Cooking in Your Mother-In-Law's Kitchen

[serafina20]

A few weeks ago, when I was doing the orientation for student teaching, one of the advisors said that student teaching is like cooking in your mother-in-law's kitchen. And I've tried to keep in mind that this isn't my classroom especially since my master teacher does a lot of things that bother me. For example, she didn't set up many proceedures at the beginning of school, so the class is a study in disorganization. And she does everything by boy/girl and the boys always get to go first (this pisses me off to no end because even though she doesn't seem to believe that you treat boys and girls differently, this is what it comes off as). But I keep my mouth shut, play along, and remind myself that in a year or less, I'll have my own classroom.

Then she changed my recepie today. I'm doing a poetry unit, and the first theme in the book was Places and Seasons. Yesterday we read the first set of poems and started our own. It had to be on a place or a season (although I also said weather was okay). They did a poetry workshop today and revised their poems; the final draft is do tomorrow. Everything is all good, right?

Well, then my master teachers does one of her social studies programs called Project Citizens. This program has kids looking at public policy and choose and issue to attempt to change. Their issue is getting the trees that were cut down in the park across from our class rooms replanted. And she started going off on how nice trees are and the shade, and lying underneath, looking at the sky and leaves, etc. etc. Then she said they should go out and lie under a tree today before they write their poems.

And then she said that instead of my poem, they should write a poem about a tree. She asked if it was okay, but I felt like I couldn't say no. This is her class and when she gets an idea in her head, she bulldozes all over me anyway. This is how her class lost their bathroom privileges: I was trying to ask if I could implement a ticket system in math so they could buy bathroom passes, and she thought I was complaining about bathroom uses.

The problem is not the suggestion, but the fact that these kids have already written their first draft and revised and edited and now they're supposed to do a final draft. But now, they have the option to do a whole new poem on a whole new topic.

GRRRRRRRR

Comments

[thefirethorn.livejournal.com]

dude, your teacher SUCKS. Interfering with your lesson (this is part of your teaching assignment, right?) is just WAY uncool. Among other things she screwed with the final product, which you have to grade by a criteria, right? Way, way uncool.

[serafina20.livejournal.com]

I thought it pretty much sucked, too. Although I can still grade the tree poems by the rubric I created (it was vague as to subject), it still bothers me that she gave me the freedom to create my own unit, and then changed the assignment because she, out of the blue, decided she wanted them to go outside and lie underneath a tree. And then she pulled the the tree poems this morning, so I'm probably missing about a quarter of the poems.

There's beginning to be a real, "If Mom says no, let's ask Dad" feel to the class. I keep having kids come up and ask if they can do something, then, if I say no, they go to her, who gives them permission. I told her about it, so she said she'd defer to me while I'm teaching (duh), but she doesn't *listen* to what I want to do, so I'm constantly being underminded.

*sigh* This is only a test, repeat, only a test. She thinks I'm great, I'm going to get through this with flying colors, and then I'll have control over my own class. I need to keep that in sight or else this could get overwhelming.