I would be lying if I didn't say I was disappointed. I guess at the heart of this deep, heart wrenching, disappointment is the fact that I was witnessing my biggest fear...teaching out of a book. No creativity, no activities, just a teacher proposing questions from a "teacher's edition" textbook. Students copying things off a white board to study for a test, which will also come from a book. "There's no time to make my own tests." "There's too may students." These are but a few of the comments I have heard since I met my cooperating teacher last week. I am not trying to be judgmental here. I understand that she may be struggling with over-sized classes and lack of time, but really, is there no room for some creativity within this curriculum? I saw many kids who were excited to answer questions, but I saw just as many yawning alongside me.
I guess I hoped that even if I worked in a school that required me to follow a curriculum with a text book that I would find some way out of it. At least find a way to make it more fun. Interestingly enough, we just encountered a case study situation like this in one of our texts for Practicum. A teacher was required to follow a strict curriculum and she wanted to introduce more diverse texts. The school required her to teach these specific authors. The question was what does she do now. My answer was: this is my worst fear. My professor suggested incorporating the texts the teacher wanted to use with the required ones. Look at the differences, make it relevant to students. Makes sense. But that was high school...
We'll see what the next three weeks holds for me. This is only day one and I will remain optimistic that I will find more positives than negatives in the days to come. In the meantime, I ponder (one of the vocabulary words on the whiteboard today) what I will teach these students in week three, and how I will make it engaging and fun to learn out of a textbook. Challenge accepted!
