An hour or so with Deedee

After my interview with Deedee, she gave me a "tour" of McCracken. First, she took me to what she called the "Cafe." Honestly, when she said that I pictured a place, well, a cafe. Instead I met the lovely vending machines that live there. 

We then went to the library in McCracken. The lighting there was mostly natural and didn't seem as nice as Scripps. She said that there feels like there's not enough resources.

The computer lab is attached to the library. At one of the computers, she showed me one of the programs she uses for class. The closest thing I could compare to LiveText to is the portfolio design students need when applying for a job. It's a site that potential employers can go to to loo

k at whether a person has reached the standards one needs to be a teacher. These are standards set up by the government, and each project she completes on LiveText meets certain standards. While this is an easy thing to show employers, she said she wasn't always sure how these projects were really meeting them. 

After she showed me some of her projects on LiveText and then we went to her class. We arrived early, so some of the previous class was still there. Of course, I usually don't do yoga after class. Apparently someone had put forth the idea as a form of stress relief.

Class started shortly afterwards. The first thing I received was an agenda of the day, something I never had in any of my classes. It gave a clear outline of what was going on that day, with times included.

The first thing they do in the partnership class is have Lit circles. Basically, each group has to read a nonfiction book that they discuss every week in class. Deedee's group had already finished their book, however, and so were discussing articles the teacher, Joette Weber, assigns them. We outside this day because it was so nice outside, so we got to watch some guys play basketball as they discussed the new U.S. Secretary of Education. 

This was done for about 15 minutes, and then the class went back inside. There Joette and one of the other students gave a demonstration of a teaching technique. They pretended that this was a discussion class. If this was real, two people would have to research a topic so that they understand both sides of an issue. The class would pick who gets what side, and each person would spend three minutes defending his or her side. After they were both done, people in the class could raise their hands to add to the conversation. It was interesting to watch a college class pretend to be a middle school class. None of my classes so far in college have been like this.

Though the class would go on for the next 2 hours, I had to leave early to get to one of my classes. Still, I felt like I got a much better idea of what classes in the partnership are like.

*All pictures are my own.*

Deedee Craun

Deedee Craun, 21, is a junior in the school of education She’s also someone who spends most Thursday nights in my apartment to watch Grey’s Anatomy (she’s the friend who introduced me to Erin). She agreed to let me interview her on Thursday, March 5.

 

Thus begins my epic journey to find Deedee for the interview. First I had to trek down Jefferson Hill for the first time since freshmen year. Then, I had to find her.

 

I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to find her because I’d never been to McCracken Hall  (the education building) before. I texted her to ask exactly where we were supposed to meet and then decided to stand on top of one of the stone benches in front of the hall to see if I could find her. What followed still surprises me because I somehow didn’t break my foot. That bench I stood on? Totally broke underneath me (see picture).

 

This would be right when Deedee found me of course.

 

We decided to sit in front of McCracken for the interview, on the bench I didn’t break. Afterward, we would go to the class for the partnership she’s in.

 

The East READ Partnership for Middle Childhood

One of the first things I wanted to know was what this whole partnership thing was about. Erin was previously in it and now Deedee was, too. What was so special about it? 

Being in a partnership is more beneficial than simply taking the required classes for an education degree.

“A student that’s not in the partnership, every quarter that they’re in a class that requires an observation, would probably not until the second week be told, ‘You’re going to Logan Hocking. This is your teacher.” Then you have to talk to your teacher and find out when you’re going and you have to get used to your teacher’s style and the students in there,” said Deedee. The students only have to spend 20 hours observing. Though they only have to spend this many hours there, apparently the drive there and back is a big pain for such a small amount of time.

With the partnership, Deedee spends a full day observing at East Elementary every week. She also takes a special class every Thursday from three to six, the one I ended up getting to sit in on. She takes this class all year, instead of just a quarter, with the same people. Deedee said, “That’s the basis of it, but there so much more that comes from it, like the friendships because you spend so much time with [the students]. I’ve gone to several of their school activities, I’m doing the makeup for a show now, I went to their fall carnival as a volunteer. Those kind of things you don’t get just from regular observations.”

 

Special program doesn’t mean special treatment

When Deedee described the kind of work that has to do for school, I became really glad that I wasn’t and education major. What it comes down to is a lot of group projects and a lot of long-term projects in general. While most of my classes as a journalism major and political science minor consist of individual work and papers, it’s clearly the opposite with Deedee. Each project she has can take anywhere from 4 to 10 hours to complete. By the end of the quarter, she spends 5 to 10 hours each week just on projects. “You’ll have a week where you don’t have anything and then you’ll have a week where you’ll have three projects. It’s like hell week every other week,” Deedee said. “On Tuesday, I spent the entire day [doing a project].”

She has this on top of the 75-80 hours she’ll spend observing this quarter.

 

No longer a rebel

She’s doing this much work to be a teacher now, but she originally wanted to be anything but one. Both her mother and her aunt are teachers and she has another aunt who is a speech pathologist. “Generally, the women in my life have been teachers,” she said. In high school, she rebelled against the idea of becoming a teacher even though that’s what she had wanted to be when she was little. She thought about interior architecture and even auditioned for OU’s school of music. She spent her first two quarters at OU undecided. “Finally, I was like, ‘I love kids, I love working with them. Guess I will be a teacher.’”

