TEA 2017 Day 8 September 19

Today we had Fellow and Partnership orientation.  We met at 9.30 at Great room on the 4th floor of UNR for welcoming introduction of UNR President Marc Johnson and College of Education Dean Ken Coll.

The Partner teacher were given pieces of paper with fun facts about us that we wrote while staying in Washington. Then they started conversation with us, trying to figure out who is who. I got acquainted with a French teacher from some high school Jennifer and chatted a little bit.

 Then we were introduced to our partner teachers. My partner was sitting just next to me. When I was looking around to see who's this he just said behind my shoulders "I'm here". 

I asked him some questions about his school and work. This is Jerry Miller from Pine Middle school. He teaches English, Social Studies and Drama. My colleague Maria form Moldova was left alone, because her partner had to go, so she "occupied" my partner with a flow of questions and talking.

As I could see from the teacher's book, the subject is called English language Arts, which is different from just English like in our schools. The 7 graders focus on reading stories, fables, extracts and do language analysis, write narratives, ect.

We agreed the schedule. I have to prepare one cultural lesson and one content lesson. The rest of the lessons I will observe and take notes. 

Then we had meeting with Dr. Carina Black and one of the partner teachers and discussed the issues of learning culture at school. Our fellows asked a lot of questions what is allowed to do and what is not allowed, what clothes to wear, what are the school rules etc.

Closer to the end of working day there was a session with Jenny about setting goals. As I've already told my friends, I was a little bit disappointed. My real goals can not be reached, because I wanted to be in a primary school. I wanted to know how to start teaching English from the very beginning, step by step. Of course, I know how to do it in my way. But my interest was to see, e.g. how do they teach English literacy to Spanish-speaking kids, which techniques do they use for enriching the vocabulary and so one and so forth. So I had to invent my "goals", that are not really my goals at all.  I wrote "to find 5 learning apps for teaching reading comprehension. But actually I don't know for sure if my partner can share these particular apps with me, whether he uses them or not. So, should I look for them myself? (Jenny told she would check if we have done the first step). But I can look for them at home. So, it is a closed circle. 

Then I read a teacher's book for a while and decided: "Let it be. I think, I can prepare lessons for the 7 grade".

Some more pictures of the day.

University campus

University campus.