The Truth About Teaching E-Book

Coleen Armstrong

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 179

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2009

Beschreibung

A beautiful gift book that offers encouragement, comfort, and inspiration for new (and veteran) teachers This beautifully designed book is a celebration of the joys and challenges of the teaching life. Author and veteran educator Coleen Armstrong is a wise, witty, and caring mentor. Her words of encouragement will resonate with new teachers, with students in teacher education schools, and with veteran teachers who wish to remember that they are not alone in an often lonely profession. From lesson plans to large classes; salaries to student engagement; germs to geometry-learning (or remembering) to love both the highs and lows of the profession has never been easier, or more fun. * Contains a wealth of wise, humorous, and practical advice for all teachers * Includes over 150 tips, suggestions, and ideas * Co-published with Inspiring Teachers, a teacher-created organization

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Chapter 1 - Getting Started

Never lose sight of your own power.

Chapter 2 - The Profession and the Politics

Remember that you’re on a divine mission.

You also have a hidden agenda.

Get ready to work harder than you ever have in your entire life.

The three-month vacation is largely a myth.

You’ll pay for most of your own supplies.

You’ll learn far more than you’ll ever teach.

If you go in thinking that it’s not your job to be mother, father, or ...

You’ll be expected to adjust to everyone. No one will adjust to you.

This job will both harden and soften you.

Schools have hierarchies.

You’ll get three-year-olds and thirty-year-olds in the same class—and both will ...

Smart kids still get placed on slow or average tracks.

Schools will never run like businesses—nor should they.

Vouchers were never the answer.

Educational “reform” is a straw man.

Despite the current testing frenzy, you’ll always be teaching people, not subjects.

The feds, however, have turned up the heat.

There’s already an intriguing reform idea out there.

If you’re a teacher who’s really suffering, it could be due to bad placement.

Understand the faculty “family.”

The teachers’ lounge may or may not be a warm, fuzzy environment.

Don’t expect everyone on the faculty to be your cheering section.

Zero tolerance isn’t as nutty as it sounds.

Don’t hate the union because it’s powerful.

You’ll probably dislike being evaluated.

Teachers’ meetings and in-service days could use an overhaul.

Compulsory education may have outlived its usefulness.

Public schooling needn’t last twelve years.

Some things you’ll never grow accustomed to.

Survival is indeed for the fittest—and that’s you.

Chapter 3 - Finding Your Teacher Persona

Create and cultivate a commanding presence.

Make an entrance.

Never shout over a class; instead wait for them to quiet down.

Cultivate a clear, commanding voice.

Take advantage of your most powerful time window—the first day of school.

Take yourself out of the authority loop; eliminate all vestiges of Me Against You.

Don’t feel the need to answer every complaint. Commiserate, commiserate, commiserate!

Don’t feel the need to resolve every problem.

Become a broken record.

Your body language speaks volumes.

Don’t take hostility too personally.

Light up when a kid enters your room or study hall.

Talk less, teach more.

Lean forward during a student’s response to a class discussion.

Never tell your class how difficult an assignment is.

Never offer the kind of help that disempowers.

Sprinkle small, tantalizing tidbits.

Be awed by the concept of universal education.

Remember what it was like to be a seventh grader.

Chapter 4 - Money and Other Compensations

Salaries aren’t as bad as they used to be, but they still have a way to go.

Salaries still differ radically, not only from state to state but from district ...

Your workload (and hence your hourly rate) will also vary according to your ...

The toughest assignments often pay the least.

Teaching summer school is a pretty decent deal—if you can stand the heat.

Night school and tutoring programs also make excellent part-time jobs—if you ...

Don’t vent to the kids about cash flows and mortgage payments; they really ...

Don’t bother venting to friends and neighbors, either.

Look for rewards in unconventional places.

And speaking of unconventional...

Chapter 5 - Nuts and Bolts

Beg for chances to observe the most talented veterans.

You need a plan—but you may never quite get the timing right.

Think outside the (text) box.

Don’t read newspapers before going to class.

Get enough rest.

Extra duties are a fact of life.

It’s the little things that will drive you nuts. Like being unable to work in ...

Take an occasional mental health day.

Be kind to subs.

Know when it’s time to leave.

Pardon the interruptions.

Beware the killer schedule.

Do most of your preparation well in advance.

