Reflections of a (possibly?) future teacher...

Sometimes I feel like our only connection to the real world is marathons of Wife Swap.



Some aspects of this trip make me question my desire to teach. Not that I wasn't questioning it before- but after seeing a school like this it really makes you wonder how many students you can influence if you don't work at a school where everyone there is really striving for the same thing. We sat in on their meetings and the teachers were really more focused on how to coordinate their efforts so everyone sent the same message to the students. I'm forgetting if I have mentioned all of this before, so I apologize if I have. It's just very eye opening and a lot to reflect on as someone who actually does want to go into this field. And how do you have a family life if you are at school for 12 hours a day? Its almost as tiring as being a law student, except eventually law school ends- eventually for those students there is an end to their days of lack of sleep, minimal social lives, and constant drain on their bodies.

The teacher that we talk to the most down here, the UMD alum Pat Wu, commented that while all of the students are for sure smart and bright and definately college bound, the close ties that the faculty of KIPP Pride High has is definately a factor in the college admissions process for these students. I don't want this to come off sounding pessimistic or against the school or anything, but I will be very interested in seeing college graduation rates and the number of students that drop out. It is their first graduating class so of course they have a large number of 'kinks' to work out in the preperation of the students for college.

Many of them are not used to lecture style classes at all. They come into a classroom and they immediately get down to business doing a warm up and praticing what they learned previously. Lecture is extremely de-emphasized and individual work or practice is generally the order of the day. While adjusting to learning with the lecture style format itself may not be difficult, I have seen with my own students that I tutor back at UMD, that unless you have had time in high school to practice taking notes and picking up on your teachers voice and noticing whats important and therefore needs to be written down, you may have a hard time to pick out the important bits. All too often I have had students either write down every word or no words at all that come out of the professors mouth. Its hard to suceed when you don't know what you need to know. I have faith however that these students are smart enough to know where to look for help to overcome the hurdles that they will undoubtedly face when they enter college.


Just to mention the small town life again- it is slightly sad when the most exciting thing during the day is when you finally get reception in the car. We can now have either christian rock or country playing in the car instead of silence or static. How wonderful.

-Sophie