Day 104: The Praxis of Pedagogy

On Monday I started off all the classes with SSR. While it's been recommended that I read with the students during this time, I used the time to do some basic prep work. I got 5 classes that I have to prep for with no prep time in school so I gotta do it when I can. That means afterschool and sometimes during school. Sometimes I feel like I've been put into a situation that is setting me up for failure. We have a staff of 8 teachers and half of us are new teachers. People are overwhelmed and if we keep this up we will be burned out soon. To help matters I listen to the wise words of a staff member that has been there 30 years. "Drink heavily!" she said.

After SSR, I had students write on a piece of paper who the most important people were in their lives from birth to 18 months, 18 months to 3 years, 3 years to 5 years, 6-12 years, and now. Next, they wrote about what their lives were like (were they happy or sad, what was important to them, and what memory were they most proud of) during those time periods. Then I paired them up and had them share with their partner what they wrote. I'm really trying to do a lot more paired work and student to student interaction this quarter. After they shared with each other I called on people to share with the class. I got a lot of good answers and they really wanted to share the moments they were most proud of. I ask a lot of personal questions, but they put it out there. It's pretty cool. This was my intro into Erik Erikson and psychosocial development. The reason that I want them to study Erikson is that I want them to understand that they are in a stage of development right now. What they do now affects their future and they are still growing. In relation to history and multicultural literature, I want to be able to analyze people in history and characters in books using some basic psychology. If they learn that people act in certain ways because of past social experiences, then perhaps history and characters in books will make more sense. They really seemed to be into this. When I was their age, I found it incredibly interesting how humans worked. The idea that there was some explanation as to why life was so crazy helped me out a lot. Classes ended mostly around play age 3-5.