Mr. Reingold's Room

  My title, "Teaching and training are exciting and hard" won't sound surprising, and certainly is true. I'm working as a student teacher at a high school in the Bronx this summer. The students are here because they need to repeat a class or two. Naturally, most of them are not happy about being in school in summer, and repeating a course is no fun. I'm impressed and grateful when any of them shows a good attitude about participating. Some of the students understand the material fairly well, and they passed the Regents exam I'm helping to teach a class in Global History. History and Social Studies were my very worst class subjects when I was in school. I've matured and am able to understand this kind of material now, but thinking as a teacher is still very hard for me. At the same time, I am taking classes on pedagogy and education philosophy. The work load is considerable, and because of my learning disabilities, writing a lesson plan, hard enough for any...

  Today is Monday, July 4. Tomorrow, I start student teaching at a school I admire very much. The faculty and staff might be somewhat different from those I met on the two occasions I visited. The first occasion was an event that the NYC Teaching Fellows and the Bronx recruiting office of the NYC Department of Education (DOE) ran. They offered tours of several schools. I visit four, and they all impressed me for various reasons. At this particular school, I went back for a demo lesson and an interview. I didn’t end up getting an offer there but they gave me very useful feedback which I will use in my upcoming interviews. In other words, I’ll be at this school only through the end of August. By then, I should have an offer from another school. The other will also be in the Bronx, since I have made a commitment to teach in the Bronx for at least two years. Thereafter I can move to another job. This is in exchange for the support I get from NYC Teaching Fellows. And who knows: I might...