Tuesday, June 9th

Well, I've now been introduced to the classes I'll take for the rest of the semester. For this week, my technology in the classroom class (which was 8-10pm last week) is from 10am-12noon. Yesterday afternoon, I had a Practicum meeting in which we got our assignments. Practicum is our practice teaching experience for the summer. After that was "Teaching Religion in Catholic Schools." Today was my Middle School Methods course and my Social Studies Content Area class.

Practicum is something that is faced with a fair amount of (deserved) trepidation by most first-year teachers. We are placed in Catholic and public schools around the South Bend area in summer school programs. Our students are typically as close to the age we'll be teaching next year as possible, and the subject tends to be related too. The class has a "real" teacher who we observe for a day or two, and then we start to take over bits of the lesson, and maybe the whole thing by the end. Most people's Practicum starts next week. I'm lucky in that I don't start till the following week (which leaves me free next week until 1:15 or so). I was placed in a public middle school that is very supportive of the ACE teachers (which isn't necessarily always the case), and I also have another ACE teacher in the class with me. The downside: I'm in a Language Arts class. Apparently many of the students will also have identified learning disabilities, so that will add an interesting challenge as well.

My Teaching Religion class has me freaked out. I think mainly because I have never taken a religion course in a gradeschool (CCD doesn't count), I don't really know how to approach it at all. Luckily, the class is completely practical, and we'll cover lots of topics, prepare lesson plans for each, and actually teach one of our lessons.

Middle School Methods basically address the unique needs of middle school-aged kids. The class has all the ACE 16 teachers who will be in middle schools (all content areas). It'll be pretty interesting, and it will be where I learn how far I can reasonably push them (I'm still planning on an approaching-high-school-level class), and how to minister to them as people. Apparently it was popular up until the 80s and 90s to think of this age as "miniature high school kids who need to be prepared for that setting." Hence the name "Junior High" rather than "High School." Now the pedagogy recognizes physiological differences as a result of the different stages of development (read: I have to deal with hormones).

The Social Studies content area class is great. It's all middle and high school teachers (both ACE 15 and 16). The 15's are relaxed and funny, our professor is very laid back, and we've just got a great group of people in there. Over half of us are teaching in Texas, so there were lots of jokes about having to teach Texas History. As the only true Texan in the room, I think it's going to fall to me to set them straight from time to time.

Not too much work yet, but I can definitely see the potential to feel really over-worked and stressed at some point of the summer. In at least three classes, I will be preparing lesson plans and giving sample presentations of parts of those plans (not to mention the prep I'll have to do for the Practicum when that starts). Also, my content knowledge test - the Praxis - is this weekend. Basically, I have to take it to prove that I know enough social studies to be able to teach it. It's focused on US History and World History, with other concentrations in geography, economics, government, psychology, and sociology. I'm solid on US history, economics, and government. I'm pretty much going to wing the rest and hope that I have enough knowledge at this point in my life to pass a test geared towards testing mastery of middle school social studies.

Classroom Countdown: 69 days until my first day of school