Interview with a Superintendent

I recently had the opportunity to interview Dr. Judith Berry, the superintendent of Scottsboro City schools in Northeast Alabama for a research project in a business writing class. From the interview, I walked away so confident in understanding the hiring process for teachers that I felt a burden lifted ceremonious off my shoulders. Before talking with her, I honestly had no idea how people went able actually obtaining a teaching job. She explained the process in intense detail and gave me invaluable advice on ways to make myself stand out from the other applicants and I want to share all these pointers with everyone else.
1. Sell yourself - Don't be afraid to go into detail why you deserve the job. This isn't a time to be humble. Let the interviewer (usually the principal) know you are a capable employee with the kids on your mind.
2. Add attachments to the applications - some people do not know that adding attachments to an application is not only okay, it is seen as extra help in the principal's decision process. You can add examples of your proficiency in using technology in the class (which the superintendent looks heavily upon) or anything you think will help you stand out.
3. Show that you are a team player - principals and superintendents want someone who works well with others and if you show you might not have that quality, you won't get the job.
4. State in your application that you are willing to coach or sponsor a club - academics come first but if the principal finds an applicant with great recommendations and a good degree who can also coach a sport, they will be picked over someone who can only teach.
All four of these pointers do not guarantee a job for anyone but Dr. Berry said that if you strive to be your best, these four qualities will only make you chances of getting a job even greater (personal communications, February 11, 2011).

Understanding the Context of a Text

In my 18th Century British Literature class, my professor puts more focus on what is going on around the making of the text and less on the specifics of the text. We recently read David Simple by Sarah Fielding and she had us read the first portion without telling us anything about the context of when it was written. For me, nothing seemed strange. It is just a story about a man searching for a true friend and running into bad characters over and over (and over) again. When we got to class the next day, she had us read a short advertisement written on the novel by Sarah's older brother, Henry Fielding (who is most famous for writing Tom Jones). The advertisement completely bashes Sarah and her style of writing. We then went into a discussion as to why Henry does this. After hearing about all the context behind Sarah life, the story had extremely more meaning for me, and I even went back and reread the first part over again. Although it may seem like a history lesson, its important to share the context of a book with our students. You never know, they might be more interested in that than the book itself.

The Order of Things

We all remember the books we had to read in high school English classes. The Odyssey was the book that my teacher decided to start us on in 9th grade English class, and I can still remember the groans and anxiety of being asked to understand such an old text. Why she started off with this text, I do not know or frankly understand. I love literature and I had a hard time looking forward to the read of the semester because I was afraid all of the reading was going to be epics like that of Homer. To my surprise, the reading got more intriguing as the semester drove on. We read books like I Am the Cheese and The Man Without A Face. In my curriculum and teaching class this semester, we have discussed this very idea I bring up for you now. What is the point of starting off a semester with a book you know must of your students will not enjoy? The English lovers that we are find hope that every child will be as moved by a text as we are, but that is not the way it works. Kids don't go into a required reading with the open mind to be changed by the words. So what should we do to get them more interested and at least act like they care? I suggest starting the semester off with books like the two I listed previously. If you are looking for some sort of order in the timeline of the reading you assign, strive to look at this in a different way. I don't want my students dreading the rest of the semester of reading because the first text is a puzzle that cannot be cyphered easily. I want to wait until the end of the semester to give their brains a real challenge because hopefully by that time, they will have learned a few things from my class.

The House On Mango Street

For many school systems, The House on Mango Street is incorporated into the 10th grade English curriculum. Written by Sandra Cisneros, this book is set up in vignettes and draws to picture of life for a teenage latino girl living in urban Chicago. As a future teacher trying to build a library for myself (and future students), I am definitely putting this book on the center shelf. One of the over-arching themes in 10th grade curriculum is teaching coming-of-age literature to students, and this novel succeeds just that and as a bonus tells it from a minorities perspective. The vignettes Cisneros sets up are in no particular order and she uses different literary devices with almost every sentence. Only 110 pages, this would be a great read aloud book for the classroom. I really think this novel will register with students who feel like a minority, and I am not just talking about Latino or African American students but any student who feels left out. When I read this book in high school, my teacher focused only on the literary devices and less on the lesson Cisneros is trying to teach the reader. When I teach my students this book (which I will), I want to focus on reader's reactions. I want to give student's a chance to express how this book makes them think about themselves. If there is one thing I have taken from my English education classes so far is that although we are supposed to be teaching students how to understand terms and write papers, our main goal is to teach intangible ideas that the studentscan't get in a science or math class. The House on Mango Street is a great book for this: teaching students to strive to be more than they are now. Take the time to read it, it will make anyone want to be better than their surroundings.

Both photos were taken by myself :)

Grey or Gray?

During my student teaching last Thursday in a seventh grade English class, I was helping a student work on a personal essay talking about some of his favorite memories. I began to help him brainstorm, and he told me he loved to draw. I naturally asked him what his favorite things to draw were. His response: "I love drawing gray and white sketches of cartoons." I told him that was a great example, and he began to copy his response onto the grocery list of ideas we had started. I watched as he wrote the word gray, and I immediately had a scary I'm not sure how to spell that moment. I let the student leave the spelling as he had it, but I made a mental note to check out the answer. came home and found a website that explains why I was so confused. This website shows the difference in spelling comes from differences in UK and American culture. Words like grey, travelled, and centre are just a few examples of UK spellings that are easily confused with the US forms. As a future English teacher, I immediately started to think of ways to incorporate lessons that help explain to students ways to remember tricky spellings with words like grey/gray. I plan on reading over my student's essay tomorrow, and I plan on making a point to tell him his spelling of the word gray. I am sure he didn't think twice about it when he wrote it, though.

How do you spell the color Grey or Gray? Which is correct, "grey" or "gray" spelling?