My journey through Graduate School to earn a Masters of Art in Education. I was on track to become a teacher, but now everything has changed, and I'm on the job hunt with a Bachelor's in Liberal Arts and a Master's in Education with no teaching certificate.

 
The traffic gods were against us this morning. We live about 20 miles from the University and we hit a majority of the red lights that we normally just cruise through, and the alternate route we've picked out because of the lighter traffic was blocked by light rail construction. I was about ten minutes late to class. I caught the last half of a Socials Studies lesson about a river system in the state that has been the subject of a huge fight between the Native American tribes who have water rights, the farmers that have been on the land for a good part of the last century, and the environmentalists who were concerned about the extinction of some species of fish, including a few that were the bread and butter (pardon the pun) of the local tribes.

Good point: An organized debate between three parties is much better than one side against another.
Bad point: If two of those groups have a similar argument you end up with two thirds of the class working against the rest. Either use a 50%/25%/25% mix so the numbers even out, or use three groups that don't have a lot in common so they can't gang up on a minority.

Good tip: Give the instructions to an assignment, then hand out any reading material. Too many people start reading material as soon as it is given to them and stop listening.

The next reading response item we're doing is a piece of art. Most of the art I do is digital using POV-Ray. I have a bunch of art supplies left from my earler attempts at art, so it won't cost a lot, but I instantly started to think about books that are more appropriate for making art on. I think I'll read Verne's "Around the world in 80 days" because I've never read it and it's one of the classics of science fiction that I should be familiar with.

We discussed how literacy works in the classroom. We need to develop environments of the students doing inquiry, not the teacher acting out the inquisition. We finished the class by doing a "write-aloud" and writing marginalia on a piece about the dangers and horrors of genetically modified food. The bias was quite clear, but it sounded a bit paranoid and impatient, and I think the writer suffers from some sort of frankenstein complex.

Tomorrow the math literacy expert will join the class. I can't wait.

Tutoring was more difficult. I decided that we would move on from stats and slip into probability. I introduced them to a game I know as 'Dice' but some people know it as 5000, or 10000. A knew the game, but R didn't, and R didn't want to participate. She said (after we played a round) that she didn't like to play any kind of game, but she seemed to want to talk about Monopoly, so I think she's just being sullen. We talked about probabilities and went back to percentages. They are still struggling with the mechanics. 'A' is very good about participating and always answers questions. 'R' tends to be quieter and just sit. 'R' is way to dependant on her calculator and can't do a lot of multiplication or long division on paper any more. J and S and I agreed that we would step back to cover mechanics.

During the second half of the session all three of us sat with the girls as they went over a worksheet that J and S sent home with them. They didn't do it. They asked their parents for help but it only confused them more. We discovered something about team-teaching. Only one teacher should be talking at one time, and all three teachers should share a common vocabulary.

During the break J took the girls into the campus bookstore to look for a sweater for some reason. The store had a table of books on sale and I just couldn't resist. I found a copy of Benjamin Woolley's "The Queens Conjurer", a biography of Dr. John Dee, who as an advisor to Queen Elizabeth I. It was six bucks, and the back cover had raves about another one of his books called "The Bride of Science" about Ada Lovelace. I walked out with one new book under my arm and another book on my reading list. The copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix that my mother sent up arrived, so I have more books on my reading list for August when I get a break. O boy.

Lunch was lunch. We discussed some hand outs we had been given. One of them was very pessimistic and the other was Swiss Cheese. Half of the pages were missing. We had pages 28 and 29, 32 and 33, 35 and 37, etc. It was hard to understand exactly what the authors point was. I think Stephanie has a copy of the book and Dr. C told us that he would get us real copies later.

In our Dimensions of Learning class we got the assignment page for the midterm, which is due next week, and the final paper, which is due on July 31. It's going to be a lot of writing this weekend. We wrapped up the Greg Michie book "Holler, if you hear me." The book wasn't bad and more optimistic than I thought it would be at first glance. The last hour of the class was a presentation about the graffitti art scene and how it related to school. I can understand the graffitti culture not wanting to turn mainstream but it's awfully hard not to appreciate their work and ability when you are not part of that culture.

Tomorrow is the midterm in Educational Psychology. I'm not sure I'm ready but I will simply jump in. I think I can survive. I don't really suffer from test anxiety but I don't have a lot of confidence going into this test. Knowing Dr. E. it will be a good test that will actually be very easy for me since I've been to every class, took notes, and completed the readings.
posted by Josh English at 7/08/2003 08:20:00 PM