Monday, June 16, 2008

Abusing my blog for fun and academic credit

Summer classes started today, and one part of the technology class I am taking is a requirement to blog. For those of us who already have blogs, we've been given the option of just using our pre-existing blogs. So, for your reading pleasure, here is my first course assignment.

EDS 204 Blog Response #1: Tell us about a classroom event this year that has an impact on your professional growth and/or vision.

Given that I knew since the beginning of the year that I didn't really want to teach as a career (and tend to dwell on the negative stories), I think I'm going to share a couple of positive stories.
The Tuesday of the last week of school, I decided to get a couple of last minute pictures to serve as "artifacts" to show that I was fulfilling the California Teaching Performance Expectations (TPEs). For TPE 2, Monitoring Student Learning During Instruction, I decided to stage a photo of me talking to students. After snapping the photo, the student operating the camera exclaimed, "Damn, Miss A, you've got a big butt!" I gave her an odd look, at which point in time she started backtracking. "No, no. It's a good thing. I've got a big butt too!" As my class had been writing goodbye messages to me on the whiteboard, she followed up that comment by writing "I [heart] Miss A's big butt" on the blackboard.

I suppose this whole incident can simply be explained as a youthful attempt to extract one's foot from one's mouth, and in the process wedging it in deeper, but I've got an alternate (though unlikely) pet theory. My thought is perhaps the embrace of hip hop culture is actually doing some good in the body image circuit.



My other story is more of the heartwarming sort. One of my sixth grade advisory students received a number of awards at our end of the year ceremony. When we had adjourned out back to feast on watermelon, I went over to congratulate her. Our conversation went something like this:

Teacher A: Wow, that's quite a haul you've got there.
Student: Yeah.
Teacher A: How many did you get?
Student: I stopped counting after five, [leans closer] but I think I got eight.
Teacher A: Very nice.
Student: I guess hard work sure does pay off.
Teacher A: That it does.

Don't you just want to adopt her? She's awesome. All the teachers are betting she'll be valedictorian. I suppose there are a few good ones out there, after all.

2 comments:

Chris said...

I am actually very proud of your year for a few reasons:

1. Your positive attitude to learn even though we all knew early that this was not your chosen path.
2. You ability to take joy in the moments that have been given to you in this experience. They will always be with you.
3. You humor and sharp edge to your wit, I enjoyed both.

Teacher Anonymous said...

Thank you. I definitely feel that, even though I may not be cut out to be a teacher for 30+ years like my step-mom, I still had an interesting and educational year full of life lessons. Hopefully I didn't screw up the kids too much, but I got the feeling that some of them appreciated my efforts.