So I was out the other night, sitting at the bar minding my own business eating the best batch of Thai mussels, i've had, ever! I couldn't help but hear the conversation that was happening next to me, it was between a man, his girlfriend and their friend. They (mostly him) were talking about how his student teaching was going, and what the state wanted out of him when he was doing his elementary portion of S.T. I couldn't help but involve myself, so i swiveled my chair and jumped in, talking about the common core situation within classrooms and how it's all about the language of your lesson. He seemed to have agreed with me on this mater, and said that a lot of his mentor's lessons were already up to par, they just needed to reword the whole thing. We started talking about the differences between Europe and America and how abused teachers can feel. He then was telling me about his recent S.T situation and how he so fortunately got to work in a private school, Storm King School to be exact. I'll admit I was jealous, because when I talked to my S.T advisory about being placed in either a private school or a charter school I was told my chances were slim pick'ns. But he was saying how amazing it is and the amount of freedom the teachers have, and the information they are allowed to share, and the freedom of lesson plan structures and how the students like to learn, and are learning a lot. This is a high school class! Now I don't want to come off as a uneducated dumdum, I mean I know students will want to learn if you can capture their interest, but it's hard at times when you have a lot of things standing in your way, and to be honest a lot of the students I dealt with had already made up their minds on not wanting to be in the enviroment they were in, aka school. I mean if teachers had the freemdom to teach what they wanted to and they wanted to and were doing it right, there would be a lot more time for individual understanding of the students and what they need from you, compared to trying to figure out how to word a lesson so it fits into some standards. He was also telling me about how being exposed to this private school, he's also being exposed to many other networking opportunities and shared a few sites with me. One being NAIS, this is a site for educators looking for alternative education jobs, whether it be charter, private, workshops, tutoring, etc. He also shared with me carney sandae, this is a site that is like a job searching networking site, it surveys what you have to offer, hands out your resume to other schools, and gives you information on how to find a job and where they are. You couldn't imagine how shocked I was that these sources are not being more widely spread for future educators, especially with everyone constantly telling you that there are no jobs out there. You also couldn't imagine how grateful I was for this information, I then noticed though that I had completely monopolized the conversation and his girlfriend was putting her jacket on, trying to escape the grasps of our teacher mumbo jumbo, not to mention the complete absence of the one friend. He was very nice though, and very happy to inform me to help with my future. His name was Chris and he was a history teacher in the making, and after his S.T. he is going to work with his cousin in the city at a charter school. We wished one another good luck, he told me to share the networking sites, and we went our different ways.
Now I know we are being trained to be contemporary art teachers in public schools, and it's harder to be trained for a public school because of all these standards and regulations that we have to deal with., but I don't think once any of my professors have said theres an option of charter or public, I've heard traveling abroad or workshops, but I'm wondering what everyone's stigma is about private or charter. I also wish there was a note taker for NAEA meetings, this way you can get the information without being there, because some of us have jobs and can't be there for these meetings. I mean I could see this information being bounced around in these meetings and not making their way to the majority of us.
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