After our first week ended, I consulted my 4 syllabi and compiled a single list of homework for the following week.  It included over 500 pages of reading from our books in addition to reading a research article and a journal article, 3 papers, writing 2 lesson plans, an assortment of assessment plans, a 15 minute presentation, a research annotation, and a few other small assignments.

The workload definitely made me balk.  In other quarters we have started off easy, and worked up gradually to intense workloads.  It seems like this quarter we’re starting at the level of intensity that we ended with last quarter!  It’s been a hard quarter already, and I’ve had a number of nights with too little sleep, and it was all really starting to stress me out.

I had my start-of-the-quarter meeting with my faculty on Tuesday.  We chatted about how the quarter was going so far, and I told her that I was feeling really overwhelmed by the work.  We talked for a bit about how I’ve been handling the stress (apparently I don’t show it in class!), and then she told me I should stop working so hard.

Come again?

I can’t say I’ve ever had a teacher tell me to stop working hard.  I sat there and just looked at her for a minute, not really sure how to respond.  She asked if I thought I could do that, and I think I sputtered out something along the lines of “I’m not sure”.  And it’s the truth.  I can be a slacker, I did that in high school.  But that means me not caring, and that’s about the furthest from where I am now.  I care deeply about what I’m learning in this program.  I caught a cold after week 1 and still attended every class week 2 because I feel like if I miss a single class I might miss something vital for my future teaching.  I’m super engaged in what’s going on in this program, and everything seems relevant and important.  I don’t know how to be this engaged and not give it my all.

To which my faculty responded that she was then making it a “faculty order”.  She told me to stop reading everything, cut myself more slack on papers and presentations, and overall just stop working so hard.  When I explained my fear of missing something crucial, she said that I have a talent for finding patterns and putting pieces together, so even if I did miss something from one assignment, I’d catch it elsewhere.

It was definitely a nice boost for my academic confidence, but in it’s own way it presents me with a new challenge.  I have to figure out how to work, but not work hard.  As we talked more, my faculty shared another reason for her new order; there’s a lot of work to do as a teacher, and if you spend all your energy focused on the work you wont have any left for when you’re with your students.  She said that learning how to prioritize and to work smarter not harder is a skill that will serve us well as teachers.

So, now I’m focusing on not working hard.  It’s hard work not working hard, but I think I’ll figure it out.

And now I’m on spring break.  I’m back in California with my family, soaking up the sun and warm weather, reading a book that has nothing whatsoever to do with education, and spending time relaxing and recovering from the intensity of the quarter (I managed a cumulative 19.5 hours of sleep in the last five days of the quarter).  I’m looking forward to catching up on some writing, as a lot of topics have been going through my head all quarter waiting to be spelled out.

I’m also planning to spend part of my break starting on work for next quarter.  My plan is to at least start the quarter ahead, though I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to stay that way.  The frightening thought is that next quarter looks even more intense than this last one!  But the good news is that I’ve invested way too much, am way too stubborn, and love this program way too much to ever think about quitting :)

This makes for super limited time.  Also contributing: this week we have to examine Grade Level Expectations for our endorsement area and pick a topic to do a practice lesson on, read about research for a workshop on types of research, continue our literacy reading and write a paper for that on Friday, and compile our practicum notes into a legible and organized binder to turn in on Friday.

I’m going a little bit nuts, saved mostly by the fact that I joined the newly formed running group in my cohort.

In conclusion, there have been numerous very exciting topics that I want to write about that I haven’t had a chance to; literacy, literacy and empowerment, my practicum, civics education day, and so on.  I’m hoping after the first scholarship is turned in this weekend I might have some breathing space.  Really hoping.  But I guess this is the reality of grad school.

I had one of those in a small group seminar.  We were discussing Cohen’s book “Designing Groupwork” and relating it to Dewey’s “Experience and Education”.  We discussed for a while how a lot of Cohen’s philosophies and practices seem very constructivist, which we all approved of.

Last quarter we’d had our introduction into constructivism and behaviorism.  We studied theories about both, watched videos to identify differences when applied to teaching, and compared the effects of each on student learning.  My conclusion was that constructivism was better by far, as it facilitated a student creating meaning through their learning.  In a way I had a very negative reaction to behaviorism, which I dismissed as shallow, and more akin to programing than learning.

