{"id":3153,"date":"2024-04-19T22:54:36","date_gmt":"2024-04-19T22:54:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=3153"},"modified":"2024-04-22T15:46:51","modified_gmt":"2024-04-22T15:46:51","slug":"ftv-student-teachers-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=3153","title":{"rendered":"FTV: Student Teachers – Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In <\/span>FTV:\u00a0 Student Teachers <\/span><\/i>(4-10-24), I recounted some of my experiences with the rite of passage called \u2018student teaching\u2019.\u00a0 The state wants teaching candidates vetted in an actual classroom setting before signing off and giving them a license to teach.\u00a0 Usually one decides whether or not they want to pursue a career in teaching before getting into the final, practical phase.\u00a0 With that said, it isn\u2019t unheard of for some to go through the student teaching part and realize they really don\u2019t want to be a teacher.\u00a0 Rarer yet is the teaching candidate who lands a job and then bails out before they make it a year (sometimes even less).\u00a0 Like any new job, you have to get the feel for what you are doing before deciding to keep at it or go another direction.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0My first and only teaching job began and ended in the Ontonagon Area Schools.\u00a0 If my advisor had his way, I would have gone straight from my undergraduate degree into a Master of Arts program.\u00a0 When he broached the subject, I recall telling Mr. Machowski, \u201cI have been in school for seventeen years and would like to go out and see how a job works out.\u00a0 If I land a job, I am going to have to take course work to get a permanent teaching certificate so one way or another, I will end up in grad school.\u201d\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t the first time I had disagreed with my advisor, but he never held it against me.\u00a0 He would just say, \u201cWell, it is your decision, but if it doesn\u2019t work out, don\u2019t blame me,\u201d which he always said with a mischievous grin on his face.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0My student teaching experience didn\u2019t start as I expected.\u00a0 When the assignments came out, I was assigned to Gwinn Middle School in seventh grade Social Studies class.\u00a0 My major was Geography \/ Earth Science so I was a little perplexed why I was assigned in Social Studies and not Earth Science.\u00a0 \u201cWell, that was as close as I could get.\u00a0 There weren\u2019t any Science openings and there are not a lot of places that actually teach Earth Science.\u00a0 Principals see \u2018Geography\u2019 and think \u2018Social Studies\u2019.\u00a0 Secondary teaching licenses are labeled \u2018all subjects\u2019 for 7th and 8th grade.\u00a0 Someday they may be looking for someone to teach a section or two and you will be able to say, \u201cWell, yes, I have a background teaching Social Studies.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0They recommend you pay a visit to your supervising teacher the semester before you student teach.\u00a0 The way my class schedule worked out, I had a couple of courses I needed that were only taught in the fall so that pushed my student teaching to the Spring semester of 1975.\u00a0 Mr. M had said this was not ideal (\u201cComing in the second semester is always tougher than starting at the beginning of a new school year.\u201d) but I really didn\u2019t have any other option.\u00a0 On a a beautiful fall day, I drove the 30 miles to Gwinn to get the low down.\u00a0 My future supervising teacher was a well respected, middle career man.\u00a0 He cheerfully gave me a ten minute school tour, a brief oral outline of what his classes were studying, and a jaunty, \u201cSee you in January,\u201d as he returned to his classroom.\u00a0 He knew I was coming but apparently stepping inside his classroom wasn\u2019t on the program.\u00a0 The only thought I had on the way home was, \u201cDriving back and forth to Gwinn in January, February, and\u00a0 March won\u2019t be fun, but at least I can live at home.\u201d\u00a0 I had spent two years driving two thirds of that route to band jobs at K.I.Sawyer so it wasn\u2019t an unfamiliar drive.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The final paperwork came my way near the end of the first semester and I did a double take.<\/span><\/p>\n

I was now signed up to teach seventh grade Science under Bill Laurich at Bothwell Middle School in Marquette.\u00a0 I called Mr. M. and asked if there was a mistake.\u00a0 Everybody knew that student teachers were never allowed to teach in their hometown school district.\u00a0 Mr. M said, \u2018Well, this opportunity came up and I grabbed it.\u00a0 Did you ever go to Bothwell?\u00a0 Did you ever have Bill Laurich as a teacher?\u201d\u00a0 I answered \u2018no\u2019 to both questions.\u00a0 Bothwell had opened up after my JH days and even if he had taught at Graverat JH, I had never heard of him.\u00a0 \u201cThen you are all set,\u201d he told me.\u00a0 All set?\u00a0 I had not expected this turn of events but it meant no to driving to Gwinn and being assigned to a Science class.\u00a0 I took it to be an early Christmas present.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As soon as the public schools resumed in January of 1975, I called Bothwell to make an appointment to visit with my new supervising teacher.\u00a0 The secretary said, \u201cI was just about to call you myself.\u00a0 Mr. Brady (my old JH principal now in charge at Bothwell) wants all the student teachers to meet with him at 1:00 pm this Friday.