Help!!

Rachel Heckert (heckertkrs who-is-at juno.com)
Sun, 8 Aug 1999 17:54:14 -0400

I have signed up to become a PPT (i.e. unqualified and unlicensed)
elementary school teacher in the New York City school system starting
next month. (No, I'm not being irresponsible. An unbelievable minority
- approaching a majority? - of the teachers in NYC schools are
unqualified.) I have had no - repeat NO - education courses, although I
have many very short friends (some are still on all fours), not to
mention my cousins' hordes of little ones, friends' kids, etc. I will
have to undertake to complete a certain number of education credits
within a certain time span, but that's not going to help me now.

I only have experience in 1) teaching psychology to college
undergraduates 2) tutoring ESL to Russian-speaking adult immigrants 3)
informally teaching various people in the workplace how to use computers.
At this point I don't even know which grade I'll have, except that it
will be somewhere in first through sixth. Also, it will be in south
Brooklyn and almost certainly have a large proportion of immigrants and
minorities.

Since this is a list more or less dedicated to teaching, can list-members
give me some guidance on teaching in general, and maybe this student
population in particular? Nothing necessarily about specific techniques,
but about general approaches to real classroom practice with real kids.
(Many of whom have already be victimized by unskilled or unsympathetic
teaching.) As I mentioned above, a lot of them will not yet be
"Americanized" and may not be hearing English at home. (I also hope to
learn something about the communities the kids come from, which I can
apply later when I'm working in them as a public health professional.)
At the very least I don't have any misinformation to unlearn - that I
know of - and I do get along very well with children.

Answers either on the list or to my private e-mail are fine. I want to
do the best possible by my students, who are going to have to learn
enough to survive and flourish in an social environment which is not
always hospitable.

Many thanks,

Rachel Heckert