However, as we discussed some of Cohen’s proposed methods for “training” students to be able to handle collaborative heterogenous groupwork, we realized they sounded an awful lot like behaviorism.  The groupwork itself and a lot of her theories about education were very constructivist, so our discussion was a little thrown off by the emergence of this behaviorist view.  Which is Cohen, we asked ourselves, a behaviorist or a constructivist?

Enter Dewey.  One of Dewey’s points was about pedagogical theories themselves.  He noticed in his time that there was a trend in progressive education of defining itself based on what it was not- traditional education.  Rather than shaping progressive education towards something, those leading the way were defining it in reaction to traditional education, doing the opposite of what had been done simply to not be traditional.  Dewey cautioned against this approach, and suggested instead that best practices from any pedagogical theory should be retained if they have proven effective.

In discussing whether Cohen’s work was more constructivist (which I approved of) or behaviorist (which I didn’t like), Dewey’s cautions about dismissing pedagogical practices and his support for using a mixture of effective practices dawned as a new perspective in my mind.  It didn’t matter whether Cohen herself favored constructivist or behaviorist, she could use both if it created a workable teaching and learning situation.  Which is exactly what it did.

With this insight in mind, I took another look at Cohen’s proposed methods of training to foster groupwork.  It makes sense.  Students are not born with an innate ability to effectively collaborate in heterogenous groups, they need to learn skills and practices for doing so.  A behaviorist approach to creating such an environment allows a teacher to bring out behaviors that will pave the way for groupwork to succeed.  Groupwork that, by it’s nature, operates on a constructivist principle.

It’s not an either-or scenario, we don’t have to choose between pedagogical schools.  Rather, analyze practices for what they offer, and don’t be afraid to incorporate seemingly contrasting ideas.  They might add up to something unique.

It was actually my first full day in a high school in probably a decade.  I graduated about eight years ago, but my junior and senior year of high school I was able to leave early because I had enough credits.  The last time I probably had a full day of high school was when I was in 10th grade myself!

I’m really excited about being able to observe and work with my mentor teacher.  He’s an alum from Evergreen’s MIT program, and seems to hold a lot of the same views and beliefs about education that I do.  It’s also great because I get to watch how he reacts to the crazy things high school students do.  And they do some crazy things!

For example, in one period, a student took the bathroom pass and disappeared for 5-10 minutes.  When he re-entered the classroom, he was carrying two drinks fresh from Starbucks.  Yes, he had taken the bathroom pass, left campus, gone to Starbucks, bought drinks for himself and a friend, and came back to class.  I would never have even thought that my students might leave in the middle of class to go to Starbucks!  But I thought my mentor teacher handled it well.  He was standing by the door when the student came in, and fixed him with an incredulous look.

“I was only gone, like, five minutes” said the student

“You know what would make me feel better about this?” the teacher said.

“If I’d brought you one too?” the student asked.  I, meanwhile, was trying hard to keep a straight face.  It looked like my mentor teacher had the same struggle.

“No.  If I see you working the rest of the period.  And if you hand in your essay to me.” the teacher said.

The student had already gone and come back, so really, what could a teacher do in that situation?  Punish him?  You could, but I liked this approach of using the situation to get the student to actually work.  And he did, rather diligently, for the rest of the period.

There were other entertaining instances throughout the day.  Several students saw me when they walked in and asked “Do we have a sub?”.  Their teacher, standing right next to them, replied “Umm, no.  I’m right here.”  I was also mistaken for my mentor teacher’s wife by some students, and as a parent of a student by another teacher (me, the parent of a teenager!).  I suppose it’s better than being mistaken for a student, but really, don’t rush me.

There was, of course, one student who worked at getting a reaction from me and testing to see if he could push my buttons.  He came up to me several times while I was writing my observations and said to me “I love you.  I just want you to know that.”  Then he would go sit down again.  After a few rounds of this I gave him my best “We Both Know Exactly What You’re Doing So Why Don’t You Actually Get To Work” look, and he didn’t repeat it again.

It was a great day overall, and very exciting.  It made me realize that one very valuable aspect to this practicum will be seeing how my mentor teacher reacts to students and the things that come up.  Listening to the stories from second years at the potluck, and remembering from previous observations I’ve done and time I’ve spent in classrooms, I know that part of being a teacher is developing the fine art of reacting (or not) to students and incidents in the classroom.

