Saturday, March 27, 2010
Almost One Month
Tomorrow will make it a month since Mom left us. I'm still not sure how to deal with it all but I am surviving and sleeping okay. Obsessive thoughts occasionally wake me up or keep me up but I've done pretty well without Benadryl.
Two of my favorite cousins were able to come in for the funeral and it was good for Dad to have most of his brothers and sisters here. My Aunt Sue just wasn't in any condition to come and Shell's husband had to be gone so she couldn't bring her.
Dad also has a lot of good friends in his hometown and nearby who were only too willing to help. My friends were also wonderful. Dad, however, sadly learned who was here for much more selfish reasons -- soliciting attention for themselves and their current life challenges -- none of which even begin to compare to the death of an immediate family member such as a spouse or a parent. Mom had mentioned this person doing this over the years since she and Dad had met their parents and how even they were tired of it. But I had to keep Dad's situation foremost in mind and he didn't want to hurt his person's feelings despite his needing to not have to worry about anyone but himself. My parents are just too nice and I hate to see people take advantage - especially at such a critical time when we were all just beginning to grieve and barely surviving minute by minute while trying to hold ourselves together. And to have someone so clueless constantly in the way certainly didn't help. But we survived it and it's another of life's lessons learned about people's willingness to take advantage of someone else's tragedy.
I went back home to sleep in my own bed each night and did quite a bit to help Dad plan to funeral -including picking the readings and suggesting Ave Maria - one of Mom's favorite songs. I've kept track of who sent flowers, food, and cards. Dad even mentioned one evening that if I wasn't doing it, it wouldn't get done. I've started the thank-you notes but do not want to send any of them until I have finished with all of them so I don't leave anyone out or write two to the same person. My brother helps when Dad tells him to do something and Dad did reinforce my minimal requests during the funeral week. When he was going right by one place to get to another Dad was sending him, he could certainly stop to drop off pictures for the obituary. You would have thought it was the end of the world but, in the end, he didn't have a choice.
I stayed over the Thursday night of the funeral so that Dad wasn't all by himself all of the sudden on Friday and it also gave me a chance to start sorting through some of Mom's things. I'm starting with the most visible signs of Mom - their shared bathroom counter, their shared double walk-in closet, and the laundry room immediately inside the back door. The drawers has not been sorted in decades and much of what was there were Mom's "copies" of things Dad keeps somewhere else such as putty knives and key holders, etc. He wants to keep the microwave from the late 1970s (it's huge and heavy) since it reminds him of her so the unused trash compactor will stay there to support it. But there is a floor in there and the brooms are in the closet.
Other times, it's simply too hard emotionally to keep going through everything. But I do my best. I have headed back over each Wednesday and spent the night and worked in the house in between various appointments on Wednesday and Thursday. The last time Mom and Dad went out together was to the club and I knew Dad would have a hard time the first time he went back. I knew I would be the designated driver and I was. And it's good for me to see the family friends each week.
We knew she had been working on taxes and I knew it was in Dad's best interest not do an extension since we wanted to get it off his plate and off his mind. I thought I had looked everywhere. We were quite frustrated because we only found a few pieces of tax-related paperwork that came in after she went into the hospital. We knew she had it gathered up somewhere. I found her 2008 envelope of prep materials still on her desk so at least I had something to model from as I found records. And all her 2009 bills were in a folder in her desk. Dad was already in the process of moving files he needed downstairs. The hardest thing about her office is how her various genealogical stacks -all of which mean something- overtake everything else in there.
When we thought we had looked everywhere, I went back to a chair I didn't think she used often in her bedroom because there was another one that was surrounded by her stuff - and found a manilla folder with all her stuff. So we were able to reschedule the meeting with her accountant the next week. Ultimately, I decided to switch to this accountant since we would be spending so much time with him as we put Mom's estate plan into action over the next few months. I like my accountant but they sold out to a bigger firm in another town a few years ago and it just hasn't been the same. Last year, it was a panic to get my tax returns back to me to sign and mail because I was leaving town - something I had clearly stated during our initial meeting. Now that won't be a problem anymore.
There's still a lot to do at the house and lot to help Dad with but I will go back to teaching on Monday. And I'll see if I can focus enough to start grading my online classes. I put notices up when this family emergency occurred and then again after the funeral that grading would take precedence over other course-related tasks. Most emails before this tragedy were asking questions already answered in the course materials they did not want to review again and I imagine most of them now are asking about grades that I don't know anything about since the material hasn't been graded yet. All I can say is I'm doing my best.
There are also some big changes on campus but since I never had much control over them in the first place, there is no reason to let it consume the little time I feel I can concentrate adequately on grading so that I can get some work back to students before they turn in their final assignments. That's my goal at least. This is a semester when I'm glad I am not the primary on-site person for student teachers. They do a lot of online written work and reflection for me - more than they do for most if not all of the other student teacher content supervisors - anyway. And it's also a situation in which I have to see all or none of them and with so many out this semester, it just makes sense to rely on their online work for their Pass or Fail grade. Were it a real letter grade, it might be a different story. But soon they will start giving back classes and it's hard enough to get to all of them even when they are all teaching a full schedule. I had tried to go see a few of them before I left for Newark but they weren't teaching hours I could go see them yet. That actually turned out to be a good thing.
Labels: back to school, death, family, funeral, Mom, student teaching, students
Sunday, April 12, 2009
"Education Schools Need a Gold Standard"
James W. Fraser asserts in this Chronicle editorial that "Reform of teacher preparation is once again in the air". It only makes sense given the reform measures that are part of No Child Left Behind.
