS desirable”? Odd jump, that.
Loving kids, school, and learning are not necessary attributes for a good teacher. Worse, as Catch-33 points out, teachers who assume that these attributes are morally desirable and preferable are profoundly shocked and disillusioned when it turns out that the vast majority of students don’t share their world view. So they are counting neutral qualities as attributes and then often further harming children with their negative response. They are also less likely to learn *good* teaching because of their ideological insistence on a moral value that is not only wrong but arguably harmful. Teachers are prone to rewarding students who drink the Koolaid, ignoring often more accomplished students who think the teacher’s full of it.
Cal, in the first place, I find it hard to believe that anyone but a severe autistic could go through 12 years of public school and be surprised that most kids don’t like learning. I’m socially inept and unaware, but I was never that unaware of my classmates…
Well, if that’s what the first place was, you should have said so. But in fact, you challenged a different premise by implying that teachers do need to like kids to succeed.