New School. First Week Done.

Like I said, I'm going to try to update this more. Nothing too hilarious happened this week. But I learned a lot. My new mentor teacher is a woman. This is new for me because all the history teachers I had in high school and the teachers I've observed here have all been males. She has given me good perspective on things.

She says she hates her job and you have to really be passionate about teaching to enjoy it. In her case, she didn't even want to be a teacher but turned to it when she realized she couldn't afford law school. She also told me that being a white female in an urban school district is probably the worst position you could be in. This is great insight. Of course I would have never learned this stuff with the male teachers because they have a different perspective on things. Even though she has a negative outlook on teaching I'm glad she's being honest with me. She told me she went into teaching thinking she would change the world and quickly realized she couldn't. I do have this invincible aspect about myself. Now I need to learn to change that and focus on how to combat everything going against me working in an urban school.

This quarter has started off real well, though. One of my biggest problems is that I am really shy in front of an audience. Last quarter my supervisor and mentor teacher told me I need to work on my teacher persona. This quarter I am definitely working towards this. I have started right away walking around the classroom and trying to get to know the students. I really want to start working on a good rapport with the students. Other than that, nothing else really happened this week!