Dad was a teacher, and later an administrator. Mom was a teacher, for a brief time before I was born. I did not want to be a teacher, when I was growing up. I think this is possibly because, while both Mom and Dad were teachers, they weren't very good at it, and certainly didn't love it. I remember my father giving me some career advice at one point, and suggesting that I become a teacher because you could put in your thirty years and then retire. I found this rather questionable as career advice.
Eventually I became a teacher. It was almost an accident. However, once I became a teacher I discovered two things: the first was that I had been doing teaching for a significant number of years. It just hadn't been called that. The second was that I absolutely loved teaching.
I, having graduated with a bachelor of science, didn't take a bachelor of education, but took a one year "transfer" program, giving me the qualifications to apply for a teaching certificate without having a bachelor of education.
When, after all of that, and some other things, I did apply to the old Teacher's Qualification System, back when there was a TQS, I obtained a TQS 5+. Getting a TQS 4 meant that you had a four year Bachelor of Education. If you took a five-year Bachelor of education, or a bachelor's degree in something else, and then a one-year education program, you got a TQS 5. A TQS 5+ meant that I had an awful lot more courses than any mere baccalaureate should have, and yet did not have a Masters, which would have been a TQS 6.
A couple of stories from my student teaching (possibly leaving out the back that driving to the school one day was the only time in my life that I have ever gotten a speeding ticket).
We had more than the normal allotment of time student teaching, in this particular program, since we had the usual three practicum sessions of three or four weeks, but we also had two days a week in the school while we were still taking other courses. For much of the year I was in a grade five classroom, and, given my science background, I was asked to produce a science unit. I did it on paper airplanes. Not just folding them: setting up experiments to assess their performance, with regard to time aloft, distance, and aerobatics. After we had finished the science unit, the results of the science unit became a kind of an art project, with the various models of paper airplanes hanging suspended from lines strung across the classroom.
But we did spend time in all of the grades available to us in that school. Because of that, and a few other things, I have, in fact, taught every grade from kindergarten to grade 12. And then up into college and university courses, post graduate courses, and, of course, commercial training in business and industry.
At any rate, this particular story takes place in a grade two classroom. I also have to admit that, unlike the spelling test, this is possibly my least favorite experience of teaching, and I still feel terrible about it to this day.
I wasn't particularly doing much teaching in this grade two class, but one student had not yet finished the assignment when the bell rang for recess, so I was deputed to stay behind and monitor her completion. As I was paying attention to what she was doing, I realized that the answers that she was providing were not the ones assumed, and expected, by the teacher in that class, but were, in fact, completely correct given the wording of the questions on the assignment.
I found this fascinating! To my mind it was a really interesting example of the care that you had to take, teaching, when designing practice instruments. If the students could answer something completely divergent from what you expected, and still be absolutely correct in regard to the question you had asked, it indicates that you weren't careful enough in wording the question in the first place.
I said, "Oh! Look! That's really interesting! I know that the teacher was expecting a completely different answer, but the answer that you are giving is completely correct!"
(I should have kept my big mouth shut.)
The grade two student, all of 7 years old, looked at me with a pretty blank face. Then she looked at the question again, and starting erasing all her answers. And writing in the ones which the teacher probably expected.
I felt terrible. I felt crushed. Crushed that I had possibly crushed the spirit of inquiry and adventure in this seven year old girl. I should have pointed it out to the teacher, not the student. I should have expected that the student would only have been interested in pleasing the teacher. The student was far too young to be interested in the labyrinthine twists of the nuances of language.
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