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I admired Bigelow's ability to paint a vivid picture of his first year of teaching in relatively few words. Bigelow used the structure of a memoir to draw in his audience (likely targeting pre-service and in-service teachers early in their careers).

The memoir structure made the piece feel authentic and relatable. The use of imagery allowed me to visualize a first-year teacher, apprehensive of how a lesson just went, witness a few students pass judgment, not on the lesson, but on the teacher's ability to teach. While the TV commercial metaphor is a little dated, the sentiment of "trying too hard" is still relevant to this day and culture.

This narrative is very reminiscent of my first years of teaching. I distinctly remember getting into a public "showdown" with a student on the fourth day of the school year. While in the moment, exerting my authority rewarded to me as an adult with a college degree was enough to convince me that I had to "win" that "showdown" by default, it was clear to me afterwards that the students witnessing our showdown knew - the second a situation reaches that point, the teacher has lost (his/her authority). I left that day feeling like I had made a mistake in choosing teaching as a career.

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From the Bigelow article, I immediately noticed his writing style and his use of imagery. He obviously used first person, to convey his story as a narrative. He used his examples from inside the classroom, which hooks readers, especially teachers as they can make a connection to their own teaching. Lastly, I like when he included the quote about how this time will past. It gives us as insight into his thoughts and the connections he made to things he had learned before.

All these pieces that Bigelow used gave us some insight into the actual experience of his classroom that day, as well as into his thoughts and reactions to specific events. This is also due to his first person narrative and his use of quotations directly from his experiences or his thoughts.

I believe this is somewhat similar to my writing. I use first person whenever possible, especially to explain a story. I try to use similes and metaphors to show imagery and help the reader connect to my story. I am would like to write better, as Bigelow's example. I also use my own thoughts to help explain my narrative and reactions, which gives a lot of depth and meaning to my writing.

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From reading Bigelow's article, the thing that stood out most to be about the narrative was the mixture of memory an personal reflection. I most admired the honesty in the piece, as the author was able to admit his short comings with his own personal experience as a first year teacher.

The first person narrative and use of the commercial ad metaphor made it easier for me to visualize the reality of the author's classroom. The language used creates an image of students being unengaged and uninvested in the class.

I found that the narrative was also very representative of my own personal experience as a first year, which was also disastrous but for very different reasons. I think where I fell short as a first year teacher was that I struggled to find the line between being human and too friendly with my students which made it difficult to manage them. I was also able to relate to the idea that it is important to continue to experiment in your classroom no matter how many years of experience you may have. While it is only my 2nd year, I see myself continuing to try different things to meet the needs of my students because it never truly feels like you have fully gotten to a place where everything you do works for your students.

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In Bigelow's article, I enjoyed that his narrative used a mix of direct memory, and reflection on not only his first year teaching, but the last 30 years of his career. Each person who has ever taught, can immediately bring to mind a moment when he/she felt similarly and has their own memory to evokes a similar feeling of shame and frustration from their career. By beginning with this memory, the reader is placed in the same shoes as the narrator and can better understand the situation he was in. The narrative also utilized quotes in an interesting way. Not only did he help the reader actually directly visualize the action of his memory by including the dialogue of the student, but he used the quote about kidney stones, Nixon, and "this" passing. The reader laughs along with this quote, and despite the fact that it is not a personal memory, and again we are placed directly in his shoes and understand the feelings he experienced. The author ends the piece that we read with a text feature that highlights the biggest piece of advice that he has for a new teacher, which allows us to focus in on this very important reflection. By ending the piece with this advice, the audience is already bought into his experience, and is likely to trust his advice more because we experienced his memory of failure with him

My first year of teaching was pretty much an unmitigated disaster. I could not manage a classroom well, I yelled all the time, felt unprepared, and though there were moments of joy and laughter with the students, I generally refer to that year as the "dark days." I certainly did not feel like I developed close relationships with scholars, and that they too felt like I was trying far too hard, and getting far too little out of that hard work. Thus, I felt very connected to his story about his first year teaching. However, much like the author - and any other teacher - I learned so much from that first year that I was able to take into the next years. Skills that helped develop me because I did them BETTER, while eliminating many of the steps I was doing (like yelling constantly or essentially bribing kids to behave) that were clearly not effective.

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I found How I survived my First Year by Bill Bigelow to be very insightful and interesting. I admired the honesty of the author when he acknowledged he made mistakes in his early years of teaching. I also admired his honesty when describing how he felt when he overheard his students compare his class to a local tv commercial. I was able to visualize the dismay and disappointment the author felt in describing his emotions.

I agree with the author when he says after years of teaching he still continues to experiment with his classroom practices. I have been teaching for 8 years and I still review the lessons I taught and determine if changes need to be made. I always try to improve and to make my lessons interesting and challenging.

