Tom Sawyer

I started teaching The Adventures of Tom Sawyer yesterday. At the same time, my host teacher had to go to a meeting in which all the 7th grade teachers reviewed statistics of the students' data from the first marking period. The result was that she came back and said we had to include a bunch of things while teaching it.

Good old Oswego State did not teach enough about good old fashioned school work. The fact of the matter is, the education system is coming full circle. Reading and writing workshops, as it turns out, are not working. And the whole getting students to think through reflection and creative writing? Not helping them master the basic skills of reading and writing. So we are using a textbook based curriculum as I mentioned. And while teaching Tom Sawyer, it's back to the old ways of theme and character development, not joirnaling and creative writing exercises. (The funny thing, I was totally a creative writing journaling teacher until now. I can see first hand these kids need the basics and I love the challenge of getting them through it.)

This is the first time I've gotten to teach a classic novel and as an ELA geek, I love that I have this opportunity. But this is much harder than anything I've done because there is so much out there and I have to include all the common core standards and the district's expectations. Looks like I'll be revising each lesson! I really don't mind, but it's a lot of work and it does stress me out that I'm getting it right.

After all, I did do about 50 one on ones last week throughout the day trying to teach students how to write an argument essay, something my supervisor wondered was too hard for the grade. Well, it's the districts selected curriculum and it's in the new state core standards that everyone must adopt next year and Hannibal has begun this year.

"Shouldn't your professors at Oswego know the core standards?" Mrs. Peters asked me.

Mr. Nyman hadn't even heard of them.

I am getting onserved today and trying not to care.