#which I'm sure is just more lesson for me because often it is agonizing for me to be persistent.
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idk why but tumblr decided my booping time is up, which really is actually ok because i kind of sunk a LOT of time into it and really need to put my phone down now haha, but if i booped you that means i like you and if i didn't boop you it's because when i checked your page, they weren't turned on. if you didn't boop me back i may have cried a little bit but you know, surrounded by everyone's heartfelt boops, was probably the ideal way to experience that feeling, since it made it feel more like an isolated incident and i could see for sure that it was all just fun and i really was part of it!! so basically: hooray for boops! 10/10 experience, if i didn't have a success rate of about 20% i would continue to send them for the rest of the night!!!!
#sorry even something this silly--i can't be 100% silly about. every one of the boops meant something to me#and i decided i like that about me and it was ok. it's ok!!!!!!!!! to take things seriously than other people sometimes!!#it's tricky. i didn't want to admit that i cried about such a dumb thing. please no one feel responsible#cause there's ALWAYS gonna be something that makes me cry and that's ok#it's ok for me to learn this feeling. i like it better this way instead of isolating in order to prevent it.#besides. in the end most people who missed my boops early on caught it later due to my persistence#which I'm sure is just more lesson for me because often it is agonizing for me to be persistent.
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little venty post about grown adults who don't have their act together despite being 10+ years my senior, feel free to read if you're nosey!
so, i'm an intern at a school as part of my final year of my math teaching masters, and i have one traditional class to attend and do work for as part of writing my graduate thesis, so there are two primary mentors i work under: my mentor teacher and my professor
first, my professor: despite quite likely being old enough for retirement, and having the teaching experience to match, she still regularly forgets to give us key pieces of information (ie requirements for assignments) until right before we need them or even after that particular assignment was already due, and classes are just us guessing at what she wants us to say in discussions, often with a significant lack of context when she asks questions so we genuinely aren't sure what piece of information she wants us to be responding to, and then scolds us for not reading her mind when we don't respond "correctly" (which, all of us in her class are adults in our final years of our masters degrees)
this week's frustration is her sending us an article "you should already have", except it's not actually on our classroom platform at all; she was thoroughly condescending for absolutely no reason when she is actually factually incorrect about whether she has already given us this article or not
second, my mentor teacher, the far more long running thorn in my side: he's early middle aged, over ten years of teaching experience, and as far as i can tell he's perhaps spent all of those years coasting on the work of others and doing the bare minimum
he's actually taught me a lot about being confident despite chaos and making a lesson plan in 15 minutes instead of agonizing over every detail, but this results in lessons that focus on rote memorization and 'tricks' to get answers to problems, and often, he's the chaos
our school is fortunately fairly relaxed about following the district's guidelines on when to teach which topics, so long as all material in the standards gets taught at some point; this year our district has rolled out new standards for our subject, which is mostly the same standards with only a few added/removed/moved around on the calendar; alrighty, that could be annoying, but an experienced teacher could just review what they did for the previous years and make adjustments from there, right?
nope. he's as unprepared as a first year teacher, constantly having to throw together a lesson, figure out what order he's teaching something in, and cross reference with the other teacher of this same subject on what that instructor will be doing in his classroom that day
this has come to head now because i had to teach for six full weeks, all on my own with my own lesson plans; i'm a planner, so of course i looked up the standards we'd be covering approximately at this time (all students at my university are doing their six weeks at approximately the same time per our degree requirements), reviewed those standards with BOTH instructors, and spent all of winter break (outside of work) planning how i would teach them with slides, examples, connections to other subjects, activities, etc
first of all, despite sending him both my initial and updated slides for all six weeks in advance, my mentor teacher drops on me that he's NOT planning on teaching a topic we SPECIFICALLY talked about students needing to know to be ready for my unit, and eventually he did end up teaching half of it, but in a way that effectively added material to my unit, because it was too close to me teaching for him to give a test on it
second of all, three weeks into this six weeks he's suddenly telling me that i should probably have split up these standards into at least two units, and maybe more; again, he had my slides far in advance and had plenty of time to give me suggestions, but when i brought this up he sort of shrugged his shoulders like a goofy frat boy (and i was in a fraternity in undergrad) and admits yeah, he probably should have looked those over and thought about this sooner; I actually can't change my lesson plans at this point because i'm also collecting data for a research project for that professor i already complained about, and i need different classes to do a certain number of assignments to have enough data, and i won't get that if i throw a test with review time into the middle of my six weeks
third, and quite frankly most embarrassing for him, he's slowly panicking because our students are now ahead of his teacher bestie, so when i'm done teaching he won't be able to just crib off of the other instructor for all his lesson plans and assignments; i've already made suggestions for what he could do to stall for time until the other instructor catches up, but seriously, you just sit at your desk ALL DAY, doodling and shopping for car accessories and occasionally entering grades data while i teach, and now your all nervous because you might have to actually plan some lessons on your own???????
which, our final units for the course are even longer than the unit we're on, and, just like most schools, we finish at the end of may, and i finish teaching in mid march, so you have at best two months to teach AND test TWO units that are together of the same length as this six week unit, and you're upset about being AHEAD?????????
like i said, i have actually learned a lot from having him as my mentor, but lots of things i've learned have come from taking notes on what NOT to do instead of learning from what he does do
to cap all this complaining off, some positivity: i'm excited to have my own classroom and be able to prepare thoroughly with no external responsibilities (classes, other job, etc) for both teaching the material itself and managing the environment to support good learning habits for my students; i look forward to having the time to research evidence-based teaching practices, implement changes without being undermined by someone doubting if they'll work, and work with my students to get their opinions on what i could do to best support them, right from day one of the school year
i know i won't be perfect by any means, and we may spend longer than i'd like learning in a cement cube, but eventually everything will come together and i'll be fully invested in a career i enjoy
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