Let it snow, let it snow...let it snow...

i am experiencing a very proud moment here where i am holding strong to my word and posting for a second time in as many days. good job mark! i'm finding myself back at work on yet another sunday evening and it is undoubtedly one that i wish i was home, curled up under a blanket, with some good munchies and zero academic responsibilities! soon enough, soon enough. in the meantime, it is quiet here tonight...and with the expected bad weather (hopefully) rolling in anytime now, it will remain this way. especially since my brainstorming last evening wasn't all that productive. what i did come up with regarding my unit plan for 511 is that i would like to conceptualize a unit in a area of my content where i am not all that strong (or confident)...for example, maybe world religions or The Roman Empire...??? something that will be more of a challenge than my usual approach to these assignments being focused around areas of strength such as Colonial America, Native Americans, or the Revolutionary Period...all stuff i love dearly but am very familiar (and confident) with!

now, with that said...let's cover todays thought! i have been in contact within the past hour or so with two very close friends, both local educators and they are both sharing these emotions of excitement, wonder, curiosity, and hope that they will both find themselves tomorrow at 630am not having to dig out a car and sludge their way to there schools. it is really hilarious listening to them! it has been almost a full year and a half since i have been employed by a school district but i do recall these nights, especially those falling on either a Thursday or Sunday, both providing for the potential of an "extended weekend". once or twice, i may even recall having to go to bed wearing my sleep garb inside-out, at least that is what my 6th graders at the time told me to do...??? anyways, just a minor, but very humoruous observation that teachers find themselves on these nights almost in more anticipation than their students when it comes to snow days...!!!

Good luck to all who are hoping, wishing, and falling asleep tonight with their pj's on inside-out that tomorrow brings that ever so exciting "day off from school".

The Home Stretch...

well, with just about 2-weeks remaining in the Fall 2007 semester...it is now "crunchtime"! with a historiographic essay to be written on ben franlin, a unit plan, a few minor revisions, one final online exam, and a few more of these posts on blogspot...i can almost see that "light at the end of the tunnel"...and boy, i am excited.

i can't recall any other time in my academic life that i have needed and looked forward to a break as much as i currently am. by far my most demanding graduate semester, mixed in with some major life changes, a move which took me from Clifton Park to Watervliet (yeah right, what was i thinking?)...well, i really don't recall much of anything this semster. it has simply flown by at the blink of an eye.

with over a handful of these posts remaining and limited time to complete them in, i am dedicating myself to write a brief post each day until i have reached the required 15 in total...and thus will have completed yet another assignment this semester.

for now, i am looking onward to brainstorming and eventually conceptualizing my thematic unit plan due in just a few days! here is a persoanl thought. something i am most definitely looking forward to over the break in between Fall and the start of the Spring semester (1/22/08)...is to do some FREE READING! a good book, nothing historical, and maybe even something fictional, who knows...??? i have had both Teacher Man and The Kite Runner sitting on my book shelf since mid-summer...maybe either one of those will do. YES, i simply cannot wait!

till tomorrow

As an aspiring historian and a soon to be educator, I wanted to write briefly on the topic of the Thanksgiving holiday that children, adolescents, and young adults will be celebrating across the nation in just a few days from now. In a time and age when myspace, facebook, youtube, NFL football games, and Playstation III will assuredly all be equal parts of the upcoming holiday season, I feel that it will be upon me to bring to light how integral the events were that played out in the woods, just off the Atlantic Ocean on Cape Cod in 1621 (I think...some historian).

By integral I not only mean for the English colonist but also the Wampanoag Indians that inhabited the southeastern shore of Massachusetts at this time. It was the first contact period for most natives and definitely as much for the English, who assuredly only heard tales and saw depictions of the natives as savage beasts.

When we view this event, at this time we are looking at the veins of what would soon be a new nation found, The New World discovered. From these early encounters on, the world in which we all live currently, in which we all succomb to those holiday vices (i.e. Playstations, Guitar Hero's, myspace, instant messaging, and text messaging), well, that world seized to exist by the encounters on that Cape Cod Beach, for us as European and African descendants and most defintely for the natives that lived off of these lands.

