Thread: A Job!

Welcome again to the teaching profession! Out of curiosity - did all of your advance reading help you put together a good presentation? What did you wind up doing for your lesson?

I think PS 262 sounds like a good choice. The fact that they wanted to see a demo lesson PRIOR to offering you a job suggests that they're not just looking for warm bodies to fill vacant slots. I am sorry to say that given the shortage of teachers throughout parts of the United States, this is precisely what some school districts do. They plug people into slots and hope that things will work out.

The fellowship idea being implemented by New York seems to be a more sensible approach to finding good people to fill vacant slots. Assuming the program has lots of built in support - there should be less overall problems for new teachers.

I hope you'll continue to visit us.

I would enjoy hearing stories about your experiences.

Regards,

David

P.S. Which grade will you be teaching? Will this be a self-contained class?

I'm very excited.

I'm not sure which grade, but the school and I agree that "upper" elementary is where I belong, 4-6. I suspect 5th or 6th. I know they lost a 5th grade teacher this year, and had to break up one class and spread it over the other 5th grade classes, so those were a bit larger than 25 this year.

The Fellows program is supposed to have a lot of support built-in: we are assigned a mentor teacher in the school and a mentor from the graduate school faculty who is supposed to visit the school at least once a month. Also, my fellows cohort will meet at least once a month, and there are organized fellows social events.

Yes, I think my reading helped a lot. It certainly helped in the interviews because I could talk with *some* intelligence about literacy teaching and the new math standards. (PS 262 has a 90 minute literacy block and a 100 minute math block every day.) I'm very interested in the new ways of teaching math; I even ordered myself some manipulatives so I could work through some of the ideas. And having read a lot about mini-lessons and how writing is taught was valuable. I did my demo on researching and writing biographies. As it turned out, the kids had done that already, so I ended by telling them to imagine they were 50 years older (62! Eeeuuuwww!), and to write their own biographies of the lives they think they want to live, with special attention to things they might have tried and failed.

I will definitely keep visiting and posting. And if you're interested in a kind of "day in the life" approach, I have a weblog called "Teacher: Year One" that's at [url]http://www.thelwell.org[/url]. Stop by and let me know what you think. The system allows you to leave comments, or you can email me. I haven't been updating every day, because things have been happening in fits and starts, but soon the updates should be coming fast and furious soon. <g>

Congratulations!! You must be very excited

There are a lot of interesting things happening with literacy right now. You might want to look into Four Blocks for the intermediate grades. I just started using four blocks this year with my grade ones and have found it very successful. Although I don't use it exactly as it prescribed in the books I have found many useful ideas and it has helped me to provide some routine and structure to my literacy blocks. It makes my planning easier and helps me to provide a balanced program.

Good luck with the new job

Hi Mata (Jeanne),

I visited your website. It was really neat. It's sort of like a professional diary. I'm sure it will be quite useful to first year teachers after you've completed your first year. If you continue posting updates, your journal will document your concerns and triumphs. It will also help you to reflect upon what you've done so that you can "keep" methodologies and instructional units that "work" while discarding things that don't work.

I look forward to hearing about your progress.

In the meanwhile, I think Catherine had a good suggestion about "Four Blocks" for intermediate grades - but prior to researching this you may want to check with your school to see what their expectations are. The district probably has adopted curriculum and the school may or may not allow you to use this program.

To learn more about the Four Blocks Literacy program, visit: [url="http://www.four-blocks.com/"]http://www.four-blocks.com/[/url]



Regards,

David

I picked up my appointment letter this morning and I have a tentative assignment to teach 5th grade next year! I think I'm going to want to try younger kids (3d grade, maybe) after awhile, but 5th is probably perfect for starters!

The school uses Great Books for it's literacy program (which pleases me because it uses authentic children's literature), and I picked up two books by the head of the Newbery Committee recommending books for boy and for girls. (Picked up Michael Gurian's book Boys and Girls Learn Differently!.)

I looked at 4 Blocks. Without buying any of the material, it seems to me that the major difference between 4 Blocks and other balanced literacy programs I've been reading about (in Calkins and Fountas & Pinnell) is that there's no ability grouping. Is that right? (The website has some major design problems, so I'm not sure where to get the best information.)

Congrats to you!!!! It sounds like you have really thought about your choice.

I've been reading mata's website and it has been such a big help for me since I just found out that I got in to the program a few days ago. I want to teach in Manhattan (I live on the west side) but I'm open to other areas. I don't know where to begin with learning about schools!

[url="http://www.nycenet.edu/jobs/default.asp"]http://www.nycenet.edu/jobs/default.asp[/url]

Has a list of the "open jobs" but I don't know if that's where I should be looking. I'm in the maths program ... would it be wise to talk to the principals of schools with open math positions in Manhattan? --or am I jumping the gun?