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!