Summer is finally here, and I appear to have survived my first semester of the teaching credential program intact. All that is left from last semester is to receive my grades, a prospect which I still face with more than a bit of trepidation and which keeps me from feeling complete closure. I say this even though the grades that I know, in two classes that I felt were somewhat marginal, have come back as solid A's.
It's funny how this whole grading thing causes so much stress and anxiety even after there really isn't anything left to be done about it. In almost twenty years of working as an engineer, I never had a dream about finishing a project late or even about losing my job, but that old cliche nightmare about "gee, it's time for finals and somehow I never remembered to go to my classes," has never stopped being a rare but disturbing visitor.
Anyway, aside from awaiting final word from "Those Who Shalt Judge," I now have the time to tell you all about how last semester went (or phase 1 of 3, as they rather like to call it). Well... I can't help but feel that the whole thing turned out a bit like a very large meal of exotic and spicy food. At first there was the excitement of the new flavors and tastes. Then there was a feeling of trepidation about how much you have just ingested and whether or not you can really digest it. Then towards the middle of the process there was pain and discomfort, and a feeling like you will never pass it successfully. Then there was an odd, but brief, period of calm where nothing much seemed to be going on. Then at the very last moment there is a period of prodigious output of questionable consistency and a feeling of sweet relief.
As for what I learned: I don't know if I got as much as I would have liked out of my various "theory" classes. It seemed like a lot of our effort wasn't very well aimed at what we need to know. What I would consider to be the "peripheral" classes, like Health Science and Anthropology of Education, were way more work than they should have been considering their relevancy, while some of the core classes, like Psychology of Instruction and Educating Exception Youth, seemed like they were toned down so as not to over stress us with our 19 unit work load.
However, I did get some chances to go in and observe real math classes in action, and I got a lot out of that. I observed almost a dozen different math teachers during the semester, and I got to see lot of different styles and levels of students. I learned that the students really aren't so bad - at least if they are being taught by a teacher who knows what he or she is doing. Also, I decided after putting together a few of my own math lesson plans that that aspect of teaching, at least, really isn't going to be that hard. Unlike history or English, math classes pretty much follow the book - and it's not like I don't know the material.
As for my fellow students: Out of the 24 people that started phase 1 with me in our "cohort," four of them will be leaving the group next semester for various reasons. One found out that his Peace Corp experience fulfills his student teaching requirement, so he is pretty much done. I will especially miss him, because he was a Cal Tech physics graduate, and aside from me he was the biggest computer nerd in the group. One woman is going to take a semester off to have a baby, and one of the guys is going to take a year off to follow his significant other to China for a year. One more student dropped out because he failed to complete his classes. He had a problem with a car break-in that caused him to lose a fair amount of his work, but I also think he was overloaded way before that because he was already well behind in his homework. He might try to start again another semester.
I'm not sure how all of the other students have done. I'm
guessing that the great bulk of them passed last semester with flying
colors. This is a smart, hard working group of people, and I
spent a large part of the semester knowing that I was behind most of
them. I'm really glad I wound up with this group. A couple
of our instructors told us this was probably the tightest cohort they
had ever seen go through this program. In fact, even after all
the classes are over we're all scheduled to meet at a fellow student's
house next week, and we have another get together planned for the
middle of summer.
I guess that pretty much brings this log up to date on my teaching adventure. Now that I have a real blog in place, I'll try to document the rest of my adventure a little more real time. I have a lot of plans for this summer. In fact, I was thinking of putting together a "to do" list, but I'm nervous about it because my mental list keeps getting longer and longer and I'm afraid that if I write it down I'll never live up to my ambitions.
In any case, I have a lot of free time right now, and I want to use a fair chunk of it to write, so check back soon - there will be more coming.