Educating Esme
I just finished reading the inspirational first year teacher book I bought on Wednesday. It was a quick read, obviously, and very well written. It was called "Educating Esme, diary of a teacher's first year". I'm so glad I picked it up. There were a lot of teacher books to choose from but this one seemed the most accessable to me. It was exactly what I needed. It is exactly what it sounds like, it's a published version of a first year teacher's diary. Esme, who has the kids call her Madame Esme (which probably wouldn't cause as much of a stir here as it did for her. Not the Madam part any way which seemed to cause her principal the most grief) taugh a grade 5 class with 31 students in it. Most were black, some were hispanic, almost all came from underprivelidged home. She started off in a brand new school with the biggest A-hole of a principal imaginable, in a classroom with bullet holes in a window. She sets up huge interactive displays in her classroom, creates interesting ways to keep the students engaged, teaches them to use effective conflict resolution and even switches places with one of her most troublesome student. He gets to teach for the day while she sits back and does everything she can to imitate the way he is in her class. And he actually learns from the experience and takes pride in his leadership abilities. It's amazing.
I've been privledged to see a lot of fantastic classrooms while supply teaching. I've been amazed at some of the imagination and thought that goes into them. I've seen reward systems and classroom management techniques that make me giddy with educational geekiness. I'm very pleased to say that I haven't been in that many rooms that make me cringe from the lack of these things. Some teachers are more traditional in their aproach, and honestly, as a subsititute and stranger to the room, it's sometimes hard to tell a teacher's style when they're not there. Most teachers leave a lot of worksheets when they have a sub come in and with good reason. They often have no idea who's coming in and what I know or don't know so leaving a stranger to introduce a topic is not a good idea.
But it seems, from what I've read and what I used to read on a forum I used to frequent, is that teachers like Esme are far from the norm in the States. As much as I bemoan about our education system here, reading about the state of affairs in the American system makes me very glad to be here. If I were in the States I would almost cetainly homeschool my future children. Here, it's only a concept I occasionally play with but probably won't do. With the "No Child Left Behind" policy, test scores are everything. Schools whose test scores are highest get the most funding. Therefore, the most privledged schools with lots of community support and affluent parents get more money because they easily have the best test scores while the schools that actually need more funding and more assistance continue to get less money. It's rediculous. More and more teachers are forced to "teach to the test" spending their whole year preparing for the tests and not actually teaching anything other than how to do well at written tests. That is not an authentic kind of learning in my opinion. It does not prepare students for the real world.
At the end of the book there's a section of suggestions for first time teachers. I found these really helpful. One being to keep a diary and a notebook of ideas that you'd like to try in your classroom. I think these are both excellent ideas, and ones I've heard before but haven't managed to do yet. I'm going to keep better records of teaching related things, infact, I'm going to start one of my many notebooks for exclusively school related stuff.
I've been privledged to see a lot of fantastic classrooms while supply teaching. I've been amazed at some of the imagination and thought that goes into them. I've seen reward systems and classroom management techniques that make me giddy with educational geekiness. I'm very pleased to say that I haven't been in that many rooms that make me cringe from the lack of these things. Some teachers are more traditional in their aproach, and honestly, as a subsititute and stranger to the room, it's sometimes hard to tell a teacher's style when they're not there. Most teachers leave a lot of worksheets when they have a sub come in and with good reason. They often have no idea who's coming in and what I know or don't know so leaving a stranger to introduce a topic is not a good idea.
But it seems, from what I've read and what I used to read on a forum I used to frequent, is that teachers like Esme are far from the norm in the States. As much as I bemoan about our education system here, reading about the state of affairs in the American system makes me very glad to be here. If I were in the States I would almost cetainly homeschool my future children. Here, it's only a concept I occasionally play with but probably won't do. With the "No Child Left Behind" policy, test scores are everything. Schools whose test scores are highest get the most funding. Therefore, the most privledged schools with lots of community support and affluent parents get more money because they easily have the best test scores while the schools that actually need more funding and more assistance continue to get less money. It's rediculous. More and more teachers are forced to "teach to the test" spending their whole year preparing for the tests and not actually teaching anything other than how to do well at written tests. That is not an authentic kind of learning in my opinion. It does not prepare students for the real world.
At the end of the book there's a section of suggestions for first time teachers. I found these really helpful. One being to keep a diary and a notebook of ideas that you'd like to try in your classroom. I think these are both excellent ideas, and ones I've heard before but haven't managed to do yet. I'm going to keep better records of teaching related things, infact, I'm going to start one of my many notebooks for exclusively school related stuff.