Stay an extra hour after school several days each week rather than taking loads ...

Entertainment is not a dirty word.

You’ll meet only about nine different kids in your entire career.

Everything you’ve heard about students’ emotional baggage is true.

Large classes aren’t the bogeymen you’ve been led to believe.

Beware of germs.

Today’s kids are so independent that we should probably coin a new word.

Be alert for happy accidents and blessings in disguise.

Understand the politics of study hall.

These are lifetime relationships.

You won’t reach everyone—but you’ll be pleasantly surprised at your success rate.

Chapter 6 - Rules and Routines

Ask for help sooner rather than later.

Bring your principal a solution rather than a problem.

Stop your class two minutes early.

Forget bathroom breaks.

Rethink seating charts.

Rethink homework.

Rethink raising hands.

There are times when you can no longer be sweet, helpful, or complacent.

Document every altercation; keep a daily log.

Make friends with Lowe’s and the Home Depot.

Store all papers.

Don’t get too bent out of shape about dress and grooming.

Call parents regularly.

Never pass up an opportunity to convey a compliment to a colleague.

Be careful what you say in class; someone may still be repeating it fifty years later.

Chapter 7 - Keeping It Creative

Ask yourself regularly: Can I do better?

Be alert to any and all possibilities: How can I use this in class?

Cultivate a genuine passion for your subject matter.

Remember your three roles.

Take advantage of youthful self-absorption.

Never teach a subject in isolation.

Keep running lists of Eternal Human Truths, Eternal Human Dilemmas, Eternal ...

Remember to show the better side of human nature too.

Dramatize.

Move heaven and Earth to get access to a VCR or DVD player.

Intersperse specific student names when teaching a lesson that could otherwise ...

Play with a bit of old-fashioned competition.

Shower your kids with applause and affection.

Stretch minds.

End every class period with a teaser.

Impress upon your students again and again that from you they can always expect ...

Math

History

Science

Government

Literature

Chapter 8 - Classroom Management —Otherwise Known as Discipline

The disciplinary conundrum is still educational rocket science.

Control over your class isn’t really the issue; ultimately we control only ourselves.

Everyone would rather be a success than a failure.

Nearly all of your disciplinary problems will be due to one of two things: ...

As a teacher, you’re a disciplinary sitting duck.

Kids and adults are not equals—but society has taught them that they are.

Parents have tunnel vision.

The biggest problem schools face isn’t what you think it is.

What constitutes insubordination is highly subjective.

In-school suspension is a brilliant concept. So is alternative school.

For kids, so much suffering—hence, misbehavior—comes from feeling stupid and inept.

Your ultimate challenge, then, is to give each student what he wants and needs, ...

Chapter 9 - Tricky Strategies All Teachers Can Master

Never disrupt your own lesson.

Know your own hot buttons—and then communicate them.

Carry a camera.

Get in touch with your inner child—it’s the key to your style.

Get off your behind.

Treat some insensitive comments as jokes.

Hold one-on-one conferences.

Check all criticism: Is it really constructive?

Give your students regular pep talks.

Use hidden flattery to ratchet goals and expectations.

Cultivate class jokes.

Never lose your temper.

Never hold a grudge.

Don’t be afraid to apologize.

Always leave the back door open.

Act “as if.”

Go after your dropouts.

Cultivate at least one student relationship outside your specialty.

Good cop-bad cop still works.

Ditto, love-children.

Practice these lines.

Pass notes.

Beware the nonapology.

Beware the “good kid” line.

There’s always another chance to turn things around—always.

Chapter 10 - What’s Next

About the Author

Copyright © 2009 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

Published by Jossey-Bass A Wiley Imprint 989 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94103-1741—www.josseybass.com

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Armstrong, Coleen, 1946-

The truth about teaching : what I wish the veterans had told me / Coleen Armstrong. - Rev. and updated. p. cm.

“Published in Partnership with Inspiring Teachers.”

