Sunday, September 9, 2012

Teacher's College So Far

Dear Internet,

I started at teacher's college (excuse me, the faculty of education) this past week. I'll be here for 8 months to earn my B.Ed. before returning completing my B.Math. There are no words for how tired of school I am. I'm tired of assignments and going to class and putting up with boring classes and annoying profs. Of the 7 total classes I have here, I (so far) feel that one of them will be useful to me.

The problem is that it's a lot of stuff that I need to know but don't care about. For instance, politics of schools and developmental psychology for adolescents...stuff that I should know to be an effective employee of a school, but not necessarily needed to be an effective teacher. But then again, what the hell do I know? I'm a 21-year-old teacher candidate, and presumably these programs have been designed by people who have been working in education for many years, possibly longer than I have actually been alive.

I think my main problem is that I'm frustrated with the format of my schedule and courses. In math, it's easy: you have an assignment every week that you complete and turn in on the same day every week, there are 50 minute lectures at the same times on MWF, one (maybe two) midterms not quite midway through the term, and a final exam at the end always worth at least 50%. My classes here follow a much stranger schedule (some have 2 two-hour blocks in a week at different times, some are 1 hour and meet once, etc.) that I'm not sure I'll ever get used to (much less memorize). Assignments that are worth marks are sporadic. Most classes require some sort of reading for every class. And I'm pretty sure I don't have any midterms or exams or tests (which, I suppose, is a plus). Really, I'm mostly annoyed with the reading. For example, I have a class tomorrow (that I of course put off doing the readings for) that wants me to read about 5 15ish page papers on equity in classrooms. I looked at that earlier and just thought, that is not going to happen. It's one of those things where, the more work you have to do, the less you're going to do.

But that's enough complaining. Here's what I LIKE about being here so far.

  • I'm living with my super awesome sister in a super awesome house
  • I have an opportunity to get to know the girls in my program a lot better
  • My prof for my math teaching class is really awesome and I've already learned a lot from him
  • After I finish teacher's college, I will be in the home stretch of finishing my degrees
I guess that's about it! I'm off to contemplate doing my course readings and probably just play The Sims instead.

Sincerely,

Caro

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

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