Many teacher credentialling programs last two years, or at least a year and a summer (usually following the academic year). UCLA’s program is a very intensive year. The fall term had, if I remember this correctly, twenty-two units (compared to the usual undergrad load of twelve units, sixteen for a really focused student who wanted to get the bachelor’s in four years or less). By spring term, the course load was down to a feasible sixteen, but the year was a brutal grind. I always thought it was UCLA’s way of showing the prospective teacher how tough and time-consuming the calling was. It worked. A few people dropped from the program during that first term.
The credential candidates were split into two groups: Team R (the candidates who were working toward their credentials only) and Team M (those who would be spending the following summer doing an additional eighteen units to get their Master’s in Education). I was a proud member of Team R, or "Team Remedial" as we called ourselves. We were the partyers, the rabble-rousers, and, we liked to think of ourselves, the creative innovators. In comparison, Team M was a bunch of stuffed shirts with whom we’d do conversational battle.
Yadayadayada.
For the most part, the year was Ivory Tower bullshit, the latest in educational theory that didn’t have a whole helluvalot to do with what was going on in the average classroom. If I had to hear one more time that the Eskimos have over two dozen words for "snow," I would have gone post office and taken out a professor (and a couple of Team M[y Head is Up My Ass] members for good measure). We spent a term with a "Reading Professor" who thought he was teaching us something by showing us how to fill out a requisition form. Another term was spent with a Sixties touchy-feely guru who was so burnt-out that he spent much of the term trying to convince us not to go into education.
Then there was the Grande Dame. She was a world respected expert in educational theory AND practice (so we were told, as we were required to pick up some six or seven of her books). In our fall term, the proud members of Team R had Her for ten hours a week, where we would learn Clinical Instruction under the Mistress Herself. The PVUHSD wags called it "Clinical Destruction" a year later when I returned home (when I also learned that she had sold the district on her techniques and that every teacher hired by the district had [and to this day still HAS] to be instructed on "Destruction"... though I was let off the hook because I had the Mistress Herself). Here was Ivory Tower Hypocrisy at its worst. She preached Motivation as well as Discipline with Dignity, but she tore into us like raw meat, interrupting our lessons, denigrating our lesson plans and presentations, and basically telling us we were, well, doing it wrong. I still think she is the reason we had the drops from the program that first term.
This is not to say that I learned nothing valuable in that year. Not true. I learned everything I know that is of any value in thirteen brief weeks. And I learned them from one man.
Bob Miller was a god. A Titan. A teacher par excellance. A classroom manager without peer. And he was my master teacher in the LAUSD during fall semester, from October through January (a year later, he would be Lisa’s master teacher, too). In a ninth-grade middle school classroom, he taught me the reality while still stoking the fires of idealism.
How to set up the desks in a classroom for easy mobility. How to manage a class without yelling... how to "square off" and "stare down" a behavior problem silently, so that only the offender and you know what has happened (and it still works, though I’m not as good at it [read "I’m not as intensely pursuing it"] as I used to be). How to never sit during a class (or use a podium, or cross your arms in front of you... all subtle animal behavior to show that you’re scared of your audience). How to set up assignments. How to put together an Assignment/Grade sheet. How to run a ditto machine. How to structure a lesson and a period and a unit. How to pick up homework. How to set up a productive Sustained Silent Reading period. Bob Miller taught me these things and so many more that HE should really write the book (when I visited him at the end of my first year at PeeVee, I watched him distribute yearbooks and teach a lesson on how to sign a yearbook with personality... the kids learned and never even knew it was a lesson, the man was so smooth).
In the spring, I had two more wonderful master teachers at Venice High School, John Batcho and Marilyn Berry. They were two old pros who prepared me for life in the high school trenches. They showed me how to deal with politics and bullshit. They showed me how to fend off the batted eyelashes of pretty young girls with just a look. They showed me how to use Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and the Minutemen in a composition class. They showed me through example how to age gracefully.
I did learn a great deal in that year. Just (little or) none of it in Education classrooms.
No comments:
Post a Comment