Includes bibliographical references and index.

eISBN : 978-0-470-56395-3

1. Teaching-United States. 2. First year teachers-In-service training-United States. I. Title.

LB1775.2.A748 2009

371.102-dc22

2009028275

HB Printing

Inspiring Teachers is a teacher-created organization dedicated to empowering and inspiring educators. Our vision is to help teachers create quality learner-centered classrooms and improve student success. To meet this vision, we offer a variety of print and free online resources including our website, www.inspiringteachers.com, a free weekly teaching tips newsletter, Ask A Mentor service, practical guides for teachers, and staff development workshops. Each element of our support system can be used individually or in conjunction with other parts. We are here to let educators know they are not alone. We’ve been there! We understand the daily life of a classroom teacher—stressful, overwhelming, and often lonely. We are here to help ease the stress, offer a listening ear, and lend a helpful hand to any teacher in need. You can contact us at [email protected].

To Emma, Ethan, Bennett, and Abigail

May you always encounter kind, loving, and inspiring teachers.

1

Getting Started

I’m always stirred bythe tremendous decencyand kindness ofteachers. They aregood, solid humanbeings who do theirjobs day after day withlove and affection.Their work is notproficiency andoutcome, it’s poetryand ministry.

—Jonathan Kozol

This book is a love letter to new teachers. By new, I mean anyone with fewer than five years’ experience. And by a love letter, I mean an acknowledgment that you probably haven’t received anywhere near the credit you deserve for finding the courage to become a teacher. I’ll bet plenty of loved ones tried to talk you out of it. Yet you forged ahead. That took pluck, daring, valor . . . even a kind of heroism.

So I want to begin by providing some reassurance that whatever difficulties you may encounter probably aren’t due to what you’d otherwise think were your own personal shortcomings. Take my word for it: rough moments happen to all of us. Yet we survive—and thrive. So will you.

Much has changed since I began my career in 1968. Back then, first-year teachers were thrown to the wolves with little or no guidance and then left to thrash about desperately on their own with no intervention. Today, because you receive far more rigorous and intensive preparation than we did, along with plenty of classroom monitoring early on, you might assume that the day-to-day realities of the profession would feel far less like being doused with repeated buckets of cold water.

But I doubt it.

No beginning teacher can be anything less than shocked at finding his lunch break so short that it’s impossible to check his mailbox, go to the restroom, and scarf down a hot dog. (He must choose one, perhaps two out of three.) Or that if his school is not air-conditioned (many still aren’t), heat waves and indoor temperatures reaching ninety-five to a hundred degrees can linger through late October. Or that every weekend will likely be spent grading, bookkeeping, and lesson planning.

During your first few months in the classroom, the disillusionment factor can be huge. There are so many students to meet and get to know, so many lessons to prepare in excruciating detail (some principals require that plans be turned in a week in advance), so many baffling dictates to follow (“During a fire drill, exit through the east door.” Which way is east?).

But I believe that disillusionment leads to dropping out only when you feel as if the problems are yours alone. This book is a testament to the fact that you are most definitely not alone. After reading it, you’ll never again say, “I thought it was just me.”

My intention here is to alert you to the thorny issues that no one else wants to talk about. I often call them educational blasphemy, because bringing them up usually results in killing the messenger, or at least a venomous verbal attack designed to shut him up forever.

Some may accuse me of sounding cynical. But I want to shed a bright light and save you years of grinding your teeth in frustration by learning everything the hard way. So here you’ll find an acknowledgment of a problem—followed by a reassurance, an anecdote, or in most cases, a remedy.

I hope this book will help you feel less isolated and more turbocharged, more convinced than ever that teaching is your true calling. And I hope that someday, long before you’ve completed your thirty-year stellar career with your mental and physical health still intact, you too will have lots of funny, tragic, heartwarming tales to tell.

Meanwhile, here’s my first advice nugget. It may well be the most essential one of all.

Never lose sight of your own power.

Teaching in our K-12 schools is the world’s noblest, most important, most invigorating, and most satisfying job. But you’ll have moments when you’ll feel whipped, drained, stranded, defenseless, used up, and spit out. And utterly, completely powerless.

That last word, powerless, is the one I want to contradict. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The most essential component of effective education isn’t a sparkling new classroom. It isn’t spacious whiteboards, computer technology, or updated textbooks. It isn’t plenty of glistening, sturdy desks or freshly painted walls. Although such accoutrements are certainly wonderful, there’s only one variable that’s absolutely essential to the learning process: you. The teacher.

You are where every lesson begins and ends. You run the show. You set the tone. You create the camaraderie. You dictate whether your kids look forward to your class—or loathe it. You can be either a soothing, reassuring influence—or a sniping, critical one. You can, in fact, save a child’s life; if not physically, then surely emotionally and intellectually. Or you can let her fall through the cracks.

