Jami Holbein Swanson April 11, 2012 rch 7, 2012

Appendix F

TEAC 930A Analytic Memo

Observations of William In TEAC 887

William is taking 9 hours at UNL, working on a Masters degree while teaching .6 FTE at Goodfun Middle School. TEAC 887 is a class on school reform. I am taking the same class as a choice course. I did not know William was taking classes until the first night our class met in January. March 9, 2012 As part of TEACH 887, we went on a site to Conde High School. Each TEACH 887 student was paired up with a Conde High School student and attended two classes. After the two classes, the TEACH 887 class and the Conde High School students shared lunch and visited about the morning classroom visits. William told the story of his experience that morning. There was a Chinese student in one of his classes who went by her Chinese name rather than an American name. Based on Williams experience at Goodfun, the Chinese students have American names they go by. William described his thoughts on American names for Chinese students. He felt as though Chinese students should ask to be called by their Chinese names and that classmates and teachers should try to learn how to pronounce the name correctly. This is in direct conflict with what William told me earlier in the semester when I asked him what he would like to be called. In January he told me to call him by his American name. March 29, 2012 Student registrations, course offerings and teaching assignments have been allocated. Williams program at Goodfun has grown a class. His contract only allows him to teach a .6 FTE, which would cover all of the classes he has at Goodfun. William would no longer be available to teach at Lux. There are advantages to teaching at Lux. Students are compliant, behave appropriately, study outside of class and are polite. Goodfun students do not always behave appropriately, have complex lives outside of school that do not necessarily support school expectations, and are more often abrasive than polite. In a conversation with William about his assignment for next year and where he would like to teach, William decided Goodfun was where he would like to teach next year. He told me that Shirley was the determining factor for the decision. Even though it was a more difficult assignment, he wanted to be in that building because he has a mentor there. April 26, 2012 The final project or TEACH 887 was to declare a challenge of designing a new high school. William chose the challenge of finding a Chinese teacher to teach Mandarin. He talked about his experience and what he has learned over the past year. He explained how he could not have made it through the year without his mentor Shirley who took great care of him. A recommendation for hiring teachers

2 for the school we were designing was to be sure each new teacher had a mentor as he would not have survived his first year without his mentor.