Educational Developments
I am starting online graduate classes this week. I’m fairly excited about furthering my education, and in a way, I’m glad I’ve had a couple years of limbo to make me more motivated to do my best. The online format makes me a little bit nervous, but as I’m practically a character from The Matrix when it comes to my connectivity and love of the internet, I guess I can’t worry too much. The more I substitute teach, the more I long to someday have my own classroom. I look forward to observing teachers in my field (secondary English) and learning more about classroom management. I feel more confident that I’m making the right decision to pursue this career path, and it doesn’t hurt that I have some wonderful people rooting for me in my corner.
Additionally, I’m having some thoughts about attempting the city school again. They held an orientation for substitute teachers this week, and I attended because I didn’t have any subbing work. I feel like, in the present economy, more people are emergency certified to substitute and this increases the number of options for schools and decreases the number of calls for the sub. So I may have to start taking calls at the city school to stay afloat financially, as much as I don’t want to do it. They seemed genuinely grateful that anyone would show up to teach for their school district, and they acknowledged that they do indeed have some bad eggs. They also gave me what I wanted—a written manual outlining different procedures. While it isn’t quite a Bible of How to Act at the Urban School, it does have some helpful information. They also gave us some pointers that I would not necessarily have thought to employ in teaching (i.e., ignore the “bad” children), so maybe if I try to follow their ideas of how things work, I will have a more successful time of it.
Nothing compares to subbing at my favorite suburban schools, though. I did have a day at one this past week, and because it’s almost time for high school finals, the class was doing review packets. The fact that they remained quiet and legitimately did work per the teacher’s instructions enabled me to all but finish Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in a single day. I sincerely hope that I can work with them more throughout the rest of this school year.
I may post some of my posts from my various classes on here as I move through my semester with SJU. The Psychology of Teaching course seems like it will be really thought-provoking, and we have to write weekly message board posts for it. My fingers are crossed that things continue to go well for me in the education sector.