March 26, 2012
This was started today
while I was sitting at my desk while my student teacher taught. It’s a little on the random side.
I am sitting at my desk at work. My student teacher is beginning his
instruction on The Hunger Games by
Suzanne Collins. I’m nervous about this
for several reasons. The first and
foremost being the themes that I had developed and the ideas I had wanted
brought up are not happening. While I am
not the queen who dictates exactly how every book in the world should be taught,
but come on! Throw me a bone here and do
something thematically.
There is always a risk when you take on a student
teacher. I work with people who
absolutely refuse to take one because of the damage that could be done. Important things not covered or not covered
well. I always volunteer to take a
student teacher because I feel obligated.
The only way to learn how to be a teacher is to actually do the
job. That’s how my student teaching
was. I was on my own in a ninth grade
English class for twelve weeks at East Hartford High School. I made tons of mistakes and bombed many
lessons, but I think I’m a pretty good teacher now because of it. Of course, doing student teaching in my
current classroom is not necessarily an introduction to teaching reality. I teach in a relatively separate program
for students who have been identified as either gifted or talented. This is teaching fairy-land. I have nearly 90 students, all of them bright
and (relatively) highly motivated. This
is not reality. Perhaps I should not
offer to take student teachers…
I call it teaching in fairy-land, but I work just as hard as
I did when I taught in a mainstreamed classroom. I just work on different things. A majority of my time is spent on curriculum
and instruction. I bring the established
standards up to the level of my students.
My classroom is full of students with varied abilities and interests. I spend a lot of time dealing with parents
who believe their children are smarter than I give them credit for. When I taught in a mainstream classroom, I
spent a lot of time on classroom management—not necessarily getting the kids to
behave but to actually do the work. I
also spent a fair bit of time “mothering” students. I’ve decided that I am much better at
designing curriculum than mothering other people’s children.
Still trying to find the wisdom in what my student teacher
is doing to scaffold the book. I do love
this book, but I think it needs a lot of support. On the surface, it is a book about kids
killing other kids in a televised knock-down-drag-out brawl to the death. Just under the surface is a veritable
bubbling cauldron of social and political commentary. It’s a smart satire on our current love
affair with reality TV. It’s a startling
snap shot of our current state of wealthy elite vs. the ever growing number of poor. It’s about a government brutally exercising its
control over its population using force and propaganda. Unfortunately, while it’s a fun, fast read,
most students will focus on the violence and the kissing (yes, there’s
kissing), not the reasons for the violence and the kissing. I’m afraid the kids aren’t getting enough
scaffolding or enough of the right scaffolding.
But I have to let it go because he’s got to cope with this. It’s his class. (I’ll probably talk to him tomorrow about
it).
John and I went to see the movie yesterday. Craig watched the kids for us, and we caught
the 11:30 a.m. showing. It wasn’t
crowded, which was good. I liked the
movie, but I’m trying to decide if I LOVED it.
There were things that translated well and things that didn’t. There were things that were added that made
sense and helped in telling the story, and there were things that were taken
away that didn’t make sense.
I do have a couple of Hunger
Games movie wishes:
1.
I wish
Katniss’s prep team was in the movie more.
They’re not really needed in the movie and would have added to the two
hours and twenty minutes of the movie. I
just like them. While they were written
as stark, stereotypical characters, they amused me. I think the movie needed some more (any)
comic relief.
2.
I wish there had been more of Cinna. He really is important to the plot of the
whole series, and the movie marginalized him.
It needed him. And besides which,
what movie wouldn’t be vastly improved by more Lenny Kravitz with gold
eyeliner? Seriously.
John says he’d like to see the movie again, but not until it
comes out on dvd. I’d like to see it
again sooner, but will probably end up waiting until then, too.
The question has come up as to whether or not to take our
students to see the movie while it is in the theaters. I had wanted to see it before I said yes or
no. Now I’ve seen it, I don’t know. While you never actually see any physical
blows during the movie, there is never any doubt that there is violence going
on. You don’t even really need to use
your imagination to picture it. It’s
spelled out very carefully. The kissing
aspect is fine—not too much (not as much as was in the book). It’s the violence that I would really need to
think seriously about before I took students.
A friend and I were talking about this. While neither one of us objects to our
students seeing the movie, we felt that it would be better seen with
parents. Neither one of use wants to the
be the person in charge of bringing the kids to see this movie. And it’s not that these students have never
seen violence; the video games they describe are frightening enough. It’s that the violence is perpetrated by
children against children, some of whom actually enjoy the games. It’s easy to miss the point that the
government is forcing the children to do so and that it has created a culture
in which it is appropriate (even educational) fodder for public viewing.
And that, my friends, is why the book needs to be scaffolded
well. J
