Day in the life of the teacher

Comments are no longer being accepted.
Sheryl Winsby September 29, 2006 · 1:18 am
I read your column because I attended Wichita Southeast over 40 years ago. Now, out of Kansas for many years, I hear little of what goes on there. Your day sounds very busy and too full of non-teaching type activities that compete for your time. I wonder how you like block scheduling. Your classes sound like they are making good use of the 90 minute period. Kudos to your for that and for planning such diverse activities for your classes. My daughter attends 10th grade in Delaware. Many of her classes do not seem so well-filled or well-planned. It often seems to me like block scheduling provides a study hall for each class so there will be little homework. This was not the case with biology last year where performing and analyzing experiments filled the block productively, but world history was dreadfully boring. I often wonder if block scheduling will become a discarded fad or a permanent part of our education scene. Perhaps that could be a topic you address as some point.
Joe Bellacero September 30, 2006 · 8:26 am
One of the things I’m really enjoying about reading these entries (besides the fact that teacher voices are finally being heard in a wide-reaching public forum such as the NY Times, albeit, in a section not everybody gets to see) is the enthusiasm and excitement each one of you has shown for the students’ talking, writing and reading to learn. This piece positively sparkles when you write about their perception in discussing the poems. Too often students, and even parents think that teachers consider boredom in class to be the pinnacle of achievement while the truth is we live for the crackling electricity of young minds grappling together with the questions of life. We hope that if we can teach them methods of listening to each other and incorporating what they hear into their own seeking for truth, that they will carry those skills with them and become peacemakers rather than propagandists in the world they inherit. When people talk about “the basics” too often they mean being subject/verb agreement or multiplying fractions–those are valuable tools, but they are not the basics. The real basics involve the ability to work with others in recognition that each of us only have a piece of the truth but together those pieces can add up to a powerful good for all.
One other thing, I must say, Stacie, that as a teacher coming from a 43 min.-per-class system, the idea of 90 minutes seems an unimaginable luxury. When we do a “jigsaw” (that’s what we call your expert group thing around here)I’m forever cracking the whip to keep them moving and it’s impossible to really dig into the pieces we are exploring and then presenting.