No matter where or what the upcoming holiday holds for us, it will be my duty, and one that I am assuredly looking forward to to engage the minids of my students in order for them to gain a real sense of what exactly this Thanksgiving holiday means to peoples everywhere.

Just a thought...Happy Thanksgiving. Someone's cell phone is ringing!

FREEDOM WRITERS

so, moving along with the likes of Educating Esme, the movie Freedom Writers depicts through motion picture the "rookie" year of teacher Erin Gruyell. Known as Ms "G." to her students, this is the true story of how a single teacher had lasting impact on the lives of her inner city students whom that many were caught up in the life of gangs and violence.

by no means the biggest of Hilary Swank fanatics, i felt as though the movie was a good story of what can be accomplised when a single individual shows the determination that Ms. "G" did in attempting to change the lives and educational experiences of her students. although some would probably agree that the story and the setbacks to Erin's life were unrealistic in the sense that she basically chose her students over her own life and that of her husbands, i feel it is more of a story of potential "obstacles" that may be encountered by rookie educators. from the beatup old classroom with little to no equipment with grafitti written all over the desks to coming across certain individual that will only tell you that "YOU CAN'T or "YOU SHOULDN'T"...in many ways this story overlaps with what Esme encountered in her rookie year in the Chicago school system.

i enjoyed the movie. probably both more than i had expected and would like to admit but would have liked there to have been more time devoted to either the classroom discussion of the film or something to the effect that wold have held us onto a standard to watch the film (i.e. writing assignment, quiz, etc.). for me, during a severly stressful academic week...if I knew there would be no grade assigned to watching this movie, I probable would have utilized the 2+ hours slightly different, say perhaps working on this very painful 502 Literature Review...!

Educating Esme

So last night just before I decided to call an end to yet another day, for the second consecutive night I picked up EDUCATING ESME and this time was unable to put it down. What an absolutely incredible read! A few weeks prior, as a class we got into a community cirle and were asked to state our thoughts on the MAT Program at Sage Graduate School and what we thought about its benefits and conversely the drawbacks. At the time, I had little of a genuine response in regards to my personal experiences thus far at SGS. I did however agree with a few of my colleagues that we needed more of an individualized effort to train effective teaching strategies towards our specific content areas. As it currently stands, we receive a great deal of content coverage, as well as a highly effective emphasis on educational aspects in the classroom but little in regards to a combiniation of the two!

Over the past two evenings, I have been encountered with one of the more beneficial readings I have thus encountered here at Sage. EDUCATING ESME is a treasure for soon to be educators and a resource that all graduate students across the education curriculum should read. I felt that it did a superb job in painting the picture of the pitfalls, triumphs, and all else in between of a first year teacher, and in this case at a rough and tough inner city school in Chicago.

Personally, for me this will be without a doubt a reference that I will take away from my time here at SGS. A tool, a resource, a motivator, and more so a reminder that I am not, nor will I ever be in this position solely by myself. While reading ESME, I found myself once again so very excited about the field that I have chosen to enter. I used to comment that I was sure that education is without a doubt why I was professionally put here on this planet but this has begun to spill out into all aspects of my life. Yes, professinally speaking, I know I will be an effective teacher...but I find myself more and more being a teacher, mentor, motivator, and all else in between to children and adolescents on a daily basis. EDUCATING ESME was a read that continued to build this massive amount of already existing excitement within me for my soon to be own, experiences in education!

E-Mail Exchanges with Mr. Peter Sipe

The following is an exchange of e-mails between Mr. Sipe and myself in regrads to his article Newjack: Teaching in a Failing Middle School. I was motivated to reach out to him after the class discussion last week in which it appeared that the class was emotionally charged and somewhat split down the middle on the contents of the article.

