rant!

i just have to blow some steam before it explodes me. pardon the venting.

whoever designed the university intern program for credentialing new teachers needs a fucking shoe up their ass. it is the most fucking miserable experience for the teacher candidates, and should not be considered anything less than a disservice to their students and the educational system immediately surrounding them, as they are completely deprived of any resources or support and drained and stretched to the point of being completely ineffective and incoherent. furthermore, it turns off new teachers to wanting to seriously remain in the educational system, or to give them the opportunity to try new and exciting pedagogies, which runs counter to what we should be encouraging in our educational system, b/c if the new teachers aren't going to be a source of innovation and exploration, who is?

there is absolutely no practicality or reason to this system. and it makes for some really fucking poor practice. i'm not even talking revolutionary pedagogy here, i'm just talking basic standards-based ordinary teaching. take this: my supervisor is supposed to get 4 formal observations done in the semester. i met with her to determine what days she would come in. but, b/c of surprise teacher training academies, district meetings, science lab trainings, etc. i had to cancel some observations, and she cancelled some observations, and now we're down to the last 3 weeks of the semester and she's threatening to give me an incomplete. she wants to come in tomorrow, a day i had planned as a test day, to observe me teach a lesson. what the fuck am i going to teach them, it doesn't even fit well into the calendar and the flow of the units.

so dig: this week is weird, b/c it's thanksgiving, and so monday is a full day, and tuesday and wednesday are half days. i need more than half a period to give a unit test, or to introduce a new topic, so i was going to do it like this: monday was going to be review, tuesday tests, wednesday a party/intro to new unit day. but, monday was taken out b/c of an emergency district meeting, so things got pushed back. tuesday became a review day (which sucked b/c i had to take two half periods to do a thorough review) and wednesday was going to be two periods of testing. but, b/c of my fucking supervisor and her demand that i teach a lesson, i'm now struggling to figure out what to do. i told my kids they were going to get a test tomorrow, so i can't just be like "haha, just kidding..." b/c then they would lose trust and never take me seriously again, esp. after all the emphasis i put on them studying tonight, and bringing their notes tomorrow to turn in for extra credit. so, no matter what, i am still going to give them the test. but, i wonder if squeezing in a lesson is going to be too little time to do either very well. and it doesn't make much sense, to me or the students, to have them test for a period, then come back and immediately start a new unit. it doesn't flow, and it gives them no sense of closure or release. they're not going to feel like things make sense, they're going to act up b/c i'm not giving them time to celebrate completion of a unit (which really, they should be allowed to do) and they're not going to retain anything from my new lesson, b/c their behavior is going to be absolutely bat shit crazy.

fuck shit cunt damn piss ass grunt kick fist.

-stef