Placement
So now it falls to me to find a school in Region 5 that needs an inexperienced white girl to teach Secondary School English (my assigned subject area.) A few days ago, I trekked up to the city to attend a placement fair at a middle school. Principals or administrators from the three districts in my region had distributed themselves among the classrooms like prizes on a TV game show. Behind door number one, a beleaguered guy from Queens who smirked at my resume and told me about his failed high school.
"The city is shutting it down," he said, "restarting from scratch. And I gotta tell you - you seem like an intellectual, and these kids, well, these are very very needy kids," who are going to eat you alive, his face said. Great.
But by the end of my five minute interview, I'd convinced him, if not myself as well, with the same script I've been giving everyone who asks me why I'm doing this:
Ahem. I want to tackle something really hard - to do something that'll jolt me out of this easy college lifestyle I've developed. That's why I chose this program - I didn't want to teach at some private school - I wanted to challenge myself. I think I'll be able to manage a classroom well because I understand the importance of setting strict boundaries on the first day and sticking to them rather than putting out fires for the rest of the year. (Here I joke that maybe I'll get my hair cut really short, maybe get some fake glasses so I look more teacher-ish. -- Not a joke. Already happened. ) Oh, and I've worked with elementary and middle schoolers before, so high school is something I'm excited to try.
A few more lines about how I went to public school and blah blah blah I believe in the public school system and I've pretty much got principals as pals. Actually, it is dishearteningly easy.
One assistant principal grilled me on what book by an African author I would assign to tenth graders, and was so satisfied with my answer of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart (which I'm pretty sure is standard for tenth graders everywhere,) that he invited me to visit his school the very next day.
"The city is shutting it down," he said, "restarting from scratch. And I gotta tell you - you seem like an intellectual, and these kids, well, these are very very needy kids," who are going to eat you alive, his face said. Great.
But by the end of my five minute interview, I'd convinced him, if not myself as well, with the same script I've been giving everyone who asks me why I'm doing this:
Ahem. I want to tackle something really hard - to do something that'll jolt me out of this easy college lifestyle I've developed. That's why I chose this program - I didn't want to teach at some private school - I wanted to challenge myself. I think I'll be able to manage a classroom well because I understand the importance of setting strict boundaries on the first day and sticking to them rather than putting out fires for the rest of the year. (Here I joke that maybe I'll get my hair cut really short, maybe get some fake glasses so I look more teacher-ish. -- Not a joke. Already happened. ) Oh, and I've worked with elementary and middle schoolers before, so high school is something I'm excited to try.
A few more lines about how I went to public school and blah blah blah I believe in the public school system and I've pretty much got principals as pals. Actually, it is dishearteningly easy.
One assistant principal grilled me on what book by an African author I would assign to tenth graders, and was so satisfied with my answer of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart (which I'm pretty sure is standard for tenth graders everywhere,) that he invited me to visit his school the very next day.
posted by Ms. Star at
1:21 PM
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