You Can’t Take the Sky From Me

Here goes.

I’ve had a livejournal for five years, but I don’t think I’d call it a blog. So this is new ground for me.

I’m currently a 2nd semester grad student in a Literacy (birth through 12th grade) Education program. I want to be a high school English teacher, but have yet to work a day as a teacher (other than student teaching). I’m questioning everything about this choice right now. I quit my grocery story customer service job to pursue my teaching, but have not yet made any great leaps and bounds toward my goal. Well, other than graduating with a 3.33 overall GPA and a BA in English and Adolescence Education and my Initial Certification. That might sounds like a lot but it feels like nothing. I’m constantly being told that I need to be multi-certified before I’ll get a job, so that’s where the Literacy program comes in. It will not only certify me to teach literacy or be a literacy specialist, but it will allow me to have my permanent certification to teach in New York State. I’ve recently realized that the permanent certification is the only reason why I’m going to stick with it. I don’t want to be a literacy specialist, I definitely don’t want to teach in the younger grades. I just want to get this freaking Master’s Degree and move on with my life. I’m not even sure at this point if I want to teach at all. Then again, I felt that way before I student taught and when I was student teaching I knew that it was what I wanted to do with my life, what I needed to do with my life. I’m just questioning myself right now and all I have are grad classes that are wasting my time; grad classes that are interesting, but not challenging; and a practicum.

Now, a practicum class shouldn’t be that awful. It just means I should be applying the knowledge that I have attained throughout my program thus far at SJFC to a student. The only problem with this is that said student is a 2nd grader with ADHD who is behind in reading and writing… oh, and the fact that the classes I took in my first semester taught me next to nothing about actual instruction. I took a class called Diversity, Social Justice, and Schooling which taught me that I should use students’ differences to help me teach them, appreciate everyone’s strengths, and that *gasp* people are different from one another in lots of ways. I took a class called the Nature and Acquisition of Learning where I learned that professors who are more interested in their research than teaching and who are rude to their classes and any guess speakers they invite in SHOULD NOT BE TEACHING. And Assessment-Based Literacy Instruction, where I learned that you should base your instruction on the assessments you do and how to do assessments, but not anything about how to teach students with literacy struggles.

Therefore, I have no knowledge to apply, except the ability to assess the child, and know that he is different from everyone else, because we all are. Yeah, way to throw me to the wolves, thanks Education department.

So, I currently have no job, classes that I hate, a seven year relationship that the other person doesn’t seem to want to move on to the next level, and I am living at home with my Dad. Oh, I’m also turning 23 in about 5 days (well, it’ll be 5 days in half an hour). Is this what being an adult is? I don’t think so, but I don’t know what to do to fix it. When I was younger and thought about where I would be when I was 23, it involved a teaching job, a shiny ring on my left ring finger, an apartment of my own, and happiness. Right now, I’m struggling to keep a hold of the fourth thing on that list, without the first three.

Hopefully this blog won’t be all negative, but we’ll see.