The challenge at the college and university level is a unique one. We have students who think they might want to be teachers but may not be sure. Yet, unlike some other majors in which you can't remain in and/or graduate from that major unless you can PERFORM well in the courses, students expect that if education is what they pick as a major or, as their "fall-back" option, they should be allowed to pursue and complete that major.
Our program has some very good students who care deeply about history and want to share that passion and knowledge with future generations. We have other students who have not done well pursuing other majors, or even began their college career as a history major, that think that "liking" history is enough to teach it. It is only the tip of the iceberg and I struggle with ways to convey that to them.
Having to pass the national Educational Testing Service's Praxis II 0081 Social Studies content test is not the best way to test potential teachers but, so far, it hasn't kept anyone out of the profession that should have been there. In fact, most students who don't pass it on the first try eventually admit that they did not study for it (despite our best suggestions).
How does this connect to the editorial? We need more examples of excellent models to which we should strive to raise the bar at all levels of teacher education. One of the reasons that society does not necessarily hold teachers to higher levels of respect is that so many lower level students opt for this particular major. This situation makes it extremely difficult for the majority of students who work their tails off to do a good job and to educate students.
I'm a former classroom teacher - junior high (even that term is now "historical") and high school for four years - before returning to school because my principal said students and parents complained I made them "write too much". It was a history class, after all. Just pick the best answer from the multiple choice. (The Language Arts (now Communication Arts) had a different outlook, however, given that my having them write meant that students wrote in other classes besides theirs.
The bottom line - we're feeling more pressure to keep enrollment up in these poor economic times. Yet how do I reconcile a student who resists (and sometimes belligerently) my advice that they need to pick another major? Like the PK-12 teachers, I'm eventually graded on their success even if they have trouble writing complete and coherent paragraphs before leaving college. I can't be the only "stop gap" but as long as public education makes it possible to "just keep rolling", we'll not have the solutions available that we need to offer those who work hard a better education and a better future.
The challenge at the college and university level is a unique one. We have students who think they might want to be teachers but may not be sure. Yet, unlike some other majors in which you can't remain in and/or graduate from that major unless you can PERFORM well in the courses, students expect that if education is what they pick as a major or, as their "fall-back" option, they should be allowed to pursue and complete that major.
Our program has some very good students who care deeply about history and want to share that passion and knowledge with future generations. We have other students who have not done well pursuing other majors, or even began their college career as a history major, that think that "liking" history is enough to teach it. It is only the tip of the iceberg and I struggle with ways to convey that to them.
Having to pass the national Educational Testing Service's Praxis II 0081 Social Studies content test is not the best way to test potential teachers but, so far, it hasn't kept anyone out of the profession that should have been there. In fact, most students who don't pass it on the first try eventually admit that they did not study for it (despite our best suggestions).
How does this connect to the editorial? We need more examples of excellent models to which we should strive to raise the bar at all levels of teacher education. One of the reasons that society does not necessarily hold teachers to higher levels of respect is that so many lower level students opt for this particular major. This situation makes it extremely difficult for the majority of students who work their tails off to do a good job and to educate students.
I'm a former classroom teacher - junior high (even that term is now "historical") and high school for four years - before returning to school because my principal said students and parents complained I made them "write too much". It was a history class, after all. Just pick the best answer from the multiple choice. (The Language Arts (now Communication Arts) had a different outlook, however, given that my having them write meant that students wrote in other classes besides theirs.
The bottom line - we're feeling more pressure to keep enrollment up in these poor economic times. Yet how do I reconcile a student who resists (and sometimes belligerently) my advice that they need to pick another major? Like the PK-12 teachers, I'm eventually graded on their success even if they have trouble writing complete and coherent paragraphs before leaving college. I can't be the only "stop gap" but as long as public education makes it possible to "just keep rolling", we'll not have the solutions available that we need to offer those who work hard a better education and a better future.
Labels: Chronicle, college education, colleges of education, ETS, James W. Fraser, No Child Left Behind, Praxis, Praxis II, student teachers, student teaching, teacher education
Friday, December 05, 2008
Sad, But True
Here's something I'll share with students. It follows along advice in earlier years not to go to the liquor store in the town they are student teaching in. Yes, it will probably be some parent there that "reports" them to the school board but it's best not to push the envelope of community expectations at that stage of the game. It's just reality, folks.
And, I'm afraid, many of our students really do think Facebook and Myspace are private spaces just for their friends and "cute" members of the opposite sex. They are much more and only a window opening into the larger Web 2.0 world that connects us all.
Here's the Chronicle article:
And, I'm afraid, many of our students really do think Facebook and Myspace are private spaces just for their friends and "cute" members of the opposite sex. They are much more and only a window opening into the larger Web 2.0 world that connects us all.
Here's the Chronicle article:
Judge Sides With University Against Student-Teacher With 'Drunken Pirate' Photo
A federal judge has ruled against a former student who sued Millersville University of Pennsylvania for denying her a degree in education in connection with an online photo of her drinking, The Washington Post reported.
The former student, Stacy Snyder, sued Millersville in 2007. A year before, the nearby high school where Ms. Snyder was student-teaching had barred her from its campus days before the end of her semester-long assignment. Prior evaluations had criticized her competence and professionalism in the classroom, the legal decision says, but the school’s discovery of a photograph of Ms. Snyder on MySpace — with the caption “drunken pirate” and a note alluding to her strained relationship with her supervising teacher — precipitated the decision to end her assignment.
That prevented Millersville from awarding Ms. Snyder a bachelor’s degree in education. Instead, the university reclassified some academic credits and gave her a degree in English, a decision she appealed and lost. When she sued, alleging violations of her free-speech and due-process rights, she sought the degree in education.
Labels: Facebook, MySpace, student teaching, students
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