What to do when people work against you.

I'm angry. This is the first time in a long time that I've ever felt like someone was activly working against me, or to prevent me from being successful. I'm sure that that isn't this person's purpose, but it is the result.

Several weeks ago I inquired from my cooperating teacher as to the availability of video cameras for taping myself teach. She told me that all I needed to do was go talk to the librarian, check one out, no big deal. So I pushed the topic to the back of my mind. Time flew by, and before I knew it I was (am!) nearly done with my unit for my Unit Assessment Report. Here is my big mistake, I waited (accidentally) for the last minute to talk to the librarian about signing out a camera. Perhaps I didn't understand how things worked, or who the cameras belong to, but she was taken aback and put out by my request, and acquiesced because she trusts my cooperating teacher. I was allowed to video tape my lesson upon the agreement that I would return the camera before her class the next day, and I would delete my video from the card. Since this is my third term dealing with this, I figured no problem.

Well, I've tried everything I could do in order to make that clip come off the camera and I can't figure out how to do it. None of the things that have worked before worked, so I did the logical thing and asked the Librarian if she could help me out. Her response when I told her it wasn't working? "I know, I can't manage that for you". But I just need a little bit of direction.. "I can't manage that..."

The way I'm hearing that it almost sounds like she knew I (and the other student teacher using the camera) would have trouble down loading our video, but she gave us the camera anyways, and didn't forewarn us about the potential problem.

I went to the tech guy at the school and he and I spent about 15 minutes messing with the camera and my computer trying to get it to read the files, and it wouldn't work. I'm afraid to go back and ask the librarian again because I don't want her to be angry with me, but I'm at a loss of what to do. I suppose I might just loose the film and have to do it again. The other student teacher is trying to get the files off this afternoon, so hopefully she can figure it out and fill me in.

However the really concerning thing is the fact that I feel like this other teacher is working against me, particularly trying to make this a difficult process for me because she's offended that I assumed I could check out the cameras for this purpose. How do I deal with this? Is this an issue/conflict that comes up a lot in schools? I expected more professionalism. It's possible that she is just exceedingly busy and doesn't mean to come across this way, but either way the interpersonal skills could use a little work.

Social Studies is different.

I taught my first social studies lesson on Thursday. It was on the causes of the Renaissance, most specifically about The Plague, The Hundred Year War/Joan of Arc, the Market Place, Italian City-States and the 'Spirit of the Renaissance' (or humanism and the well rounded individual). Each topic had a slide with some art on it, and I asked the students to tell me what they saw, and what it made them think of. We discussed each slide and topic, it was half me lecturing/leading them to answers, and half them discussing, theorizing about why, and providing the information themselves. I worked really hard to involve them in the discussion process, and keep them interested. I was really pleasantly surprised to see that several of the most knowledgeable and engaged students (even if their information did come from Age of Empires) were students that are often disconnected in my math lessons and do poorly.


I felt like I spent the entire time talking, and was afraid that I went on much too long, but my cooperating teacher said she thought that because of the pictures and the fact that I included the students in the discussion so much made it so it was manageable for them. Now the challenge is going to be figuring out how to vary the lessons so I don't spend every day lecturing with images and discussing with the students. Needless to say, I'm finding that teaching World History is very different then preparing to teach math, both in the planning and the execution of the lesson. Tomorrow, after we finish the slides, I have them doing an activity creating a compare and contrast chart with the classical era (Ancient Rome and Greece), the Middle Ages (in Europe) and the Renaissance. There is a section of the book that outlines that really clearly, so they should alsmost be able to copy it out, but hopefully they will learn something too. It is hard to find an assignemnt that is accessable, but challenges them to think more then just copy. Perhaps I'll also assign a critical paragraph as homework? It is particularly challenging that there are only class sets of the books, so homework needs to be something that doesn't require a book, and they can do at home. I have to keep in mind that not all students even have access to the internet, so that aspect should be challanging. I don't anticipate giving nearly as much homework in that class as I do in math. Any ideas for homework assignments that fit this bill?

Time Management

It seems to me that one of the greatest lessons that I am learning this term is that time doesn't move at a constant speed, it is indeed relative. I can prove this by the fact that the moment lunch time arrives, I suddenly discover that it is 3:00, and school is nearly done. Equally surprising is that by what feels like Monday afternoon, I need only look at the calendar to discover that it is in fact not Monday afternoon, but somehow we have arrived at Thursday.

Despite time's acceleration, I think that my previous terms of practicum work have prepared me well for my 'full time teaching', and that in turn, this term's student teaching will prepare me excellently for what will (hopefully) be my first year of teaching in the fall.

I find that I am finding a method that works for me to stay ahead of the game and prepared for each week of teaching, but not so planned out and set in stone that I cannot be flexible for the speed that the students are working/learning at.

Because I have all of the classes I teach on one day, and I only assist on the other day, I am fortunate to be able to do all of my prep at once. Depending on how the days fall, either Friday or Monday (whichever is an odd day), I plan the basic format for the week, deciding which investigations will be taught on which days, picking out the homework assignments, and deciding if there are any unusual materials that I will need to find. Then, on each odd day, I make sure that I have read through each investigation thoroughly and have planned how I want to approach it, especially identifying how I want to do a warm up (pre-teaching, or review) and trying to pre-identify any aspects of the investigation that might be confusing. I also make any photocopies I need to make (usually I try and make photocopies two days ahead, in case the students rush through an assignment and finish early). Odd days are also my opportunity to write any office hour requests slips. Office hours are the last fifteen minutes of each odd day, and it's a time I can call in students that have an over abundence of missing assignments, need to retake quizes etc.

In this way I have found a rhythm that allows me to feel prepared for each lesson, without spending hours and hours of grading and planning at home.

Though I will likely not be so lucky as to have on and off days as far as teaching, while still being 'full time', using this method to keep me organizedd this term will allow me to modify it in the future when I have even more classes to prepare for, and less time to do it in.