ncjenn2nd 的个人资料Jennifer's space照片日志列表更多  |  工具 帮助 |
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Jennifer's spaceTeaching 850 miles from home... 4月28日 Lots going on....new baby, new job, new home!Alright! Things have been uber-busy for me. I had two pregnant friends back home, but as of this morning....one of the babies was born! Both baby and mom are doing well, she had to be induced so it was very anticipated. I just wish I were there to meet the new little girl. I will get to meet her in June when I go home to stay for good.
I have enjoyed my two years of teaching and learning and having my eyes opened to a different way of life, however, I miss my mommy, and my daddy, and my brother and everyone else that means a lot to me. It's time to go home.
My job hunt has not been easy. I spend approxiamately 3-7 hours a day on the internet searching school districts and job finders to see if anything new is open. At this point there are 378 school districts on my list and there are somewhere around 30 that I have not added to my list yet. Yeah, just a few to look through. Needless to say, I have not checked them all yet. There are some jobs open, and a few in a district that I would really love to work in, it is a growing area and only about 20 minutes from all the people I want to be around, so I could buy a house even!
So, that is why I have been so gosh darn busy lately...plus the fact I am working on packing also:). Ahh yes, and the other friend who is pregnant is having twins and is due in June.
Hope all is well,
Enjoy the weekend! 2月17日 Apparently, I suck.I got my observation write up back yesterday from the principal. Based on the paper, I totally suck as a teacher and should completely revise my way of teaching. My students in small group are just working on rhyming, which the activity I was doing was never mentioned, although it is a strategy I have been told to use. The four activities I told the rest of the class not in small groups to work on should be on a checklist to focus students (these are second graders, and I am a second year teacher - this expectation is a bit ridiculous). Many of my students were off-task and unengaged - 2 were reading (one of the assignments was to silent read for 15 minutes), several were looking around the room (one of the assignments was to write silly sentences with the word wall words, and another was to use the spelling words to create rhymes, could they possibly be looking at those words?), 5 were writing (one of the assignments was to work on a fairy tale writing of their own, could they maybe be writing this?!) and 4 were just unengaged (were they sleeping? how were they unengaged, cause the other 7 or 8 mentioned already were actually working.) And did you know that silly sentences, or sentences in general, don't really help students understand the meaning of a word? Really, cause I thought that if a person can use a word in a logical sentence they knew what the word meant. Interesting. Plus, silly sentences give students a chance to use the elements of a good sentence and make it funny. It is an activity that has been used in many K-2 classes for many years. My mom remembers both me and my brother doing those for homework, and he and I are ten years apart!
I had a couple other people look at the review just to be sure I was not blowing it out of proportion, and they could not believe the things she said about me. And the lack of information on what I was actually doing. Oh yeah, and under strengths, she put: Ms. S has a melodious reading voice. Really. I read to second graders on a daily basis, do you think I would read to them in a monotone voice? Especially since I am teaching them to be good readers? Yeah. So I suck and the only strength I have is that I can read aloud well. Go me.
Just to make the observation review even better, there were numerous spelling and grammar errors all through the typed form. She had already signed off on it, omitting the date. The sticky she put on the front of the review said for me to review and come in to discuss. Think she meant for me to review and correct her errors? I would just love to take my highlighter and green marking pen to that paper and return it to her saying, I'll sign this when it looks good. My dad said to just leave it because when it goes in my file, it will just make her look like the idiot. He's right. If I sign it at all, I do have that option, as I'm told, along with putting a rebuttal note in my file. I may take that option if my meeting with her does not go well. I think I just need the weekend to calm down and think of the best strategy to handle this without losing my cool.
Have a great weekend and enjoy the President's Day if you happen to get it off! 2月11日 Qualified teachersI wrote this post to a person who left a message on another site about teacher's reading stories about different ways of life. Here is the site post and the comment the person left, and then my reply, which I chose not to leave on the person's site, I felt it was a little rude and not asked for, so I kept it here.
Original post:
Parent-isms: A couple of Massachusetts parents filed a lawsuit against their children’s school district for “violating their parental rights.” The parents claim that the school is using “propaganda” to “brainwash” their children against their parents’ religious beliefs. Evidently, one couple felt “violated” when their 5 year-old son came home from kindergarten with a book featuring a gay family. The other couple felt violated when their child’s second grade teacher read King and King (fairytale about two princes who fall in love) to the class. Hello, parents! If it’s that big a deal to you, take your kids out of public schools. The public school system has a responsibility to teach diversity and acceptance of different people from different backgrounds. As John Davis, lawyer for the school district explained, "The parents do have rights ... but they don't have the right to dictate to the public school system what their children can be exposed to in the way of ideas.” If you want your kid to be a bigot, keep him at home.
