post observation scheduled

So my post-observation is scheduled for monday and she has asked to see all reading logs, conference notes and running records for a student who just happens to be my biggest challenge. Luck or she has some kind of teacher-weakness radar? His issues are more that he has difficulty with letter and word recognition and not any real language learning deficiencies. It is difficult to put him into guided reading and I don’t have any academic background in literacy. What I know I have learned on the job which has been inadequate. It wouldn’t be as much of an issue if all my students just had language challenges and weren’t confronting letter-sound recognition obstacles. Sorry for the lack of detail. I am running to physical therapy. This student has been deemed learning disabled and gets pull-out services but it just hasn’t been enough. Hopefully the principal will have helpful ideas and not just criticisms.

feeling intensely certain and uncertain

Lately I have realized that my insatiable passion for languages is heightened when learning about linguistics. The scientific viewpoints, polemical debates, necessity to document and defend endangered languages, the whole unanswered question about the origins of language. I am loving it immensely. My professor has been encouraging about my curiosities over getting a PhD and I am excited at the idea of it. Could I be that scientific though?

I am 98% certain that it would be extremely challenging and potentially fulfilling. But what would it mean for being an ESL teacher? Could I still do it and do research? Would I feel compelled to do something more in terms of academia or research? I am torn. I feel being an ESL teacher is very important but this other part of me does yearn for more intense understanding of language and its acquisition.

Of course, research is intimidating to me so there’s that too haha.

Any elementary school teachers with PhDs in linguistics wanna throw in?

tear it down! dismantle it!

My supervisor and I are on a similar wavelength right now and I’m really liking her approach and vision. Aside from being so helpful with problem solving, she trusts my instinct. Which is bizarre since I am so new and my instinct is in its embryonic stage.

Today we were talking about how I go about using and teaching academic language to my students and she says, “I hate (the way the school does) the word wall. You have my permission to tear it down. Get rid of it and use words that they will use. That are meaningful.”

How rockin’ is that?! Not only is she giving me permission to do something different but it’s something that requires me to be creative and do what I think is best. Weird.

Of course part of the reason is she seems to think I am brilliant because I use “big” words all the time. She tells me how she tells everyone about my vocabulary. I don’t think this is brilliance. I just happen to have been raised to prize a good vocabulary and then I had a job that also valued that. It’s all culture not brilliance. Trust me. But I am happy to not have THAT argument with her :)

formally observed and i survived

“Ms.Flecha? The principal is coming. Please don’t start your minilesson yet.”

I hang up my phone and get my outer-calm, inner-panic act together and tell the kids who know to get their game faces on. I didn’t know what that would look like until I was in the middle of it.

Now, Readers lessons with my kids tend to go like the infamous Goldilocks – sometimes I scaffold too much, not enough, and just right. This time I think I managed to hit all three in one lesson, for better or for worse. Their game faces? Silent and obedient for the most part. I was shocked.

Biggest concerns and worries: the guided reading I did was not so hot. Kind of lacked in scaffolding and didn’t take them exactly where I wanted to go but they did read with the purpose I gave them (looking for cause and effect in events) and seemed to show comprehension, but they just didn’t do it with the graphic organizer I provided to them. Fine with me but not sure how the principal viewed it. I hope she has helpful ideas, friendly advice, a sense of optimism, and an S rating for me!

Linguistics

I am taking a linguistics class right now – sort of a “linguistics for teachers” course for my MA and I’m feeling so excited, rejuvenated and totally loving it. I have to read this New Yorker article and was just so entirely inspired by it — it makes me think so many things that I can’t even write about it yet, but I wanted to share, as well as share a link to a sound bite of the language being spoken.

Part of what makes the article interesting and Daniel Everett’s research controversial is that it is seen as a challenge to Chomsky’s universal grammar theory, which is so widely accepted (though also contested of course, as in any good scientific field).

Here are some other interesting and related articles you may like to explore:

• from Wired magazine
• from a linguistics blog
• from a radio program
• from the Guardian UK
• from Spiegel Online
• a paper from Everett on Recursion and Human Thought

Randi

Randi Weingarten is going to be at my school this week for a we-support-the-stimulus-pkg photo op. Why my school?

Countdown

2/2

Principal did not come today to observe me and is at a meeting Thursday so that leaves tomorrow, Wednesday, and Friday of this week to be observed, or I get to bite my nails all weekend for next week.

Update as of 2/5

Principal nearly came to me yesterday – the secretary even called to tell me to not start my lesson right away — but she apparently had me confused with another new teacher about to be observed, cuz she never came! All that insanity just to have it not happen! So more nervous waiting, over-preparing and wondering!!

Exactly what I feared..

Extremely worthwhile post from Miss Brave on grading the ELA. Reminds me of my experience grading the NYSESLAT, except we were grading our own students. Tests by ELLs really ought to be graded by teachers familiar with ELLs.

rudderless

I haven’t written in a while and I am expecting to be observed some time in the next two weeks, so I don’t have time now either, but I felt neglectful and had to drop by. Last week was pretty intense — aside from finding out I’m soon to be observed by my principal, who is so difficult to read, I’ve also got this enveloping anxiety over potential lay-offs and a powerlessness I confront when I feel I need to protect my students from their own parents. Not an experience worth having, I must say.

It’s only happened once before this most recent event (finding out about abuse of a student at the hands of a parent) but this time there was a twist.

One of my students was absent for a week – Thursday through Thursday – and when he returned on Friday, he told me simply, “They forgot to wake me up.” I sent him to the guidance counselor who eventually got the full story – mom and step-dad left for their country, leaving my student and his older-but-still-a-minor brother home alone for who-knows how long. They allegedly told their sons they’d return in a week or so, but who knows what to believe at this point? So, of course, the boys never went to school. Why he even showed up on Friday is a mystery to me.

And what at first seemed to just be educational neglect immediately became child endangerment, leaving the counselor and I to call ACS. And yet with no real way to make sure my student is safe or cared for. The uncertainty of his future eats me up. Couple that with the uncertainty of my professional future, and you can imagine the knots my stomach has been in. Ugh. And, like I said, I’m about to be observed. It’s like taking a major exam the day before you’re expelled. And if I am laid off what happens to my status with the Fellowship or my Masters? Can schools lay off ESL teachers, even if their new, given they need a certain number to remain in compliance? The fact that my supervisor didn’t know the answer to this and that her only reply to my wonder was, “They’ll go after money first” simply left me more confused.*

*I guess they could take Randi’s advice and offer retirement incentives. Maybe that’s what she was referring to.