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Teacher Education Program
Student Perspectives
Mandy Firenze
MST 2008
Oh what a year it has been. I still can’t believe we have made it this far. This year has been one big roller coaster ride, with its fair share of ups and downs. Looking in the mirror now, none of us probably see the same person we saw a year ago. At the beginning of this program, we were teacher candidates. We walked into our classrooms on the first day of school, a little excited, a little scared, and little unsure of where this journey would take us.
When it came time to teach our first lessons we stayed up late the night before making sure those lessons were just perfect. Our hearts raced as we stood in front of the class for the first time teaching our students dinosaur addition, or the days of the week, or how to write a paragraph. When the lesson was over, we took a deep breath, wiped the sweat off our brow, and ten minutes later our pulses finally returned to normal.
As the year progressed, we began teaching more, sweating less, and our role as teacher candidates began to shift.
We listened to Susie complain countless times that Bobby was staring at her for no reason. We watched Joe stand on top of his chair and make animal noises in the middle of our math lessons. We have been sneezed on, thrown up on, and we’ve heard the words, “I had an accident,” multiple times. We have dried tears, given advice, and called the office after Carry ran out of the classroom for the third straight day in a row.
We have taught lessons with temperatures of 102 degrees. We have said, “Sit down and raise your hand,” more times than we can count. And by April, some of us were even a little tired of hearing our last names.
We have been observed by supervisors, principals, aides, and parents, and sometimes by all of them at the same time. We have laughed, cried, raised our voices, joked around, and sighed often. We can’t help but smile when hear the phrase, “I get it!” We have been talked back to more than once and we have prayed for the day to be over. We have said things we shouldn’t have and not said things we needed to.
We have held some kids accountable while letting others slide because we were worn down. We have taught great lessons and struggled through terrible ones. We have been supportive. We have listened and we’ve encouraged. We have made mistakes, learned a great deal and grown a tremendous amount. We have become role models, disciplinarians, caregivers, friends, counselors, and confidants. We are not teacher candidates any more. Ladies and Gentlemen, we are teachers!
Our journey does not end here. We have so much more to learn and grow as teachers, but I have to say, I think we are all off to a great start. There are several good and bad days to come. There will be days, we ask ourselves why we chose this profession and there will be days we can’t stop smiling.
We might have the most difficult job, but it is also the most rewarding. Next year, when we have our own class, we will have challenging students and students that always follow directions. We will continue to be sneezed on and interrupted, but we will also get to teach children how to read, write, and add. We can teach science by making ice cream, we can bring history to life, and we can sing songs about the Fifty Nifty United States. We are teachers and I think that is pretty amazing!
There are so many students waiting for us to teach them. They need us and we need them. Next year we will spend weeks getting our classrooms to look just perfect before the first day of school. We will probably stay up late the night before making sure all of our lessons are just right and our materials are ready to go. Our hearts will probably race, and our palms will probably sweat as we say good morning to our own class for the first time. We just have to remember to take a deep breath, smile, and take it one step at a time. We are ready, we can do it, we are teachers!
(A closure presentation given to her fellow TEP candidates on June 10, 2008)
A Note to Teachers
by Katie Rossi
Don’t live a life of plastic,
Goose grey business suits,
And crest white strips.
Bathe in the sea speckled with the night’s distant jewels
Rather than stew in a bathtub artificially lit by candles.
Wear Passion Fruit Pop lip gloss
And dance on the bubbles of Strawberry Crème Champagne.
Build sandcastles in the snow
And ice skate in the desert.
Live a life of Jazzberry Jam,
Purple Pizzazz,
And Unmellow Yellow.
Chase your shadow,
Blow bubbles in your chocolate milk,
Exhale convention, structure, rigidity
And inhale some wild blue yonders, fuzzy wuzzy bugabaloos, and mango tangos.
Improvise, humanize, recognize through natural eyes…
…your students will thank you.
( a poem read to her fellow TEP classmates on June 10, 2008)
Adam Weis
MST 2008
What a privilege we teachers possess! We are ever so fortunate to spend our days surrounded by the spirit, tenacity and vibrancy of youth. We are graced daily with these things along with the astounding sense of responsibility that they demand. For in accepting the role of teacher, we accept the role of scientist, historian, artist, therapist, lion-tamer, handyman, detective, designer, philosopher, judge, economist and poet along with countless others. It is within each of these roles that we capture the beautiful potential of teaching and learning, of playing a strong hand in shaping and guiding truly profound processes of discovery and reflection.It is also in the recognition and execution of these roles that we are constantly tested.
We are consistently challenged to accept the seemingly impossible reality that we must be perfect. It is the quality that both parents and politicians criticize, champion and vilify us for. It is terrifying, and yet somehow an exuberant breath of ardor wisps and winds its way around the classrooms of the great teachers we remember through the eyes of our own childhoods, the great teachers that we aspire to be. Amongst the highest of stakes and the most tenuous grasps for idealism, where does this sense of elation and confidence originate from? As a young teacher, I do not proclaim to hold the answer, but if I had my guess, it is in the very counter to this charge of perfection. It is in the realization that we are not perfect. It is in this realization that learning is not, as it is so often purported to be, a neat and tidy process, and that it is not so bound and restricted to the condition of childhood. It is through this humble acceptance, that embracing education follows squarely in accepting the honest reality that we revel in, each day, in the challenges and stretches through which we too learn. It is in recognition of this reality, that we not only open our eyes to empathize with the condition of childhood, but that we provide children with a model through which they learn how to learn.
The process of becoming a teacher, of truly espousing the belief that one can fulfill that roll, in all that it encompasses, and build the confidence to take it all on…well, it's more than a little daunting at times. To accept that learning process is to accept oneself, along with all the imperfections, frustrations, and limitations we are built from, and to believe that through a process of thinking, creating, instructing, assessing, and reflecting, on the part of oneself and with the assistance of others, that we do indeed continue to grow and learn. We must dismantle ourselves, if just a little each day, and appreciate the dissonance that this creates. It is what keeps us close to understanding the struggles we so often place on our students. To be blind to our own dissonance is to ignore the plight of the unique needs of our students and the individual challenges that they face each and every time they open a book or put a pencil to paper.
This is not to say that I am not confident in my ability to implement a balanced language arts program, to navigate through a math investigation, to carefully orchestrate and support diverse sets of language forms and functions on differentiated levels or to morally dissect and categorize a historical dilemma. But through my teaching experiences, have colleagues, professors, and personal experience alike, consistently and dramatically reshaped my understanding and humbled my expertise in each of these fields? Will this process continue through my first year of teaching? My second? My fifteenth? I hope so.
As I have traversed my own path as a teacher, from outdoor education camps in the mountains of Southern California to special education schools in New York City and most recently through the motions of a teacher education program in Santa Barbara, California, I have taken great care to embrace the daily challenges I have experienced as a teacher and as a student. I have put forth an effort and belief in a purpose that grows with each experience and challenge and have reflected over and over upon what these experiences mean to me, where I can find their worth and how I can believe it all to improve me as a teacher. I feel exceptionally privileged each day to wake to the possibilities that teaching creates, and I have great hope in the potential that it grows. I hope to continue in this path next year, teaching in my own classroom. And while I will not promise it all to be perfect, I do promise that I will be passionate in my expectations, reflective in my practice, humble in my understandings and confident in my growth. Thank you for your consideration.
(His acceptance speech upon receiving the Laura E. Settle Scholarship from CRTA.)