A quick turn-around from Chicago it was - in from Boston and now out to Notre Dame. (It's good to be "home!") It's been three intense (time-wise) days of supervising/coaching ACE teachers in Practicum and helping out in a couple of their classes. It's been pretty neat to feel out this new role of "mentor teacher" at the summer school experience - nothing is really set in stone for what we are to do or how we are to carry it out, so Marisa and I have quite a bit of freedom.
But with that freedom comes a little frustration too - since there's no one who's walked in these shoes before (metaphorically speaking), we're not sure we're meeting expectations of all of the ACE faculty involved with Practicum (which is quite a few people). We want to do right by the program and right by the ACE teachers, so we've been striving for balance. We've also been flexible - Marisa and I planned to address consequences with a few activities today, but when the ACE teachers were being so thoughtful and asking so many meaty questions about creating their literacy block schedules, we knew we couldn't move on today to those consequence activities we had planned. (It's pretty amazing we both came to this decision/action independently and only found out afterwards that we'd followed our guts in the same manner. Hmm...must be a twin thing.)
Maybe in the coming days/weeks a little more light will be shed on our roles - Are we mainly coaching? Are we addressing questions/concerns about their schools/the fall? Are we spending time having them review and work on assignments?
We shall have to wait and see...
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