\u201d\u00a0 I assured her I would be there.\u00a0 I forget how many student teachers were at Bothwell that semester but the handful of us who attended the meeting fit comfortably in Mr. Brady\u2019s office.\u00a0 He ran down the list of expectations he must have given to all new teachers:\u00a0 when to be at school, how to call in sick, and so on.\u00a0 He verified our assignments but when he got to mine, he said, \u201cOh, and by the way, I switched you from Bill Laurich to Wayne Greenwald who teaches 8th grade Social Studies.\u201d\u00a0 There was no discussion or explanation and at that point he released us and suggested we go and visit our supervising teachers.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I walked up to the second floor and found Wayne sitting at one of the four desks in their prep area.\u00a0 Bothwell was set up with large rooms they called \u2018clusters\u2019 or \u2018modules\u2019 shared by four teachers.\u00a0 Movable desks and barriers were set up so each class (English, Social Studies, Science, and Math) had a quarter of the space.\u00a0 When a film or presentation for the whole group was in the daily plan, they would move the barriers and so everyone in the room could watch at the same time.\u00a0 I knew Wayne because he had worked with my brother Ron at the Red Owl grocery store.\u00a0 My only previous contact with him in a school setting was in the spring of 1967.\u00a0 He was a first year teacher at Graveraet JH and I had to serve an hour of after school detention under his care (more on that later).<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Wayne saw me coming and after introductions to the other three teachers in the cluster, he read my mind and asked, \u201cAnd are you wondering why you are here and not with Bill Laurich?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Brady is mad at Bill for something or another (I never did find out what the rub was) so he doesn\u2019t want Bill to have a student teacher.\u00a0 I saw your name on the list so I volunteered my class instead.\u00a0 Once you get the hang of how the cluster scheduling works, you should be able to at least spend one of your planning hours working with Bill\u2019s science class.\u201d\u00a0 I still didn\u2019t quite know what to make of it but said, \u201cOkay, I will see you in a couple of weeks when NMU\u2019s semester starts.\u201d\u00a0 I actually volunteered to start right away, but they did not want the student teachers to start until school was back on at Northern.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I stopped at the Geography Department on the way home to drop off some papers and Mr. M happened to be in his office.\u00a0 I knocked on his door and told him about my change of schedule, ending with,\u00a0 \u201cHe can\u2019t just change my assignment, can he?\u201d\u00a0 Mr. M looked up from the paperwork I was interrupting, gave me his trademark grin and said, \u201cIt sounds like he already did.\u00a0 It is his school.\u00a0 Just remember what I said about getting experience outside of Earth Science.\u201d\u00a0 I relayed what Wayne had said about working with Bill and he said, \u201cThere you go – best of both worlds.\u00a0 Laurich is an excellent teacher so working with him one hour of the day for even part of the semester will be worth it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Bothwell\u2019s open concept scheduling was new to me.\u00a0 The clusters met for half the day and the time for each segment was adjusted almost daily.\u00a0 If one of them wanted to show a 40 minute movie, that time would be subtracted from the half day and the rest of the class periods would simply be ten minutes shorter than normal.\u00a0 The other half day schedule was taken up by two planning periods (for individual and team planning) and an enrichment class.\u00a0 I would eventually end up working with Bill Laurich during one of the planning periods and my enrichment classes ended up being nine weeks of chess and a few weeks of outdoor education.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Wayne caught me up to speed on how he graded his students and how he liked to structure his lessons.\u00a0 I observed him at work the first week but by the first Friday I was there, he caught me a little by surprize.\u00a0 He was reviewing an assignment he had given his class about historical figures from World War II by putting pictures up on an overhead projector.\u00a0 Once they IDed each picture, he would fill in some additional information about them.\u00a0 After he had done the first two rotations of that day, he said, \u201cOkay, did you hear enough to run through the other two sections?\u201d\u00a0 I had been half listening to him but was actually watching how the kids behaved but I had not choice but to say, \u201cSure, I can do that.\u201d\u00a0 Lesson learned, he never caught me flat footed again and we shared duties for the next couple of weeks.\u00a0 Wayne told me to prep a unit on different cultures and minorities.\u00a0 I ran an outline by him and he gave me a starting and ending time for my unit.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I was getting to know the kid\u2019s personalities a bit by the time I started my unit.\u00a0 Our Student Teaching Seminar only had one assignment outside of us attending a monthly half day session with all the other student teachers out that semester.