Dear 2012
Sarah,
I hear you have recently made the
decision to become a teacher. You plan to go back to school to get a second
degree, and I have to say…that is awesome! I am sure you are nervous; you don’t
know if this will stick. You haven’t written a paper in years, and you know you’re
behind. I am here to tell you not to worry—you will be successful!
I won’t lie to you…this program will be difficult at times. You think you can keep working full time at the law office—you can’t. You will have to quit your job after two months of being back in school. Just so you know, Brian will be completely supportive of this decision, and you should probably buy him Oreos at least once a month as a thank you.
I wanted to fill you in on a few
things I have learned these last three years to help you be as successful as possible.
Many things I did were very effective, and some were not. Hopefully you can
learn from my experiences, and be a rock star in the education program.
I learned after about the first year back in school that to keep up with all of the reading, papers, projects and presentations, I needed to create a better time-management system. I started using Google Calendar to keep track of due dates, and to schedule specific times to study. DON’T WAIT to start this. This system is a life saver—you will never forget to do an assignment again. Also, very important—keep up with all of the reading. And do not JUST read, but also take some notes, write down some questions…you should be totally informed of the content before entering the classroom each day. There is nothing worse than participating in a class discussion without having anything to contribute. Trust me.
Another thing to remember is that
you shouldn’t stress the small stuff OR the big stuff. You will be required to
do a bunch of FERs in Core 1 and Core 2. These seem impossible to accomplish, and
because of the way they are introduced by certain instructors, it will seem
like they are assigned only to cause you to fail. Believe me—if you try your
best, you will get an A on every single one. There is no need to feel insecure
and anxious. Just break them up into chunks and tackle each chunk a little bit
at a time.
I had a great experience in both
pre-student teaching and student teaching, but I did have to learn some lessons
the hard way. In fact, the very thing that made me successful in student
teaching ended up being my biggest fault as well. I took student teaching VERY
seriously. I always planned ahead, I treated the students as MY students, and I
took it to heart if they were not succeeding; this mindset was very beneficial
at first, but it did eventually get the best of me. The last month or so of
student teaching, I have had an insane amount of anxiety, trouble sleeping, and
have become unpleasant to be around in the evenings (according to my family).
This is my advice to you, 2012 Sarah, take student teaching seriously, but
leave it at school. Your family and your health is important.
Sarah, you are very lucky to be in
this education program. The people are AWESOME, both professors and students.
Don’t ever take the people or the program for granted. The program is set up to
give you plenty of classroom experience before student teaching, so you will be
prepared when it is time. Also, most of the content that is taught will be very
beneficial—put what you learn at WSU into practice as much as possible in your
placement classroom.
One thing that I do not feel the
program prepared be for was teaching writing. We talked a lot about
writing-to-learn and creative writing, but not as much about analytical and
informational writing. I would suggest that you do some additional research independently
on these subjects before trying to teach them. I taught an analysis essay unit
for my KPTP. I went into it with many different ideas about teaching writing,
but I did not do as well as I would have liked because I hadn’t completely
settled on a specific strategy. There is a lot of research out there to support
several different, conflicting theories about teaching writing, and it is hard
to know who to believe. For example, Randy Bomer’s book Building Adolescent Literacy in Today’s English Classrooms less-than-subtly
hints that teaching formulaic writing is a mistake, and actually hurts students’
ability to write. However, I have also run across many articles that seem to
support more formulaic writing as part of the learning process. The article “The
Writing Revolution” from The Atlantic, takes a look at a private school
instructor at Windward School in New York. Judith Hochman, who has become a bit
of a legend in the private school community, first teaches students how to “turn ideas into simple sentences, and how to construct complex sentences
from simple ones by supplying the answer to three prompts—but, because,
and so. They are instructed on how to use appositive clauses to vary the
way their sentences begin. Later on, they are taught how to recognize sentence
fragments, how to pull the main idea from a paragraph, and how to form a main
idea on their own. It is, at least initially, a rigid, unswerving formula.” (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/10/the-writing-revolution/309090/)
2012
Sarah, I hope these insights into the education program will help you succeed during
the next three years. And by the way, you are not as behind as you think you
are.
Sarah McQuery
