Things have settled around here at home, at least for the time being. My son is pretty much back to normal, but with a cast on his arm. He is adjusting quite nicely and he likes that he's not as immobile as he was before. No pain. Just itching inside the cast. That's a good sign. It means that his arm is healing.
In the past couple weeks, my classes and practicum are becoming more and more hands on and surreal to being a teacher. For my Essentials of Teaching class, we delved more into lesson planning and prepared for our 10 minutes presentations. For my Teaching and the Social Order class, I'm becoming more and more aware of classroom cultural diversity (and of my skin color; I'll explain later). Lastly, for my IT class (Instructional Technical skill), we are learning to make charts and forms that you normally would find inside classrooms (such as attendance sheets, data base, etc.).
My practicum is becoming very routine and I'm fully prepared to present formal lessons in front of second graders. Thanks to tonight's presentation in my (adult) EOT class, I feel ready to stand in front of a classroom full of real second graders.
Prior to my pres., I practiced it on my three children. It helped -- a little bit. When I first practiced on them, they laughed and acted like very naughty little children. Then after making a few observations on classroom behavioral management at my practicum site, I tried those techniques on my own kids while practicing my presentation on them. It worked. As long as I kept putting my foot down on their smart-aleck remarks, they kept quiet, listened, and participated. It was all in good fun; so, in a way, it was seriously-fun.
The subject I taught was on "brainstorming". When it was time to present to my EOT class, I was semi-prepared. I thought I brought my dry-erase marker with me, so I ended up using the school's. The darn thing barely worked, so I made do with what I got. Then at the end of my presentation, I realized I forgot to do a couple of things with the class. I was complimented by many of my classmates, but I felt that it wasn't good enough and I know that I could've done better.
My Social Order class in the last couple weeks was very interesting. It deals with multi cultural controversial issues facing American schools today. It is hard to fathom the idea that it still exist...and it still does. I'm not talking about African Americans. The controversy exist among children of immigrants, American-minorities, gender-differences, and those with sexual "preferences". I have looked at myself and others in a whole new different way than ever before. I always grew up never thinking, or being conscious, about my ethnicity. Things that were brought up in class are now beginning to surface that I've never noticed before. I told my professor that I never have experienced any kind of prejudice. Now that I think about it, I did, but it was done in a subtle way that no one has ever noticed it in class.
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I had this one math teacher in high school. She was of a different Asiatic group, which I will not mention to prevent stereotypes. What I DID NOT notice was that I was the only Filipino in my math class...everyone else was this other Asian-group. I failed that class. It was the only math class I failed in high school. I've always wondered why she looked at me like she was going to eat me alive. I seriously thought that it was her fluctuating hormones. I tried everything to impress her: studied hard, raised my hand in class to volunteer answers (she has never called me; she'll call me when I didn't know the answer), and even hung out with those who she favored in class.
This is the grand-salami that made me now realize that she was prejudice: there was this one kid -- class clown -- in my class who said something in a Filipino accent (i.e. he was making fun of Filipino accents), when he did that, my teacher laughed. Next thing I knew, the entire class started making jokes about Filipinos and my teacher stopped her lesson mid-way to join them. Dummy me thought it was funny, too, as it was the norm in Hawaii to joke around about other Asian ethnic groups. What really bothers me, though, in this present time, is that she's someone who preferred a quiet class that stayed on task. This was the first time she stopped in the middle of the lesson to listen to and be involved in jokes. When this same boy joked around about other things, she immediately stopped him. She did not stop him when he made fun of Filipinos.
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Looking back, I now know why I got that bad grade and why she gave me dirty looks (she always smiled at her "other " Asian-counterparts). She graded me according to the color of my skin. Although I had a lot of answers right -- and HOW can you get math problems wrong if you have a 50-50 chance -- my papers would always come back with comments such as "can't understand your handwriting", "write clearly", (for Algebra theories) "this doesn't make sense", "your 1's look like 7's" (wtf? I wrote my 7s like a backwards "F" to indicate CLEARLY that it was a seven), etc. The right answers rarely counted. She merely wrote her comments in bright red ink and whenever she returned my paper to me, she would give me this look. Seriously, a look like she was -- oh, I don't know -- it seemed like she was threatened by me.
So what happened? I got sent home a note to my parents about my bad grades. Because I saw how unfair her grading was, I was really pissed off, and ended up forging my father's name on the note. Yes, I got caught -- she called my father to see if he received it. She never told him WHY I got that (final) grade, "D". She was just checking to see if I gave him that note. My father had the reputation of coming down hard on his kids when it pertains to education; my teacher knew this and she used it against me. I know it is some serious accusation, but when a teacher stops midway in her lesson to make fun of Filipinos, then it was a strong indicator that she was (and probably still is) a bigot. Again, she's not white. She is Asian.
By the way, I was the only full-blooded Filipino in that high-math class level. I guess she never thought, in her years of teaching, that someone like me would end up "there".
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That was my story share-time here on this blog. In my classes we always share stories and we learn from them. Our ideas on what is really out there, what we must face is a reality. It would help our society -- a multi culturual society to start seeing that although we are different, we are all Americans.
Teachers of Cohort 32...we are almost ready.
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