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 weekend was really hit or miss. Friday my grand plans for reading ahead turned into hitting the reset button. I managed to get some reading done on Saturday but I still read into late Sunday night to get caught up. I started last week by taking extensive book notes and I felt pretty comfortable with the information. I didn't take detailed notes Sunday night and when we covered that material I was at a bit of a loss. I think I'm going to try building word maps out of the vocab listed in the back of each chapter.

I took an allergy pill before I left the house this morning and I felt a lot better all day. It was also cooler and threatening to rain a little, which improves my mood quite a bit. I love the rain, which is one of the reasons why I moved here.

In Literacy we tackled more difficult text and watched the process of how we read. It was an article from the Atlantic Monthly, June 2000 about Machiavellian politics and it foreshadowed a lot of crap we're living with now in the post 9/11 world.

We met one of our students today. R was there but A was still out of town. R is a very intelligent girl but she has serious stumbling blocks against math. It breaks my heart. I had her do a simple assessment using a sample benchmark test for the state and we will go over her answers in greater detail tomorrow. Once I understand her thought process with math I can help her more, and J and S, my two co-tutors can get a clearer understanding of what they can do to help. I know this tutoring is supposed to be a group project but I'm finding my greatest challenge is learning how to be a teacher in community. I'm used to doing things by myself. Even looking at other teachers lessons plans is like a threat to my independance. I know the first rule of teaching is "Adopt, Adapt, Create" in that order, and I struggle with it.

Educational Psychology was a bit challenging. I kept wanting to fall asleep. Not being as familiar with the day's subject matter as I felt I should have made it more difficult. We're also in the basement with no windows and I suspect not a lot of fresh air gets down there. We covered behaviorist and social cognition views of learning. I found over the weekend that I was recognizing the application of these theories in videos and on television. I suppose it's good to be that sensitive to the learning proceedure. I can see it in action and elaborate on what I know. I've been told that it will go away after I've been teaching in the real world a bit. I'm sure it will all balance out in the end.
posted by Josh English at 6/30/2003 08:21:00 PM