Mr. Sipe,

Good evening! By no means do you know me but I am a 2nd yr. graduate
student at Sage Graduate School in Troy, NY (Upstate). I am about 10 months
away from my student teaching where I will enter the realm of secondary
education...content area being social studies. Anyways, I will do my best
to get to the point in matter here. In a class titled Literacy for Teaching
Interdisciplinary Approaches, our class debated the article you had written
sometime ago comparing your 1st year as an educator at a "hard-to-staff"
school in NYC to that of a correction officer's rookie year at Sing Sing,
interesting. The class was equally divided I'd say in either agreeing or
disagreeing with what you offered us in your article. Some would have acted
with similar thoughts, some thought you utterly failed your students but no
matter what side my peers were on, it was interesting to see the emotions
that this article stirred in all of us.

I'd like to ask you your take on all of this? Where are you now? Have you
moved on to greener pastures, preferrably in a suburban district somehwere
in Westchester Co.? My peers, and I were left with so many unanswered
questions. Who knows, maybe someone equally as touched (or curious) as I am
is writing to you this very second. Before I end all this, let me share
with you my take!

My initial reading of this article left me looking basicallly at what was
on the immediate surface, like many academic readings leave me. But this
one forced me to soon after completing it to really wonder what was your
TRUE motivation behind writing it? I asked whether or not it may have been
somewhat of a personal experiment? Maybe something authors and writers do
to get the inside scoop on reality of a profession. I thought maybe your
parents were school teachers of some sort, and that has left you with this
burning desire for education reform, and this was your contribution to let
the general public become aware of the harsh realities of the NYC school
system (or maybe even the perplexing idea of the New York City Teahing
Fellowship)?

.........the questions could go on and on forever it seems but until I know
for sure that this is an e-mail address that you most certainly check, this
is what I will leave you with for now! I do appreciate a reply and thank
you for your piece. Must be something to know that your work sparked heated
debate in a classroom in Upstate NY of 15+ (soon to be educators) graduate
students. Hey, maybe that was the sole motivation behind the article...to
become "famous"...?

good night -mark a. condor

(the following was Mr. Sipe's resonse to me just a day or two after my initial e-mail)


Mr. Condor -

thank you for your message and for your very kind words.

I would say, very simply, that I wrote the piece out of anger. I wrote it
during my second year as a Teaching Fellow, when I'd come to the conclusion
that our school was a profound failure. It appeared to me that the building
in which I worked didn't merit the term "school," due to its lack of success
in educating children. What angered me even more, however, was the
un-remarkability of this failure. The school simply carried on, as it had
done for years, churning out students, most of whom could not read or write
(and had the state exam scores to prove it). Had I been working in a
hospital with a similar rate of failure, I can't imagine that there would
not be some grave consequence for both the staff and institution. Yet, at
my school, we all drew salaries, stayed on, transferred, or quit, and
students kept entering and then graduating uneducated.

(Another factor in writing the piece was that I was taking a class, for my
teaching degree, for which I had to write a term paper. That kind of
spurred me to put these thoughts together!)

I'm still a teacher. I now teach at Williamsburg Collegiate Charter School
in Brooklyn, not very far from where I taught as a Teaching Fellow, teaching
essentially the same students as those who attended the school described in
my piece. WCCS is a very good school (and we have the state exam scores to
prove it), and I'm quite happy there. It has, to a great degree, restored
my faith in public education for the underserved.

I wish you the best in your studies, and thank you again for contacting me.

-Peter

Sir Ernest Shackleton Article

Well, I have just completed the first two article readings that are due this upcoming class meeting (Tuesday, 9/11) and have to admit that by far I took more away from Katz article on the Sir Ernest Shackleton thematic unit than the Boyd article on multiculturalism. Although both were very informative, albeit in different ways, the Katz article did an exceptional job of laying out (to the day) how a 4-6 week thematic unit can be approached surronding a nonfiction book. What I found to be most beneficial was how the developers of this unit implemented a number of strategies that covered many intelligence areas. My favorites included the "frontloading" approaches (i.e. Directed Viewing-Thinking Activity and Character Quotes) used to spark interest in a given text. Immediately in the introduction of the Katz article, it is stated that the developers of that unit had set out to build a "template in which, with few exceptions, a teacher could plug any book and happily and effectively teach reading content for four to six weeks" (Katz, 38). Undoubtedly, I see that the developers succeeded in their attempts and in doing so, have given me as an aspiring educator a tool to build any thematic unit around.

Great Job!