Week 1
- Maria Pairitz
- Aug 24, 2017
- 5 min read
I'm going to start with a summer recap and then move on to reflect on my first day back at my mentorship! So this past June my mom resigned from her job because administration and fellow teachers in her department were hostile and unsupportive while seeking accommodation for her kidney disease (she is at 19% function and needs a transplant in the near future) through keeping a part time position as a dance teacher and dropping her coaching contract for color guard. It was extremely difficult for her and our entire family. I was literally nauseated at the way the school handled the entire situation. I had held out hope that they would do the right, COMPASSIONATE thing, but they failed and she needed to leave for not only her own physical, but also mental health. I hope I never have to experience what she went through. And if you can't tell from my tone, I still feel unresolved and deeply angered today. I have also dedicated three years to helping develop and build the color guard program there and after watching what happened to my mom I knew I could not and would not work for Concord High school ever again. It was hard for me, because I went into teaching with the longterm goal of teaching art at Concord and being the color guard director there, so to have my "purpose" in life ripped away was difficult. It hurts to know a place I considered home as unwelcoming and volatile towards me and my family now.
I knew I wanted to continue teaching color guard and knew I could not do it at Concord, so I took a leap and applied to be an instructor at a high school my boyfriend teaches drumline at. I had to deal with a lot of insecurity about not being qualified or skilled enough to teach at another high school and whether or not I would work well with new staff, if I would be too inhibited being in a new environment that I wouldn't be able to do my job etc. But I got the job and I had the most amazing experience with Penn High School's color guard. I developed great relationships with my students and co-workers, I have a newfound confidence in myself, and I learned a lot comparing my experience at Concord with my new experience at Penn. I am so grateful for the opportunity to work with them and grateful to have found a new home.
More good news from this summer: My mom found a donor! A distant relative who responded to her mass letter that was forwarded to her through closer relatives. She still has to go through testing to make sure she is a suitable donor, but so far she is a match!
Onto my mentorship! Yesterday was fantastic! I missed Ms. O and was really happy to be back at Fishers. Ceramics 1 is working on building a coil vessel that is a mashup of a historical piece and a contemporary piece of art. They are still in the planning stage and what they have to do is create an inspiration/vision board that include pictures of their two pieces and sketches of what elements they want to incorporate from each piece and how they plan to merge them to make it one cohesive artwork. This is literally the coolest coil pot lesson I've ever seen. So great to have such creative teachers to work with! Below are two examples of the vision boards and the completed project.
I'm excited for Ceramics 1 because Ms. O wants me to lead the unit on wheel throwing. I'm going to be able to collect a lot of good evidence during this time.
Intro to 3D classes took a test over the elements and principles of art and then began sketching ideas for the wire shoe project. I helped grade the tests throughout the day and I found it interesting when one class did really poor and then the class after performed extremely well. I asked Ms. O why she believes this happens and she thinks it's because the previous class is chaotic. She has 5 special ed students in the class, some who are actually taking the class as Pass/Fail and some who are kind of "auditing" the class and do their own thing. She said that most of these students frequently have behaviors and it's hard for her to teach the rest of the class when they are being so distracting. These students do have student helpers, but one of the students gets physical when he has behaviors and his helper is a small female. Another student has seizures frequently so Ms. O is always nervous that is going to occur during one of her classes. Anyway, point being, this particular class is hectic and distracting. She is very welcoming and accommodating towards special ed, inviting students to come in whenever they want, but this class she has been asking the teachers of some of the special ed students "auditing" the class to keep them in their regular class sometimes so she can focus on the rest of her class.
AP and IB has 20 students this year which is crazy! Ms. O had me create an assignment for their breadth portfolio and she really liked it. I've attached it below. She said she'll have me introduce the project on one of the days I'm in class.
During lunch the art staff talked about a new initiative administration is implementing for high school teachers. For parent teacher conferences, instead of sending out a flyer and having parents sign up for slots as usual, the teachers are being asked to contact the parents of students who are doing poorly in class and offer time slots for them first and then open it up to the parents of high achieving students. And instead of making themselves available for 3 hours during parent teacher conferences, they are required to fill every 15 minute time slot and if a parent does not show up they have to cold call other parents during that slot. Obviously, this new system is not favored by the teachers whatsoever and I have to agree. I understand that usually parents of high achieving students are the one's who will take the initiative to sign up for conferences, but making them identify poor students and basically doing the parent's job by making sure the parent does come to a conference is excessive. Not to mention the fact that they have to fill up all of their slots or make up that time in meetings with parents during another week. It just seems like that is a ton of extra work for a teacher to make sure a parent is being a parent, which is not our job.
I'm excited for the rest of the semester with Ms. O! I have made it a goal to learn everyone's names within the first week or two. It's hard since I'm only there once a week, but I think it's very important because I did not like trying to talk to students last semester and not know their names even after being there for 10 weeks.
I am collecting evidence currently for Classroom Management/Culture and it will be the first of four expectations I submit this semester. I plan to have all 16 at SP before I student teach so I have a basis for all of my expectations that I can add on to when I have evidence from student teaching.
This LINK is my action plan for this semester's expectations.
Thanks for reading!
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