I do remember my first year of teaching and the mistakes I made. But, these mistakes have made me a better teacher today.

I believe and practice daily what the author said about showing your students that you respect them. I feel to get respect, you need to give respect. And I strive to have mutual respect with all my students.

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I enjoyed How I survived my First Year by Bill Bigelow. I admired how quickly it could introduce and address a complex set of topics including student-teacher relationships and student engagement. The text does a good job of using dialogue and figurative language to set introduce the central idea of the piece.

This helped me visualize what the Mr. Bigalow's first year class was like. First, it showed that his students were disengaged. Second, it illustrated the source of this disengagement by showing us the teacher's actions. Just the quick sentence about a tv infomercial told us everything we needed as readers to picture him in front of the class.

I found this piece similar to my narrative as a teacher. I have heard students complain that my class is boring. Early one, my go-to strategy was to be "high-energy" in front of the class. While this worked for some students, it felt disingenuous to many. I have sense made an effort to build real relationships with students as suggested at the end of the article. While I am by no means perfect at this it has done a lot to help me with classroom management.

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I admired that Bigelow begins and ends his short piece with honesty.  It can be difficult for teachers, at whatever stage they're in, to admit their shortcomings.  Having a student comment casually that your class is boring or lame can sting as badly as any insult.  I appreciated that he seemed thoughtful and sincere in what he wrote.

Because I, too, had had similar experiences, him opening up so much allowed me to picture his classroom and the dynamic that he tried to build with his students.  It sounds like he didn't have the worst possible experience in his room, but that he felt when things were lack-luster and hated that he'd delivered something subpar.

While my first year teaching had many more volatile experiences in my classroom than it seemed for Bigelow, once things settled down, I had very similar feelings about my lessons.  What especially resonated with me was when he talked about understanding that his energy made all the difference. I completely understood the feeling of committing to starting off a lesson with the utmost enthusiasm and still feeling it die out a little by the end of it. Of course, being more honest and real with your students always helps in those situations because it makes you more human, as he mentioned.

Extra Reflection on The Writing Revolution:
Some things I admired within this piece were the constant inclusion of actual examples of what students said and did.  Choosing to follow Monica made the writing much more interesting and allowed me, as a teacher, to connect more to the affects of using this writing program.

The addition of the quotes and specific descriptions of the kids in the classes, particularly in the scene where students are practicing using the discussion prompts, really helped me visualize the transformation of the classroom.  Even small details like the type of hair or clothing the students wore helped set the scene.  Adding in that one of the boys had a background in working with the janitorial staff put me in the seat of one of his peers in the way I heard his answer explained.

In Monica's reflection at the end of the article, you feel this rare sense of self-awareness in her own struggle. When she points out that her disadvantage of simply not knowing what to do stemmed from just not having it taught to her, that shows that her understanding around her struggle has changed. That is such a powerful thing to do for a student because it takes some of the fear of not knowing away from them and pushes them to seek out the person who WILL teach them, instead of believing something is wrong with themselves for not naturally knowing.  This is a narrative far from my own growing up.  It wasn't until my first year teaching where I really felt entitled to good instruction and someone helping me understand the why and how of new ideas.  If I'd found that awareness earlier, like Monica, I know my college experience would have improved tremendously.

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How I survived my First Year by Bill Bigelow was a quick and easy read, not just in terms of the length but the author had a very expressive way of conveying his thoughts onto paper. When reading the passage, it felt very personable and the fact that the author was honest with his experience as a first year teacher made it very relatable as well.

What really stood out to me from the text was when the author stated, "Most of us come out of college full of theory and hope. But then our lofty aims often bump up against conservative cultures of our new schools, and students who often have been hardened by life and public schooling." I couldn't help but nod in agreement at his sentiments because I could  definitely relate to this. When I first started teaching, I had plenty of ideas and was very excited to share it with my co-teacher. Unfortunately, I didn't have the best of experiences when it came to co-teaching and  I found myself (and my ideas) being shot down or disregarded by a few of my co-teachers. This year, now that I'm at a new school, I feel hopeful yet again since my co-teachers have been much more supportive this time around.

Although, I've never heard students compare my teaching/lessons to that of a local TV commercial, nor have I heard any complaints from them, (I'm sure they do it in secret) I found it to be relatable. At the end of the passage, the author talks about how the most important piece of advice he received was in terms of showing his humanity to his students and I definitely agreed with him. Having your students see you as a human above all else is very vital when it comes to developing good bonds with your students. Yes, you may create amazing lessons, however, if the students do not respect you, then those lessons aren't as meaningful to them as you'd hope.

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What were some qualities that you admired in this writing piece?

How did these qualities help you to visualize the author's experience?

How is this piece similar (or different) to your own narrative?