I’m looking forward to learning a lot from my mentor teacher about this and many other aspects of teaching!

So today we had a potluck with both cohorts, in order for us to be able to get to know each other, and especially for us first years to pick the brains and draw on the experiences of those in the second year.  It was pretty awesome, and a good turn out.  It was nice to meet people who had already experienced this year, and who were fresh from their first round of student teaching and from turning in their final drafts of their Masters papers.

Among the conversations I had, I made a point of asking what tips and bits of advice they wished they’d heard a year ago.  Some of the more common responses I got were:

-Be organized!  And to start organized, not try to work it out late in the quarter.

-Make sure your relationships are solid going into it.

-Don’t stress over reading every sentence of all of the texts, skimming is your friend.  If you try to read them all, you will go insane.

-Keep up on your friendships, and make good friends with folks in your cohort.  Time with friends is essential for sustaining sanity.

-Find a few folks you match up well with academically and study together.

I think I’ve been doing well with most of these.  There were other useful insights people shared too.  Some people talked about how great it was to write their Masters paper because they found a topic they’re really passionate about.  Others talked about how each quarter of the program seems to be more intense than the last.  And it was great to hear about their experiences student teaching, it’s made me very excited to get to that point!

The second year cohort also started with 43 students, same as ours.  They are down to 31 now.  That was a shock to most of the folks in my cohort.  We can’t imagine losing twelve of us!  Strangely, they also lost every one of their secondary social studies endorsements, thought they seemed to think that was just a coincidence.  It is weird to think of anyone dropping out or being dropped.  We’ve spent ten weeks so far bonding as a group, so it’s strange to think of anyone not being part of it anymore.  And I can only imagine the feeling will be stronger after another quarter together.  But maybe we’ll break a record and not lose anyone.

In the meantime, it’s nice to gain a little perspective from the second years, and to share our collective enthusiasm for our pursuit of becoming great teachers.

We started back with a hefty reading assignment on multiculturalism and multicultural education due yesterday.  I noticed while reading that my attention span seemed to have decreased over break, as I was pretty much distracted by anything and everything every few minutes.

We also started class yesterday with our customary Tuesday 3 hour lecture.  I’m not a big lecture person, but I developed strategies last quarter that seemed to work, including taking copious notes (even though we’re given the powerpoint printout) and bringing snacks.  My strategies didn’t seem to up to scratch yesterday though.  I found myself struggling to stay awake and to bring my focus back to the lecture multiple times.  I maintain that sitting through lectures is really a very unnatural thing, and it takes practice and training to be able to do so effectively.  Winter break definitely got me out of shape.

We also were divided into our new seminar groups for this quarter.  I’m with about half of the people who were in my seminar last quarter, and we have a new faculty leading it.  It’s a bit early to really have an opinion, but from our first two hours I’m optimistic about the group and the discussions we’ll have.

Today we had our first workshop of the quarter and got back into doing groupwork.  Before this program groupwork had been the bane of my academic existence, but I’ve really come to appreciate it and rely on it for helping me understand texts and concepts like the Deweyian ones we worked with today.

Tomorrow is a very exciting first day for this quarter.  It’s the first day of our practicum!  Mine is at Shelton High, in 10th grade World Studies.  I’ve very excited about having this weekly hands-on class-time experience.  I’m less excited about getting up at 5:30 am for it.  But at least I have a colleague to carpool with!

We ended with a program potluck at Evergreen’s organic farmhouse, a cozy little building on the farm surrounded by trees and gardens.  The faculty had a few things planned; some reflection on things that worked well and things that need work within the program, brainstorms on what we as students and they as faculty can do/change/continue to improve our learning community, and going over the thirteen page syllabus for next quarter.

Then we ate.  It was a lot of fun.  This group is good at bringing really yummy varieties of food.  We’re also pretty close as a cohort.  Someone mentioned that day that they really appreciated the community we had, and that they felt they could go to anyone in our cohort and ask for help, and any one of us would be willing to help and do what we can.  There was general agreement on that.  It’s pretty amazing, because even with a variety of personalities and temperaments we’ve managed to forge a pretty tight community.  I think it’s part of what has made this program such a fantastic experience.