I touch the future. I teach.

—CHRISTA MCAULIFFE

The choice is yours. And although for most of us it’s an easy one to make, its daily implementation will continually be a challenge. Despite your best intentions, you’ll be crippled by a shortage of time and energy, frazzled by constant interruptions, frustrated by students who huff that they’d rather be anywhere else but in school, and infuriated by taxpayers who think that teachers only work part-time.

Yet somehow, thousands upon thousands of us rise above such handicaps and misconceptions. No wonder observers are awestruck when they realize they’re watching (or once, long ago, had the privilege of watching) a truly talented classroom presence. On some level, they must realize how much self-assurance, dedication, charisma, and hard work that requires.

As for us, we understand what a privilege it is.

No wonder so many professionals in other fields confess that they always secretly yearned to be teachers. There is no more powerful place to be than in a classroom, where mutual esteem and genuine affection between a teacher and his or her students are palpable.

It’s often said that a child is lucky if she encounters one dynamic, inspiring teacher during her entire twelve years of school. That’s the bad news. The good news is . . . one is all it takes to change everything.

Wouldn’t it be awesome if that one turned out to be you?

2

The Profession and the Politics

There is no real teacher who in practice does not believe in the existence of the soul, or in a magic that acts on it through speech.

—Allan Bloom

Remember that you’re on a divine mission.

In your heart you already know this. You wouldn’t be a teacher if you didn’t understand on some level that you’ve been handpicked by the universe to carry out the most sacred trust on Earth—preparing the next generation to take its rightful place in the world and giving them the skills they’ll need to run it successfully. Intimidated by the impact of it all? You should be. If you weren’t, you’d be arrogant—and arrogance is one of the worst traits for anyone to carry into a classroom. It hinders growth, change, learning . . . and, most essentially, empathy.

Occasionally someone will regard teaching fourth grade as a mere stepping-stone toward something better (read: higher paying). Although these folks (I met only two throughout my entire career) may well have something significant to offer in terms of administration, they still need to start, so to speak, in the trenches. Most who “advance” eventually regard those early years spent interacting with the kiddoes as some of their most cherished—which is as it should be.

If by chance none of this applies to you, if you’ve selected the teaching profession for the security, as something to fall back on until you discover your true talent, or for the “long” breaks, then please do everyone, including yourself, a favor, and go elsewhere. We desperately need more fine teachers—but there’s no room for anyone who’s less than totally committed. This is a tough, demanding assignment, with enormous challenges and even greater rewards. It’s not a place to hide out, relax, or bide your time.

You also have a hidden agenda.

You were hired to teach sixth-grade math or tenth-grade biology. But it won’t take long before you realize that your real reason for being there is something much more fundamental and long lasting—to coach, to bolster, and to reassure. To escort your students with love and compassion into adulthood. To provide a safe, secure sounding board. To be a stable influence. To model honesty and integrity.

In a few cases, you may be the only reliable, rational, solid, and steady adult in your kids’ lives. And if you think that’s an exaggeration, let’s meet again in five years, after you’ve gotten to know a few hundred of them, and we’ll talk.

I can tell you this much with certainty: teachers are probably the only people they’ll ever meet, besides a small handful of close friends and family members, who are happy to extend themselves beyond measure for someone else’s benefit, rather than their own—and who ask absolutely nothing in return.

In the world of books I am a late bloomer. My first book was published when I was 66, my second when I was 69. So what took (me) so long? I was teaching, that’s what took me so long. In four different New York City public high schools.

—FRANK MCCOURT

Get ready to work harder than you ever have in your entire life.

This is not a job for one person—but you’ll have to pretend that it is. That’s the only way you’ll be able to deal with being your own administrative assistant, researcher, scribe, custodian, and gofer. You’ll be keeping records that will rival the IRS, along with files upon files of teaching materials. You’ll be planning lessons, grading papers, and composing tests far into the night and probably every weekend. You’ll be carrying around inside your head the personality profiles of as many as 170 unique, individual, precious human beings. You’ll even be wiping down boards and inventorying and storing your own textbooks. All while the rest of the world tells you how easy your job is. Which brings me to . . .

The three-month vacation is largely a myth.