I'm taking a break from grad school application stuff because my brain can't handle it anymore! My little grad school train is moving on down the tracks, which is good I guess. I've started applications and am going to two open houses this week. I still need to update my sadly out of date resume, write my statement of purpose (and then tweak it for each program I'm applying to), and ask people to write recommendations. I always hate doing that. Plus, it's hard cause the schools want mostly academic references, and although I've kept in touch with professors a little bit because of recruiting for Urban Promise, I haven't talked to them that much. And the ones who initially wrote me recommendations for teaching jobs (which I never even got to use because Urban Promise didn't need to see any of that kind of stuff) are the ones I've talked to the least!
During my little application break, I'm watching an episode of Teach: Tony Danza on Hulu. This show is very interesting to me. First of all, Tony Danza is pretty funny as a high school English teacher. He talks a LOT. And he cries a lot. And he's really insecure. I think the show does a pretty good job at portraying that teaching is a difficult job. But it's gotten a lot of criticism because he only teaches one class a day, and he has an instructional coach who sits in on his class and then meets with him afterwards. I don't know any first year teachers who have it that good. I was reading a little more about the show, and apparently the instructional coach is there because even though he has an education degree, his certification was expired and they didn't have time to get it update before they started filming. And even though he taught just two periods a day, he chose to be at school all day, helping with lots of extra-curriculars and office work. When the filming for the show ended in January, he chose to stay through the end of the year, even though it meant being away from his family. So all in all, it's pretty interesting. He teaches a pre-selected group of kids who were chosen through a casting call and had to have parent permission to be in the class. So no, it's not totally portraying what a first year teacher's experience would really be like in Philly public schools. But it shows that teaching is really hard work. And tiring, physically and emotionally. So even though Tony Danza can be kind of annoying when he keeps rambling and crying, I'm going to keep watching to find out how his first year turned out.
I had a short week of school last week which was very busy. We keep adding extra specials and assemblies and things which have all been very good. But it takes away from my instructional time, and I'm having trouble getting all the stuff done that I want to. So I'm thinking about taking nap time away again, even though that hasn't worked for me in the past. We'll see. I'm not going to try until after Thanksgiving.
Thursday and Friday we went to the Urban Promise International Summit in Camden. There were some good speakers, and there was lots of good food. We had some time to meet in small groups, and I got to talk with some of the teachers from the Urban Promise School in Camden. That was probably the highlight of the Summit for me. I got to hear about some of the really neat things they do related to creative arts and different cultures. I also got to hear that they deal with a lot of the same struggles that we do. I can into a pretty negative mindset from time to time, thinking that our school has all these issues and every other school is great. This is definitely not the case. Overall, I think our school is doing a lot of things really well this year. And I think I personally am doing a lot of things well too. So it's just good to be reminded of that.
This will be another short week, but then we have conferences and the banquet. I'll be busy the next few days getting stuff together and prepared to conference with the parents. It's the only mandatory conference of the year, and I want to be sure I don't forget anything while I have them there as a (hopefully) captive audience! I'm hoping the banquet will be nice. I'm glad Mom and Dad will be there. It'll be good to see them, plus it makes me feel like I at least got someone to come to the banquet, even though I failed at getting anyone from my church to come.
OK, time to finish my episode of Teach: Tony Danza. Then it's almost bedtime. The weekend goes so fast!
During my little application break, I'm watching an episode of Teach: Tony Danza on Hulu. This show is very interesting to me. First of all, Tony Danza is pretty funny as a high school English teacher. He talks a LOT. And he cries a lot. And he's really insecure. I think the show does a pretty good job at portraying that teaching is a difficult job. But it's gotten a lot of criticism because he only teaches one class a day, and he has an instructional coach who sits in on his class and then meets with him afterwards. I don't know any first year teachers who have it that good. I was reading a little more about the show, and apparently the instructional coach is there because even though he has an education degree, his certification was expired and they didn't have time to get it update before they started filming. And even though he taught just two periods a day, he chose to be at school all day, helping with lots of extra-curriculars and office work. When the filming for the show ended in January, he chose to stay through the end of the year, even though it meant being away from his family. So all in all, it's pretty interesting. He teaches a pre-selected group of kids who were chosen through a casting call and had to have parent permission to be in the class. So no, it's not totally portraying what a first year teacher's experience would really be like in Philly public schools. But it shows that teaching is really hard work. And tiring, physically and emotionally. So even though Tony Danza can be kind of annoying when he keeps rambling and crying, I'm going to keep watching to find out how his first year turned out.
I had a short week of school last week which was very busy. We keep adding extra specials and assemblies and things which have all been very good. But it takes away from my instructional time, and I'm having trouble getting all the stuff done that I want to. So I'm thinking about taking nap time away again, even though that hasn't worked for me in the past. We'll see. I'm not going to try until after Thanksgiving.
Thursday and Friday we went to the Urban Promise International Summit in Camden. There were some good speakers, and there was lots of good food. We had some time to meet in small groups, and I got to talk with some of the teachers from the Urban Promise School in Camden. That was probably the highlight of the Summit for me. I got to hear about some of the really neat things they do related to creative arts and different cultures. I also got to hear that they deal with a lot of the same struggles that we do. I can into a pretty negative mindset from time to time, thinking that our school has all these issues and every other school is great. This is definitely not the case. Overall, I think our school is doing a lot of things really well this year. And I think I personally am doing a lot of things well too. So it's just good to be reminded of that.
This will be another short week, but then we have conferences and the banquet. I'll be busy the next few days getting stuff together and prepared to conference with the parents. It's the only mandatory conference of the year, and I want to be sure I don't forget anything while I have them there as a (hopefully) captive audience! I'm hoping the banquet will be nice. I'm glad Mom and Dad will be there. It'll be good to see them, plus it makes me feel like I at least got someone to come to the banquet, even though I failed at getting anyone from my church to come.
OK, time to finish my episode of Teach: Tony Danza. Then it's almost bedtime. The weekend goes so fast!
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