This is a pretty big contrast to Erin, who wanted to be a teacher as soon as she got a taste of it.

 

Still pretty free

Whereas Erin felt like she had matured greatly from school, Deedee hasn’t felt that yet. “I feel pretty free,” she said.

This isn’t to say that nothing’s changed for her. Being an education major has taught her the fine art of time management.

How she’s changed the most, however, is that she’s now much more aware of how her appearance affects how others see her. She doesn’t go to Walmart in sweats anymore because of this.

While laughing, Deedee said, “I always wear my helmet now when I ride my bike to school. I didn’t wear it once and I passed students on my way as I was leaving school and I couldn’t face the fact to them.”

 

 

Coming Soon...

For those of you reading this blog, I though I'd let you know that there will be new content by this weekend because I'm doing an interview tomorrow with a education major junior. I'm actually going to be able to class with her for a while, so expect more content and actual pictures soon! 

Erin Lewis, Graduate Fellow

Erin Lewis, 23, is a graduate fellow in the reading masters program at OU, She was the first person who agreed to talk to me, even though she probably has the most full schedule of anyone I’ll talk to. “I’m very busy” was a quote she said often. She was so busy, in fact, that the only time she had was Friday morning before she went to teach. I was unable to go to the school with her because a current FBI check is required, something I don’t exactly have on me.

I got into contact with Erin through a mutual friend who is an education major. I wasn’t sure what to expect since the only contact we had before the interview was through email. We met for the interview on February 13 where I found Erin to already possess qualities that I associate with teachers (perkiness, patience, maturity, general niceness, etc.). Just because she seemed to already be a teacher in spirit, though, didn’t mean that I didn’t have any questions,

What exactly is a graduate fellow?

For me, the first thing I wanted to know was what the heck a graduate fellow was. The OU’s education web site offered information for those who wanted to apply, but little information to really look at. Erin said, “Basically… you apply to teach for half a day and then on top of that you take a full quarter of classes.” A full quarter for a graduate student is less than that for an undergraduate, but she teaches class on top of that also. “I guess the benefit of all of this it it’s kind of like a TA or GA where they reimburse you for your program and you get a stipend on top of it,” she said. It allows her to get more experience while getting her masters degree, but it also guarantees that she basically has no free time.

 

 Wait, no free time at all?

I kind of had to pause a little to process what she was saying when she explained what a graduate fellow does. She teaches in the morning Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and in the afternoon Thursday and Friday. Along with this she takes her 12 hours of graduate courses.

This doesn’t even include the amount of homework she has to do. Her face kind of fell when she described the amount of reading she has to do for the class. To make sure she gets everything done, she has to plan out her weekends ahead of time. On top of that, she spends two to three hours a day just preparing for class.

But no free time at all? The look Erin gave me said this was clearly the case if she wanted to keep her sanity. “I mean, last [weekend] I took a Saturday off and was like, ‘I’m not going to do any work, I’m just going to relax’ and I got back [to my apartment] on Sunday and I was a mess. I mean one day, it’s just one day. All I wanted to do was relax for one day and I still felt so behind,” Erin said.

 

Why would someone do this?

Well that’s a two-part question. I wasn’t sure I understood why she would want to be a teacher or why she would want to join the first part.

The answer to the first part convinced me that she was one of those people, the kind of people that were meant for the whole teacher thing. In high school, she applied to something called the Young Professionals Academy to get an internship opportunity. Though she wanted to go into pharmaceutical sales, she ended up working for a teacher. Erin said, “It was like fifth or sixth on my list, but why not give it a shot? So I did and it was… I don’t know what it was, but I walked into that classroom and it was like instant. I just felt like this was where I was supposed to be.”

So maybe she did have a higher calling, but why the fellowship? Teachers eventually need to get their masters anyway; she just decided to get it out of the way. The fellowship part is a little different, though. “I actually am new to the fellowship program. I did a GA program last quarter and then a position opened in this,” she said. Though there is a ton of work, she picked this crazy program for the experience. Erin said, “You really lose a lot of what you know and what you can apply if you’re not in the classroom.”

 

On that whole maturity thing…

Erin agreed with me in that maturity was something gained through school. Erin said, “You take on a lot when you decide to be a teacher because you’re a role model for these kids.” Because students might see her, she has to act a certain way whenever she goes out. As her time in OU went on, this got more and more intense. She said that while she could balance fun and work sophomore year, that’s not true anymore. She says, “I definitely wasn’t as focused as I am now.”

These rules are really a factor in deciding if you can be a teacher, Erin says. “My friends used to give me such a hard time about not going out, about not doing this, not doing that and you really have to have that ability to say no. ‘I’m not going to do it, I have other things that come before partying, that come before going out to dinner or anything like that’” she said.

 

I think that both of these traits Erin explained, responsibility and self-sufficiency, are the traits that get developed through school. Erin seems to support this. Now I just needed some more proof…