New teachers are supposed to be scared, right? I'm more excited than anything. But, I wouldn't say that I'm not scared--and believe me, before you say, "You have no idea what you're in for as a new teacher," let me tell you, I do. I'm not exactly new to teaching, or to ESL, but I am new to public school ESL. I've been in trainings for 3 days straight, and I have to say--the district I'm in is AMAZING and they haven't wasted one minute of my time. All of the trainings have been relevant, although not always engaging, so very helpful. I left the one for ELA today full of excitement, encouragement and energy! How's that for having sat for 8 hours??
The purpose of my blog is to reflect on this year, my first full year in a public school--whether it's everyday, once a week, or once a month. I want to put my experience out there for all to learn from. I will be posting reflections, lessons, pictures, thoughts, ideas, links, etc. My hope is that it's worth reading to someone who needs it.
As I stated earlier, my school district has done a phenominal job on getting us prepared for the new year. One of the things that they did (which was my personal favorite) was provide us with an EXTRAORDINARY guest speaker. He is hopefully familiar to you--his name is Rafe Esquith and he is a 5th grade teacher in L.A. in a VERY low socio-economic area with almost all of his kids whose first languages are not English. But what he does in his classroom is unlike anything you've seen. I was familiar with what he did before he spoke to us because I had watched his documentary months ago and was highly inspired. After hearing him speak and speaking to him personally, however, I was charged for the year. Here are just a few reflections on what he said.
1. There are no shortcuts.
2. Behavior must be exemplary
3. Two rules in the classroom: Be nice and work hard
4. Some things to think about everyday:
- You are a role model (which means, before you ask your students to do something, look at yourself; if I want them to work hard, I have to be the hardest working teacher they have ever seen)
- When you teach, you must remember the point of view of the child
- Make your lessons relevant
- 4. Teaching is in everyday moments
6. Create a culture of excellence in your classroom. I love what he says to the kids: "Being excellent is like being pregant. You can't be a little pregnant--you either are or you're not."
7. EXCELLENCE ISN'T INSTANT.
8. Base your classroom on trust--teach them what that means. "You are going to mess up in here, but those things can be fixed. The only thing that can't be fixed is trust. Once you break trust, it's forever." YOU need to be dependable and reliable. WORK HARD TO BUILD THAT TRUST!
9. Your punishments need to be fair, connected, and reasonable. The punishment must fit the crime!
10. ASK FOR HELP!
11. Reading is not a subject--it's something educated people do to connect with the world.
12. The challenge is to make your lessons so exciting that the punishment is missing the lesson.
13. Check out these two websites: Novel-ties (study guides on thousands of books) and Learning Links (similar, but has a LOT more).
There is a whole lot more that I've been learning, but for the sake of length, I will close now.
Tomorrow I hope to post about what I learned in the ELA training--it was grand!
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