The Second Day

So this is going to be an adventure. My saying that is so cliche. What isn't an adventure? Everything's an adventure to someone who spends half his time on the couch.

My second day of student teaching was similar to the first, except everything was magnified. Everything was so new the first day that I didn't have time to notice what was actually occurring around me. I spent so much time futilely attempting to learn names that I forgot to actually observe what was going on in my classroom.

You must remember that I was previously producing widgets for Mackubin Consolidated Widgets of Schenectady, NY, so I haven't had to do much thinking for the last two years. Because of this, I have to relearn how to think, how to interact, how to crack jokes, how to do just about everything. I'm Robin Williams' character in "Awakenings." Or, maybe that's Robert De Niro's character. There is a character in the book who wakes up after a long time down, and I'm currently that guy.

My school, Land o' Lakes Memorial Edifying Educationifying Center of America (LoLMEECoA for short), is not racially diverse. Or, at least, the summer school program is not racially diverse: the total number of non-minority children in my classes is one. And his family recently immigrated to the US, so I don't know if he would count as a member of the non-minority population, since he's probably ELL.

Of course, this is exactly what I signed on for. The achievement gap in America between white students and minority students is large, and our job is to close that gap. Our mission is to raise achievement standards for all students, but since most of my classes are going to be composed of a similar ethnic mix, I'm going to have more opportunities to close the gap than raise achievement standards.

The first class and the last class of my day are both rambunctious, but neither is what one would call a "bad class." The second class, however, will not make it onto my Christmas card list. There are two students in the class who don't like paying attention, prefer not to follow directions, and basically spend most of the class period trying to get under the teacher's skin.

I am sure I will write about them a lot in the future.