Student Teaching - Week #6

Rebecca Verhage - Walsh Elementary

Middle school students are often pretty good at avoiding schoolwork. Lately, I have heard quite of few stories and off-topic questions designed to distract. Here are some of my favorite comments from the week.

 Boy raises his hand in the back of the classroom while they were doing independent reading. I go over to see if I can help him.

Boy 1: Miss Verhage, did you play sports in high school?

Girl sitting next to him: Yeah, she played volleyball.

Boy 1: Oh, you look like you were a cheerleader.

Boy 2: Where did you get your skirt.

Me: Stop stalling, you know you don’t really want to know.

Boy 2: Yeah, well my mom wants to know.

Miss Verhage, your eyes look like marbles.

Boy 3: Why do you have a scar on your head?

Me: It’s not a scar it’s just where I part my hair.

The Killer Angels - Lifeline Theater

In other news, the art event of this week was a play at the Lifeline Theater up north about the civil war. Based on the topic, I wasn’t all that excited to go to it, but I’m really glad I had. There were ten actors in the play and they each were two or three different characters on either side of the war. I liked how they had a troubadour who played between set changes and during the transitions because it showed the culture of that time period. I suppose music would be a great way to raise the soldiers’ spirits during a long war like that. He also narrated for us giving some extra information about the battle at Gettysburg. My favorite part was one of the last scenes where the confederate army was charging the hill. During this part of the war, the confederates lost many men. In order to show this, the actors had a rack of coats behind them. There were six soldiers, three in front and three in back, along with their commander. As each of them got shot, they dropped their coat, handed their rifle to the man behind, and went to the back to get another coat and join the march again. By the end, there were a good fifteen coats on the ground representing the deaths of those who marched. This was a great visual to me and I appreciated the way they performed the battle in such a small space and with a small crew and were still able to do it justice. I think it helped me to have a better appreciation for what the war was like for those fighting in it and how hard it must have been for those fighting against their own friends.

White Sox game at US Cellular Field

 On Saturday night, La Casa (the apartments where we live), offered students free tickets to go to a White Socks game. We had a really great time. My roommates and I went and we got to know other people from our building which was fun. While none of my roommates or I are really into baseball, it was fun to cheer along with the avid sports fan, help start the wave and sing, “Take me out to the ball game”. One of my roommates is from Singapore so when we all started singing she was shocked saying, “Oh my gosh, you guys have a baseball anthem?”  While most things in the United States are adopted from other country and cultures that we immigrants have come from, baseball is truly an American sport and it was great to be at the stadium on Saturday!

With Trinity roommates at Navy Pier

With La Casa roommates at Sox game

One thing I have really enjoyed about being in Chicago is its proximity to my home college. This weekend, I had a couple of my old college friends drive downtown and spend the afternoon with me. We walked around Michigan Avenue, got lunch and strolled down Navy Pier. It was a beautiful day in the Windy City and it was good to catch up with some of my old roommates. Then to top it off, my new roommate and I went to church together on Sunday and then got dollar gelatos afterward for a treat. It has become a Sunday tradition for us and a good time to catch up on what’s been happening in each other’s lives. I have really appreciated the friendships I have built while being here this semester. In fact, as we were leaving the baseball stadium, my roommates and I were goofing around and another guy from our building commented that “you guys are like family.” I’m glad he saw that in us because that’s the way I feel about them. In one short month, I have grown to love these girls and I am glad for the opportunity to get to know them better throughout the semester.

Student Teaching - Week #5

by Rebecca Verhage - Walsh Elementary

If any of you have worked with kids or been around them at some point in your life, you know what I mean when I say that you never can quite tell what will come out of their mouths. This is one of the greatest joys of teaching! This week there were a couple instances that come to mind that I’d like to share with you.

First, let me remind you that this is middle school. Do any of you remember a time when you were in middle school and something happened that, at the time,  seemed like the end of the world? Looking back, these things often seem quite inconsequential and I’m sure this is how these students will view it in the future as well.

Now imagine this. It’s the third class of the day for these students and they are going over a reading passage trying to decipher the meaning of words they don’t know based on context clues. The teacher has just finished modeling this and now the students are working together in groups to finish the remaining words. Both my teacher and I are walking around the classroom helping individual groups when all of a sudden, I look over and there is a girl in tears. Of course our middle school students are all over that in two seconds and there are three girls walking over to comfort her, drawing the attention of the rest of the class as a result.  My teacher ends up pulling her out of the classroom and a few minutes later, calls about four other students as well. I continue teaching the lesson for the remainder of the time. About twenty to thirty minutes later, just before the bell rings, everyone returns looking somewhat sullen. I find out during our lunch break that sadly, there had been some verbal bullying going on. The boy involved thought it was just a joke but took it too far. He and his friends had apparently decided to nickname this girl “Ostrich”. Now I know I probably shouldn’t have but I just started cracking up, but an ostrich, really? Where did they come up with that? In retaliation, she called the light-skinned Hispanic boy “Black” which didn’t bother him one bit and just made him think that it was a big joke. In the end, my cooperating teacher had to find a way to make him understand that name calling is never something one should do and they spent about twenty minutes doing some role playing until they did understand.