\u00a0 We were told to identify one student with some type of \u2018difficulties\u2019 (social or behavioral issues that were affecting their school work) and see if we could somehow modify how they interacted with their school environment.\u00a0 I decided to work with a leather jacket clad James Dean wanna-be who tended to respond to everything with mono-sylabic answers.\u00a0 I got a two-for-one deal as he had a steady girlfriend so any time I spent with him at school, she was along for the ride.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When I shared my target pupil with Wayne, he was realistic.\u00a0 The background he gave me was typical for a kid who had a bummer home life, spent a lot of time out on the streets so he would not have to be home, and really didn\u2019t want to be in school.\u00a0 It turned out his girlfriend lived two blocks up and two blocks over from our house on Summit Street so we had a neighborhood connection.\u00a0 When he didn\u2019t feel like engaging, she and I ignored him and talked about life in western Marquette.\u00a0 After a few tutoring sessions spent being ignored, James Dean started trying to be part of the discussion some of the time.\u00a0 I wrote in my final seminar paper that my efforts to reach the kid had been sort of successful, but did I get him to love school?\u00a0 Probably not.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0At the session we handed in our \u2018student behavior modification\u2019 reports, we were told we now had the opportunity to demonstrate our skills on one of our fellow student teachers.\u00a0 The facilitator said, \u201cLook at the person to your right.\u00a0 They have something that you want.\u00a0 Use your negotiating skills to get them to give it to you.\u201d\u00a0 I had no idea who the guy to my right was or what his student teaching assignment was.\u00a0 He was a head taller than me and was wearing an NMU letter jacket.\u00a0 I did not recognize him from the basketball team so I suspect he was a football player, probably a lineman judging by his size.\u00a0 I looked at him and he said, \u201cDon\u2019t even bother because whatever it is, I ain\u2019t gonna give it to you and you ain\u2019t gonna take it.\u201d\u00a0 He had a smirk on his face that said, \u201cHa, take that!\u201d so my response was \u2018Okay.\u201d\u00a0 I went back to watching the other \u2018negotiations\u2019 taking place around me and ignored the doofus who had just told me he wasn\u2019t going to cooperate.\u00a0 After a while, he said, \u201cAren\u2019t you supposed to be trying to convince me?\u201d to which I replied, \u201cNah, you already said you weren\u2019t going to cooperate so I won\u2019t waste my time.\u00a0 When they ask me how I did, I will just say, \u2018I failed.\u00a0 The subject was not interested in cooperating\u2019.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Mr. Letterjacket looked at me with his mouth open like he was going to say something but nothing came out.\u00a0 I think he realized at that point he was now the one who was supposed to convince me of something and he was going to get from me exactly what I had gotten from him:\u00a0 nothing!\u00a0 Finally, he said,\u00a0 \u201cOkay, if you tell them I gave you what you asked for, can I say the same thing about you?\u201d\u00a0 \u201cSure,\u201d\u00a0 I said, \u201cbut you haven\u2019t actually asked me for anything, have you?\u201d\u00a0 \u201cWhat did you want from me?\u201d he asked in return.\u00a0 \u201cCooperation,\u201d I told him, \u2018So I guess this means I got what I asked for.\u00a0 Sure, we can both say we were successful.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I shared this story with Wayne the next day and he surprised me once again.\u00a0 He said,\u00a0 Oh, I always knew you could talk your way out of trouble.\u00a0 Remember when you skipped detention back in 8th grade?\u00a0 You said you showed up but there was no one in the room so after ten minutes, you left to catch the bus home.\u201d\u00a0 I was amazed he remembered our one meeting from one incident eight years earlier.\u00a0 \u201cYes, I said.\u00a0 And that was the truth.\u00a0 You must have believed me because you said I would have to repeat the detention but you wouldn\u2019t make me do another one as a penalty for missing the first one.\u201d\u00a0 Wayne said, \u201cThat is right.\u00a0 You were the only one in detention that day and I almost forgot to show up myself.\u00a0 I can tell when someone is lying and you weren\u2019t, so we called it good.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Top Piece Video – Before\u00a0Aqualung,\u00a0<\/em>Jethro Tull sang about\u00a0Teacher!\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>This is a little more recent clip as Ian Anderson has taken to sharing some of the vocal duties as his well weather voice has begun to age!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In FTV:\u00a0 Student Teachers (4-10-24), I recounted some of my experiences with the rite of passage called \u2018student teaching\u2019.\u00a0 The state wants teaching candidates vetted in an actual classroom setting before signing off and giving them a license to teach.\u00a0 Usually one decides whether or not they want to pursue a career in teaching before […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,8,12,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-from-the-vaults","category-humor","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3153"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3162,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3153\/revisions\/3162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}