When I wrote about leveraging technology in the classroom, I should have been more concerned about leveraging technology during my internship, for I seem to have skipped one blog and carried on with the others. So…here goes!
The prompt I skipped reads, “Describe at least one way you can connect your summer externship experience to your classroom curriculum.” I have been holding on to a fortune cookie message that I got on June 17, our first official day as Kenan Fellows. I had gone to Cottle Farms a nervous wreck, and Whit Jones was kind enough to take me lunch at a local Chinese restaurant after spending the morning showing me most of the farm facilities. When I opened my fortune cookie, I expected a silly, philosophical statement that would sound even funnier when read with the words “on the toilet” added to the end. The joke was on me!
What Confucius or whoever writes the fortunes for this American invention taught me is that EVERYTHING about my internship will be relevant to my curriculum. My title is that of English teacher, but I prefer to describe myself as a “Social Studies Teacher with an Emphasis on Literature.” In other words, my students study people and their words, their ideas, their frustrations, their livelihood, and most importantly, their dreams. I have had to take risks – check. I have learned about the food that sustains us and the jobs that sustain Duplin County – check. I have learned that the workplace of the future will actually be determined by the student, not the teacher – check. My curriculum is not just English Language Arts and some sense of historical context. My curriculum is life skills – ELA just happens to be the vehicle.
So…How will I connect all of this to my classroom? How can I not? I am a different person because I have stepped out of my vacuum. My students may never remember that Hester Prynne was a good person at heart or that an infinitive can be used as a noun, a adjective, or an adverb, but they will remember that there is a career, a vocation,a calling for all, and my job is to help them discover it and answer the call.