We also turned in our portfolios that day.  These are our Advancement to Candidacy Portfolios, and were a rather massive project.  The faculty assigned three themes for our portfolios, and we had to collect evidence from our work throughout the quarter to support who we are according to each theme, and then we had to write a reflective essay explaining our assembly.  That took most of the week to put together, and involved long hours of sorting through piles of work, making copies, cutting and pasting, writing reflections, and organizing.  It was a big project, but I felt really good about the portfolio I turned in.

And then the quarter ended.  The only thing left was an evaluation conference with my faculty.  There was, of course, a lot of celebrating at happy hour that night.  We were all quite proud of having survived our first quarter in the program!

Evergreen has no grades, and instead uses a system of narrative evaluations.  While it does make the process of assessment a lot more personal and relevant, it also makes it more complicated.  Each student has a faculty sponsor (the one who leads the seminar you’re in).  Each faculty writes a narrative evaluation of the student, each student writes a narrative evaluation of the faculty, and each student writes a narrative evaluation of themselves.  And at the end of each quarter, there are individual evaluation conferences between each student and faculty to discuss all of these evaluations.  There’s lots of evaluating that goes on at Evergreen.

I had my eval conference on Tuesday, and it was fantastic.  My faculty had a great eval of me, as well as feedback on my portfolio and my synthesis paper.  It was the longest and most productive eval conference I’ve ever had, and we really talked about what I felt I’d done well, places where I can continue working to develop, goals for next quarter, and just general thoughts about being in the program thus far.

Plus, I got all of my credits and am officially “advanced to candidacy”.  One step closer to becoming an awesome teacher and saving the world through education!

And now it’s winter break, and I’m back in California to celebrate the holidays with friends and family.  Part of my plans for break is to catch up on writing about a number of topics that I have either started to and never finished, or wanted to and never started.  One thing I’ve noticed about grad school; I get so caught up in the work I sometimes don’t even remember to eat dinner, much less keep up on my blog!  But I’m hoping to play catch up a bit over break.

But for now, it was a very merry end of the quarter, and I have to say that I feel quite proud of myself for the work that I’ve done and the amount I’ve grown just over the last eleven weeks.  I can’t wait to see what the remaining 5 quarters will bring!

For those who aren’t familiar with Evergreen-speak, each quarter is divided into ten weeks, and greeners generally refer to the date by which week it is.  Week 10 is the very last week of classes, followed only by eval week, which is a week devoted to evaluation conferences with faculty (because we have narrative evaluations instead of grades).  This is the home stretch.

We have a rather large essay question response assignment due today, and our Advancement to Candidacy Portfolios due on Friday.  We have class today and tomorrow, an observation on Thursday, and our end of the quarter potluck on Friday.  It’s all coming to a close, and in a matter of days we’ll all be headed separate ways for our winter break!

Before that happens, I have a very exciting meeting to look forward do.  I got in touch with the teahcer who will be supervising my practicum for the next two quarters, and on Thursday I’m headed out to observe his 6th period class and then meet with him after class.  There I’ll get to see what he’s like, we’ll get to talk about what I’ll be doing, and he’ll fill me in on what subjects I need to review for class.  I’m definitely looking forward to that!

I also had a great impromptue meeting ysterday at a coffee shop.  I was there doing homework, and as I was packing up my things to leave the two guys at the table next to me asked if I was an MIT student.  We don’t exactly wear shirts advertising who we are, so I said yes and asked how they knew.  Turns out they’re both second year MIT students (they were all doing student teaching this quarter, so we don’t really know any of them), and they recognized one of my books.  We laughed about the signature nature of this book for the program, and I pulled over a chair to chat.

It was great to pick their brains and ask the questions my colleagues and I have been asking each other without any good answers.  For example, we will not have any assigned readings or homework per say during our student teaching, though we will have to do data collection and reach certain benchmarks in our teachings.  We wont have additional classes during student teaching, but we will have a weekly seminar that will function mostly as a check in.  We also talked about the cohort bonding as a community, which mine has definitely done, and about the experience of being in the program.  It was really refreshing to hear the perspective of two people who are in their second year and still share the same enthusiasm that I do now.  It gave me a little boost of energy that was ever so helpful in finishing my essay assignment.

Though they did reflect that winter quarter of first year was far more intense than fall quarter had been.  But hey, we’e got winter break to recharge and be ready to meet that challenge!