If you were not already aware – I am currently enrolled in college in hopes of becoming an English teacher. My long term goal is to teach in college. To get there, I am first going to become a high school English teacher. Why would I start there? For a good many reasons, one being that I don’t have the money to earn my doctorate any time soon. A second reason is pedagogical in nature.
I want to actually learn HOW to TEACH. Professors earn their ability to teach solely by learning the information of their field. Why do so many college students complain about poor teaching skills, test questions that make no sense, or unfair grading practices? Because unless that teacher belongs to the education field, he/she has not once been trained in HOW to teach. So, I began my journey by taking an English degree with a specialization in secondary education. I get to focus my concentration on my field while still learning how to teach the information. I understand that a lot of the learning process will be on the job experience. I will have to try many different approaches, on many different kids, in order to find what works best for me. Luckily, I have two children on whom I can practice.
My eldest child is in second grade and is learning how to write multiple paragraphs. My child and I sat down the other day to gauge how far along his skill has progressed and to discover what I need to do to help him further his progress. We worked with the four-square model that is used in his classroom. There are four squares that surround a central fifth square. (Should it be called five-square?) The fifth square is the topic of the piece, it can be anything from a journal entry to a response to book the class has read together; his topic was his sport’s team. Three of the squares represent three paragraphs while the fourth represents a feeling sentence to close out the paper. (This system can be tweaked, and has been since its inception at the beginning of the year, as the child progresses in skill.) The first three squares are filled in with three different ideas concerning the topic. This idea will transform into the topic sentence of the paragraph. The student then fills out supporting details – I started with having him provide at least two. This gives each paragraph three sentences, the last paragraph has four since it includes the feeling sentence from the fourth box. When my son had transferred his topic sentences onto his first draft, he did not include any supporting details. I hinted at and danced around ideas for almost ten minutes before he came up with two other details for each paragraph. After the first draft was completed I checked for spelling and grammar errors. I added final details to sentences that would make them clearer. ”I have two Taylors” became “I have two Taylors on my team.” He then wrote a second draft that was again checked for spelling or grammar errors. At his level of writing, all sentences were pretty simple, so the grammar issue is very slight. I did not make him rewrite the work a third time, but I did inform him that for school assignments he would have to correct mistakes if he wanted to ensure getting the best grade he could. (As a tangent, we do not push for good grades in my house. I firmly believe that grades do not always accurately reflect a person’s knowledge in a subject. Nor do low grades always reflect laziness/flat out refusal to do work. My husband and I push our children to do the absolute best they can do – the good grades will come as a result of their effort. If they get low grades we talk about what they could have done to achieve higher marks- was it their lack of effort or their understanding? If lack of effort we look for ways to improve, if lack of understanding we provide scaffolding.)
After everything was completed, he went and played with his legos, a favorite past time of his, while I sat back on the couch looking at our three sheets of paper and felt a pride that I don’t think I’ve ever felt before. Of course, I was proud of the work my son had done. His reading and writing level, which has never been his strong point, has jumped significantly over the course of the year. But, I was also filled with the pride that comes from helping someone. Did this one exercise forever change him? No, of course not. Will he continue to struggle with his writing? Yes, I still do. But, I was able to help him achieve a small success. Little things in education build until they become big things – like graduation in ten years. I know teaching high schoolers will be slightly different than teaching a second grader, but I felt for the first time that yes, I can be a good teacher. I felt a moment of clarity that I am called to be a teacher, and lucky for me, teaching begins at home.
