Danielle+Slatinsky

Genre Reflection 3

Hearing you answer the question right is like: Seeing the changing leaves at the top of Amicalola Falls after the 604 step climb. Listening to Green Day’s ‘Time of Your Life’ for the very first time.

Seeing you finish that essay is like: Riding down that two lane highway on the back of his bike going 120 miles per hour. Going to that candy store on River St. in Savannah and finding a treat to devour.

Reading your well thought out response to the persuasive prompt is like: Hanging by a parachute above the Pacific Ocean at a 100 feet altitude. Quitting Bahama Breeze after four years of servitude.

All of these things make me feel like: Anything is possible. You are unstoppable. The unlikely is probable. Your life might be…unforgettable.

When you tell me that you hate writing it’s like: Seeing my tooth in a pool of blood after doing the Superman across the black top. Doing a flip off the high bar and upon landing feeling my ankle pop.

When you say you still don’t understand after I have re-worded it four times it’s like: Losing that softball in the lights then catching it with my head. Standing on the starting block in my one piece swimsuit filled with dread.

When I read over your expository paragraph and it is not at all informative it’s like: Attempting to jump over that hurdle and nicking it with my toe. Preparing to take that winning jump shot and hearing the whistle blow.

All of these things make me feel like: Your ignorance is not plausible. You are much more capable. Your past needs to be escapable. Your future is not yet…palpable.

I want you to know that: I have enjoyed watching you grow, if only for five weeks. I’m glad I got to see what you know, thanks for the sneak-peek. I hope you have learned something from me, in this short time we have shared. I want you to know what a great learning experience this turned out to be, and I hope you could tell how much I cared.

_

Genre Reflection 2 Journal Entries on Classroom Management


 * This first journal entry was written towards the beginning of my Internship.

Kids talking, scratch that, squawking. Struggling to focus on their work that is too easy. Singing ‘carry on my wayward son’ and barking about getting shut down by a girl. Actually, defending: ‘I changed my mind about her’. Not living up to their potential, or worse, not believing they have potential to fulfill. Phones ringing: singing ‘airplanes’. ‘Give me that phone’. To be answered at a later date. Mouths chomping on pretzels and almonds. Happy for tile floors. When did kids start eating healthy? Snickers and chips would have been too predictable. Intercom: ‘Excuse me, send your attendance to the office’. Kids welcome the distraction. An excuse to start yapping again. Laughing at empty jokes, braces shining. Whispering wrong answers. ‘This is stapled backwards’. Oops, that was my fault. The kids should pay more attention in class so they don’t end up like me-in my last year of college and not able to staple pages the right way. Failure, no, learning experience. Lesson-don’t space out with stapler in hand. ‘Are you doing your work?’ ‘No, I’m picking the lint off my pants’. Apparently, filling out a vocabulary worksheet is too boring. Actually, it definitely is. ‘Does anybody want some raisins?’ A plastic baggie of raisins goes flying across the room to the person who said ‘I do’. He grabbed them and threw them at someone else who said ‘Get those dried, crusty raisins out of my face!’ She throws them back. Then they are launched and hit a kid in the face. That’s what it took for the teacher to say ‘stop’. Should I have told them to stop? Not my classroom. Still unsure of the rules. If the teacher doesn’t stop them, should I? I’m not teaching…yet. Will they respect me if I let them throw raisins at each other? Or am I non-existent in their eyes? An extra body sitting in the corner. When I do start teaching I hope they won’t be singing, ringing, yapping, and throwing. But how will I stop them? Will they listen? Will I engage them? I just knocked all of the papers off my desk. Failure, no, learning experience. Lesson-don’t concentrate so hard on writing about my surroundings that I don’t pay attention to my surroundings. Translation-don’t fidget and cause papers to fly across the floor. Another distraction. They welcome it. Vocab lesson-every week. Fill out worksheet, take quiz. Remember words for later use? Not a chance. Bell rings. ‘Dismissed’. Failure, yes, failure. No learning experience was accomplished. Maybe tomorrow. Reason-grades are due. Furlough day instead of teacher work day. Not enough time. Too busy. How much more can they take away? When will the effect on students be too much? How long will it take to weed all of the good teachers out? Failure. How much failure is acceptable? How much failure is preventable?

*The students are not usually this bad, this day was an exception. My CT has very good classroom management skills. She was just really busy and distracted because grades were due and she did not have enough time to enter them all in.

*This next journal entry was written about my fifth day of teaching.

