week 3

It's the middle of week 3 at school and I'm beginning to miss my social life. I stayed in this whole weekend catching up and finishing up on work I needed to do for class this week, but managed to finish by mid-day Sunday (I got to watch some football games!). The TEP 10 month program is definitely an accelerated one, but it's manageable. I still haven't really felt too "stressed" about completing all my work, but I have been doing work every single day. The majority of the work is reading, which I struggle with, and reflecting how you can/will apply what you read to your fieldwork. It's pretty simple stuff but it's constant. It feels like I just started and I think I only have 7-8 months left. The time is flying by, but as long as you have good time management skills there is nothing to worry about.
From what my friends in the program have been telling me it is best to live near campus. Living near campus ensures the commute to my high school, as well as UPenn is not going to be long at all. I currently live in grad housing (Sansom) which is definitely the most convenient spot for education majors. If you can't tell from my writing I am very excited to be in this program as well as very scatter-brained with what I should share with you all. Hopefully what I am including has calmed some peoples nerves down! Thanks for reading and talk to you again soon.

Democratic School

So I've been going to my field placement as well as UPenn classes for about two weeks now. It sure is a grind, but it's been fun to keep busy so far. I'm going to my high school from 8-12 each day and then I have one 2-3 hour class each day of the week...it's not too bad. My first couple weeks at high school I have just been going class to class seeing how each teacher sets up their room. Some teachers have rules posted and in other classes they are just understood. Some teachers have individual gridded seating, but others have group seating. It's fascinating to see the different amount of successful teaching strategies that can be completely opposite of one another.
I've just been taking a lot of notes while at high school so far and haven't been planning any teaching yet. Again, the workload isn't too much (yet), but I've heard it gets more in tense....we'll see.

The school that I work at has a really neat set up. The school is ran like the US Government and the principal heads the executive branch, the students make up the House, there is a teacher Senate, and students and teachers make up the judicial branch. Most of the policies that occur in and outside the school are sponsored by bills that the someone in the school created. Some of the new policies that are taking place this year are longer lunch for sophomore/juniors/seniors, more time in between periods, and reduction of the old uniform policy. If students are able to democratically create a "legal" bill and pass it through Congress it will make its way to the principals desk to be viewed. It's a really neat concept they've got going on that allows for some student autonomy. I'll be sure to keep you all posted on the new bills that will be created this year. Take care for now!

Beginning of Fall Semester

This is my first ever blog…here we go! So first a little background on me personally is that my name is Joe and I was born in New Jersey. I went to Rutgers University and got my B.A. in History. I then joined City Year AmeriCorps and moved to Los Angeles to work in their school district. After working in LA schools for two years I applied to The University of Pennsylvania’s Teacher Education Program (Secondary) and came back across the country to pursue a master’s degree in Secondary History Education.

The 10 month accelerated program that the Teacher Education Program provides started on July 1^st. We took two classes and had a field workshop or “internship” a couple times a week. Summer classes finished up a few weeks ago and the break between the Summer and Fall semesters felt great! Now that the school year has started I have been going to my placement high school each of the last few days. As a member of the Teacher Education Program in the Fall semester I am taking four Penn classes and co-teaching each morning at a local high school from 8-12. I haven’t even been at my high school for a week yet but I think things are going very well so far and I’m hoping for a great year. Penn gave us more than enough time to familiarize ourselves with our partner teacher, high school environment, and staff so the only thing that’s different now from last week is that there are kids in the school. That’s all for now, but I’ll be sure to keep everyone updated as my year continues. Bye!