I wanted to share a post from TeachitWrite by Connie Casserly, a fellow TpT Seller! Her web site contains a blog called "From My Side of the Desk," filled with numerous posts worth checking out!
From
My Side of the Desk
What College Never
Taught Me:
After I handed the
professor my Teaching Of English
final exam, signaling the conclusion of my formal BS ED instruction, I
literally sprinted toward my future. I
was so pumped up with visions of adolescents gobbling up my lessons culled from
my Idea File and clamoring for,
“More, please, Mrs. C,” in my perfect classroom that Dr. Ryder’s last words
failed to register. “Remember,” he said, “we have been discussing theory. The realities you all will be facing in the
fall will probably be a bit different.” His words bounced off my ears like my
mother’s urgings to, “Eat burnt toast so the boys will like you.”
Ninety-six days later,
my lesson using lyrics from Bob Dylan, the Beatles and other folk rockers to
teach metaphor melted my students into eye-glazing stupors. Only then did the
irony of Dr. Ryder’s probably send
dreams of strangling him with the rope of profanities twisting through my frustrated
brain. The man had obviously never spent the eternity of fifty-five minutes on
a fall Friday afternoon experiencing the sensory explosion of a ninth grade
public school classroom.
This is what college never taught me:
1. Administrative Assistants
run the school. A friendly, “Good morning,” and an occasional chat about their
families will:
· garner
me that last ream of copy paper when my colleagues are rifling through the
recycled paper bins five minutes before the bell and I desperately need 50
copies of my Metamorphosis test.
· get
me a meeting with the principal about the mouthy kid I want to hang by his
thumbs when everyone else thinks he is, “Lunching with the superintendent.”
· insure
a heads up on Monday morning when the principal is checking out the “teaching
going on” and I planned Reading Time while I unscrambled my weekend sleepy
brain.
2. Custodians
can make my life heaven or hell. I
always pick up the day’s detritus left by my students, make sure my trash cans
aren’t the result of a “How Can we Pile the Junk before it Spills” contest,
clean my own white boards and deliver home baked goods before holidays to their
break room. This guarantees:
· a
bottle of white board cleaner when everyone else is told to, “Buy your own. The
district hasn’t authorized us to hand out our supply to teachers.”
· more
desks from their secret stash when the counselors have blessed me with five
more students than I have in my class.
· a
sweet cushioned office chair fresh off the truck before they send out an All
Staff email to, “Come and get one.”
3. Technology savvy students
are to be showered with smiles. They have saved my sanity more times than I can
count by:
· fixing
the connection between my computer and television so I can show that PowerPoint
I spent a gazillion hours designing.
· finding
the Editorial pages that magically disappeared twenty minutes before the
newspaper has to be sent to the printer to make deadline.
· showing
me how to add external links to my first-ever website.
4. Finally, College professors’ theories are like
the nursery rhyme girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead: When they
are good (reality-based) they are very good, but when they are bad (ivy tower
based) they are horrid.
Connie
