By some amazing twist of fate...still alive...
Still around. The amount of stuff that's happened between my last entry and now is so huge that it's really impossible for me to explain much of anything aside from the fact that I indeed have not died yet but I'm getting there!
In a nutshell - I finished last semester with four A's and a B. I'm currently student teaching full time in Bibb county for the next 2-3 months. I have two 9th grade English classes and a 12th AP ELA class to take care of during the week. The entire thing has been and still is an insane ride of emotions both good and bad, overcoming obstacles, and negotiating my way around people who seem to love to throw said obstacles in my way.
Georgia is an "interesting" place to teach to say the least. Don't get me wrong, I'm teaching in the same town I grew up in. Still, that doesn't change the fact that school, even more so than daily life in Macon, is supercharged with racial tensions. Being a young white male of 24 still in grad school trying to teach a class that's literally 95% black is certainly a feat when it comes to "connecting" with your students, no matter what professors might say to the contrary.
I won't go off on some post about specifics, but I can tell you this much: no matter what color someone is, if that student has it in their head that they are going to drop out of school at the first possible opportunity, there isn't a thing I or anyone else can legally do to make them learn and pay attention. While I have plenty of ideas as to why these kinds of students continue to come to school (social interaction and free food among other things) the fact remains that it only perpetuates educational problems when this kind of behavior is allowed. As to how one would go about fixing it - there is little anyone within the institution can do aside from pressure parents into action and impress upon the student the value of education in modern society. "Discipline" (as most of us know it) has long since become obsolete - effective forms of behaviorist disciplinary practices have been neutered down to nothing by legalities, and cognitive forms of discipline do not work when such a high level of disconnect exists between not only teacher and student, but that student's culture / family and the institution / society.
Safe to say, I don't see myself in a public school when this program is over in several months. If anything, I'll probably be going into ESL stuff while I still have the time to travel around and see the world. Lol, at least in most foreign countries the kids have a little more respect.
In a nutshell - I finished last semester with four A's and a B. I'm currently student teaching full time in Bibb county for the next 2-3 months. I have two 9th grade English classes and a 12th AP ELA class to take care of during the week. The entire thing has been and still is an insane ride of emotions both good and bad, overcoming obstacles, and negotiating my way around people who seem to love to throw said obstacles in my way.
Georgia is an "interesting" place to teach to say the least. Don't get me wrong, I'm teaching in the same town I grew up in. Still, that doesn't change the fact that school, even more so than daily life in Macon, is supercharged with racial tensions. Being a young white male of 24 still in grad school trying to teach a class that's literally 95% black is certainly a feat when it comes to "connecting" with your students, no matter what professors might say to the contrary.
I won't go off on some post about specifics, but I can tell you this much: no matter what color someone is, if that student has it in their head that they are going to drop out of school at the first possible opportunity, there isn't a thing I or anyone else can legally do to make them learn and pay attention. While I have plenty of ideas as to why these kinds of students continue to come to school (social interaction and free food among other things) the fact remains that it only perpetuates educational problems when this kind of behavior is allowed. As to how one would go about fixing it - there is little anyone within the institution can do aside from pressure parents into action and impress upon the student the value of education in modern society. "Discipline" (as most of us know it) has long since become obsolete - effective forms of behaviorist disciplinary practices have been neutered down to nothing by legalities, and cognitive forms of discipline do not work when such a high level of disconnect exists between not only teacher and student, but that student's culture / family and the institution / society.
Safe to say, I don't see myself in a public school when this program is over in several months. If anything, I'll probably be going into ESL stuff while I still have the time to travel around and see the world. Lol, at least in most foreign countries the kids have a little more respect.