Letter to Myself...2012 Style

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/) 

 The article persuaded me to change my mind for the hundredth time about writing instruction. I guess what I am saying to YOU, Sarah, is that you should start your research now instead of waiting until your final pre-service year. And please, choose something else for your KPTP unit…writing instruction is too controversial for such an important assessment.

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.

 Yourself,

            Sarah McQuery