Comment
I agree with you somewhat on the parent-ism. What two consenting people yada, yada, yada. Agree with all of it. I have to ask, were the parents aware they were discussing gays and gay families in school? Did they know that the books were being sent home? I ask because everything else is discussed to death ad naseum in the school why not this. They can teach about alternative life styles, but not about God. I am not a God freak, or Jesus born again. I don't think think I'm even very religious. Just whats fair is fair. Besides most of the teachers I know would have a hard time explaining why Dick and Jane have two dads or two moms. My concern is not that it is in the classroom but are the teachers qualified to teach it.
My reply that I did not post on the person's site:
Hey there, I say your comments on Jenn's space about the diversity education stuff. I teach second grade in NC in a small town. I personally love teaching about things the students don't know much about, like during the Christmas season, we do a unit called Christmas Around the World. Each teacher chooses a country and the classes rotate throughout a week between the rooms to learn from each teacher. I chose to teach about Isreal. Last year when I taught about it, a parent who came into my room saw that we were learning about Hanukkah, and she actually asked me what country that holiday originated from. I was a little shocked, especially since this person was an educator. I do agree that parents should be informed of what is being taught, but teachers do have a duty to teach about different cultures and ways of life. We also have to be sensitive to the fact that some students may have a home situation like the ones we are teaching about. Especially families where there is more than one home due to divorce or a split, or whatever the case may be. I even have some kids who are being raised by their grandfather's girlfriend. I wish we could talk about everything we do in the curriculum, but most parents don't care and most people in the government don't care as long as students make the scores they need to make. I do also make a point to talk about Jesus when cultural issues arise that involve Christianity. I also make sure other religions are represented when appropriate. I am not any more qualified than any Average Joe on the street to teach about different home situations, I personally came from a typical nuclear family with wonderful parents, who were happy to have me learn about different ways of life, so it is hard for me to understand all of the ignorance and intolerance we have in this world. I don't feel like I am qualified to teach the heavy subjects, but I do feel obligated to at least expose the students to a few different things that their parents may not, and possibly help make a more tolerant new generation. Sorry if you didn't want my two cents, but I just wanted to give it. Cape HatterasIt turns out that I live in the state with the largest lighthouse in the US. Considering I am moving back to Michigan in June, I am trying to see as much of my state as possible. So, when my neighbors said they were going to Manteo for a photo shoot, and they were going to stay in Cape Hatteras for the night, and get up to see the lighthouse in the sunrise. Bonus: if I helped her with the kids while he was doing the shoot, then they would give me a free trip besides food. So really I just had to pay for what I ate. I thought it was a great deal. It really did turn out pretty well, fights were minimal, and once I got the point across to him that sometimes his teasing goes a little too far and bothers me, it was all good. I did really want to do more walking around and looking around and stuff like that, but they are not really into that, and since they have two little kids, I didn't really want to push it. I got some awesome pictures though! And I have been to one more new place in my state. Definitely cool.
2月1日 Snow DayToday was my first snow day in the south. Very interesting indeed. We started out with a 2 hour delay, which I found out about around 5pm, pretty early in my opinion. Then I woke up around 7ish and it was clear out, just a little cloudy. So I was considering taking a picture and emailing my yankee friends and family that my 2 hour delay was a false alarm. Then about 7:30 my neighbor calls me and tells me to look outside. I do and it is really starting to come down! Yay! Snow! But school was still not called off, so I decided I had better take a shower so that I could get to work around 9:30 if I still had to go. Then my neighbor calls back around 8:00 and tells me they just saw that school was definitely closed. So I decided to take my time getting ready, and I surely did. All I did most of the morning was take pictures of the snow, and videos of the snow, it was very exciting to me. I haven't seen any snow at all this winter, even when I went to Michigan for the holidays, so I had definitely been missing seeing the white stuff. So I got my fix, didn't have to scrape the car or shovel, it was pretty nice. Sadly, it was not good packing snow and since it started raining a couple hours after it started to snow, I didn't go out and build anything, not even a snow ball.
But ya know, I got enough pictures to make a really good scrapbook page:)!
Hope your day was as relaxing as mine! |
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