I tell the kids to quiet down. And they actually do. Ever since I learned how to make my voice carry to the back of the classroom they have listened. I was told, ‘it comes from your belly’. So now I talk from my belly. It works. A student asks me if he can answer the warm-up before I even ask for someone to raise their hand. They are eager. I am overjoyed. I tell them that they are going to be writing persuasively about a prompt. They boo. I tell them they will only be graded on effort, since they have not been taught how to write a persuasive essay yet. They smile. I read the prompt. They get started. I look over and one kid is not doing anything. Sitting with no paper or pencil and staring. I walk over. I don’t even need to ask what’s wrong. He has a broken hand. He can’t write. I get it. I got approval from my CT to let him type. His index fingers on both hands work just fine. He seems excited that someone is trying to accommodate his needs. That someone noticed him, and wanted him to do a good job. He sits at the computer. He ponders. Then he types. A kid asks for a pencil. His is too small. Someone hands him a pen. He says, ‘I don’t like pens.’ All of a sudden three pencils are thrown at him. They want him to quit complaining so they can concentrate. He whines too much. I’m in the middle. They are lucky they didn’t hit me. Or anybody else. They just hit the floor. I hand all of the pencils back. Tell them not to throw things. I know where I stand in the classroom now. I am not non-existent. I do stop them…and they do listen. I tell the kid to just use the pencil he has, he is causing too much of a distraction. I take control. I am the teacher. A kid behind me is getting off task, poking somebody next to him. I look at him. And he stops. When did I get the teacher look? I have them fooled. They think I know what I’m doing. I tell them they need to finish the sentence they are writing. They are almost out of time. Then I tell them to stop. I walk over to the kid on the computer with the broken hand. He typed three full paragraphs. More than he typed during five days of working on an essay. I was so proud. I smiled at him and told him to go ahead and print off his writing. He asked if he could finish his paragraph. My heart overflowed, and I hope he could see it in my eyes. This was improvement, major improvement. And now that I know what he is capable of, I won’t accept anything less.

___

Genre Reflection 1

Dear Kevin,

It’s been exactly one month since that morning, and I have exactly one month left of my Internship. It’s weird how all of the pieces fit together to compose the snapshot of our existence. Well, my existence. Your snapshot is finished even though it is incomplete. There just wasn’t enough time to create all of the pieces. You just didn’t have enough time.

I wish I could share my memories with you in person, but this letter addressed to nowhere is the best that I can do. So, like I mentioned, one month to complete my Internship, which means I have been in the school for a week. I am in an 8th grade classroom with a really passionate teacher. I was pretty nervous when I started on my first day. I wasn’t sure what to expect and I wasn’t sure how the students would react when a foreign body entered the room. The students were actually really receptive, unlike what I had in mind for 8th graders. They smiled at me with quizzical faces, and they talked to me when they realized I wasn’t an enemy. The teacher was super friendly and informative. Plus she offered me M&M’s, which won me over, even though she was pretty cool to begin with.

It was on the third day that my nerves traveled through my stomach and up to my brain where they turned into fear when my CT asked me to do the warm-up with the kids. I had never spoken in front of students before. My biggest fear was that I would choke on the words that were trying to escape my mouth to teach the kids. I was even more afraid that the words wouldn’t come at all because they would be blocked by the fear in my brain and my mouth would be empty. Then I’d be like Eminem in that movie where he lost his spaghetti. A kid in the class is the mini version of Eminem. He has the neglectful attitude and saggy pants to go along with the bleach blonde hair and hardened expressions. I hope I am cut out for the challenge of working with him. We listened to Eminem on the way back from your funeral. It was almost cathartic, but my mixed emotions were still too fresh to be purged.

Anyway, when I got up in front of the class my fear was suddenly gone. It was replaced by a comfortable ease that I’ve never experienced before when talking in front of a crowd. It’s so much scarier when I’m talking in front of my peers, but in front of these eager students I was at peace. The words just escaped my mouth like little critters that were searching for a home in the students’ ears. I’ve been questioning my chosen career choice lately, but in that moment I had no doubt in my mind that I was where I am supposed to be: in the classroom.

I know it seems rash considering that a couple of months ago I was telling you I didn’t want to be a teacher anymore, but I was just going to finish my degree because it was too late to go back and hit the restart button. I’m glad I stuck with it now. Learning about teaching and actually doing it are two totally different experiences. I didn’t know what I was going to feel until I actually got up in front of the kids. Honestly, I was afraid I was going to hate it and go home crying every day. I am so relieved now because of the way I felt when I stood up in front of those kids. I felt that way the next day, and the day after that too. I’m sure there will be challenges in the next few weeks, but I am prepared to take those head on because I know that it will prepare me to be a better teacher, rather than discourage me from the profession.

I hope you would be proud that I have finally found a place where speaking in front of a crowd isn’t scary, and a place where I want to spend my time creating the pieces of my snapshot. I miss you.

Love always and forever, Danielle