Another Assigned Summer School Blog

Evaluating My Performance During the Year:

1. Select a "learning goal" where the students were successful.  Tell why:

Participles.  By the end of the year most of them could identify participles and participial phrases.  Why?  Because I labored with it; I spent hours and days and weeks on participles, incorporating them into a thousand different lessons in a thousand different ways.  Eventually the repetition effectuated some learning.

2. Select a "learning goal" where the students were not successful.  Tell why:

My students were not any good at higher-order thinking skills.  Why not?  Because I have not found a good way to teach those sorts of things; in order to effectively teach skills like this, one of two things has to occur.  You either have to:

                                   1. have a school that encourages outside-the-box thinking

                                    or

                                   2. know what the hell you're doing as a teacher.

Neither one is true in my case, so teaching integration and analysis is still not easy.  I guess it's all about repetition, the same way it is with participles.

3. Give a general overview of your year in order to make sure you don't get a bad grade.  Tell why:

By the end of the year I was teaching things;  It took a while to establish my classroom in such a way to allow me to do my paid job.  At the end, I was teaching "Romeo and Juliet", and I was (no small accomplishment) teaching it.  Everything you need to know about the English language (and about interaction between people) is found in Shakespeare.   To (semi-)effectively teach a real masterwork gave me the feeling that I was inching towards being a real teacher and not just another jackass sitting in a classroom to serve some ulterior motives.

Now, with my freshmen, I didn't get anywhere close to teaching Shakespeare.  We were still remediating during the 4th 9 weeks: phrases and clauses?  plot and setting elements?  having students say, "We didn't know there was more than nouns and verbs"?

I don't really know what else to say.  I've already had to write another "end-of-year" evaluation blog.  I'm sort of tired of talking about my last year.  I'd like just to teach another.