Week of 9-23 through 9-27

This week we focused on traditional literature and how graphic organizers, among other forms of comprehension activities, can be incorporated into the classroom without making it seem like "busy work." This was kind of a new concept to me because when I heard the word "worksheet" in elementary school, I got excited. I was (and still am) a person that can't really sit there and read 30 pages and be expected to learn a whole lot. I learn by having discussions, listening to people talk, looking at powerpoints during class, etc. So when I got a worksheet in class, it was awesome. However, there were exceptions. You could always tell with a couple of different work sheets that it was definitely busy work, such as redundant and mundane writing activities where you were so bored because you were writing about things that had been drilled in your head through discussions, books, and different interactive activities with the teachers and the class. I can't seem to wrack my brain and think of any right now in particular (watch, I'll think of them in the middle of the night), but you could always tell it was busy work if the teacher was mad at the class. Teachers love to give out homework and in-class assignments with a rather short timestamp when kids misbehave. Some teachers live for it. When I was coming up in school, we had a lot of obnoxious and disrespectful students in my grade. We were known as the "bad class" because of all of those kids that never could behave. So, to say the least, I know what busy work is. Most of the bad kids in my class dropped out before senior year, but a few of them made it to graduation (and that was only because they got it super easy), and that's rather sad, but it makes me think of how I want to approach teaching some day. I don't want to be the teacher that makes busy work for their kids when they get upset or are just annoyed. I want to be the teacher that their class wants to be engaged and willing to learn and if there is a behavior problem or a bad day, to be able to approach it in a way that will avoid further conflict. From my experiences with my classmates, all I know is that being a teacher takes patience. I went to a school where I graduated with a class of 35. I can't imagine what a large school would be like, especially with different settings (such as in Cedar Rapids, where you have more troubled families, more minorities, higher poverty rates...), and will I ever find out? Who knows. That's the adventure and the learning experience in teaching.