It's been a while. Honestly, after school let out I just needed a break from anything and everything to do with education. I've had a great month of vacationing, visiting and being visited, et cetera, and now I'm hopefully refreshed enough for the next round.
When I was still a student, mid-July would still be early summer break. I would still feel like I had all the time in the world until I had to think about school again. Instead, my summer break is about to come to an end. On Monday, I start the first session of classes for my master's program. I'm excited!
In preparation, we have a variety of assignments. Right now I'm reading Critical Pedagogy by Joan Wink. I shan't bore you with my reading journal (half of it is scribbled in the book anyway) but I do have a couple of thoughts to share:
1) I like being a student! I was sitting on the couch, scribbling a note onto a sticky after highlighting a bit of text and I looked up and said "This is fun." I miss reading and engaging with texts on my level when I'm teaching, and I miss the feeling I get when I'm learning and making connections. It's still there, sometimes, but there's so much more going on.
2) How did I get to be so good at being a student? I've been trying to figure out where and when and how I learned all these skills that so many of my students still lack as 10th graders, partly so I can figure out how to help them be better students. The hardest things for me to teach are the ones I don't remember having to learn. I know I learned them at some point, but...?
2 comments:
For starters, It's great to see you posting again.
I totally understand how you feel. For most of my life I was a poor student. I was middle of my class in high school and spent most of my college years on probation. I left school for a few years and then went back at 28. I was a great student the 2nd time through. I think it was because I knew how to do poorly, so I didn't do those things.
Most importantly, and this is what I try to instill in my students, I actually did the basics. I took notes, I read what I was supposed to read, and I actually studied for tests.
I graduated with a 3.6, not because I'm brilliant, but because I actually did the work without taking shortcuts. Our students want everything the easy way. They have to learn how to work.
By that I don't mean that have to learn how to do work(as in assignment). They need to learn how to do work, as in spending time working on a task from beginning to end without giving up and without shortcuts.
That's my take, for what it's worth.
Too bad that you have not written any recent posts. Nice work. I came across your blog while “blog surfing” using the Next Blog button on the blue Nav Bar located at the top of my blogger.com site. I frequently just travel around looking for other blogs which exist on the Internet, and the various, creative ways in which people express themselves. Thanks for sharing.
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