In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Four Days

Lauren

Roughly four days and you may never see me again (to answer some readers’ hopes and prayers). I’ll be student teaching. I imagine it will appear something like this:

Hellfire, caffeine, and books. Sort of like college. Or high school.

I have no idea how much free time this experience will leave me, but I don’t expect I will have much time to blog about anything but my navel. I only know two things: 1) 99% of student teachers cry at least once the first week, and 2) if I just buck up and do this, sayonara to undergrad in less than ten weeks. Finally.

Fingers crossed, Kleenex ready.

LEGO Me via Rana

25 thoughts on Four Days

  7. I wish you the best of luck, Lauren.

    And you’ll have something to blog about when you get your hands on the gifts we got you at the Kinsey Institutes book sale. Ta!

  9. In four days you start student teaching.

    In 8 days I anticipate an outcry of parents about the “feminist indoctrination” their kids are getting from the new student teacher.

    More power to you.

  10. I always swore that should I ever actually get my own classroom, I would prepare to be fired within five years.

    In 8 days I anticipate an outcry of parents about the “feminist indoctrination” their kids are getting from the new student teacher.

    I wish. But no politics allowed.

    I don’t know what I’ll talk about… Literature?!

  17. I’m so very proud to see you moving up the academic ladder. I always thought you had ‘teacher’ in you and who knows where this could lead? It’ll certainly pad your ever-expanding resume out very nicely.
    I fully expect to see you on the $20,K a ‘pop’ lecture circuit within the next five years. So keep up the fantastic work.

  18. Ah, Masculiste has a great idea, there.

    And Norbizness’ music suggestion, I would definitely try to play some music, at some point at least. Would your teacher allow that? A professor last year would always have music playing before class. It was great, since it was an 8:30AM class, to walk into a classroom with good tunes playing. Set the mood perfectly.

  19. My wife is teaching english to that exact age, except that she’s teaching it in a competitive-admission public school here in San Francisco. The kids from this school usually go on to Harvard, Berkeley or Stanford, and they can get a little obsessive about their grades.

    Clearly, not the typical teaching experience. So I’m not saying your experience will match hers, but she does love it. She didn’t cry even once during student teaching. But she did work pretty hard. All I can say is – don’t assign more than you can grade. One of her teacher colleagues describes it this way: “It’s a pipeline. Nothing new goes in the pipeline until the last thing comes out of the pipeline.” My wife didn’t follow this rule at first, and she ended up with stacks of essays to grade that were, I kid you not, 150 deep. You don’t want to face a mountain like that all at once.

    English teachers live or die by the pacing of their assignments. Don’t make them all essays – sure, you need to teach them to write, but for your own sake you’ll need to add in some things that count toward their grade but don’t take as long to grade as an essay.

    I’m sure you already know this stuff – but trust me, you will need more non-essay components than you think you will.

    I’m sure you’ll make a great teacher. The fear fades quickly, and soon it will feel perfectly natural.

  20. Actually, I need to amend that pipeline idea. What he said was “Nothing new goes in the pipeline until SOMETHING comes out of the pipeline.”

    To wait until the last thing came out of the pipeline would be unrealistic, obviously. You’d never get anything done.

  22. In 8 days I anticipate an outcry of parents about the “feminist indoctrination” their kids are getting from the new student teacher.

    More power to you.

    That just made me shudder.

Comments are currently closed.