Let me preface this story by sharing that one of the things I have struggled the most with is classroom management. I have a hard time being stern because I don’t want to be perceived as mean. It is something I will probably always be working on to some degree, but no worries, I may have just found the solution to fool-proof classroom management. It was an idea given to me by a student of mine after I taught all day with a substitute in my cooperating teacher’s absence. He had forgotten something in the classroom so he came back in at the end of the day to retrieve it. As he was standing by his desk, he says to me, “Miss Verhage, you know what you should do if the class isn’t listening?,” out of nowhere he pulls out a whistle and gives it a blow, “use a whistle! That will get their attention.” I said, “Thanks for the suggestion, but somehow, I’m not sure that would work very well.” He counters by saying, “Well, you could just keep blowing it until it hurts their ears and then they would have to stop and you can wear headphones so that it doesn’t hurt your ears.” At this point, I believe I was laughing as I thanked him for his suggestion  and wished him a wonderful weekend. He is a studious child and one of those kids that brightens my day each time I see him. It’s times like this that makes teaching and all the work that goes into it worth it.

Joffrey Ballet - Russian Masters

These stories are not unique to the city, but what is unique, and one of my favorite things about Chicago Semester, is the opportunities to be attend art events! This week, we went to watch the Joffery Ballet! It was great to see the dancers telling a story as they danced and to watch them perform in ways I hardly thought possible with such an ease and grace. It was a relaxing, entertaining night and a good mid- week break.

Murals in Pilsen

This weekend the reality of teaching set in causing me to spend most of my time writing and preparing lessons for this week. I did however enjoy time going with my roommates to get ice cream from a local vendor and the opportunity to use my Spanish as well as purchasing fresh made tortillas from the Mexican bakery down the street. I absolutely love the culture of the neighborhood we live in!

Student Teaching Introduction

by Rebecca Verhage - Walsh Elementary

The view from the L (elevated train)
Roommates at La Casa

Welcome readers! I’d just like to begin with a little disclaimer. I’ve never really considered myself to be the blog writing type and am afraid my entrees might not be quite as well written as others before me but I’ll do my best.

As for who I am, my name is Rebecca Verhage and I come from a rural town in the middle of Washington state. The part of Washington I’m from is technically a desert, a fact most people don’t know, because of the lack of precipitation it receives. Therefore, we have irrigated farmland. I was raised in the outskirts of town where my family has raised a menagerie of livestock. Just from this short blurb you can probably guess the difference between my home and where I live now.

Other information you might like to know is that I am a fifth year senior finishing up an Elementary Education degree at Trinity Christian College, and am due to graduate in December!!! For those of you who have been near the end of a four or five year degree, you understand my enthusiastic anticipation.  However, I am very content and excited to be living in the Pilsen neighborhood for the next three months in order to have the opportunity to live and work in a city as grand as Chicago.

John A. Walsh Elementary School
Pilsen Neighborhood

For my internship, I have been placed at Walsh Elementary School in the Pilsen neighborhood in which I live. Pilsen is on the southwest side of Chicago and is predominately a Hispanic area. It is a wonderful place to enjoy authentic Mexican dishes and pastries! I am really glad to be living in the same area as my students because I have been able to get a better idea of what their day to day lives are like by living it myself. I also really enjoy the Hispanic culture evident throughout the streets.

I am working with the Language Arts teacher for the seventh graders at Walsh. They are great kids and each day is full of the drama of middle school students but also the laughs and the giggles. I have been fortunate to have received a very supportive cooperating teacher and think I am off to a good start to the semester but more about that later.

Living in the city is something that drew me to the Chicago Semester program. I was going to school in the suburbs so I had visited the city often but living in it is so different. In a matter of weeks, my general knowledge of city locations has grown so that I no longer need a map to move get around. I have become a natural at riding public transit and have enjoyed that as well. A benefit of city living is opportunities it offers. There are always things going on and things to do in the city from the Jazz festival I went to with my roommates in Millennium Park, the Mexican independence parade just outside our apartment, a play featuring Dr. King at the Court Theater and accessibility to the beach.

Mexican Independence Day Parade in Pilsen

Chicago semester does a great job with their Arts and the city program and with letting us know about free things going on in Chicago that we can participate in. I’m looking forward to learning more and sharing with you about my experiences in Chicago and the classroom!

Be blessed.