This has been a draining week or last week somehow drained in to this week. Grades are coming out and it is not pretty. How does this reflect on me? Am I a bad teacher or are my students lazy? Considering the fact that most of the grades are reading logs for some strange reason or art work worked on in class, I would blame the students. Are reading logs are simple, you read in-class for ten minutes then fill out the log. A one sentence summary a day, with a five sentence summary at the end of the week. Pretty simple, blasted children can't do anything right! But, I still like them!
Then there is the student who was standing next to his friend who was shot in the head and died. How do you deal with that? He realizes that he is a lucky person, but is beginning to slip into depression. He can't sleep is having a hard time focusing and all the other things that go with an experience like that.
The next student actually had a drive-by shooting at her house, in which her brother was shot and she was grazed on the arm. Her family has decided to leave for a few weeks with the hope of an arrest, so that they don't live in fear. I'm assuming that the brother is okay because they were gone three days after the shooting.
The worst part is that some of these things I experienced myself as a teenager and I do know that it gets easier with time, but how do you explain that to traumatized teenagers. I don't know how to relate my similar experiences, so that they learn that you sort of loose feeling. I sometimes think that my heart has hardened to things like this because they no longer shock me the way they used to. I've become desensitized in a sense. But these two experiences have brought back memories that I thought were in my past.
What a student teaching experience?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Hi Norma,
I just finished my first term student teaching with a diverse group of 8th graders. It can be very disheartening when you give strategies and tools for knowledge and some students just refuse to take advantage. My class was 50%ELD and the curriculum does not adequately address ELL students who are mainstreamed. But they can get a passing grade if they would just turn in all assigned work. Some will simply not commit themselves. Often I could not even tell where a student was having problems because they did not give me anything to help determine what they needed to succeed. How can I take responsibility when they make no effort whatsoever. They smile, they like me, I just can't figure out why they feel so defeated and that nothing they do will matter. I saw many of my students get that lightbulb turning on affect as we went through the trimester. I think I was catching a few more when my time ended. Maybe they would have done better as time went by. I would say I put in at least 80% of my time with the low achievers. My high achievers really didn't need the majority of my time as they will tend to set a standard for themselves. The others don't seem to see that self determination will bring them the greatest success. I can let them know that, then it is up to them. Regarding the violence you spoke about, I had written in one of my earlier blogs about a boy from Baghdad who was walking with a friend when a bullet that had been fired into the air had struck his friend and killed him. I can no way understand the day to day violence of war, but I can empathize. He seemed glad to just be able to talk about it with me in a one on one situation. My son lost two friends at once when they were killed by a drunk driver. We talked a lot and cried a lot. It's been 12 years and we still cry. It's just not something that ever goes away. But my son feels as though his life was spared because he was out of town and not with his friends that day. He feels obligated to live his life the best he can. He is a deputy sheriff. The other day a mother of a depressed 17 year old wrote the department. She had called the dept. because her son was missing. My son went to the house and stayed with her until her son contacted her and everything was okay. The next day my son went and talked with the young man, the mother was eavesdropping. She said the things my son said to her son made a great impact on him for the better and she is trying to use the same technique when dealing with her son and it seems to be helping him. She called my son an "angel in uniform" It made all of us cry, because at one point in his life my son felt just how that young man was feeling. I doubt that the violence that plagues our neighborhoods will disappear over night, but Norma if you know how it feels to be a part of that situation, maybe the best you can do is listen and talk, and let your students know you have been there and you know how it feels. It may mean more to them than you will ever know.
Post a Comment